TITLE:  Things Not Seen 

by Nynaeve



E-MAIL:  mtknigh@ibm.net



RATING:  PG



CATEGORY:  V, fill-in-the-blanks for "Biogenesis"



SPOILERS:  Biogenesis is the biggie;  I gave up counting the

minor ones - they're very tiny, but you should basically know

the show.



KEYWORDS:  conspiracy,  a little implied MSR, but No-Romos will

survive easily



SUMMARY:  Wish I'd written down what everyone else has said in

their summaries - it's pretty much what it sounds like from the

Category.



DISCLAIMER:  Yes, I know, they belong to Chris Carter, 1013, and

a bunch of other legal entities.



DISTRIBUTION:  Anywhere, just keep my name and above info on it.

Please let me know where it's going so I can visit



FEEDBACK:  Always.  Anytime.  I keep it all and I always respond.

Constructive criticism, nicely written, will be valued; pickiness

will be politely ignored in my reply; and praise will be eaten up

with a spoon.



DEDICATION:  To JC, as usual, who's been waiting for this ever since

I got going on it.  I hope it was worth the wait...  And to my

husband for beta reading.  Thanks honey, you give great beta.





Faith is the assurance of things hoped for,

the conviction of things not seen.



Hebrews, 11:  1







I wait.



Caged.



Maddened.



Bereft.



The noise in my mind floods through me, threatens to sweep

away my knowledge of who I am.  I search for my anchor,

my lifeline.  I scream out.  I beg.  I plead.  "Scully!"



I wait.



Caged.



Maddened.



Bereft.



When did this start?  I think it was only days ago, but

it feels like years; it feels like a lifetime.  For all

I know anymore, it may be only hours.  I recall only its

genesis.  I touched the rubbing made of the ancient tablet

and let loose this tide within my mind.  It was Scully's

voice, at first,  that tethered me, held me fast, though

I rocked  perilously, awash in an unpredictable deluge

of unsought  sound.



I wait.



At first I had likened this cacophony to Babel and its

tower of  old.  Had I, like those ancient citizens, grown

arrogant,  tried to reach too close to the Heavens?  to

touch the very  face of Scully's God Himself?  It is written

that God destroyed  that overreaching tower and caused

confusion in Babel, as men  began to speak in languages

incomprehensible to one another.   It seemed so to me, in the

beginning.  The babble of a multitude inside my skull.



Yet it *is* more even than that.  Many of the legends from

Ancient Britain tell that Galahad, Companion to Arthur and

Knight of the Round Table, vowed to find the Holy Grail.

Some say he found it and upon holding Christ's chalice,

died, overwhelmed by its holiness.  Is this tablet then my

Grail?  Will is kill me or simply drive me mad?   My mind

is already wandering into the mist shrouded realms where

demons lurk, not in the shadows of the mind, but cavort in

the light of reality.  I rage against the demons.

My screams keep them uneasily at bay.



I wait.



I remember little of what transpired after my collapse in

the university stairwell, my head a chamber of unrivaled

noise, sound within and without leaving me no peace until

I slipped into the gentle arms of unconsciousness.  As I

swam my way up into the realm of waking, I found I was

aware of the voices still, but they were fewer, softer

now, sibilant whispers, not grating shouts and screams.

I surrendered to the confusion, not caring to understand it;

Scully would find me and she would make sense of it.  Instead,

I fought the rising tide, seeking to control the waves of sound,

to surf them as Gibson Praise must do.  If I could learn to

navigate the treacherous river of sound, to distinguish the

voices, and not to be controlled by them, I could survive this.



I found Diana with me.  How I knew not.  I knew hers were

thoughts I could hear, but only dimly, as though I listened

through a wall.  Then Scully called, from New Mexico, from

beside the sickbed of Albert Hosteen, chasing my Grail.

