From: "Jessica Minier Mabe" <snarkypup@mindspring.com>
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 13:27:01 -0800
Subject: The Thirty-Sixth (1/6) by Jess
Source: xff

TITLE: The Thirty-Sixth  (1/6)
AUTHOR: Jess Mabe (since there are now, like, ten-thousand Jesses)
EMAIL ADDRESS: snarkypup@mindspring.com
DISCLAIMER: Um, let me check... nope, don't own them. Damn.
DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: Anywhere, just let me know.
SPOILER WARNING: Through Millennium and beyond!
RATING: R
CONTENT WARNING: some sex and a bit of violence, just enough to make it
spicy
CLASSIFICATION: X-File, MSR
SUMMARY: It's about faith, religion and sainthood

AUTHOR'S NOTES: I must give credit where it is due: the idea for this story
came from one moment in the documentary "The Cruise", which is superb.

I did a little research for this story, gleaning what I could from that
great "font" of info: the Web, and then running with it. I also used a very
helpful book my mother bought me years ago: "What is a Jew?" by Rabbis
Kertzer and Hoffman, for some of my information. I hope I don't offend
anyone with my lack of scholarly knowledge in the Kabalah or the mystical
side of Judaism. I'm making a darn lot of it up, in other words, especially
the bits about the extremists. Jewish extremists exist, of course, as they
do in any factor of life, but I think I'm ascribing beliefs to them that
they simply don't have. But I liked the idea behind it, very "Millennium",
so I just went for it. I'm exactly as Jewish as I've made Mulder in this
story.

And I do knit. The sweater Scully makes doesn't exist, nor do the socks she
creates. But the mittens can be found in Piecework Magazine, Sept/Oct. 1997.
They are beautiful. If you would like to learn, email me and I'll point you
in the right direction.

Finally, this is dedicated to Darla, for waiting so patiently for the
airplane to... ehem... land (Sunday! Wee hee! Donnie Phaster look out!) and
to Galia, who is my ever-faithful archivist and friend. Next time, baby,
I'll give you more time to beta!

Visit my site for all my fiction, lovingly archived by Galia:
http://galias.webprovider.com/jess/jess.htm
Then visit Galia's site for more great fiction!
http://galias.webprovider.com/visions.html

Send me feedback, I put on my best gooey red lipstick and ravage them with
kisses!


The Thirty-Sixth

Scully was never sure why her mother had chosen that point in her life to
teach her to knit. Margaret had knit for as long as Scully could remember,
producing utilitarian dark blue sweaters for her husband to wear to sea, and
watch caps and mittens and socks so thick and warm no shoes they owned would
fit them. When they were children, Margaret had sat Dana and Missy down and
taught them the basics: how to cast on, how to knit, how to purl. They had
produced great furry scarves, so boring to make that Scully's teeth had
ground in her sleep over it. Knit, purl, knit, purl. It was like marching,
like running, but the destination was only a long, red strip of fabric.
Useful, but ugly.

Missy, on the other hand, had taken to knitting. Branching, as always, away
from the practical to the whimsical, she had discovered that she could make
elaborate lace using impossibly thin needles ("metal toothpicks" her father
had said) and yarn so fine it seemed more like spider's silk than cotton.
She created gossamer shrouds for her bright hair, as if anticipating her own
death. As light as a breath and as strong as a fisherman's net, she had sent
her sister several glorious shawls over the years, shimmering and delicate
in their complexity. They weren't Scully's thing, however, and they remained
folded between sheets of acid-free paper in her hope chest. A hope chest,
ridiculous now, filled with fine linen she never used and the floating,
achingly appropriate black and gray webs.

And then, just a few weeks before Mulder's illness, her mother had called
and demanded a weekend of her time. Sitting on the familiar couch, watching
her mother produce book after book of patterns, Scully had been sure it was
all going to be one great, disastrous mistake. She didn't have the patience,
she explained.

"It doesn't take patience, silly," her mother told her. "If you like it,
it's enjoyable. It's not like someone's sitting there with a gun to your
head. You do it because the act of creation is, in and of itself,
rewarding."

"I don't wear scarves," Scully insisted.

"There are other things to make," Margaret said. "Look, it's something you
can do when you're bored, or lonely. And don't tell me you don't get lonely,
Dana, because I know you do."

"I wasn't going to say that," Scully said, sipping her herbal tea
defensively and finding it was still too hot. She held the tip of her burned
tongue away from the roof of her mouth for a moment.

"And it's useful, you see. It's not like crocheting, where all you can
really make are doo-dads and decorations. It's not like embroidery,
ornamenting things. You are creating something you can wear, something you
would buy in a store. How many hand-knit sweaters do you own?"

"A few," she demurred.

"Exactly. So you're just going to make them from now on, instead."

And so, without really having any desire, she flipped through a few books.
Ganseys... god, how many of those pedestrian things had she owned in her
lifetime? Beautiful Norwegian sweaters that she would love to own but would
never have occasion to wear... and then, her mother handed her Vogue
Knitting and sighed.

"Try this," she said.

Scully flipped past the pages of frou-frou fuzzy sweaters and
ridiculousnesses (knitted bell-bottoms, for heaven's sake?) and then there
it was. A beautiful sweater in shades of gray and black and white like the
shadows on the face of a statue. Chiaroscuro, depth and light.

"I like that one," she said.

"Fine." Margaret Scully rolled her eyes. "Pick the hardest one in the
magazine. But I can show you, if you're really committed."

Scully examined the sweater, fading and rearranging its colors before her
eyes. It hugged the body, but it draped. A low neckline and a texture like a
rabbit's fur.

"Let's do it," she said, never one to forego a challenge.

They spent four weekends in a row going over the basics. She learned to knit
with one hand, then with both, holding the yarns like a child doing cat's
cradle. Making little squares of geometric regularity. Swatches, her mother
called them. Passing yarn over and under, catching it in the back, learning
to follow a pattern. They were speed-knitting. Margaret seemed to understand
the need to arrive at a certain proficiency quickly. Scully's patience was
endless for the sublime, but the details, the beginner's fumblings, sent her
yawning in search of more tea or chocolate. By the end of the month she was
working on quite a lovely pair of mittens, patterned in waves just like the
sea. "Safe Return", the pattern was called. She finished them in the first
week that Mulder was ill, on her trip to New Mexico, working with the fever
of a new convert.

She wore them for Mulder, two weeks after he had recovered. Never one to
show off, she didn't point them out or hold them up or say "look, I made
these," but he noticed them anyway, as she knew he would. Because he was the
sort of man who saw things, however small, when they mattered to her. Most
of the time, anyway.

"Hey, are these new?" he asked, holding her hand up to examine it. "They're
beautiful."

And they were, so she just nodded. Somehow, she wasn't ready to tell him she
had created them. Ok, she was following a pattern, but it was her movements,
her hands, that had wound the eight essentially straight pieces of yarn
around each other to make what was, let's face it, really one giant knot.
But this act of creation was new for her, still damp and hidden in the tall
grass of her practical personality. She wasn't ready to expose it to
possible ridicule and therefore, possible death.

She began the sweater just after her return from Africa, casting-on three
hundred and thirty-two stitches in a deep gun-metal gray alpaca and sheep's
wool mix. "Fingering-weight", the wool was called, which merely meant it was
fine enough to do quite detailed pattern work. Thin as twine, soft as the
belly of a kitten, light as feathers, nearly as strong as nylon. She admired
it, by its very nature this yarn appealed to her.

It was ironic then, that on their fourth case back, after the kiss and the
lucky man and the speeding children, that they would end up immersed in a
world of yarn, of women, of soft clouds of color piled up the sides of the
store shelves like candy. It was funny, Scully realized later, how the world
worked, giving them just enough to survive another day, dropping little
joyous petals into their laps when they least expected it.

xxxxx

Mulder wasn't entirely comfortable in his own apartment anymore. If anyone
had asked him about it, which they couldn't since he'd never actually told
anyone, he'd have said it was the taint of all the years he had spent there,
suddenly washing over everything like a stain on wood, changing his
perceptions. What had been as clear and blond as Swedish pine was now a
dark, murky oak, heavy and old-fashioned.

He had changed. He wouldn't have admitted that either, but it was true. What
had mattered before the illness seemed irrelevant to him now. He was tired
of taking the responsibility for his father's machinations, tired of the
subterfuge and the endless running from place to place shouting about the
falling sky. If it weren't for Scully, he'd simply have given up. Of course,
if it weren't for Scully, he'd be dead. It was that simple, and so,
consequently, it was that complicated.

Why kiss her? There was no reason behind it, really. He couldn't, in the
sense that everyone understood it, have her. He couldn't marry her and take
her to suburbia in their new minivan. He couldn't have children with her, or
even a dog. Their relationship, if it had gone another step, would have been
incomprehensible to everyone else on earth, which made it daunting. Why kiss
her?

Why not? She had such a lovely mouth, soft and coral as the inside of a
conch shell. Part of the sea, that was Scully. Suffused with it, dipped in
it at birth like Achilles into the fire, part protection, part curse. And he
loved her, of course, the way he loved breathing or the sky. It was as if he
had grown up loving her and couldn't imagine his heart working any other
way. Not that he didn't remember the time before she came, and some of the
times after, when it could all have evaporated due to his own stupidity, his
own greed. But lately, when he looked at her, it was as if she were naked
before him, and he before her. He understood her now.

He had plunged his head beneath the surface of her, seen the sandy depths of
her, been washed by her salty waters. She was no tropical reef, his Scully,
but the cool, deep channels of the Pacific. There were no bright, darting
little fish in Scully's world, but great schools of salmon, migrating toward
their home. Ok, that was a bit much, but that was what it had been like. He
had been swimming with orca, with dolphins, with great blue whales so
intelligent and beautiful they transcended the notion that humans ruled the
earth. She was elemental, essential and despite the pollution, as pure
overall as a new river, as prehistoric rain. So why not kiss her?

This morning, lying on his couch (he'd never replaced that silly waterbed),
he listened to footsteps in the hallway and dreamed that it might be her.
Despite the fact that it was Saturday, that it was after noon, that the sun
was out and the winter air was crisp and he knew she was at her mother's.
Why not dream of her?

The knock on his door startled him. It wasn't Scully's knock, which was
sharp and precise. No wasted energy. This knock was hesitant, light and
quivering, a ripple in the still air.

He loped over to the door and peered through the peephole at an unfamiliar
face. Ah hell, he thought, who was he to refuse someone entry? He opened the
door.

"Fox Mulder?"

The woman was young, barely over thirty, if that. She was dark-haired and
long-legged and despite being in love and the fact that she was wearing the
soft, dark clothes of a widow, he felt himself attracted to her.

"Yes," he said. "Can I help you?"

"Oh I hope so," she said. "I have a very long story. Do you mind if I come
in?"

"Be my guest," he said and she smiled. It was disarming, to wake to the
knock and have a woman smile at him like that, like she knew him.

"Thank you," she said and followed his outstretched arm into the apartment.
She shrugged off her black coat and he took it from her, placing it
carefully over the back of a chair in the hall. She was thin, with hair so
curly it had to be real, and large, wide-set eyes the color of mica. "My
name is Leah Levich," she said, extending a hand. She reminded him of a
gazelle. Except that she wore a black velvet dress that covered every inch
of her skin but for her hands and her face. Even her feet, clothed in dark
leather boots, seemed cloaked.

"What can I do for you, Leah?" he asked, leading her over to the couch,
still warm from his body.

"I have been given your name by someone in my community. They thought you
might be able to help me. You see," she said, stretching out one hand
against the light-absorbing blackness of her leg, "my sister is missing."

The ache, so familiar it might have been an actual wound, spread through his
chest and clutched his heart like a vice. Mulder nodded and waited for her
to continue.

"She is... well, Esther is special," Leah said. She had a soft voice, like
the velvet, like the wool of her coat. There was nothing sharp about her,
nothing to offend or cut or stab. In another lifetime, he might have found
her comforting, before he learned to crave the little slices. "She is what
the medical community calls disabled. Mentally challenged. Retarded," she
said the words contemptuously. "And that's all perfectly true. But Mr.
Mulder, she is much, much more than that. She is holy."

"Holy?" he asked quietly.

"Yes. I understand you are Jewish."

Mulder was surprised and didn't bother to hide it. It always amazed him when
anyone asked him. He didn't believe the bigoted assumptions about looking
like a particular religious group. After all, did Ethiopian Jews "look"
Jewish? Did his grandmother, with her blond hair and green eyes, "look"
Jewish? So what it was that occasionally gave it away, he didn't know. After
all, the nose came from his mother's side of the family, who were French,
long ago. "No, not really," he said. "My grandmother on my father's side was
a Russian Jew, but that doesn't make me much of anything, does it?"

Leah regarded him for a moment. "No," she said, "not technically. But it may
make you sympathetic, and that may be enough to understand."

"I don't need to identify with your religion to sympathize," he said.

"Ah yes," she nodded. "I have heard about your loss. I'm sorry, of course
that too makes you particularly empathetic. But I don't need someone to
understand what it is to lose a sister. I need someone to understand what it
means to lose this particular woman."

"Go on," he said, not fully following her.

"Are you familiar with Jewish mythology, Mr. Mulder?"

He shrugged. "Some aspects of it."

"Have you heard of the lamed-vovniks?"

He shook his head and she looked at the ceiling for a moment, like she was
trying to find her thoughts there. She had a graceful, easy way of moving,
as if she didn't want to disturb her own joints.

"At any given time, according to legend, there are thirty-six lamed-vovniks
on earth. In fact, lamed-vov means thirty-six in Hebrew. These people, men
and women, are designated by God as the... how can I put this... they are
the hearts of the world. They receive the burdens of our sins, of our
worries, our angsts. Collectively, they make our griefs bearable. Without
any one of them, we would be overcome by pain, unable to survive. Not all of
them are aware of who they are, of what they do. They are often what we
would call 'simple' or crippled in some way. This is, perhaps, to help make
their lives livable. It isn't easy to ease the pain of the world. If any one
of them should die before they can be replaced, the apocalypse will begin."
She was stroking her own leg, touching the dark fabric there. She seemed to
have dissolved into herself, like a black hole, drawing in his energy with
it. He slumped next to her and listened. "We believe my sister is a
lamed-vovnik. Our Rabbi thought she displayed indications at a very young
age, though of course there is no way to be sure. We have tried to shelter
her, to protect her, but she is incapable of inaction. She laughs... even
her laugh, Mr. Mulder, would take away some of your unhappiness, whatever it
might be. It's her job, you see, and she must do it as surely as a fish must
return to the river where it was born."

"I see," Mulder said, though he didn't really. "Have you reported her
disappearance to the police?"

"Of course," Leah said, watching him. He could practically see his own
reflection in the darkness of her eyes. "We came to you precisely because
you are more open than local law-enforcement. I am not seeking you because
you are an FBI agent, Mr. Mulder, though that is a benefit, of course. You
have to understand, if Esther is not returned, if she is harmed, then we
will all pay for our sins. I know I don't want to face mine, no matter how
small they may be, do you?"

"Not particularly," Mulder admitted. "But I still don't understand why you
feel I will be able to help in this investigation if local law-enforcement
is already on the case?"

"Because," Leah explained gently, "I don't believe she just wandered off
into the night, which is the basis the police are using to continue the
investigation. I believe she was kidnapped."

"Kidnapped?" Mulder said. "Why do you think that?"

"Esther's gift is of great value, Mr. Mulder. What do you think some men
would give for the ability to hold the trigger to the apocalypse in their
hands, to know that they stood a hair's breadth from the total annihilation
of the world?"

"Why would someone want to destroy the world," Mulder said, "when they would
be destroyed along with it?"

"There are those who believe, though I am not one of them," Leah said, "that
only true Jews, the chosen ones, will be spared the terrible judgement.
This, Mr. Mulder, is the key to Zion, in the minds of a few extremists. I'm
not talking about a small state in the middle of hostile territory. I'm
talking about a world where there are only the faithful, the believers."

"A world where all the enemies of the Jews are finally dead."

"Yes," she said. "So you see how important it is to get her back. I fear, if
her death is sudden, we will all pay for it. And if I am wrong, if we are
all wrong, than at the very least, an innocent woman, in all senses of the
word, is suffering somewhere."

Mulder stared at the young woman in front of him, dark as a shadow, her face
pale in the fading light from his windows. She watched him with an
intensity, appealing to him to see the urgency as she did. He didn't
believe, couldn't she see that? He never had.

"I'll think about it, Leah."

"Thank you," she said, and reaching into her bag, handed him a card. "You
can find me there, every day until five. My home number is on the back."

He nodded and examined the card. "Distant Mountain Yarns," it read.

xxxxx

end part 1 of 6

TITLE: The Thirty-Sixth (2/6)
AUTHOR: Jess Mabe
EMAIL ADDRESS: snarkypup@mindspring.com

Email me, I'm papering my Barbie house...

Mulder was in early. Scully could see the light creeping from beneath the
door into the darkened hallway, seeming to stir the lazy motes of dust that
floated in its path. It was rare for him to arrive first. Falling asleep at
two or three in the morning meant that he often overslept, right through his
alarm. Last year she had bought him a video of sheep, leaping lambs and they
had laughed over it, but in reality, it sometimes concerned her that he
seemed to take such atrocious care of himself. It wasn't that she thought,
like some women, that she could easily convert him to a comfortable sleep in
her presence, but she sometimes fantasized that she could, at the very
least, help him wear himself out.

He was sitting behind his desk, eyes on the wall across from him, glaring at
nothing. She sighed.

"Mulder," she said. It was more than a greeting now, between them. It was a
statement, an affirmation. You are here.

"Hey, Scully," he smiled, but seemed strangely melancholy despite the grin.
"I think I have a case for us, but I'm not sure."

"You're not sure?" She stepped over to the coat rack and hung up her jacket.
The room was warm, as always, and Mulder was already in his shirtsleeves, at
seven-thirty in the morning. "You mean you have something you are prepared
to admit might not be an x-file and you're actually going to ask me to tell
you whether or not it is?"

He nodded, indulging her a bit. "Don't I always consult you on the validity
of our cases?"

She stared at him for a moment until he relented.

"Fine, but I would genuinely appreciate your help with this one."

Sensing his serious side showing itself for the first time in weeks, she
settled into a chair opposite him and watched him, one eyebrow up for the
familiarity of it. I'm listening, she was saying to him, and you already
know what I'm going to think.

Mulder smiled tenderly at her and it was enough to sink the eyebrow and
bring out her own newly-tender heart.

"Shoot," she said.

"I was approached by a woman yesterday..." he began and then paused.

"You need my help with that?" she joked and was rewarded with an amused
glare. "Boy, it has been a long time."

"Longer than you know, Scully." He was still serious and she sighed. "She
wanted me to help her find her missing sister."

She didn't mean to extend a hand to touch his arm across the desk. Somehow,
these touches of consolation between them had become automatic recently.
Necessary. Real.

"Was this sister a child?" she asked.

"I don't think so, at least, not in terms of age. She is, apparently,
mentally challenged." He sat back, and she let her hand drift back to her
side. "Here's the funny thing, Scully. I don't think she came to me because
I have a missing sister, or even because I'm in the FBI. I got the distinct
impression that she came to me because she thought I was Jewish."

Scully thought about this for a moment, knowing how little respect Mulder
gave his own background, especially the religious aspects. "You told her you
weren't?"

"Yes. She told me this story, Scully, about people called lamed-vovniks..."

"The thirty-six," Scully interjected and was pleased by the abrupt lifting
of Mulder's head. "Chosen by God to carry the pain of the world."

"I'm impressed, Scully. First witchcraft, now this..."

She smiled and shrugged. "I spent some time exploring aspects of other
religions in school. So what does that have to do with this case? Does this
woman believe that her sister...?" She trailed off, seeing the look in his
eye.

"She thinks her sister may have been kidnapped by extremists trying to force
a religious apocalypse."

"Of course," Scully said slowly. "To kill any of the lamed-vovniks could
trigger a release of all the griefs of the world, burying us in our own
sorrows and terrors. And there are those who believe that devout Jews would
be exempt from this horror, like devout Christians at the Rapture. Though if
I remember correctly, there's nothing in Jewish holy writings to support
that assumption."

"You, as a Catholic, should be aware that people often create an internal
reference for the structure of their religious beliefs. Jesus never spoke of
Original Sin."

She didn't bristle at his religious challenge, or his essential rejection of
her beliefs. Her own experiences had strengthened her faith well beyond the
small jibes of a non-believer, even a beloved one.

"That's true, Mulder. And extremists never need a justification for
anything. For instance..." She made sure she was twinkling with mirth when
she teased him. "... I hear there are people whose belief in alien life is
so strong they're actually willing to consider the notion that creatures
from outer space walk among us."

"Nonsense," Mulder said, smiling. "They don't walk, Scully. They slither."

"Why don't you want this case, Mulder? It sounds like an x-file. Just as
much as any of the other faith-based cases we've investigated over the
years."

"That's just it," he said and stood, his face twisting with discomfort.
"Those cases hinged on your ability to believe, Scully. I have no faith."

"And this is a problem? Mulder, how often have I walked into the heart of an
investigation which, according to my own belief system, had to be false from
the start? And how often have I been proved wrong?"

He didn't answer, wandering over to her desk and poking at her pencil cup
distractedly.

"Or is that the problem?" she asked. "Are you afraid you may, in fact, be
forced to question your own faith? That this case may cause you to examine
the beliefs in God, in religion you have held onto throughout your life?"

"I'm just not sure I can do what these people are asking me to do."

"It seems to me," she pointed out, standing and moving behind him, "that
from what little you've told me, they're merely asking you to find a missing
girl. Which is, Mulder, something you are extraordinarily good at."

He turned to face her and she realized that he was genuinely conflicted.
"What if I can't find her?" he asked. "We don't always get them back."

"Are you afraid to trigger the apocalypse?" she asked. "Are you afraid to
take on some of the blame if it should come? That doesn't sound like you.
We've never yet met a guilt you weren't willing to partially absorb."

He rolled his eyes. "You don't understand," he said.

"On the contrary, I think I do." She was gentler with him then, not wanted
to hurt his feelings. They were so newly exposed and tender in the bright
light under which she examined them. "You're afraid, Mulder, that this case
might ask something of you that you have been unwilling to hand over. But I
want you to consider this: each time we have taken a case that has
challenged my beliefs, that has forced me to examine what I call faith, I
have come from it enriched. Maybe, in opening yourself to a part of your
past,  you will find something in yourself you didn't realize was there."

He was noncommittal. "You think we should take it."

"If you feel there's a case, then yes. But I don't think we should ever turn
someone down because they disturb our sense of equilibrium."

"And if we don't find this woman, Scully? What happens to my faith then?"

She realized that he wasn't speaking only of his faith in God, but also in
himself, in his ability to one day find Samantha.

"You repair it. It may take time, Mulder, but true faith is indestructible."

"I don't want to be Job," he said tiredly. "I just want to solve cases and
be with you."

She smiled. There was an honesty between them that had not been there in the
past. "That's what we're doing," she said. "We're solving cases together."

xxxxx

Distant Mountain Yarns was really just a small shop in a strip of small
shops, the sort of place that begs questions about its ability to remain
open, even in a booming economy. Pushing the door open, Mulder was instantly
hit by a wave of warmth. He paused and Scully, obviously distracted, ran
into his back with a small grunt. She steadied herself by clutching his
waist and sending cool shivers up his spine.

"Sorry," he said and stepped inside. The shop was small, but crammed to the
ceiling with shelves. Arranged like boxes stacked onto one another, each
cubby contained a pile of color like a pallet in a paint store. He was
accosted by color, even eliminating several shades of red and green; it
reeled around him, a palpable, living force. Scully stepped from behind him
and there was an odd light in her eye that he recognized after a moment's
reflection, having never really seen it before: greed. She was eyeing the
shop like a child in a chocolate warehouse.

"Wow," she said and reached out to touch a small ball of something fuzzy,
like a baby-blue hedgehog. "This place... Mulder, this woman knows yarn."

He watched her, puzzled.

"Scully," he began, but at that moment, Leah emerged from the back of the
shop. She looked exactly as Mulder remembered her, only this time she wore a
soft black blouse and a long black moleskin skirt that swirled around her
legs for a moment even after she had stopped and smiled at them.

"Mr. Mulder," she said, stepping forward and taking both his hands. "I'm so
glad you've come." Her hands were warm and impossibly soft, her nails filed
down until they could not possibly project above the smooth ends of her
fingers, could not catch anything she touched.

He could practically feel the jealousy build in Scully's hot little form,
wrapping its tentacles around his arm and pulling him subtly closer to her.

"Hello Leah," he said. "This is my partner, Agent Scully. Leah Levich."

For a moment the two women examined each other, then Leah reached forward
and plucked something from Scully's hands. Her mittens. He had noticed them
a few weeks before, because they seemed so unlike her and yet exactly like
her. Scully didn't wear mittens, not chunky ones that looked perfect for
making snowmen, but if she did, she would wear these. Patterned in gradated
shades of blue and gray, waves circled her hands and crashed on her
fingertips like a Japanese ocean. They were entrancing.

"'Safe Return'," Leah said cryptically and Scully nodded, her eyes huge.
"You made these," Leah added and turned them over, examining the work.
Mulder's mouth actually dropped open.

"You made them?" he said, moving to stand behind her.

She nodded, not looking back.

"Aren't they beautiful?" Leah asked, handing one to him to hold. "'Safe
Return' is the name of the pattern. They are made by a woman for herself as
something to keep her hands busy while she waits for her beloved to return
to her from the sea."

"I know the story," