Title: Snowball's Chance
Authors: Jessica Zyvarek Taylor and eponine119
Written: July 1999
Disclaimer: The X-Files...well, if they were ours, wouldn't they be a lot more fun?

Summary: Mulder and Scully have a snowball's chance in hell of getting together on a hot summer day. But maybe true love can prevail.

Meg's note: If you stick with the story, you'll be rewarded by some really good stuff at the end.

- 1 -

She thought idly of death as she watched the weather forecast flash across the screen yet again. She'd long since muted the volume. Listening to the happy, air-conditioned newspeople give out more cheery, dire predictions of death had started to make her crazy. Of course, the broadcasting buildings still had air conditioning. Hospitals still had air conditioning, although only on the odd numbered hours. Airports had been shut down. Her building was one of the lucky few that still got enough power to run the television.

18 days of 100 plus degree weather in the air conditioned yuppie scum capital of the world had seriously depleted the energy levels. There had been a city-wide brown-out in effect for the last three days. Since her apartment was relatively safe from break-ins, located on the fourth floor, she had all her windows open. Part of her mind pondered how crazy the theft statistics had gotten, what with the entire populations' doors and windows open trying to summon a breeze. Unfortunately, there was no way to find out since there wasn't enough power to boot up her computer. She'd driven to work four days earlier, only to find out that she'd been declared non-essential and that she should return home. The last rumor she'd heard before the phones went down had been that only one office in the entire FBI building had air-conditioning and no one was quite sure whose office if was.

She grumbled to herself, thinking that she knew exactly who got the air and that it was somehow entirely his fault for the diminishing ozone levels that had brought the sun's fury. Of course, she was certain cigarette smoke had something to do with it, but it was too hot to think and there was no phone to call and ask Mulder. She wondered how he was making out, but an image of him lapsing into a coma from the lack of electronic diversion was upsetting. If she was bored stiff, she couldn't image that he was still breathing.

She lifted the pitcher from her coffee table and poured herself half a glass. The pitcher had been out of the fridge for less that ten minutes and it was already luke-warm. Too hot to drink. Before she could even contemplate getting more ice, the TV set flickered and went out. The one lamp she had on in the house despite the pitch blackness of 10 pm dulled to the intensity of a candle and the constant, reassuring hum of the fridge silenced. If she dared to open her freezer now, everything would go bad within minutes. The insulation didn't stand a chance of saving her groceries. It would be an hour or two, she knew, before the power came back. She closed her eyes for a moment, wishing she could recline on the couch, knowing that it was still slick from the sweat she'd shed the last time she'd stretched out.

A second later she heard the sound of breaking glass and a car alarm ringing in the night. It was too hot to think of getting up. Half a second later she heard the car start up and speed off. She didn't react. Her own car had been stolen twelve hours earlier. Cars, the ones with air conditioning at least, had become the looters choice prize. But even that had quickly died off when the stolen cars ran out of gas and no one was at the gas stations to turn on the pumps. She imagined her car would turn up a few miles away. She hadn't had that much gas in the tank.

Testing the water in the pitcher with her finger, she discovered that while it was too hot to drink, it was still cooler than her skin temperature. She dared to venture down her sticky hallway to grab a towel from the bathroom. She carried it back to the kitchen and stretched it out on the floor. At least, she thought it was stretched out. It was a little hard to tell in the dark. Then she grabbed the pitcher, stood in the middle of her towel, and poured the water over her head. The entire two quart pitcher. It was cool enough that she actually shivered. She'd never enjoyed a sensation more. She set the abandoned pitcher on the counter and luxuriated in the feeling that for one whole minute, the water covering her body and soaking her clothes was not sweat. Her building, much to her dismay, had some sort of new age mumbo jumbo pipes, which translated into electronic something or other which, the super had explained in a hastily handwritten note on the door to his abandoned apartment, meant that the plumbing didn't work without the electricity. She had thought for a few minutes about driving to Mulder's, but she hesitated because sharing the room with another human might raise the temperature a few degrees, and then she'd heard her own car alarm sound and her chance was gone.

She heard a knock at her door and froze. There were few buildings with any power at all, she could see that from her windows. And the tenuous moral structure of the city had severely eroded in the past days. She was honestly afraid of what was waiting at her door. She approached it silently, peering through the peep hole uselessly. The lights in the hallway were out completely and her apartment was in darkness except for the lamp which did as much as a Bic at a concert. She didn't call out, as she might have normally, fearing that if it was a group of people trying to break in they might be encouraged by the sound of a woman's voice. She couldn't remember what she'd done with her gun and made a mental note to look for it in the morning when there was a little more light.

The knock came again, as she'd known it would, and she found herself uncharacteristically backing away from the door. She backed herself into a corner next to a plant and contemplated the situation. so maybe it was a gang of men who wanted to raid her freezer for anything cold. They wouldn't find much. She'd already taken most of it. And she was pretty sure raping her would be out of the question. She couldn't imagine anything less appealing than the feeling of someone's hot, sticky skin touching hers and making her more hot and sticky. Even so, she didn't want to answer the door. The weather had started to make people deranged. There was no trying to logic with the insanity that had gripped people. She squatted down and prayed that they'd just go away.

Another knock sounded. She caught herself whimpering. "Scully?" The familiar voice made her smile momentarily, until she realized he'd want to come in and make her apartment that much warmer.

She sighed and opened the door. "What?"

Mulder pushed past her and immediately slammed into the table, which she'd moved a few days earlier. "Ow! Are you trying to kill me?"

"I wasn't exactly expecting company, you know."

"The power's out here too?"

She took light hold of his arm and led him through her rearranged apartment to the couch. Then she plopped down and tried to convince herself it was cold. "Gee, Mulder, actually, my power's fine. I just like it too hot to breathe."

Her voice was lost in the sound of the television blaring to life. the fridge hummed back to life as did the tiny lamp in her bedroom. She glanced at her partner in the glow from the screen, shocked at the huge bruise forming on his cheek.

"My God, Mulder! What happened?" She stood up to get ice, plopping back down when she remembered there wasn't any.

"Carjacked."

"Someone took my car a couple days ago."

Mulder stared past her, his mouth open with shock. Scully glanced past her shoulder, fearing whatever was there. She didn't see anything. "Mulder?"

A huge smile lit up his face. "You've got TV!"

"Mulder, please don't..."

He reached for the remote and wrestled it out of her hand. He pressed the buttons furiously, obviously having not yet discovered that every channel had the same newscaster warning people to stay in their homes, drink plenty of water, and try to remain calm. Then every two minutes or so, it would switch to a huge weather map of the city with big plastic suns everywhere and the word `hot' flashing at the bottom of the screen. She glanced at her disheartened partner as he flipped through the channels repeatedly. "That's it?"

"I think everyone melted, Mulder. That's all there is."

He threw his head back against the couch and moaned. "I'd cry, Scully, but I think all the water has evaporated from my body."

Scully dared the skin contact to pat his hand for a moment. "I know, Mulder, I know."

"Do you mind if I take a shower?"

She frowned. "No water."

Mulder frowned too. "That new electronic temperature monitored humidity setting thermostat controlled water tank?"

"I didn't realize they were that common." Slowly, Scully met Mulder's eyes. His face froze for a second, an unnatural glow taking over his eyes.

"Scully-"

"No, Mulder, it's too hot to investigate anything."

"But Scully, this is too weird."

"Mulder, the world has gone insane and neither of us have a car. I'm not going out there."

"If we don't, Scully, it'll be like this forever."

"But it'll be a short forever because we'll die in a few days without water."

"Or we could save the world and everyone will be eternally grateful."

He was already heading for the door and for lack of common sense, she followed him. "Mulder, why do I think that even if we do save the world, someone or something will prevent us from getting any credit."

Mulder jogged down the stairs and up to the last car on the block. "Probably because of some little technicality like this." Then he withdrew his gun and shot out the window, unlocking Scully's door and hot-wiring the car while she remained silent with her eyes squeezed shut. Once the car was started, he glanced at her. "Scully?"

She smiled. "When they ask, I can honestly tell them I saw you doing nothing illegal."

He grinned. "That's my girl."

She rolled her eyes and turned the air conditioning on full blast, feeling her body shiver. Her tank top was still soaked from the water pitcher and now the cold air was assaulting her. She'd never felt so happy in her life. "Where are we going?"

"There's only two places in DC that have full power. The White House, which I doubt we'll get real far at, and-"

"One office in the FBI Building." She leaned her head against the seat and figured at least she'd enjoy the air conditioning before they got arrested.

- 2 -

Scully didn't bother to pay attention to where Mulder was driving their borrowed vehicle. She was too busy cranking up the air conditioning, sliding that little bar all the way into the blue zone and angling all the nozzles she could reach toward her sticky, dripping face. She glanced at Mulder when the air began to dry her sweat, cooling her skin. His hair wasn't even soaked. Just as she'd suspected, the man really wasn't human.