Her voice calmed me, comforted me, provided ballast to the

frail craft of my battered mind.  Even across the plains of

stricken Babel, I will always apprehend her language.  A feeling,

strangely like hope, began to dawn in me, lighting my soul as

the sun does the eastern shore each morning.  The tablet was

the key, the missing piece to the puzzle that had consumed

us, that continues to lead us on.  In the past we have found

pieces of this puzzle, bits that have given us clues to the

center, but never the center itself.  This tablet would solve

everything, I was certain.  Through its use we would wield the

sword that would prevent colonization.  We would trace the trail

of  my lost sister and I could close the gaps in my life, could

at last convince myself I deserved the love of the women in my

life.  Scully and I would live the lives we were never meant to.



My dawn darkened unexpectedly as a tidal wave, torrential, violent,

mammoth in scope, pulled me away from my moorings, swept me into

the maelstrom once again.  Scully's voice no longer came to me over

distances; she had ended her call as Diana walked away from me,

making a call of her own.  She spoke into her phone, muffling

her voice as if to deceive me, but her thoughts, muted and distant

moments earlier, now howled, unbidden, through my mind.  I heard her

plans for me.  I saw her intentions toward the future.  I knew her

for the traitor she is, knew if I did not accede to her ambitions,

she would make every attempt at my destruction.  I groaned inwardly,

mind recoiling bitterly from a day, months past when I had inflicted

upon Scully a wound so deep, a violation of her trust so profound,

even now it is barely healed.  For this woman, one I had once known,

or professed to know, I had nearly cast away the one person without

whom I am adrift.  Aloud I screamed, raged at her to leave me.

The voices engulfed me again, control gone, I sunk to the depths of the

ocean shelf, pounded by the crashing, obliterating tides of babbling

sound.



In my fury I struck at Diana, physically tried to drive her from me.

It was all the excuse she needed.  I found myself here, surrounded by

soft walls, bound by institutional fashion, observed by cold

disbelievers

and one equally cold, cunning believer.



Drifting hopelessly, being torn asunder by the volume in my mind,

I called for Scully.  I ached for the calm,  still pool of her soft

voice.  Slowly I was able to force myself to some measure of

tranquillity.  And so I waited, slid along the currents of near calm,

until Skinner arrived to stand vigil with Cancer Man's minion.

I heard the thoughts he kept, unwilling to hear them, unable to

stop it.  I knew his betrayal.



The warning, cliché and shopworn, skittered across my brain:  Be

careful what you wish for...  I had hoped to distinguish the voices

in order to calm the Babel in my mind.  That I was then able to

was to my worse detriment.  Skinner had been a pier to which I

had long lashed the frail vessel of my quest.  Within the pilings

of his Bureau position, with his tacit approval, Scully and I had always



been protected.  Now we would be battered against those same beams.

We would be bruised.  We would bleed.  That we might drown was a

distinct possibility.



I had exerted myself to mute all the voices around me, save for the

few I *had* trusted.  Like lightening flashing on the water, truth

illuminated my darkness.  It illuminated the darkness and blinded me.

Skinner was no longer our ally, but a pawn in the exhausting game.

Diana, too, had betrayed all she once professed to hold dear.



A stray thought, one of my own even, niggled its way into my conscious

mind.  I *had* trusted Diana and been deceived.  I *had* believed in

Skinner's incorruptibility and had been in error.  I *knew* Scully was

loyal to me.  Or did I?  The small  semblance of calm I had washed out

of me in that moment.  I  needed her, needed to know her thoughts.

My tenuous grasp on sanity depended on her (when hasn't it in the last

six years?).  I needed proof.  Ironic, as it is Scully who has always

needed that.  Proof to substantiate belief.  Now it was I who needed

facts, facts in the form of her thoughts, to justify my faith.

So I screamed out.  I begged.  I pleaded.  "Scully!"



And I waited.



************************************************************************



It is a small room, dark, artificially cold, dominated by a

large monitor.  I watch him.  I wonder if he can hear my thoughts.

Abruptly he looks into the camera and screams my name.  His voice is

raw, hoarse.  I hear in it fear.  Fear and more?  I listen as he

screams my name again.  Fear.  Anger.  Loathing  Doubt?



Doubt?



I realize I have been guarding my thoughts just as strenuously

as I've been guarding my emotions.  I  cannot be overcome by my

feelings, cannot give in to what might be a fatal display of weakness.

Outwardly I maintain my veneer of detachment.  I pretend I haven't the

slightest desire to pull out my weapon and with it threaten that

traitorous

bitch and suddenly suspicious AD.  I pretend my only thoughts are of

Mulder's

breakdown and the attempts at treating him.  Inwardly, I open my mind.

If Mulder can distinguish separate voices, I believe he will hear mine.



The doctor enters the room; suddenly it grows even smaller.

Claustrophobia is a rare feeling for me, yet I could swear the

walls inch closer together with each word this man utters.

He has no answers.  Medicine cannot explain Mulder's condition and it

seems it can do little to treat it.



I understand now that I unknowingly left my science at the door

of this cubicle.  Right now the touchstone of my science holds no

answers, can provide no cures, any more than the course of treatment

adhered to by the physician.  I accept that I am going to have to

bear Mulder's faith in order to save him.



I listen as the doctor continues to speak.  I hear his words.

I let them play through my mind, as though they were a book-on-tape.

Only partially engaged in this activity, my mind also thrusts from me

all the science I know.  I cast it into  a corner, into a dark

space and step into the light of my partner's belief.  The only cure

- if there really is a cure at all - the ooonly palliative will be

found in those beliefs.  I know I will come back here, to this corner.

I will retrieve my disregarded science.  I will integrate what I may

witness, what Mulder will believe, and what science can show me as

I always do.  I will have an explanation.  Most of all, I will

reclaim Mulder.



So science slips from me; the mantle of credence so long worn,

so exhaustively worn by Fox William Mulder engulfs me.  I feel

the oddest feeling.  As the science slinks away, so does that

part of me that sat in a hospital room and confessed, "I'm afraid to

believe."  No longer am I afraid to believe.  I identify the

feeling, smile mentally at it.  I am afraid *not* to believe.



I turn again to gaze at Mulder.  I clear my mind of all else

save that one thought:  "I believe, Mulder.  I believe."  I

will let this mantra carry me wherever it must and when I

have found what I need, I will allow it to lead me back.

"Yes, I believe, Mulder."  Though it should be impossible, I could

swear I hear his voice, deep in my mind, reverberating

against my heart, nestling into my soul.  I hear, "Thank you,

Scully.  I'll wait."



Away from the monitors displaying Mulder's incessant motion,

out of the tiny, cramped observation cubicle, I face Skinner

and Fowley.  We exchange words.  I hear only the deceit in

her voice.  In the AD's voice I long to hear reassurance, but

I don't.  Something isn't right with him.  His tone is ...

reserved.  Without preamble, Skinner has become part of the

mystery, a puzzle piece that fits nowhere on this board.



Without preamble, but not without warning.  Mulder and I had

known for months that Skinner had changed subtly.  His near

death due to an unknown causal agent, his  unexplainable recovery,

his subsequent brusque dismissal of our attempts to discover

the instigator were all signs.  Signs we willfully ignored,

consumed in other matters.  We convinced ourselves we were respecting

Skinner's wishes in dropping the investigation.  Had we defied those

wishes we might not be in this exact position now.  Skinner might

still be our ally and not the foe I sense he has become.



I can do no more right now for Mulder.  I tell Fowley she is a

liar; I add that Skinner is one as well.  I leave.  If I am to

help Mulder at all I must solve this puzzle.  Much as I would

like to remain here, to stay near him, guard him vigilantly, I

would do him little help.  To save him I must leave him here

for now.  I leave.



He waits.



