by Livia Balaban

Rated PG-13 = VA, MotelFic.
Spoilers: Fight the Future and Within/Without
Summary: Doggett wants to know something personal, and being Doggett, he asks

"Can I ask you a personal question, Dana?"

She squeezed her lids even tighter, committed to keep them from opening. Little shafts of light had pierced through the slitted curtain gap the last time she'd opened her eyes, and she didn't want to take the chance of seeing his face in such an intimate environment.

"Dana?"

She shuddered at the reminder of intimacy, but she herself had agreed to the concession, begrudgingly, when his first intonation of "Scully" left her shaking and short of breath. They'd agreed at the time: Agent Scully or Dana. Agent Doggett or John. There would be no Doggett and Scully; to do so would be to negate Mulder and Scully, and that could not be permitted.

"I'm awake," she yielded.

"That's not what I asked," he responded.

"I know it's not."

She heard him sigh. He wouldn't give up. So like... "You can ask. I can't guarantee that I'll be able to answer."

"That sounds fair." He sounded like he meant it.

"What do you want to know?"

He paused for a moment, and she heard his bedding rustle. "Why do you go this far for Mulder? Why endanger your life, your reputation, and your career for him?"

Unseeing, she shook her head against the scratchy pillow and grimaced. Bad enough she had to share a room, she thought, worse that it was with a male partner, but worse yet that she would wake up with reddened skin. She made a mental note to slip one of her own pillow cases in the outer pocket of her carryon next time.

But worse than the uncomfortable accommodations in the only room in the only fleatrap motel in Grange Park, Oklahoma, was that it was a fair question. And as supportive as Doggett - *Agent Doggett*, she corrected herself - had been over the prior month, he deserved a response.

She gripped the edge of the pillow. "I think it's a foregone conclusion that my reputation and career are already beyond repair. By the look of things, you're probably headed for a similar fate."

"That was very good, Dana," he said, his voice tightening and strengthening. "Now stop evading. What was the nature of your relationship with him? If I'm going to help you find him, I need to know, and I *know* you know that."

She sighed. "It's complicated, John." Perhaps a personal response would disarm him.

"I have all night here," he replied. "Regale me."

She chuckled resentfully. He was a good man, and she regretted feeling so adversarial still, but the instinct to suspect anyone other than Mulder was as much a part of her as her firearm; she would put it aside only when she was confident she was safe.

"I don't know how to explain it to you so it will make sense," she said. "So much has happened over the years, and it's created a mutual need to protect."

"I need more than that," he said. "I've had partners before, and I understand the mind set. This example goes beyond anything I've seen before. I've read some of the files, Dana. The things you two have done for each other are...well, frankly, they're unbelievable."

"I know. I just don't know what to tell you that you won't find implausible. So many of the defining moments in our partnership took place during events that remain unexplained and unproven. I don't know how you would believe the bond the events created if you have trouble believing in the events themselves."

"Sounds like it makes for a lonely life, if only one person is capable of understanding you." Although he sounded sad, Scully suspected there was more accusation in his words than sympathy.

She winced. "If you want to push it, John, if it's the only thing that will make it understandable to you, I'll tell you everything. We can go through every casefile in the office - and a few that aren't - and I can detail for you every attack, every death threat, every murder, every personal loss, every single instance of sadistic medical rape. I guarantee you'll have nightmares for months. Is that what you want?"

"I don't know, Dana," he said in a rough voice. "Maybe. What I want is something tangible, something real." He was silent for a moment while he scratched. "Was there a pivotal moment? Something that happened that made you think, 'Yeah, I'll kill or die for him now'?"

She bit down on the lining of her lower lip. "I would have done either from the beginning. That's what you do for your partner."

He exhaled loudly. "Then I'm asking the wrong question. What I want to know is when you knew you couldn't walk away - when you knew you were irrevocably dedicated to the work, and by extension, to him."

He had her. His question was so precise and to the point, it was impossible to dodge. At first she thought of evading the question anyway as punishment for - well, for not being Mulder. But he had proved so helpful and open-minded in their few weeks working together, she made the quick decision to answer before she had a chance to think too much. "I suppose it would have been the events that followed the bombing in Dallas three years ago."

"You were in Domestic Terrorism at the time," he said, not demonstrating any understanding of what she had just granted him. "I still can't believe Kersh put you on manure detail. What a waste of talent."

"Thank you," she responded, and felt a little better about continuing, despite the suspicion that he had flattered for just such a purpose. "Deputy Director Kersh has a history of wasting talent, as you can now attest."

He snorted derisively.

"How much do you know about that case?" Scully asked him.

He cleared his throat. "The official record held you and Mulder responsible for the deaths of the five victims due to negligence in locating the bomb."

She cringed at the notion that any objective observer could consider her negligent. "And what's your opinion of that conclusion?"

"Taking into consideration that you and Mulder were the only agents with the foresight to search that building, compounded by the fact that you got just about everybody out of there in time, I think the panel's characterization of your actions was brutally unfair." His blanket and sheet rustled again.

She smiled. Either he was a masterful manipulator or he really had faith in his assertion. She made the decision to believe him. "And the dead firefighter they found in the rubble?"

"Inconclusive. The body disappeared from the morgue, so there was no physical evidence."

"Yes," she puffed out. "Funny how that keeps happening every time we get close to something big."

He scratched again. "Gibson Praise was going to 'disappear' too, wasn't he?"

She smiled. "Yes, he was. Between him, the bee, and that pile of green goo, I think we're finally beginning to accumulate some convincing physical evidence."

"What bee?" he asked.

He couldn't have known about it yet, she realized. "I'm getting ahead of myself. The bee comes much later. All right, so the firefighter died of undetermined causes, but cause of death was stated by the coroner and accepted by the OPR committee to be concussive organ failure from the explosion."

"That's what I came across. I assume you're implying the assumption was incorrect."

"I examined his body myself, John, and I am absolutely confident that he was dead before the bomb went off. His corpse was placed inside the building to conceal the evidence of what had really happened to him."

"And what had happened to him?"

She knew he wasn't ready for it, but she forged on. "He had been ingested."

"Ingested."

"Yes."

" As in ... consumed? Eaten? Devoured?"

"I can't specify evidence of devouring," she replied, "but he was indeed consumed. I examined his body in the morgue at Bethesda before it was removed. His entire body was translucent and gelatinous, and there was an enormous rupture in his abdominal cavity."

He gave a little harrumph. "And how is that inconsistent with impact trauma?"

She responded in a level voice, "Well, aside from the *translucency*," she stressed, "the rupture had occurred from the inside, not the outside. Something had burst *out* of him."

He was silent. She was glad.

She teased, "Shall I continue, or are you still allergic to the 'A' word?"

"Okay, wait...I've seen this movie," he teased back in a grizzled voice. "An alien bursts out of a human host's chest and there you are, another evil slimy alien is free to roam around the planet, while the human host dies. I think Ridley Scott did it better."

She breathed loudly and waited. If he really wanted to know what had happened to the firefighter, he would have to ask. The matter was far too serious to be diminished by genial chitchat.

When he finally spoke, his voice betrayed his earlier humor. "I'm sorry. Go on. What does a gestating alien have to do with bees?"

She pursed her lips, reflecting on his apparently sincere wish to hear her story, and elected to continue. "We ended up following a lead back in the desert near Dallas. There was a field of mature corn plants, and two reinforced, dome-like structures."

"Someone was growing corn in the desert?"

For a frightening development, it lacked a certain dramatic zing. "Yes. Not very ominous, is it?"

His voice lightened. "No, not really. I assume there was something menacing about it."

"Yes. The domes contained millions of bees, which we discovered against our will when swarms of them were released on an automatic timer. We got out of the building safely, but not before one bee took up residence somewhere in my clothing. I didn't know it for some time."

"THE bee."

"Yes. But first we were chased through the corn field by a couple of black helicopters, and we barely managed to get away. I can only imagine what they had planned for us, but I assume it might have been something as mundane as a couple of bullets."

"Because they were hiding something big," he said with mock drama. "In the corn."

"Right." She disregarded his glib response and continued on. "In the wake of the bombing I was transferred to Utah, despite the strong indication that SAC Michaud had been part of the planned bombing. Regardless, I decided I would rather be a fry cook than let them send me into oblivion, so I resigned."

"Mulder must have freaked out." He was good.

"Yes, he did, and that was when the bee stung me. My body reacted immediately. It was worse than anaphylactic shock...it was like my blood began superheating at the point of infection, and burned through my veins. I don't remember much after that. From that point, I rely on Mulder's description of events."

She cleared her throat and went on. "Mulder said I collapsed, and he called 911, but when they took me away in the ambulance, the attendants shot him." Her voice began to break. "They shot him in the head and left him to die in the street."

"Jesus," he breathed.

"Fortunately the wound was superficial, and the real ambulance must have come shortly after that. He told me that he left the hospital and contacted a few people in power within the Consortium."

"What consortium?" he asked.

"THE Consortium. It was, and most certainly still is, a group of power brokers within all levels of global government. They had a large manpower loss a couple of years ago, but I'm certain that they still maintain a practicable power base."

"Which is how they've managed to preserve their covert control over your lives."

"It sounds a little foolish when you put it that way, but essentially, yes."

"So you at least acknowledge it sounds ridiculous."

She pursed her lips. "I used to be where you were, John: sneering at every intimation of alien life, refusing to see the evidence piled in front of me as what it was, creating even less plausible explanations for what I saw. I remember how it felt to find the stories too ridiculous to accept." She exhaled and bit the inside of her cheek. "But after what I've seen and experienced, I can come to no other conclusion than the truths I've given to you. Whether you choose to accept those truths is up to you."

His bedding rustled yet again. Scully imagined he was shifting his position to find one in which her stories made sense, and she smiled at the thought. He was a formidable investigator, and she found his bewilderment satisfying.

"All right," he conceded. What happened after that?"

She settled back in to the pillow. "Mulder made two important contacts once he left the hospital. The first was a doctor with connections inside the organization, who confirmed his theory about the cornfield."

"And that was...?"

"Transgenic crops. Corn engineered to produce infected pollen. The honeybees collected it, and their stings transmitted the virus to human hosts. The bees themselves had been engineered to create a very aggressive microstrain, which explains my own unprovoked attack."

"And that's how you were infected."

"Yes." She nodded, even though she was confident he couldn't see. "Mulder's second contact was a high-ranking member of the leadership. He gave Mulder a vial of a vaccine, as well as coordinates for a location in the Antarctic where he claimed I was being held. His instructions included the warning that the vaccine might only be able to help me within ninety-six hours of infection."

"So he had...how much time to get to you?"

"A little under eighty hours at that point."

He gave a low whistle. "How the hell did he do it?"

"I found out later he'd contacted my brother." She chuckled. "You don't know Bill, so you'll have to take my word for it that a cooperative effort between those two is nothing short of miraculous itself."

"No love lost there?"

"Bill can get a little emotional where my safety is concerned. We'd already lost one sister to my work, and he takes every setback as further evidence that I should leave the Bureau."

"And Mulder."

That was an entirely separate issue, and she decided to avoid it. "Let's get back to the bizarre yet effective joint effort."

"All right."

She shifted her numb left arm under the pillow and winced at the sharp little pains rippling through the muscle. "Bill is a Commander in the Navy, and Mulder suspected he could arrange for transportation down to Wilkes Land, in Antarctica, which was where I was being held."

"Do you have any memory of being there?"

"Well," she paused. "Yes and no. At first I thought it was all an elaborate dream, but when Mulder described the scene to me later, I realized it must have been real. My memories are a little fuzzy. I'll get to that later, I promise. For now -"

"- Mulder is trying to hitch a lift from the Navy, Protective Brother unit."

She smiled. "Right." With each day that passed, she found it easier to like her new partner. But it was the gnawing fear of losing her need for Mulder that prevented her from showing it outwardly. "Bill of course tore him a new rectum, but nonetheless arranged for the transportation. He tried to offer to get some men to do the job themselves, but Mulder refused, insisting on looking for me himself."

"That must have gone over well."

"Like a bag of rocks. They're both stubborn as oxen. I suppose that's why they don't get along."

"Yet their goals seemed to align."

She was glad he understood. "Yes. I think deep down, they both know that as well, which is why Bill was so helpful. He arranged for Mulder to catch a ride on a Navy Jet down to Panama City. From there, transportation got a little faster and a little riskier. He ended up on an F14. They refueled twice in the air before they arrived at Christchurch, for his connecting flights to McMurdo and Amundsen-Scott Stations in Antarctica."

"Man..."

"In all, it took him just over fifty hours to make it to that last station, where he was equipped and sent on his way. I still don't know how he paid for all of it, and he's been tightlipped about the details. From the little bits and pieces I could glean from Bill, I think Mulder had to grease a lot of palms to get there."

"I'll bet."

"Anyway, he found the base without much difficulty, and ended up breaking in."

"You two seem to do a lot of that," he said facetiously.

"Yes," she responded. "And if you've been paying attention, you will no doubt notice that most of our break-ins occur on government property. Does that signify anything to you?"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. Government conspiracies, shadowy figures planning and plotting behind the scenes. Get back to the tundra."

"Fine," she growled. "He found his way inside an enormous subterranean structure, and managed - somehow - to find me where I'd been stored."

"Stored?"

"Yes, stored, as in cargo. That's all I was to those people. Look, John, I need to warn you..."

"I'm a big boy, Dana. I can take it."

"No, it gets really awful from here. Are you sure you want to hear this so close to bedtime?"

The rustle of his sheets indicated his movement. "According to our glowing red friend here, it's way past bed time, and edging fairly close to wake-up time."

"You insisted on asking, John."

"And I fully accept the responsibility for the loss of a night's sleep. I have to hear how this ends, because I gotta tell you, none of this appears anywhere in the official record."

She snorted. "And you expected it would?"

"Well, call me naive," he defended, "but I usually expect the official Bureau record of an agent's kidnapping to be detailed and accurate."

"And what did you find?" Scully asked.

"Bupkis. According to the record, you were never kidnapped."

"And your conclusion?"

He chuffed out a breath. "That they didn't want to hear the truth."

The words pleased her. "Good boy. You're learning." She found that she liked leading him through the facts and asking for his take on things. She felt like a mentor, a teacher, and the attraction of that feeling was powerful. No wonder Mulder had always taken the role of lecturer. The high was incomparable.

"So why did they take you? What did they hope to accomplish?"

"You know," she responded, "I'm still not sure. They seemed to attempt to retard the growth of the organism, but they didn't just give me the vaccine they had. I honestly don't know what that means. They were content to hang me there like a side of beef in a cooler."

"So they kept you in some kind of stasis?"

She nodded again. "Essentially."

"What do you remember about it?"

She stopped breathing for a moment, her jaw tense. There was no way he could understand what it was like in that pod, and everything that took place from that point onward was crucial to the understanding of Mulder's place in her life. She exhaled a shaky breath, and attempted to order her thoughts.

"At first, I remember the cold. It was so terribly cold. I couldn't move my limbs, or even close my eyelids, but I remember how it felt. I was suspended in a freezing cold, viscous solution, and I wasn't so much breathing as absorbing oxygen from it. I remember slowly coming to, and feeling my lungs spasm as they tried to pull in air. I remember panicking, thinking I was drowning."

"What was the solution?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. "

"Go on, please," he asked.

"I couldn't move my muscles, but somehow I knew they'd removed my clothes. I think it was the feeling of contact of the solution over certain parts of my body. It was awful."

She rolled onto her back, and opened her eyes to look at the ceiling. "There was nothing to do but think in there, and the fear that engendered was unlike anything I've ever experienced. It was, essentially, sensory deprivation for nearly three straight days. I thought I would go crazy from the fear and hopelessness."

Scully reached up and tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear. "Every now and then I would see a figure pass by my limited field of vision, but it was never Mulder. All I thought about was that Mulder would come and get me out of there. I was absolutely convinced of it. Even during the long hours when he didn't come, I was sure that he was trying to get to me."

"Prophetic?" Doggett asked her.

"No," she told him. "Force of habit."

He gave a dark chuckle.

She had never told anyone about the events of those dark days, not even her EAP therapist. It was difficult to put into words, so she concentrated on the events and the thoughts related to them in an effort to create a linear tale for her listener's benefit.

She continued. "They had placed some kind of umbilical down my throat, and as the hours passed, I felt it strengthen. It was connected, organically, to something growing inside me, and I felt it growing. When it began to move on its own, the terror struck, and that's how I remained until Mulder arrived. Hours and hours, John; days of nothing but pure terror and the absolute wish to die."

In a scratchy voice he asked, "Was it painful?"

"Physically?" she asked rhetorically. "No. But fear is a powerful force, and it was worse, I think, than if they had just mutilated me again. I'd seen that firefighter's corpse, and I knew that I was headed for the same fate. I wish I could explain to you how horrible that was, and how unlikely any chance at survival felt after what must have been just one day."

She flinched at the memory. "It was utter hopelessness. I prayed for death then. I remember praying to God, begging Him to free me, asking Him for mercy, for even enough control over my eyes so I could close them and sleep."

"God," he whispered.

"For a while I thought about my family, I tried to remember the periodic table of the elements, the addresses and phone numbers of all the places I'd ever lived - anything to keep my mind sharp and far away from despair. I knew that Mulder was coming, and that I had to be patient and wait for him." She wiped a stray tear from her eye, grateful for the darkness in the room. "In the end, I think I had more faith in Mulder than in God. I knew my partner would never give up on me. I had yet to see such a commitment from my creator."

"Strike one commandment right off the list."

"God will forgive," she sighed, counting carefully to locate the ceiling tile that lay over the dead center of her bed. "And if he doesn't, he's an asshole, and I want nothing to do with him."

"You tell him," he snickered. "Let's get back to that 'pod' you were in."

"All right," she said, weariness saturating her muscles. "I remember wishing that it would all end, because, although I genuinely believed Mulder would try to find me, I began to lose faith that he would succeed. I didn't know where I was, of course, but if I had, I think I might have lost faith even earlier. That was why I was so frightened when I finally saw him."

She shook her head. "I saw his nose first, then he turned, and I saw his eyes, and when he looked at me, I knew that he had seen me. And knowing he was so close and so afraid - it showed in his eyes - I began to panic. He slammed a palm against the glass, and I felt myself sloshing around in the liquid. He was trying to get in, but he couldn't break through."

She closed her eyes again and concentrated on the memories.

"I remember that he went away, and I wanted to scream for him not to leave." Tears clogged her throat and she choked the words out past them. "When he returned with something large and heavy, I felt relieved but ashamed. I knew he would never just abandon me, but I was irrational."

"Of course you were," he murmured. "Abject fear wipes out logic."

She nodded. "I know. But I'll never forget how badly I felt when I thought I'd given up on him.

"He hit the shell with whatever it was he was holding, and it jarred badly. That was when I decided that if he left again it was because he was going to get help, and I would be okay. Then he struck again, and I felt the damage of the impact. My body was moving, finally, and my muscles were screaming in a combination of pain and relief. When he struck for a third time, the damage to the casing was even more severe. I had a momentary fear that he would hit too hard and I would be cut by broken glass, but that fear passed as soon as I felt the liquid begin to drain away. Then I felt what *real* cold was like. The air was freezing, and against my wet skin, it created horrible stabbing pains. I saw Mulder take out a syringe, fill it, and I felt him sink it into my shoulder. I wouldn't have had to see him push down on the plunger, though, because the moment the vaccine entered my muscle, it burned the way the initial sting did.

"I felt it burning all through my body, and the reaction was instantaneous. The organism growing inside me suddenly shrank and rose through the umbilical, and I remember feeling the umbilical shrivel as well. Before, it had filled my throat completely, but when it began to desiccate, Mulder was able to remove it."

She shook her head and opened her eyes. "I remember being overwhelmed by cold, gratitude and fear, but all I could think about was getting warm. I coughed out the remainder of the fluid, and when the cold air hit my lungs, they burned as well."

She thought of the odd disparity of the sensations that had assaulted her body as she'd lain on the ground in Mulder's parka. The burning in her veins, the burning of her lungs, the icy cloak of her skin. How like their most recent relationship turn, she thought. The fire of his skin, the heat of his kiss, and the chill of their mutual denial come dawn. They'd had a few precious times to get it right, but they never had. So again and again it had been another night of ardor, followed by another morning of coffee and slides of mangled herd animals. She would never forgive herself for failing to tell him of his worth to her before he left, and she might never forgive God for turning his back on both of them.

"You okay?" John asked.

She bit the inside of her lower lip and nodded stiffly. "Yes," she murmured. "Give me a moment, please."

"Take as much time as you need." The words confused her. If it had been Mulder lying in the next bed, he would have said nothing - merely waited it out until she was ready to speak again. Of course, if it had been Mulder, he wouldn't have been across the room; he would have been in her bed, holding her, stroking her hair, pleading with her silently to stop crying.

When she'd calmed, she continued, determined to express as much as she could about the experience.

"All right." She cleared her throat. "I think I'd stopped breathing at some point, because Mulder had to perform CPR on me at least twice. He'd put me into some of his clothing, and carried me as far as he could before we had to climb."

"Climb where?"

"At the time, I didn't know. I just did whatever it was he told me to. Now I know we had to climb through an access tube to the surface, to ground level. We were underground."

"How far underground was the structure?"

She snorted. "How deep is the Garner-Carlson crater?"

"The what?" he asked.

"The crater that was left behind when that 'structure' surfaced and flew away."

"So you're saying it was an alien space craft, buried in the permafrost."

"At the time I couldn't have vouched for it, but now, I think so. Mulder said he saw it take to the air, and I believe him." But she was getting ahead of herself.

"I remember hearing screeching noises behind us as we climbed, but I never saw what was following us. Mulder said it was one of the creatures that had hatched from a body in a containment pod near our point of escape."

"But you got away."

"Yes," she confirmed. "We lay in the snow, and I remember how disoriented I felt. It was June, after all, and I couldn't imagine where we could be to see so much snow and feel such cold. Then the ground began to shake, and Mulder tried to get me to stand and run with him. It was unbelievably hard. He half-carried me, and we ran so much farther than I thought I could go. I was so tired, and so cold, and all I wanted to do was lie down for a minute, but he wouldn't let me stop. My lungs were burning worse than before, and my legs were still like jelly."

"Why were you running? Did that thing follow you out?"

"No," Scully said. "The snow was falling away, as if we were being followed by an enormous moving cliff. Essentially we were. I remember how quickly it approached and eventually engulfed us, and as we fell, I remember thinking that at least he'd come for me, and that it would surely be a free ticket into heaven for him."

"So you were falling, about to die, and you thought about him."

His sudden shift in perspective alarmed her. There was nothing to say to that, so she lay still and concentrated on her breathing.

"What happened then?" he asked.

She was grateful for a direct question. "We didn't have all that far to go. The structure was rising and we fell onto its surface, but as it continued to rise, we slipped off its curved edge and fell back into the snow."

In a hushed voice, he asked, "How far?"

"I don't know," she told him. "Maybe fifteen or twenty feet. I remember having the wind knocked out of me when I hit the ground. I thought for a minute I might never be able to breathe again, but I opened my eyes, and saw Mulder lying there, looking off into the distance, an expression of awe on his face."

"What was he looking at?"

"The ship, he said."

"Did you see it?" he asked.

"No," she hushed. "I could barely lift my head from the snow." The faint trace of a smile crossed her lips as she recalled the few words they'd exchanged before things became so much worse. "He'd asked me if I'd seen it."

"What did you say?"

"I told him," she said smiling, "that he'd have to duke it out with Skinner himself."

He laughed, and the sound was so free and unfettered, she forgot for a moment how it felt to laugh through sorrow.

"He must have loved that."

"There wasn't much time for any kind of reaction," she continued. "He'd been through so much, and under such stressful circumstances, that he just collapsed."

John whispered, "I bet he did. Between the gunshot wound, the traveling, and the search and rescue, it's amazing he lasted as long as he did."

She sighed. "I think," she said in a thick voice, "that was when it all came crashing down."

He sounded stunned. "The ship?"

"No," she sniffed out, "metaphorically. I sat there and tried to keep him warm, trying to ignore the wet snow saturating the socks he'd put on me, trying to think past the biting wind stinging my cheeks. I sat there and thought about all he'd done, wondering where the hell we were, and knowing it was farther from home than I'd ever been.

"I examined the fresh wound on his temple, and wondered how he got it. I thought about how far he must have come to find me. I thought about what he must have risked by breaking in and taking me out. And I thought about what he must have done to acquire the serum that saved my life." She coughed loudly, hoping to conceal the tears in her voice and the congestion in her nose. "I thought about his selflessness in getting me out first, despite the creature literally nipping at his heels, and I thought about the fear in his eyes when he first saw me. I thought about how, when he was obviously injured, all he'd thought about was getting to me."

She paused a moment, and tried to bring her outrage under control. "I thought about those bastards and what they'd done to both of us, and I thought about how much more we had left to accomplish. I thought about the tenuous thread of human life, and I realized how close we'd come to losing everything. I looked down at that fragile, wounded man, and realized that he was all there was for me between death and life, and that I had nothing to give him in return."

Scully's voice broke, and she feared she would lose control. Breathing deeply, she continued, faltering. "What do you say to someone who does something like that for you?" she sniffed. "How can you...how do you thank him? What can you do to express the importance of his place in your life? What could you ever...give him?"

In a hesitant whisper, Doggett answered, "Your soul."

She exhaled with finality and lay there for a few minutes; long enough to compose herself. "Yes. Exactly."

He took a few moments before blowing out a breath himself, and she heard the quiet resignation in his voice. "I get it."

She sniffed once more, then brought her voice under strict control. "Good."

"It's about giving a gift freely," he finished, "rather than paying out in pity or paying back in obligation."

She closed her eyes again and shuddered. He understood, and it hurt. He was a good man and he understood her, and Mulder was still gone, and the lines were beginning to blur, and it was wonderful and it was awful. All she could say in response was, "Thank you."

She looked over to his bed to find him looking back with warmth and sadness in the growing early morning light, and he said in a soft voice, "Thank you for the gift." He was smart, and he was learning.

Maybe he would learn faster than she had, and maybe that would make the difference.

Despite her residual anger at a deaf and unfeeling God, she prayed silently, thanking Him for the gift she'd received only recently. "Keep him safe," she pleaded, trusting God to understand.

=====
End.

Thanks to Lysandra for the beta, and Tara for the whoop of glee. This is for the MulderLuvDictatorship. Sorry there's no Mulder/Doggett slash. No gold star for me. Maybe next time.

livia@stoodjood.com