"Uh, Mulder? Where are we going? This isn't the way to the FBI building."

Mulder nodded. "I know."

"'I know' is not the answer to the question 'Where are we going?'" Scully pointed out. She would have tapped her foot but it was hot. The air conditioning wasn't working very well. The air blowing on her was sort of, well, hot.

"Why play Russian roulette trying to find the one office that has air conditioning?" Mulder asked her. Great, this was the one time he decided to be practical. Scully wasn't feeling very practical. "Besides," he broke into a grin, "There's probably forty agents holed up in there in their underwear."

Scully cringed. It wasn't a great image. Then her mind began to fill in some of the agents she knew. Kersch in boxers. Ugh. Skinner in boxers. She was going to have nightmares. Diana...she was going to vomit. "Mulder, pull over for a second."

"Uh?"

"Just do it," she ordered and he veered onto the side of the road as she threw the door open. The gravel at the shoulder was hot enough that she could feel it through the soles of her shoes. She realized she was wearing shorts and a tank top. She hoped Mulder hadn't noticed. Scully opened the hood and began rooting around, wishing she had a flashlight.

"What're you doing?" Mulder asked her.

"I'm trying to figure out why the air conditioning in this car doesn't work," she informed him.

"I think I already know," he said, dismayed, and she raised her head from the darkness under the hood. She met his eyes and her stomach turned. "It doesn't have air conditioning. It's a Dodge."

She swore. "No wonder it was so easy to steal," she commented, sadly climbing back into the passenger seat and rolling the window down. Mulder joined her, solidly closing the drivers side door. "If you drive really fast, we'll get a breeze," she told him.

He started the car and did as she said, flooring the gas and the car shot off into the night. Scully hung her head out the window like a dog, her hair flapping in the wind and becoming impossibly tangled as it air dried. "I've never seen this road so empty," she said and for a second, she got chills. Chills! In this heat. She was probably halfway to death. She could only hope the saying "Colder than hell" turned out to be accurate.

"I guess all the other people who stole cars didn't think to drive them," Mulder said.

"Where are we going?" she asked him again.

"Somewhere cooler," he told her.

"Most of the country is over 100 degrees," she informed him, parroting what she'd heard on her television while there was still enough power to run it.

"There has to be somewhere," he insisted.

"And you're just going to keep going till we find it?" she demanded.

"You got a better idea?" he asked. "At least we're moving. It's better than your stifling apartment, isn't it?"

Grudgingly, she had to agree. But she didn't have to voice it out loud. "I bet it's cold in Canada," she told him.

"We could get to Canada," he offered.

"Did I hear you mention something about investigating something or was that just a ruse to get me in the car?" she remembered. She turned on the radio. A lot of what she got was static. Maybe all the tapes had melted in the stations. Maybe the CDs had melted too. One station was playing the Emergency Broadcasting System, warning everyone that it was hot. "No shit, Sherlock," she murmured. And it was going to stay hot, he warned, causing more power failures, car thefts, and starvation if refrigerators didn't start to function. Not to mention the disease from poor santiation since it seemed most of the city had installed those weirdo electrical water systems.

"Scully, you're going to laugh at me, but I think someone is controlling the weather."

She laughed. But she stopped quickly. "Dare I mention that's impossible? No, guess not."

"I think it's the same person who sold all those electric water systems to everyone in the whole city. I think they're trying to kill everyone." Mulder was sincere.

"Yeah, and I bet that same person made sure there was no working air conditioners in the Dodge we stole," Scully said.

"You mock me now," he said.

"I mock you all the time, Mulder," she reminded him. "What're we going to do to find this all powerful scientific wizard with the potential to make the whole world really freaking hot and have no running water or power?"

"Where would you be if you were that person?" he asked her.

"Somewhere cool." She closed her eyes and stretched out. With the breeze from the air rushing past the window, she was almost comfortable.

"Then that's where we're going," he vowed.

"I'm with you there," she said and concentrated on breathing more slowly. When Mulder thought she was asleep, he started to sing silly songs under his breath since the radio wasn't functioning. She tried really hard not to smile and alert him that she was conscious, but couldn't quite manage it. He slipped his hand onto her thigh and she jumped at the burning heat of his skin against his. "Ugh, you're hot," she cried, flinching away.

"And you didn't shave," he cringed.

She stuck her tongue out at him.

"I bet you didn't brush your teeth either," he complained.

- 3 -

She had actually brushed her teeth. But she quickly discovered that brushing without water left her teeth really really sticky. And out of boredom, she'd read the back of the toothpaste and discovered that if one ingested too much fluoride they should contact the poison control center. While she was sure somewhere, somehow, she'd known that fact, she'd lost use for pretty much everything in her medical textbooks except the really odd things that they editors always put in that funny blue type on the outside margins too keep wayward students attentions. Those useless things that she was sure no one else remembered was how she always had some technically feasible medical explanation for whatever Mulder threw her way. She was also pretty sure she only remembered them because while her classmates had skipped them and read the text, she generally skipped the text and only read the sidebars. It made her reading assignments that much easier. Exams, on the other hand, well, she'd graduated an had successfully convinced everyone she' met in the last ten years that she was just smarter than all the other doctors since she knew them, rather than letting them know the truth and that she could barely tell the difference between pneumonia and a sprained ankle. Mulder never seemed to notice.

She leaned forward and pulled the duct tape off the dashboard in an effort to do something, anything with her hands. She discovered quickly that that duct tape held not only the glove compartment closed, but also the windshield wiper controls and the manual transmission. She quickly replaced the tape, but not before she'd emptied the glove box. Mulder was driving them somewhere cold, and since she wasn't sure how exactly one drove to hell, she was sure it would take a while. She'd need something to occupy her mind.

As she paged through the owner's manual, an ancient piece of juicy fruit fell out from between the pages. "Here, Mulder, since you didn't brush."

He smiled and gratefully took the gum, obviously not knowing where her selfless gift had originated. "Thanks."

She paged through the manual, reading out anything that seemed particularly useful. "It says here, Mulder, that when the check engine light comes on you should go to the nearest service station and have your engine checked." She glanced between Mulder and the dashboard, which incidentally had quite a few lights on, including the afore-mentioned check engine light. "Hey, did you know that children under four or forty pounds should be buckled securely in a child safety seat and that for optimum safety, all children should ride in the back."

Mulder glanced at her, blatantly eyeing her petite frame, since 99% of it was left exposed to his prying eyes. "Maybe you should get in the back, Scully. At least until we find a car with a rear-facing child seat."

Angered, Scully skipped the rest of the section on child safety, although she felt that would be the most interesting one since neither of them had any experience with children and they probably wouldn't know all the answers. "Look, here, it says that shoulder belts should lie across the shoulder, not the collarbone or neck." Just for safety's sake, she leaned over Mulder's lap and made sure he wasn't in any danger from his should belt. "And lap belts should be fastened snug and low across the hips, not at the waist." She carefully folded her page down and reach over to yank Mulder's seat belt down. She lost her grip on it, however when Mulder turned the wheel and her forearm landed hard in his lap.

"Scully!"

She sat up and resumed her reading, noting that Mulder's face had gotten quite red while his pants had become a slight bit tighter. "Funny, I never really figured you for a soprano." She smiled and continued to read, ignoring Mulder's grimace. "Did you know that you should replace your oil before and after a long road trip, every three months or thirty thousand miles, and if the car has not been used for a time?"

Mulder glared at his travel buddy and wondered if child seats came with gags. "Actually, Scully, I did know that. Now will you shut the hell up?"

She scowled and turned the page. "And you should rotate the tires every 50,000 miles. Or maybe it's 150,000. The type's kind of worn away here."

Both driver and passenger made unhappy faces when the car abruptly started toward the left. Once he'd regained control and pulled over, Mulder snatched the book out of her hands and threw it over the railing of the freeway. "No more of that, now that the tire has rotated itself back to recycled rubber."

Scully folded her arms across her chest, quite miserable that her trivia book had been stolen. She watched with quite glee as Mulder worked to change the tire, exhausting himself quite quickly in the heat. She muttered about how much he deserved it when he mentioned how hot it was. Eventually, he climbed back in the car and tried to pretend that the car wasn't still steering drastically to the left.

"Fuck, now we need another car." He glanced in the rear view mirror before he changed lanes, more out of habit than the need to look for other cars. There were none.

"Well, if you'd left me finish, I could have told you that extreme heat and wear cause the rubber in tires to become quite unreliable and that speed limits should be observed in cases of extreme temperature."

"Did the book say anything about how to drive a stolen car, by any chance?"

"Somehow I doubt it, Mulder. Dodge's don't really get stolen very often. What would be the point?"