***************************************************************



She's not entirely certain what she has to do next as she walks

away from Skinner and Dianna.  Yet she'll gather herself and

determine a course of action.  I know she will.   She always does.

I hear her silent apology, her rational explanation for leaving me

here.  I am not happy with the situation.  I ache to go with her,

but I accept that I cannot.



The moment she had entered that observation room, I knew she was

there.  At first I had sought out her thoughts, needing to know,

longing for reassurance that at least Scully was, and is,  who

I have believed  her to be.  With concentration, I had been

able to find her voice  amongst the many in my head.  Scully's

thoughts did not scream at me,   did not go howling through my

mind as others have done, as they  continue to do.  Like Scully

herself, her thoughts proved to be calm,  understated, controlled.

I could not decipher the words she was thinking though, only muzzy

syllables of sound.



I had grown impatient, increasingly desperate in my need to know.

Frustrated by her self control I screamed her name aloud.  I felt

her respond to my voice.  She was analyzing it.  She sensed the

emotions roiling within me and I felt her let slip her grasp on

those thoughts.  She let me in willingly.  As she has let me in

to her life, to her heart, to her soul, she welcomed me into her

mind, that one part that should have been sacrosanct.  She knew

why it could not be so.  She knew why I needed to know.   In her

thoughts I listened for her triumph.  She would have had the right

to gloat, having been on the mark about Diana.  Yet, she is Scully;

she didn't.  She was only unhappy, concerned over my condition,

distrustful of all those around me, suspicious and alarmed at the

power they held over me.  She was willing to soothe me, to prove

herself to me in whatever way I needed her to.



I listened to her reactions to the doctor, once he had arrived.

She thought everything he told her.  For me.  I knew then she

believed I could hear her and that I knew it was her.  She wanted

me to know, clearly all that the doctor said.  She was giving me the

only weapon she could, arming me in the only way possible to fight

them.  What irony abounded that at that moment when we would appear

to be as far apart as possible, we had never been more connected.



I became aware of a shift in the currents of her own thoughts.

I was with her, felt her, as she let go of her science, for me.

She was confused, groping for an explanation of why, how she could

abandon the science that had sustained her for so long.  The

realization washed over her just as it did me, drenching us both in

a flood of comprehension.  The woman who told me she was afraid to

believe disappeared.  Her mind cleared.  I heard her, whispering gently,



tenderly in my skull.  "I believe, Mulder.  I believe,"  seeped into

me and I thanked her.  I  promised to wait and she knew.



As Scully, Skinner and Diana (<Mulder's little chickadee?  What...

Oh, Frohike.  Little beast.> moved outside, the connection between

my partner and myself had stretched.   It stretched but did not break.

I needed to concentrate more fully on Scully, but I could still hear

her.  I could listen to her mental recitation of Diana's lies.  Would

that  Scully could have heard me again.  "I did not call her,"  I

longed to assure Scully.  "I've learned who she really is."



I listened to her mental calculations regarding Skinner's part in

this.  Her instincts told her he is no longer what he once had been,

though she had no way of knowing how horrible the truth is.  I was

waiting again, for once hoping Scully's insistent skepticism would

surface.



I felt a stab of pity for Skinner - he is being held fast by Krycek.

Pity, mixed with anger - in the last months he could have found a

way to tell us so that we could have helped him.  And above all,

fear for my partner who knew not the face of the enemy, only

sensed his presence.  Still, I never doubted she would prevail,

so I felt that moment of pity for a man once an ally, often our

only ally.  I could vaguely sense his thoughts as he had tried to

reel in Scully.  He grasped her wrist in one hand.



Diana's thoughts also buzzed dimly in my mind, as she had

anticipated Scully's reaction.  She had assumed Scully would

capitulate to Skinner or would lash out fiercely at him.  She

had not yet learned exactly how unlike her Scully is.  I waited.

I imagined Scully as she faced them.  She was tired, exhausted

really.  She kept trying to push that thought away, as if ignoring

it would negate its reality.  I could see her, her beautiful face

impassive,  not a hair out of place.  Her suit, even after all

she had to through to get here, was impeccable.  In her stockingfeet,

she would have been dwarfed by Skinner and even Diana would have

towered over her somewhat.  Yet, balanced flawlessly in her

three-inch heels, back ramrod straight, I had just known how

she would be able to minimize the height differences.  I have

witnessed people attempt to intimidate her, some consciously,

others unconsciously, that way.  It  has never worked and I didn't

believe it would in that corridor.



<God, my feet are killing me> her thoughts had told me.  I had

laughed.  I hoped, for their sakes, that neither Skinner nor

Diana actually thought they were winning this game.  Captain

William Scully's daughter, the child he nicknamed 'Starbuck',

had faced them both, and she was in control.  Voice cold, all

sharpened edges, Scully had announced her refusal to participate

any further.  She did so without outburst, without venom, and

with only six words.



I could hear the stare which she had fixed on Diana.  "You're a liar,"

she had told the devil's advocate.  Diana's mind had reeled, as

though Scully had reached inside her skull and slapped her brain

itself.  Skinner had started to speak when Scully turned her gaze

on him.  "You're both liars."  I never knew until that moment that

a person can actually *think* in a tone of pure contempt.



Scully had wrenched her wrist from Skinner's grasp, had turned

away from them, and had strode away.   She was not quite certain

what she would do next.  she knew only two things for sure.  First,

she would rather not leave me, but she didn't believe she had a

choice.  I believed she was right.  The key to this mystery will

not be found within me.  It hurt me, like glass driven into my heart,

to know she was walking away, letting them keep me here, but she will

be back as soon as she can.  Second, she was done playing their games.

So she left.



I wait.





***********************************************************************



My thoughts are a whirling maelstrom as I leave the hospital.

I am apologizing to Mulder, loathe to leave him, knowing the

solution to his impending madness lay elsewhere.  I hope

desperately that he knows this.  I try to have faith that he does.

I was considering Skinner's behavior.  He has been turned.

Mulder knew why, of that I was and remain certain.  Mulder also

knew by whom.  That will matter once I have gotten Mulder out of

there.  Now all that really holds any significance is the fact that I

have made my last move in this futile game.



For six years, more or less, I have played by the rules  they

set down.  I had dutifully filed reports on Mulder's work,

though I could never discredit him as they had hoped.  I had

worked for the truth.  I have seen and kept secrets because they

stole the proof we had gathered. They had known, had chosen

me because they knew, that I would keep secret that

for which I had no evidence.  I have a chip in my

neck and vivid memories of existing at death's threshold because

of their game.  "Well, I'm done," I tell myself.    "I'm through

being a pawn in this cosmic misbegotten game of chess with the

Devil.  They can wrap me up and toss me out of the Bureau for

all I care right now."  Ahab's daughter, Captain William Scully's

'Starbuck' is off to hunt the white whale and she hasn't any time

for games.



It is the call from Sandoz and the shots I hear that tell me

what I need to do.   The artifact is the key - to what I couldn't

say then.  It certainly seemed to be what had given Mulder his one

way ticket into Looney Land.  I don't want it to be what I know

Mulder thought the artifact must be.  I can't accept that aliens

created us, gave us our most ancient texts.  I seek a more rational

explanation, realizing it will have to come from my faith.



I spend most of the first leg of my flight, DC to New York, considering

this.  Faith, bestowed upon me in the cradle of childhood, thrust from

me on the threshold of maturity, and brought back to me in the embrace

of mortality.  My faith is too hard fought for, too dearly won, to be

surrendered without proof.  It seems I live my life on this

juxtaposition:  faith in things unseen - God, the soul, love;

confidence in things observed - medical treatments, physical evidence,

scientific data.  Mulder has challenged me, denied the veracity of my

beliefs, even dismissed it, unable to accept there are some things

in which I simply believe.  I have opposed him in the same manner,

unwilling to believe, as he does in alien life.  I still seek answers

in science, or I had.  I think those beliefs, those varied faiths of

ours are about to collide, to merge.  I am assailed by these thoughts

as I make my way through JFK International Airport to my international

flight.



During the first hour of this long, transoceanic flight I shift my

thoughts from the philosophical to the practical, beginning to organize,

to take notes of the facts in my possession.  I analyze them as best as

I can.  I know that, whatever I may learn in Africa, I'm going to need

to know the score of this game  when I return.  If I can't identify and

classify the players, don't know the vital statistics in this vicious

contest, nothing I uncover will be of any help to Mulder.



Mulder is, I can only hope, where I left him.  I left the Gunmen with

orders to guard him, take him out of there if it becomes necessary.

His descent into mania began when he touched the rubbing made of the

tablet.  It seems to have occurred intermittently at first, strongest

immediately after contact with the rubbing.  I think of Gibson Praise,

whose genetic make-up is exactly the same as mine, as Mulder's, as

anyone else's, except that one gene, unused by the rest of us, is

'turned on' in that child.  I little doubt that were I to examine Mulder's

genetic markers right now I'd find that same gene 'turned on'.  I can answer

'How' Mulder is able to hear voices with science, that science I shed because

it isn't going to tell me the 'Why'.  I know the 'Why' is related to the

tablet and I need that 'Why' to help me turn the gene 'off', at least

until Mulder can handle what's happening to him.



Why...Why...I consider every angle I can.  Why...What magic?

Magic... if science doesn't have answers, will they be found in

the arts of the alchemists?  Mulder said something about 'magic

squares'.  I think back over the last few days to that conversation.

Popular in the Middle Ages, they were supposed to have, by virtue of

the combination of letters, words, or numbers contained in them, power

over certain individuals.  Was the artifact Mulder's 'magic square'?

Many myths, legends, and superstitions have their origins in facts,

events, and verifiable occurrences.  It suddenly seems possible this

is one of those.  Is it possible that there have been people, since

the beginning of time, of history, who have had these experiences?

They would have been written down, accounted as mad, fanatical,

terrifying.  This is not an answer, not one that satisfies me anyway,

but I have to admit, as a theory, a Mulder theory, it has its

possibilities.



Using the air phone I place a call to the Gunmen.

Byers answers.



"Byers.  It's Scully."



"Agent Scully...." he begins.



I interrupt.  "I can't talk, Byers.  I'm on an air

phone and I doubt the line is secure.  I need you to

find out everything you can about 'magic squares'.

History.  Use.  Prevalence in or near archaeological

sites.  Coincidence of madness or religious mania.

Anything else."  I pause, breathe deeply.  "And Byers,

analyze the data with an eye to the paranormal."



I hear him start.  "I know, twice in less than one year.

'Party Girl' is walking on the wild side again."  I

pause a second time.  "How is he?"



"He's calmer than he was at first.  Frohike is at the

hospital now.  He called to say Fowley wasn't pleased

to see him."



"Byers?"



"Don't worry, Agent Scully, one of us is there with

him around the clock.  And we'll find out as much as

we can about 'magic squares'."



"Thanks.  Send whatever you find to my contact in Africa,"

I tell him and end the call.



It's crazy, I tell myself.  It *is* a theory worthy of Mulder

at his best.  I muse somewhat wryly, somewhat tenderly, and

decidedly wistfully, that Mulder at his best is usually

pretty close to the truth, however strange it may be...



The truth.  Elusive.  Critical.  Multilayered.  I consider

Diana and I wonder about her.  I don't want to believe her

loyalties always lay elsewhere.  I hope her initial involvement

with the X Files and Mulder was honest.  I hope so for Mulder's

sake.  I want to believe Mulder judged her rightly then and

clung to his faith in her this past year out of that judgment.



Diana is easy to read, though that lessens the threat she represents

not at all.  She is working with CBG Spender.  I can't prove it,

but I know in my heart it's true.  All her expensive perfume can't

quite overpower the scent of cigarette smoke wafting from her.



She possesses unbridled ambition, or is possessed by it, and it

appears she'll do whatever she must to achieve her ends.  She

would gladly have taken Mulder along her dismal path were it

not that he chose a different way.  I strongly suspect that which

Diana Fowley cannot have, she will cheerfully destroy.



While I do not dismiss Diana Fowley as an enemy, yet she is a

familiar one.  She is Alex Krycek, years ago when he was initially

assigned to Mulder;  she is Section Chief Blevins; she is Marita

Covarrubias; she is a mole, a rat, informing her superiors on

Mulder's progress.  Like all those who came before her, she can

but hinder Mulder's quest, my quest.  Like her predecessors, she

may frustrate us, may sidetrack us, but she cannot thwart us.

Ironic that for all their grandiose plots, the Syndicate, whatever

may remain of them, thinks quite conventionally, chooses for its

weapons the obvious choice.  Lull us into false security with one

who appears to be an ally, revealing their tactics, their true

motives once they think we can be destroyed.



I wonder, with a silent, bitter chuckle, if Diana has considered

the rather dim fate of the pawns who sallied forth in this grand

game before her.  Krycek lurks in the deepest shadows, a maimed

lone wolf.  Blevins' decomposing body and what's left of his head

lie in a grave in Maryland.  Marita Covarrubias... Jeffrey Spender

mentioned to me about finding her in the hospital after his mother

was taken.  Marita, from his account, would be better off dead.

It's one hell of a retirement plan...



Diana is a liar, not even a very good or original one, telling old,

tired lies.  I've heard her bed time fairy tales too many times to

be beguiled or enchanted by them.  She is a known quantity, and a

known quantity, however unpleasant it may be, is far better than

the wild card.  It is Skinner, our once-ally, who mystifies me now,

whose motives plague me, and whose actions I dare not trust.



How could I fail to notice, to make the connection between my

conversation with Skinner when I was in New Mexico and Sandoz' subsequent demise?

He was the only person, besides myself and a group of Navajo holy men,

who knew where Sandoz was.  I highly doubt that those Navajos shot

Sandoz in cold blood as he tried to impart to me what he believed

to be the secret of the artifact.   Skinner, who once sold his soul

to the devil for me, able to reclaim it only when that devil vanished,

is not what he was.  I doubt it is so simple as CBG Spender's return.

Spender has moved on, choosing, using, and discarding new pawns.

Whatever, whoever has this hold on him is unpredictable.  So Skinner

is a wild card now, the only one whose actions I cannot predict at

all.  Skinner can bring us down as the Syndicate never could.  With

Skinner it's personal, meaning our enemy, unseen, unknown to me,

venomous, must hate both Mulder and me.



It is these forces I will face upon my return.  Two foes I have

fought, in some form. for years now, by Mulder's side.  Foes I

despise, but know well.  And I will face two new, unthought of,

unlooked for foes.  Through this mine field will I have to navigate

a course for Mulder and myself.  Unless he has learned to control

the voices, our only map will be whatever I encounter in Africa.



Exhausted, physically and mentally, I save my notes to disk and

shut down the laptop.  Habit dictates I place the disk in a pocket

of my clothing.  I do so before placing the laptop in its case and

laying it on the empty seat beside me.  I turn my head and gaze

out the window at the clouds brushing languidly by.  Below us,

the Atlantic shimmers.  Light reflects off the waves,  giving

the illusion of diamonds dancing along the surface of a sapphire.



I begin to drift, realizing that I've never crossed the Atlantic.

Once when I was about ten, my father received orders, later

countermanded, posting him to the base in Rota, Spain.  My mother, the archetypal

Navy wife, began preparing for the move, assuring us children it would

be a great experience.  Only Missy, the suddenly boy-crazy teenager,

was happy.  Thoughts of dark, handsome Spanish boys kissing her with

lips whose first utterances had been in a Romance language traipsed through

her brain and took up semi-permanent residence.  Years later, when we

would talk about such things, she confessed that those particular

thoughts should have been followed by visions of Dad tearing the

Romance speaking tongues out of those poor boys' mouths.



Bill had been angry, complaining he would miss playing in Little League,

just when he was supposed to play for the team that always won the

championship.  Charlie had been afraid nothing would be the same in

Spain - different food, different games, different television.



I had been resigned.  I was accustomed to moving, to enduring the

painful process of first leaving the few friends I had endeavored

to make, then making a few new ones, only to leave them shortly after.

Despite the fact we would attend the base school, where English was

taught, I realized I would most likely meet many Spanish children.  I

would at least have an excuse for not making friends easily.  And I

would have my father.  In all our moves, he was my constant, my

pole star.  I would have followed him to the ends of the earth if

that was where the Navy needed him to go.



Mulder has proven himself to be so like my father in essential ways,

so unlike him in details.  "Mulder, you *are* Ahab,"  I had told him

once, years ago, in a lake, on a rock, the night my poor little dog

had been eaten alive.  I know now what I could not quite see then:

Mulder is the Ahab of the book and he is a man like Ahab, my father.

Dedicated, loyal, loving.  I seek Mulder's approval, as I did my

father's, and at times, I resist the constraints this partnership

places on me.  Both had difficulty expressing feelings.  My father

told me how he felt by reading me his favorite book and bestowing

upon me a nickname from it, by saluting me, and even by disapproving

of my decision to join the FBI.  I know how Mulder feels about me

without words (or, I smile, in spite of works spoken in a drugged

haze while the man was concussed).  Mulder never believed I was dead

when I was missing.  Mulder always believed I would survive the

cancer.  Mulder and I *have* been to the ends of the earth together.

From demons, real and imagined, distant and close, Mulder has saved

me countless times.  It's my turn at bat and I know he's waiting.



The thoughts strolling through my brain and the look of the sun on

the water pull me into sleep.  My body is grateful for the rest and

I don't dream, not that I can remember, so my mind must be content,

too.  I wake up as the plane begins its descent into Dakar.



The next hours will always be a blue.  I change planes twice, finding

myself at last at a small airport from which I am driven to the dig

site. The driver, arranged for by Langly, of all people, speaks English quite

well.  He chatters steadily, asking after Langly, explaining local

customs, and the like.  I listen, try to absorb his words, but

apprehension grips me, suffocates me.  As we arrive as the dig site

he introduces me to a professor from the University, wishes me well,

and departs with these cryptic words, "Monsieur Byers said to tell you

that it is an interesting theory, to say the least."



I am led across an outcropping of rocks down to the sand.  Before me

the ocean stretches away, moving lazily.  I walk in the direction

indicated, toward the surf.  The long skirt I'm wearing, appropriate

to this climate and culture, billows behind me in the breeze.  I squint

against the afternoon sun, trying to determine what it is I'm seeing in

the shallows ahead of me.  As if mechanized I begin walking toward it.

Water washed over my feet, soaking the hem of my skirt.  Wind blows

locks of hair across my forehead.  My eyes tell me what I'm seeing,

but my mind is awash in waves of confusion...



**********************************************************************



Even over the distances I hear her.  I hear her thoughts as she stands

on a beach in Western Africa.  I have no frame of reference for what

she is seeing so I can't envision it.  I feel nothing of what surrounds

her, only in my imagination am I with her.  Yet I hear her.  "Oh my God.



Oh ... my ... God."  I don't know what she's found; her mind can't

encompass it.  I can't guess how much she'll believe, but she's found

the key. We both know that.  And so I wait.



Caged.



Maddened.



Bereft.



And ...



Protected.



Calmed.



Whole.







END