"Then shut up!"

"Fine." She scowled at Mulder while he scowled at her.

Mulder took the next exit, slowly cruising the abandoned streets for another car. He slowed to a stop behind the first one he saw.

"Don't, Mulder, it's American. Look for a nice Toyota or a Honda or something."

He shot her another look and continued to drive. He didn't need to mention that the pickings were slim. It was two miles before they saw another car. "I don't care if it's a freaking Hyundai, Scully, shut your damn mouth."

She climbed in silently, figuring Mulder was just upset because he was wearing jeans and she wasn't. After four tries, Mulder sighed and leaned his head back against the head rest, apparently giving up on stealing it. "Mulder, is now a bad time to mention that this is a Kia?"

He looked at her and growled, his eyes dark and frightening. She waited for him to smile or at least turn away, or at the very least stop the low rumbling sound that was coming from his throat, but after a moment, she feared it had something to do with the fact that his eyes were bright red.

She grabbed at the door handle, which promptly broke off in her hand. "I, uh-" She rolled down the window and tried to climb out butt first, succeeding only in falling flat on her ass with her feet still in the car. Scrambling to her feet, she checked to make sure her partner, or whatever he was, hadn't gotten any closer. He was still growling and glowing at her. "Come to think of it, Mulder, I'm going to walk. Don't worry, I'll be fine, you just go right on you way, sir."

She continued to back away, afraid to turn her back on it, assuming whatever else she ran into wouldn't be as bad. Unfortunately, she didn't figure out backing up directly into...

- 4 -

...Skinner.

Scully screamed. His eyes were glowing red, too. This was not good. "This is not happening to me," Scully muttered to herself. As his hands reached for her, she realized it was way, way too hot to run. So she did the only thing she really felt she could do. She fainted.

When she dared to open her eyes, Mulder was sitting by her side. He looked perfectly normal, except that he was holding her hand and looking like he wanted to bite it. "Scully, you're alive!" he cried.

"This sidewalk is really hot," she commented. "And I think I hit my head." As she raised her arm to see if she had a bump, her fingers encountered something sticky and she let out a shrill noise.

"Are you bleeding?" Mulder asked, gripping her hand more tightly.

"No, there's gum in my hair. Uck," she said, trying to sit up, but the gum had been broken down into a sticky, gooey mess by the heat. She couldn't budge. "I, um, I think I need some help here."

Mulder reached for either side of her face, grasping her ears and preparing to yank her up from the sidewalk by them as though they were the handles on the sides of a crockpot. "Wait!" she cried before he managed to rip all of her hair out at the roots. "Can't you use scissors or something? Or, wait," What was it her mother had told her to use when she'd gotten gum on her gym shorts in sixth grade? "Ice and a butter knife."

"The butter knife I could maybe find, but ice? On a day like today?" Mulder asked her. "Be a big girl, this is the only way."

"M -" She started to protest, but it was too late. All of the joints in her neck snapped as he yanked her forcefully up from the sidewalk. She tried hard not to scream but couldn't help the large tears that rolled from her eyes. She covered her eyes as she got to her feet so she wouldn't have to see the big clump of hair and, from the feel of it, a good portion of her scalp lying in the street. Scully started to walk away, determined to find a house or a car or maybe a big meat freezer like in that one episode of the Brady Bunch.

"Where are you going?" Mulder asked, hurrying to keep up with her. He was hurrying, in this heat. Well, she already knew that he was crazy...

"I'm getting out of here, Mulder. Away from you."

"But why?" She glanced at him. His eyes had returned to their normal color of brown and they looked very charming and puppy dog like as he stared at her, trying to win her sympathy so she wouldn't leave him. She'd seen it hundreds of times before.

"Because that really hurt." Her voice dropped to a whisper as she dared to raise her hand to her head. She was bald on one side. Great, he'd turned her into a walking monster freak. If only he'd go away so she could cry about it, even though crying would doubtlessly be too hot an activity.

"I don't know how you get yourself into these messes, Scully," Mulder chastised her.

"You don't?" she raised both her eyebrows at him, crossing her arms. "I'm surprised, Mulder, since this is all your fault."

"My fault?" he demanded.

"Yes, your fault. I was having a perfectly nice time melting into a big, sweaty puddle in my apartment. Think of all the money I pay to use the sauna at the gym! Think of all the water weight I could have lost -"

"You do look a little bloated, Scully, which could explain this bad mood you're in," Mulder said helpfully.

If looks could kill, he would have dropped dead. But that didn't stop her tirade. "But you insisted we steal a car, the only one in town with n o air conditioning and then you had to go and blow out the tire driving so damn fast and then your eyes turned red and started glowing and I saw Skinner and fainted because it was too hot to run."

"I think you have a concussion," Mulder replied, suddenly looking concerned.

"No, I don't, I have heat stroke and I'm certain there's a difference," Scully informed him. "Mulder, why are your eyes red?"

"When?" he asked. "You mean late at night when I'm the only one in the office because you decided to go home and have a 'life' whatever that means and the fluorescent light is so hard on my poor tired farsighted eyes that I have to rub them and when I start it feels so good that I can't stop until they're raw and itchy?"

"No, I'm not talking about allergy eyes due to the fact that you never dust in the basement," Scully informed him. "I'm talking about glow in the dark like the red light on my answering machine like your eyes are glowing red right now." It occurred to her that she should be scared. She started to back away from him, but remembered where that had gotten her the last time. She wished she had her gun, even though it would be so darn hot in her hand if she fired it.

Mulder's shoulders went up and then down in an easygoing shrug. "I guess that's because I'm the devil, Scully, and this is your worst nightmare come to life."

"If this is hell, why couldn't it have been cooler at least?" she asked him. When she'd been a girl going to Catholic school, she'd had a lot of questions she wanted to ask the devil, if she ever got the chance. Once she'd tried to ask one of the nuns but she'd only gotten beaten with a ruler for her trouble. Now she couldn't remember what any of the questions were.

"Don't you think you should run?" Mulder asked, his voice growing deeper and scarier, like something out of a horror movie.

"In this heat, are you crazy?" Scully demanded.

He growled and blinked his red eyes at her.

"Oh, I guess you've got a point," she said. Since he was the devil and all.

- 5 -

She lifted her foot and went to start her escape, but she was paying more attention to the fact that she'd always thought the devil would have a perfect nose than the sidewalk and tripped, coming down heavily on the side of her foot. "Ow!"

Mulder's evil arms reached out quickly to help support her weight. "You ok?"

She leaned on him and tried to move her foot, discovering that everything made it hurt except letting it hang limply without touching the ground. Surely being attacked or possessed or whatever it was the devil had in mind wouldn't be as painful as running on a sprained ankle. "Aren't you supposed to be apathetic to pain or something?" She wished she'd paid for attention to the nuns in Sunday school when they talked about the devil because she really had no idea what to do. If she just went along with him to keep herself alive, she'd be lying and therefore sinning and the devil would like that. If she used her feminine wiles, if she could remember how, then she'd be sinning too, this time something about sexuality outside of marriage, and he'd like that too. She began to think that the devil would like whatever she did, but then she realized that would be despairing and not trusting God and that was a sin too. She gave up and sighed.

Mulder, aka Satan, whichever, smiled an intimately gorgeous smile at her and his eyes returned to an attractive hazel. "Hell, I may be the embodiment of pure evil, but I'm still courteous and brimming with chivalry." He lifted her into his arms and began walking back to the Kia.

"Brimming with bullshit too if you're trying to convince me that Satan can't do better than a stolen piece of crap." She was quite disappointed when he put her down abruptly.

"And I'm sure a beautiful woman like you can't do better than a silly lout like me." He continued walking, leaving her standing with one knee bent and looking like an idiot.

"Um, excuse me, Mr., uh, Satan, was that you talking or Mulder or have you always been the same person?"

He walked back to her side and made a completely paranoid, painfully typical Mulder move of checking around to make sure no one was listening. "Could you not scream my name like that?" He was speaking in a loud whisper and leaning close to her face.

"Which name? And is Mulder really the devil or are you just inhabiting his body or something?" She was really quite perplexed by the whole idea, but the proximity of what she'd always thought was the enticing body of a mere mortal was distracting her. Even as she spoke, she was leaning in, turning her face up, and letting her eyes slip closed.

"Man, you must be horny. You can't decide whether to hate me or love me, but you still want to fuck me." He shook his head and scooped her back into his arms.

Staring entranced at his face while he carried her, she used all remaining energy to wrap her mind around his words. She couldn't figure out why the instant he'd mentioned being something so fundamentally bad, she'd come down with a terrible case of finally noticing how attractive he was. Finally, a thought occurred to her. "I didn't turn the lamp off in my bedroom, what if my apartment catches on fire?"

"What?" He looked genuinely confused as he carefully set her down in the seat of the car.

"Oh, and I think you're doing something funny to my brain. I can't even think straight anymore." She watched him walk around to the driver's side, smiling smugly to himself.

When he was seated and had fastened his lap belt, low and snug against his hip, she noticed, he clamped a hand down possessively on her thigh and winked. "I've always thought you had a crush on me, but I never imagined you'd admit it."

She frowned and tried to remember why she was mad. Unfortunately, all she could do was look back and forth between his hand and his face. the latter seemed to be moving closer. Her heart pounded and her lips parted in anticipation.

Instead of a passionate damned kiss, he pulled her seat belt around her and smirked. "Low and tight, Scully. "

Her cheeks burned with embarrassment. She folded her arms and plastered her Scully frown on her face, hoping it would have the same effect on the devil that it had always had on Mulder. She wondered if she should hope that they were one in the same so that she would have the advantage of knowing what made him squirm or that they were separate entities so she would someday have her Mulder back. Whichever, she decided, she wasn't throwing herself at either one anymore.

Mulder drove some more, seeming to aimlessly turn the car without so much as a thought. She wondered where they were going, but she felt that asking would be leaving too much room open for him to make a smart remark. Might as well wait and see, she figured.

Apparently, Satan's ultimately destination was a gas station mini-mart. He looked over at her and smiled, as he'd grown so fond of doing. "Thirsty, hungry, anything?"

"I'm fine, Mulder." She refused to look at him and willed the jelly to turn back into functional knees. And the ankle too, she thought, since functional knees wouldn't do much good without a working ankle.

"Yeah, right, I forgot. Of course you're fine." He slammed the door so hard the car shook. Well, actually, it probably wasn't all that hard, if it had been a decent car. A few minutes later he emerged with a grocery bag filled to the brim. "Whaddaya know? It was all free!"

She bit back a comment about stealing because seven years of wanting to see Mulder joyfully gleeful over anything was not easily overcome. "What did you get?" She leaned over to peer inside the bag.

He snatched it closed. "I thought you didn't want anything."

She stuck her tongue out and stared out the window. "Never mind."

"Here." He tossed a bottle of Advil at her, along with a soda.

She was too annoyed to thank him, but she figured he'd sense her gratitude in the way she scarfed down a handful of pills with her first sip of soda. "So, anyway, which is it? Are you really always the devil and Mulder was just a convincing, endearing, gorgeous, intelligent facade or is Mulder in there somewhere trying to get out and shouting at me not to trust you in his body?"

He put down the sunflower seeds he was munching on, a sign that made her quite upset in and of itself, and ran a hand gently across her cheek. Despite herself, she sighed at his caress. Then he smiled again and started up the car. "That's really quite a conundrum, isn't it, my dear?"

- 6 -

"You could always find out," Mulder offered, raising one hand and stroking the soft, delicate skin under her chin with his fingers. It tickled and despite her painful ankle and the fact that he was the devil and everything, Scully giggled. Mulder frowned and dropped his hand. Into his lap. Why do guys sit like that? Scully asked herself, but she knew she'd rather not know.

"How?" she asked a moment later, catching him by surprise. He looked at her, confused, not knowing what the heck she was talking about. "How could I find out?"

"All you have to do is kiss me," he told her. "Just once."

"And that would tell me if you were the devil or not?" she asked, her eyebrows rising skeptically. They hadn't mentioned that in Catholic school either. Her education was sorely lacking.

"Well?" He leered.

"I'll think about it and get back to you later," she assured him, scooting away from him in her seat and looking out the window. The scenery flew by. The Kia seemed to have some sort of air conditioning but it didn't work terribly well. It smelled stale and bad and she wondered if they were hurting the environment by even driving such a car. Then again, maybe she had better things to worry about, she realized, scratching idly at the palm of her hand as she heard a rumbling noise from somewhere in the car. She stopped to listen to it, but couldn't tell if it was coming from the engine or the transmission or Mulder. The noise sounded evil, in any case.

Scully looked at her hand to see if there was a bug bite making it itch. There was nothing but a big gaping sore. She frowned at it, wondering what she'd touched that could have caused such a gross thing. Only Mulder, she thought, looking at him. It was right in the middle of her palm. She raised her other hand to look at it and there was a similar mark on it. This is really weird, she thought. Blood began to well up in the center of her palm and she jumped, crying out.

"Something wrong?" Mulder asked.

Scully could only hold out her hand, terrified, remembering the time she'd suffered from a terrible voodoo curse and a man had crawled out of her hand. That, of course, had just been a hallucination. Maybe she would be really lucky and this would all be a dream, too, the heat and the terrible cars and Mulder.

Mulder glanced at her hand and screamed. The car veered off the road, landing with two wheels in the ditch that ran alongside the pavement. "What the hell are you doing?" Scully demanded.

"Ah!" Mulder screamed.

"What the hell is your problem?" She reached for him.

"Ah!" he screamed again.

"You're afraid of my hand?" she asked, looking at it. It was pretty icky, but that was no reason to drive the car off the road.

"Ah, ah, ah," Mulder cried, nodding, his eyes so wide she could see the white all the way around his irises. Which weren't red at the moment, something for which she was very thankful.

"Mulder?" she tried.

"Stigmata, Scully!" he yelled at her. "All of this, it's the signs of the end of the world!" He jumped out of the car, or tried to. He didn't get far before he realized he needed to unfasten his seat belt before exiting the vehicle. It snapped back, flinging him into his seat, and he fumbled to undo it.

Scully was forced to get out and make coversation with him outside the car, in the dark moist heat. "Mulder?" she asked again because she honestly had no clue what else to say.

"The heat, the Cubs are winning, it's 1999, Scully, do you know what this means?" he cried.

"That it's summer and you've fried your brain?" she tried.

"It's the end of the world! The seven signs of the apocalypse!" he ranted.

Scully nodded. She'd seen that movie, or the commercials for it at least. "So, Demi Moore is going to give birth to the antichrist?" she cracked.

"This is no time to be sarcastic!" Mulder yelled. "It's the end of the world as we know it!"

"Well, I feel fine," she told him, and started to put her hands in her pockets. Then she thought the better of it, since they were still sticky, though the sores were already beginning to scab over. It had to be some sort of odd dermatological reaction, maybe caused by the heat.

"I don't."

They both spun around to locate the source of the voice. A pale, sweating overweight man was sitting in the back seat of their stolen car. He groaned terribly and Scully realized the sound she'd heard had been coming from him. "Where did you come from?" she demanded.

"I don't know. I lay down in the back of my car to take a nap in the air conditioning and the next thing I know, I wake up and you're fighting and - ow -" he winced, holding his large, basketball shaped stomach with both hands, folding his head down over it.

"Are you okay, mister?" Mulder asked.

"Obviously not," Scully said. She had a very bad feeling about this.

"What's wrong?" Mulder asked.

"It's gas. Heartburn. It has to be," Scully said, more to try to convince herself than for Mulder's benefit.

The man bit his lip and shook his head. "I'm afraid it's worse than that. I'm in labor."

Scully closed her eyes and counted to ten. It didn't make her feel any better. And Mulder hadn't busted out into hysterical laughter. She opened her eyes to see him nodding seriously. "That's not possible," she snapped.

"Of course it is," Mulder told her as though she was insane.

"No, it isn't," Scully insisted as the man screamed in pain again. This time she thought she saw the muscles in his overlarge stomach contract beneath the thin stained white undershirt he was wearing. "I don't care if you are the devil and these are stigmata, this man is not pregnant! There is no room at my goddamn inn!" she screamed.

"Is she always like this?" the pregnant man asked Mulder.

Mulder nodded and shrugged as though to say yes. "I think you'd better help the man, Scully," he suggested, shoving her toward the man in the back seat.

She approached gingerly. "Do you have a womb?" she asked the man. "a vagina?" Maybe he was a hermaphrodite or something, stranger things had happened.

The man shook his head.

She looked at Mulder. "There's no where for the baby to come out, Mulder," she told him. "Maybe it's just gas."

The man screamed.

"Can't you do a c-section or something?" Mulder suggested.

"With what?" Scully yelled back at him.

Seventeen minutes later, she was crouching on the gravel at the side of the road, the back door flung open and the ill man lying on the backseat. They hadn't been able to get the car out of the ditch. Scully looked at the roadside and surveyed her tools. At least if the man died he couldn't sue her for malpractice, she thought. Or murder. She felt a twinge and picked up the can opener.

Twenty five minutes later, Scully stepped back, drenched in sweat. The baby lying on the man's chest was screaming and she had a headache. Her knees felt weak. She'd just delivered a baby from a man. Maybe the first baby ever born to a man. Junior. She was too drained to laugh. If only she knew someone at the Weekly World News to write the story for her.

Mulder was standing on the shoulder of the deserted highway, his hips slung casually, posed as though a magazine photographer was nearby, shooting pictures. He didn't look at her as she approached, just took a puff on his cigarette.

"Where did you get that?" Scully demanded, ripping it out of his hands and inhaling. It didn't exactly calm her nerves and she began to cough. Mulder gave her a smug smile and took the cigarette back. "Aren't you even going to ask how I did?"

"I can hear how you did," Mulder told her, still not looking at her. She licked her lips, wishing the taste of tobacco would miraculously leave her mouth.

"It's a ..." no, it wasn't a miracle. She always said what she meant. "It's really fucking weird, Mulder," she said.

"Doctors deliver babies in the backs of cars all the time," Mulder said, blowing a smoke ring.

Scully wanted to grab him and shake him. "That wasn't a woman!" she screamed.

"That's right." Scully heard the man's voice and began to turn, thinking that he shouldn't be up and around after an emergency cesarean. She'd just stitched his stomach closed. But then she felt the cold barrel of a gun poking into her spine. "And now you're going to get into the car and drive to the closest ATM machine."

"This is a mugging?" Scully cried incredulously. Mulder didn't react, just dropped his cigarette and stamped it out. "Have you all lost your minds?" Mulder turned and started to walk back to the car. "This is not happening!"

"Get in the car, Scully," Mulder advised.

"Take the kid," the Kia's owner shoved the squirming newborn into her arms. It was too warm to hold another human against her body, Scully thought, and it was very unsafe to transport the baby without an infant seat.

Then it peed on her.

"This is so not happening," Scully squeaked and fell into complacent silence. Maybe Mulder was the devil. There was no other explanation for this sort of craziness.

- 7 -

Mulder slowly drove along, half the car a good foot lower than the other because of the ditch. Scully had placed the newborn on the seat between them, using her cheap Payless foam and string sandals to wedge the tiny girl in place. Thankful to not be holding 8 pounds of hot sweaty flesh, Scully sighed and leaned her head back. She wasn't at all disturbed by the metal barrel of the gun digging into her neck because she'd obviously slipped into a parallel universe where the devil was her best friend, men had babies, water existed only as vapor, Satan was pretty damn sexy but not quite worth selling her soul over, and Kias were the only cars around. Scully made the educated quess, after examining the facts, that bullets didn't hurt there either. Besides, the metal was cool.

A mile down the road, Mulder abruptly stopped and shut off the car. the baby, stereotypically soothed by the sound and motion, began to wail once again.. The mugger snorted unappreciatively at either his baby's cries or his captive failure to cease them or both.

He made an indiscernable gesture with his gun. "Look, I don't care if you are Satan and Jesus and sleeping together, I want to go to an ATM and I think one of you ought to be able to shut the damn brat up." Muggerman used the gun to shove Scully forward, letting her seat belt snap her back against the seat. She frowned and rubbed her neck.

Mulder turned around angrily. "I don't care if you are a man with a gun and the only air conditioned car on earth who just gave birth. Don't treat my partner like that."

Muggermommyman was unimpressed with Mulder's concern for Scully and repeated his earlier action, this time causing Scully to whimper slightly and grab her neck with both hands.

"I warned you," Mulder reached out with impossible speed, snatched the gun out of Muggermommyman's hand and pistol whipped him. The assailant fell back, silent and unconscious. Mulder gently touched Scully's neck. "You ok?"

She smiled at him gratefully, trying to concentrate on the fact that he'd done it for her and not on the cat that his eyes, which had been a bright, intense, pulsating red, were slowly returning to normal. "I've got a bit of a headache, actually, but I think it's more her fault." She nodded to the incessantly screaming baby between them.

For the first time since they'd started driving, Mulder looked at the baby. "Scully! What were you thinking?" He picked the baby up, more gently than he'd ever been with her, Scully noted, and cradled her in his arms.

"I was thinking it was too hot, not to mention extremely dangerous without a rear-facing car seat, to hold her while you drove. What did I do?" She watched the sweet way Mulder rocked the girl and talked to her in quiet nonsensical soothing words and seethed with jealousy. The whole idea of Satan and a baby was almost as disturbing as the idea of Mulder and a baby. And, well, Scully wanted him all to herself anyway.

Mulder looked at her slowly with a reproachful glare for disturbing his attentions. "You have to support their head and neck, Scully. Newborns' muscles are too weak."

She frowned. She'd skipped the chapter on babies all together becasue she hated them. And Charlie was only two years younger than she was. She had no experience with babies. Mulder'd had a baby sister to learn from. "Mulder, this is fascinating and all, I assure you, but it's pretty fucking hot in here and what are we doing anyway?"

"Until yu decide if Mulder is the devil all the time or just today, we can't do anything." The baby had fallen asleep, so Mulder carefully rested her next to her Mommy in the back seat. "Let's find another car."

"What's wrong with this one?" She got out even as she spoke because she knew there was no point in arguing with Mulder. She'd learned something in seven years.

Mulder shook his head slowly, as if to say 'what isn't wrong with this one,' and then motioned to the metal guardrail in front of the car. "Embankment."

"Oh." The two fell in step as they walked along the road, each lost in their own thoughts. After a moment, Scully stopped dead and put her hands on her hips. "Wait just one God-damned minute."

Mulder obeyed and faced her. "What?"

"You're telling me that until I kiss you, we're not going anywhere or doing anything? We're just going to wander around aimlessly and steal cars and waste time?" This was disturbing. The whole day was disturbing. Or maybe she was just disturbed. Maybe the voices woud come soon and tell her what to do.

Mulder nodded. "Basically, yeah."

His smug acknowledgement of her assessment of his marvelous plan annoyed her. "Well, then, hurry up and wait." She sat down, right where she was, painfully jabbing her butt with one of those little reflector lights that divided lanes on major interstates. She shifted slightly to be more comfortable.

Mulder let out an exasperated sigh, put his hands on his hips, and his eyes developed that slightly deranged glaze of a chocolate-craving, cramp-feeling, utterly irrational woman in the most dire stage of PMS. Scully ginned, thinking if men had PMS, then maybe this world wasn't all that bad after all.

"Damn it, Scullt, this has been going on for seven years."

"You've been waiting for me to kiss you and decide if you're really the devil all this time?" He nodded. "Why didn't you ever mention your, uh, duality?"

"I figured you'd break down and kiss me eventually without me having to tell you the truth." He sat down next to her, seeming quite guilty about the whole fiasco.

"Then I know the answer. You really are the devil and Mulder was just a lie." Her chin began to tremble. Her voice shook as she continued. "Mulder, the champion of honesty and justice and truth, was really just a lying devil, no pun intended, created to seduce his God fearing partner and send her to hell for believing in him. The tears spilled out uncontrollably, but before Mulder could wipe them away, the water evaporated, leaving salty streaks down her cheeks.

He scooted closed, forgetting the heat bothered humans, and pulled her into a hug. His hand twined into her hair and rocked her in his arms as lovingly as he'd rocked the baby. "Don't cry, honey, it's ok." She sniffled and sobbed, telling him that she refuted his statement. "No, really, Dana, don't you see? God, forgiving guy that his is, decided to make a bet with me, maybe letting me have another chance and he said he'd forgive me for everything and trust me, there's a lot, if I could become human completely."

She sat up, embarrassed at her loss of control and her desire to receive comfort from Lucifer himself. "Human's eyes don't glow, Mulder."

He took her hand in both of his. "Forgive my pun, but all Hell is breaking loose, Scully. My time is running out and I'm going to lose you and the bet, if I tell what has to happen."

Her mouth started the unstoppable twitching at the corners, the undeniable prelude to tears. "I don't understand."

His fingers caressed her hand, longing and love fairly oozing out his pores. Or maybe it was just Mulder finally breaking a sweat. The tought was gross and turned her stomach. That meant it was really too hot to support human life. "I had to live life here, live like a human, experience everything humans do." Scully nodded and watched him with wide eyes, trying to take it all in. "I had to do it all, Scully, without using my powers to make anything eaiser." He grinned at her. "What do you think I was doing in The X-Files?" She grinned back, trying to hold back more tears. "But there's a timeclock on this bet and I'm terrified that I'm going to lose for more reasons than just going to Hell. I'm afraid of being without you, Scully, because Hell may be my domain, but I know you're not going to show up there. Ever." She didn't know why this fact disappointed her. "It's my anger that's making the whole world go nuts like this. I can't stop it and I can't control it. I'm so angry that I agreed to this because if I lose, I'm still human enough to feel the pain and I didn't have to be. I could have been free from pain forever."

She couldn't hold the tears back another minute. "And that's all you have, isn't it? Pain and fear and horrible things to remember." Her shoulders shook and she was so numb from the shock of what she was hearing that the blood slowed down and her body temperature actually cooled down some.

He smiled ruefully at her, his eyes meeting hers. "What hurts the most, though, is something that should have felt the best." His hands left hers, carefully cupping her face and leaning towards her. Instead of the kiss she was desperately waiting for, he merely leaned his forehead against hers and let out a slow breath. She could feel the air hitting her skin.

For the second time in all the years they'd been together, she knew how badly he wanted to kiss her. She wasn't sure why he didn't. "This weather and everything, it's your terror of losing me?" She pulled back slightly and discovered that Mulder was crying. He nodded and ducked down, human enough to be ashamed. "And if you tell me how to win, you'll be disqualified, right?" Again he nodded, his eyes locking with hers for a moment, darting to her lips, then meeting her eyes again. He was trying to tell her. He was trying to use their connection to tell her and she'd be damned if she wasn't pretty sure she'd gotten the message. She laughed at the thought, thinking maybe be damned wouldn't be so bad either. She leaned forward and put her arms around his neck.

"You had to fall in love. And you had to be human enough that someone would fall in love with you. Someone who would kiss you without you kissing her first, right?" She raised her eyebrow at his face, full of both terror and elation. She stood up suddenly and started walking, leaving Mulder so hurt, confused, and angry that the temperature rose five degrees in as many seconds.

He followed her unhappily, glaring at her the whole time. As mad as he was, though, he doubted he'd ever hurt her. He had all sorts of tricks up his sleeve he could use to cause her eternal pain, but he loved her. And he wasn't convinced God could be so cruel to not forgive him after everything he'd been through anyway. He caught up to her quickly. "Guess I picked the wrong woman, huh?"

She glanced at him and fought to keep the grin off her face. "Actually, Mulder, I'm just looking for a motel. We're going to need a bed once we get started."

"Uh, Scully, it's against the rules to tell you how much time is left too, but, um, well, it's really rather urgent."

"Like how so?"

Mulder lifted her hand to his chest and she could feel his heart pounding wildly. Then he nodded behind her and she turned, seeing flames engulfing everything around them. Her eyes grew wide in fear. the fire was moving faster than her body. Even as she tried to pull his face down even with hers, she felt like she was under water, unable to move fast enough. It suddenly occurred to her why he was afraid of fire. Before she could think anything else, the world went red, then black, then disappeared and she wasn't aware of anything at all.

- 8 -

He was alone. Horribly, terribly alone. He could still feel her in his arms and the searing, comforting heat of the fire his anger had wrought. In a second's time, because they'd only had seconds left, it had all vanished, consigning him back to the darkness of hell.

Mulder let out a groan so furious the walls of the cave seemed to tremble. He only felt more frustrated because there was no one for him to disturb with his antics. He could yell and scream and destroy things as much as he cared to. No one was there. His shoulders dropped miserably and his head fell forward. It had all been in vain. All the pain and the suffering in the world, in his human life.

In her life.

That, most of all, was the tragedy. There was no reason for Dana Katherine Scully to have experienced everything she had, the humiliation, the pain and the fear, the torture and the illness and the indignity. No reason but for him. He had caused it all.

Leading with his head, he moaned, putting his hands over his eyes and rolling forward until he was curled onto his elbows and his knees, face first in a hissing, sulphury odored pit. He couldn't cry. That was too human, that would give him too much relief. He could only sit there and feel the agony of humanity.

Slowly the memories began to come, each cutting sharper and deeper than a razor. Everywhere he looked he saw her face and the thousand demons he'd conjured. Had he really been testing her? What gave him the right to test her, she who was everything he was not, luminous and good.

She's gone, Mulder, he told himself.

Just let me wallow here a little while longer. Then I'll get back to the business of hell, he promised. Here, there was always work to be done.

In a flash, everything changed and a searing white light blinded her. Then the heat was gone and coolness bathed her limbs, which felt weightless. A moment of fear fluttered through her heart before she forced her eyes to open. She didn't feel the pull of her back as she sat up, just the fluid gracefulness of the movement.

Scully's mouth dropped open in awe and amazement. Everything was just as she'd pictured it and yet beautifully different. Soft colors were everywhere, white and pale blue and pink like a baby's nursery, like the veins and arteries traversing the back of her hand. Tears flooded her eyes and a sob bubbled up through her chest as she saw her sister and her father. Waiting for her with gentle smiles.

Something dark crossed Melissa's face and she turned to her father. "She needs time," her sister said and their father nodded and disappeared. Missy reached her hands out to Scully.

Scully couldn't take them. "What happened?" she demanded, her voice flat and harsh, seeking a scientific explanation for this. She'd been raised Catholic, but the events of the previous hours had sorely tested her. Mulder was the devil and now she was supposed to believe she'd died and gone to heaven?

"Dana," her sister said in that warning, scolding tone that had annoyed her for her entire life.

"No, Missy, I want to know what's going on. I don't believe in any of this. I don't believe this is happening. God," she cried, "Please let this be a terrible dream."

"You don't know what you're asking," Melissa cautioned. She reached again for Scully's hand and Scully jerked away from her. She didn't want to be touched by this thing, this illusion with the familiar face. "You're so angry and so scared and so small, Dana," she said.

"I wouldn't think you'd be so judgemental here, Missy," Scully snapped.

"You weren't ready." Missy shook her head.

"Of course I wasn't ready!" Scully yelled at her. She felt dangerously close to tears and she didn't want them. She kicked at the hem of the diaphonous robe clinging airily to her body, expecting it to be heavy. It billowed away at the mildest contact of her toes, very unsatisfyingly. "How could you possibly think this is what I wanted? I had a life!"

Missy shot her a look that said, quite sarcastically, did you?

"I was alive!" Scully screamed. "I had breath and strength and muscle and bone and there was air in my lungs and feeling in my skin and blood in my veins. My stomach ached with hunger and my throat was scratchy with thirst, my body hurt from walking and my feet were blistering and my body smelled and the sweat was stinging my eyes and it was wonderful. And I felt...and I felt...it wasn't time. This is wrong."

Melissa didn't say anything.

"Because Mulder had just..." She took a shaky sigh. "...finally...told me that he loved me." the tears rolled down her cheeks, but her nose didn't run. When she put out her tongue, she couldn't taste the salt of her tears. They weren't real. The pain in her chest and the knot in her throat were real, but not the tears. None of this was real.

"Mom's here," Missy said.

"No," Scully gasped, stunned. Her sister turned her back and started to walk away, gliding gracefully through what looked like clouds on the floor. "Wait, come back," she called, afraid to be alone in this unfamiliar, sunny place that was so cold.

"You're not ready," she said. After a few seconds, the other woman disappeared as her father had.

Scully sat down, still worried by how loose her joints felt and how easy the movements were. It was as though her body didn't actually exist. She felt like she was an illusion, too, or some kind of disembodied brain. Maybe it's not real, she thought. Maybe I'm in a coma somewhere. Heatstroke. Maybe none of it ever happened. She looked down and watched herself cross her fingers in a fourth grade gesture of hope.

"Dana."

"No," she said, even before she raised her head and looked into her mother's eyes. Maggie Scully was crouching over her and reached out with one hand to touch her daugher's hair as she had when the bullies at school had tormented her as a small child.

Scully moved her head back and away. If one of them touched her, it might make this real and irreversible. "You're not supposed to be here," she said.

Maggie nodded. "This is a good thing, honey," she said. "Remember how we studied when you were a little girl? At the end of the world, before the reign of terror, God will call his people back to him to spare them the horror of the apocalypse."

"The Rapture," Scully said, the word unfamiliar in her mouth. She couldn't help thinking of all the beat up old cars she'd seen bearing bumper stickers that said, "In case of Rapture, this car will be unmanned." They'd always seemed self righteous to her, made her sick.

"He called us," Maggie said.

"I didn't hear St. Peter's horn," Scully said, pressing her lips firmly together. "I don't believe in any of that stuff anymore."

"He believes in you."

She wanted to tell her mother that she was full of shit, but she couldn't. She could only feel the release of more tears. "I know this is hard for you, Dana. But the sooner you come to terms with it..." Her mother stopped short. "You could be in danger here, honey."

"What're you talking about?" Scully demanded.

"You haven't made it into heaven, yet, Dana. You're just outside..."

"You mean like purgatory," Scully said.

Her mother shrugged. "In the Mormon faith, they believe there are different levels of heaven. the true believers, the truly blessed, go to the highest level of heaven. Some of the others...well, they need a little help."

"And you and Daddy and Missy have come to help me along, is that it?" Scully demanded. She'd never needed help with anything in her whole entire life, until now. Now, at the end, when it really counted, she was a failure. God didn't want her.

"You can't have it both ways," Maggie told her.

"I wish I could believe, Mom, but I can't," Scully said. "I can't," she whispered, her fingers trailing up her throat, seeking the familiar gold symbol of her faith hanging around her neck. The cross necklace was gone. Her index finger found an odd patch of skin in the indentation between her collarbones, like scar tissue from a burn in the shape of the emblem. "How am I in danger here?" she asked.

"You're vulnerable. To other forces." Maggie told her.

"Like Mulder," she said. Her mother nodded. "You know what he is."

"I know this can't be easy for you," Maggie said comfortingly.

"How could you know, Mom?" Scully demanded and Maggie faded away before her eyes. Scully, watching carefully, could not understand how it happened. She frowned and blinked and rubbed her eyes but nothing changed. "There's no one else in purgatory?" she asked, getting to her feet.

"Hello?" Scully yelled, but there was no response. There has to be someone else out there, she thought determinedly, beginning to walk. But no matter how long or how far she walked, nothing changed. Not the scenery or the sky. The sun never set and darkness never came. She never felt tired or hungry. "I hate it here," she whispered to herself, lying down. The position brought her body no comfort because she wasn't weary.

And she couldn't sleep. She wanted to cry for the loss of dreaming.

She knew she was never going to be let into the higher kingdom. She couldn't make herself believe. And even if she could, she was in love with the devil. A man condemned because she'd been too afraid to let him know until it was too late.

All of this was her own fault.

The only thing she had was her pain. Eternally, unless something changed.

Heaven had become her prison. She hated it as much as any criminal must have hated the stone blocks of a jail cell. "Okay," she yelled finally when she thought she would go insane. "Okay, I'm ready," she yelled. It seemed to go unheeded. "Please? I believe in you now. I get the message. I'm sorry. Please let me in. Please don't make me stay out here."

There was no response. She had never known she could feel so cold or so alone. Her emotions felt more intense and uncontrollable than they had ever seemed on earth. She didn't understand that.

She felt herself descending into a kind of delirium. She couldn't make the thoughts stop and so she just said them all. She was no longer afraid to speak the words aloud, perhaps because there was no one to hear her. "I don't understand why I'm here. I should be in hell. I've done so many bad things. I broke the commandments. I didn't believe. I forsake God for science. I gave my heart to the devil.

"Why me, God? Why me. For a deal for all mankind and earth, why did you choose me? I wasn't worthy of the challenge and I f..." she'd always been afraid of the word. "I failed, okay? I failed. I didn't fall in love with him. I wouldn't let myself. But I did love him. I should have been stronger to serve you. Or I should have been weaker willed to serve him, because if he had become human, if he had redeemed himself, then they all would have been saved the suffering. I never knew that when peope were suffering needlessly and asked how God could allow it, that it was my fault.

"I don't know what I can do. Are you going to leave me here forever? Have I already been here forever? Or can I go to him? Can I make another deal, God? I'll do anything if you'll just make it stop."

Scully's pain was gone so suddenly it startled her, and she was somewhere else. She could feel her body again and couldn't help smiling at the sensation. Her lips slid against her teeth, the muscles in her cheeks contracting so tightly it made her jaws ache. It felt so good it made her shiver. She was sitting on some sort of leather couch in a plush office filled with books.

Facing her was the Cigarette Smoking Man.

She recoiled. "No," she said.

He shrugged. "You're right, in a way. I'm not him. I had to meet with you, though, and you aren't ready to see my true form."

"You mean you're God," Scully said. This was really freaking her out.

The man nodded. "You wanted to make a deal?" he asked, in that odd pronunciation so characteristic of the smoking man.

She threw her head back and laughed. "I can't believe God makes deals!" she cried.

"I don't..."

"What?" she cried. "You're a liar, too? You made a deal with Mulder and now you want to make a deal with me."

"...Usually," he finished. "And you want to make a deal with me, not the other way around. Just like Mulder did."

"Mulder begged for a deal?" she asked, her brows drawing together. She felt her forehead wrinkle and wanted to touch it, to feel her own skin furrowing. She felt living, if not alive. It felt good. She couldn't believe Mulder would have cried and whined the way she had when she was out there. Wasn't Satan supposed to be powerful?

"It was a little more complicated than that," he told her.

"Then how was it?" she asked, blinking once, her eyes wide, waiting to hear the truth.

He chuckled. "You were always so bright, so inquisitive. I should have known this wouldn't be easy for you."

"You didn't know?" she asked. Wasn't God supposed to be omniscient?

"I did know," he amended. "Why do you think I set up so many tests for your faith?"

She bit her lip, not knowing what to say. "Can we talk about Mulder rather than me, please?" This was making her uncomfortable. She'd never really wanted a shrink. And Dr. God was even less appealing.

"Satan...or Mulder as you call him...we don't get along."

"I got that, is there more?" she asked.

"Patience is a virtue," he reminded her.

"I feel I have very little to lose here," she said. "So, moving right along?"

"The sinners go to hell. I know, you knew that already too. But Satan had never been mortal. He had never lived on earth, yet he was surrounded by sinners. He was tainted with original sin...the first original sin, not the Adam and Eve one...yet he was as innocent as anyone in heaven. He could have been my own son," he said and Scully shivered. Her stomach was twisting. This was all so far beyond weird and uncomfortable. Suddenly she wished she'd majored in theology after all so she'd feel qualified to discuss this with God.

"He wanted to know what it was like," Scully guessed, and he nodded. "The rest of the deal, where did that come in?"

"Satan knew that he was good...as good as anyone in heaven. He just had to overcome his original sin. So if he could survive the most horrible things on earth without giving in to that...if he could find his way through to the light of love in the face of darkness...he would have proved himself worthy."

"Isn't everyone worthy of your love?" she asked.

He lowered his eyes. "There are things you don't understand. Things you cannot know."

"The Tree of Knowledge, that kind of cannot know?" she asked.

"It's complicated, Scully," he told her. "Everyone mortal is worthy of my love. You were a created by me. Satan...Mulder...was not."

"So he's like you. Do you have original sin, too?" she asked.

"It isn't that simple," he told her.

"Why not?" she asked.

He had no answer for her.

"Okay, then, why me? Why Mulder, why the 1990s, why aliens, why The X-Files? Why any of it?"

"I think if you search your heart you will find the answers to those questions," he told her.

Real helpful, she thought, but she did know. the 1990s were hopeless, it was the end of the millennium, aliens were a test of faith, a religion to some as surely as science had been a religion for her. "But I fell in love with him. You have to know that."

"You didn't know it yourself," he told her.

She was silent. "What do I do?" she asked. "What's the deal?"

"You have to go to him." The answer was suitably vague.

Images flooded her mind. The illustration in her grade school reading book when Persephone had lived with the god of the Underworld, eating persimmon seeds and never again being allowed an unfettered existence with her mother and the people who loved her. And the day she'd met Mulder, his hair styled and his glasses on and her suit too big for her. "Where, on earth or in hell?" she asked.

- 9 -

He didn't respond immediately, taking the time to put out his cigarette, light a new one, and contemplate the smoke coming from the end. Enough of a pause to make her thoroughly nervous. "Well, my dear, that's not an easy decision." He paused to inhale and she got the feeling he rather enjoyed those Bible-pounding preachers who waited impractically after every three words to allow them to sink in. The same manner of speaking that Scully was incredibly bored by, but seeing as he was God and everything, she thought asking him to speed it up a bit would be inappropriate. Instead she just waited with the appearance of patience. Finally he spoke again. "If I sent you to Hell to get him back, both of you will be quite tempted to stay there together. If you're together, neither of you will really care where you're spending eternity." Scully thought about it, biting back seven years of the immediate urge to argue that they were only friends. It was true. He was God and everything, she decided. Maybe he did know a thing or two. "If I sent you to earth, it would be pointless since you already know about the deal we made and you've already figured out how to win it."

Scully didn't like where this was going. "So, fine then, let us win, I think we deserve it. Or condemn me to Hell, please-" She felt tears springing to her eyes, realizing suddenly that she'd never been afraid to be desperate. All of eternity with the man she loved was worth desperation and tears and whining. It was worth her dignity. It was worth begging. She dropped to her knees in front of the man she'd hated so much for so long. "Please. Anything at all, just name it. Just let us be together. We've been through so much, we've hurt so much, even if it's in Hell, please just give us another chance. Just one. I know we can do it. We were so close this time and I had no idea of what was at stake. Give us one more chance. We can do it. You know we can."

He took another puff, nodding slowly. "All right. But some changes will have to be made. The deal will have to be altered. Perhaps even time will have to change." He stood up, moving away from her slowly.

"But how will I- what will we have to -"

He held up his hands. "You can't be told. This time, maybe he won't be told either. It'll be up to you to figure it out." He walked away, fading from her sight long before he should have.

Scully remained on her knees for several moments before nerves and exhaustion and upset got to her. She fell forward, sobbing and despairing. She was certain she wouldn't see him again, at least not with the knowledge of who he was. The scientist in her wanted to sit calmly and consider the ramifications of his words. She'd never once been hysterical in her life, however, and she had quickly discovered the secret- once a person became hysterical it was just easier to remain so or grow more so than to regain control and calm down. She was making up for lost time.

Mulder spent what felt like a good portion of eternity curled up, feeling nothing but the enormity of his loss. The pain welled up in his gut and quickly took over his body. It ate at him, the pure misery consuming him like acid. He spent a while on his side, hugging his knees and wishing the acid would eat through his heart until he couldn't feel anymore. Still, though, the pain continued. He didn't want to cry. It was so pathetic and useless. It wouldn't give him another chance. It wouldn't give her another chance. It would accomplish nothing at all.

His shoulder began to ache and he rolled onto his back, stretching out, discovering that somehow pain was related to the appearance of surface area, since it was more, well, painful when he stretched out. Rolling onto his other side, he curled up again, finally feeling the ache constricting his chest turn into gut-wrenching sobs. He cried and howled and moaned and whimpered. When all the tears had been cried out of him, he continued to wail, scrunching up his face painfully in an effort to shed more. So he was pathetic and weak. He still prayed there was a way he could cry until all the pain was completely released. Until he'd cried the memory of her away entirely.

He could make it stop, he realized suddenly. He had all the powers of God, and none of the love for morals. He could make her memory disappear. He could stop the pain, the crying, the feeling. He could return to being cruel, evil, unfeeling. But that would be to lose her completely, more so than he already had. He loved her too much to erase their love from existence. To stop feeling would be to deny her love for him. And she had, he finally knew. She had loved him enough for both of them. In the end, though, he couldn't be forgiven. He didn't think it was fair to her, however, that she would be saved to spend eternity without the man she loved.

He stood up, wrapping his arms around his middle as if to protect himself. She was in heaven, he'd certainly know if she was with him, content, secure, happy, with her family. He smiled faintly, realizing that she'd had to have come face to face with God, and accept there were two beings she'd met with powers that defied logical explanation. She could stick that in her scientific pipe and smoke it.

Standing at the entrance to his cave, his eyes surveyed the stark, dead, bleakly colored landscape. Truly horrible, almost painful to look at. But he'd become human enough to know real pain and he'd never give it up, not even to feel better. He owed her that. She'd saved his soul, whether God believed it or not.

He toyed with the idea of scamming his way back into heaven. He could forgive all the people he'd stolen from God along the way, free their souls and send them all back home, sneaking himself in with the chaos it would create. But that wouldn't be right. The conscience took some getting used to, but he would keep it. It was the only reminder he'd have of her.

The pain coiled up again as more flashes of forever came to him. He'd never look up from his desk and see her standing in his doorway and smiling. He'd never be able to gently touch her back, the silent way they'd always acknowledged his claim, his stake, his possession of her. He'd never smell her perfume clinging to his jacket on a Friday evening and know it was all he'd need to get through until Monday without her. He'd never get to call her on Saturday when it wasn't enough and pretend there was something they just had to do so they could spend the evening together. He'd never get to say the craziest things he could think up until she made a face at him.

He could, of course, conjure it up. He could create an illusion so real he'd believe it himself. He could start at the moment they'd met and relieve their entire journey. He could even edit out the bad parts, add in plenty of good parts. It would just be a fantasy though. And he couldn't stand to lose her twice. He couldn't betray her by creating an illusion of her with which to share all the memories they'd never share. He could never soil or mar the memory of them even if she'd never know. Even if she'd never think of him again. Even if he'd never have anything better to do than think of her.

He chuckled to himself. Lucifer was even more pathetic than Mulder. Lucifer had fantasies that could never come true; Mulder could have had her, condemned them both to Hell, but had her just the same. He wondered idly if any thoughts of him would ever cross her mind. He sincerely hoped not, if she thought of him, even once, she would hurt and he wouldn't have that. But just the same, he knew she'd think of him.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on her as hard as he could. Maybe their connection could transcend eternity. He wanted to try and at least tell her that even if they were apart, he was still there. He wanted her to know he was ok, she didn't need to know how badly it hurt. She should know, if it was possible, that he still loved her, that he always would, and that in that one terribly short moment, he'd luxuriated in the feel of her love. He bit his lip and focused on her so completely, trying to force his thoughts into her head, that he could almost feel her tiny, soft hand slip into his and squeeze gently. He took comfort in that, knowing it hadn't been his thoughts that made it happen. He was sure that she'd heard him and that was her answer. But even as he opened his eyes and stared at the ugly expanse of land, the feeling of her skin burning against his with the heat of life remained.

He squeezed back, running his thumb over the back of her hand possessively; separated for all of eternity and she was still his. It amazed him. As long as they were connected somehow, he'd go with it. Maybe it was easier for her to communicate since she was in paradise and all.

"I'll be all right, Scully. Don't worry about me." He spoke out loud, the feeling of her presence beside him so strong and real that his reality started to slip away. His eyes shifted slightly, seeing the dingy brown curtains at the edges of the window. The cave walls gave way to the bland beige of a motel room. He wondered where he'd come up with the idea that he was in a cave at all. The vast ugliness of the nothingness of the horizon of Hell turned into the almost empty parking lot outside. He must have bumped his head, he thought. He'd been in a fight of some sort. A suspect. They'd tried to take a man into custody.

The case was slowly coming back to him, but he still felt disoriented. Probably a concussion. There had been a baby involved. The man was a kidnapper. A sick pedophile. He'd abducted the newborn from the hospital. He'd pretended he was giving up, allowed Scully to get one of the handcuffs on his wrist and then he'd fought, punching her, sending her to the ground. Then Mulder'd lost it, gone ballistic in a way he had never had, almost choking the man to death.

His eyes slowly turned to his silent partner, not understanding why he felt a terrible aching dread in his soul as he turned. Something tried to convince him that she wouldn't be there. But she was. The dread, he decided, must have been because he'd seen how hard the man had hit her, he must have known the bruise would be there. Half of her face was swollen and purple. The asshole must have broken her cheekbone. Mulder wondered why he didn't know for sure. He vaguely remembered police cars and two ambulances. They'd gone to the hospital separately; must have met back at the motel.

He met and held her eyes, still feeling uneasy. Something seemed wrong. The world seemed foggy. He was certain there was a damn good reason he'd become convinced that something horrible would happen if he ever let her out of his sight again. "Why were you cuffing him, Scully?" What had he been doing that had been so important that he'd let her get hurt? Why didn't he remember?

Her concern shone in her eyes, even if one of them was almost closed from the swelling. "He'd been holding you hostage, Mulder, don't you remember? You were in shock and you'd been beaten badly."

As he heard the words, the memory of being held returned. His utter joy when he saw her and the other agents burst into the room. The way his heart started beating again at the sight of her. The medical tape holding his ribs safely in place suddenly explained the constriction he'd been feeling. A glance in the mirror confirmed the source of the throbbing pain in his face- he looked far worse than she did. The fog started to lift. The world began to feel real again.

"Mulder, I know you went to the hospital already, but you're scaring me. Maybe you should get an MRI, just to be sure. You're confused and not remembering things-" Her voice shook with emotion. "Are you sure you're ok?"

He moved quickly, ignoring the sharp pains as he reached for her, pulling her against him regardless of his body's screams. It hurt too much to not hold her, more so than the physical pain of squishing his ribs into her body. "I'm fine, honey. I'm fine now."

She held him for several minutes, pulling away much too quickly. "Your ribs, Mulder. You could puncture a lung like that." She smiled gently, trying to hide the involuntary wince. "Get some rest, Mulder. I'll see you in the morning." She started to walk toward the door.

Watching her leave, the unmistakable knowledge that he was a chance slip away formed in his brain. The panic of not being able to see her returned. He couldn't identify what had convinced him, but he found a courage he'd never had before.

"Don't go."

She turned around almost too quickly. Her eyes locked on his; hope evident in her bruise face.

"Not tonight, Dana. I need to know you're here." He reached out his hand, letting her close the distance and reconnect their hands. She smiled at him, a loving smile that didn't even hurt. Then they snuggled up on the bed, ignoring the various external aches and pains for the inner peace of holding on to each other.

She was on her side, resting the uninjured side of her face against his chest, her arm wrapped snugly around his waist. One of his hands twisted carefully in her hair while the other rested on her outstretched arm. He was drifting into a peaceful sleep when he heard her quiet vow.

"I love you, Mulder. I always have. I hope you know that." She knew he did. She knew he loved her too. For some reason, she felt like she had to say it aloud.

And someone, somewhere, stopped smoking and smiled.

The end.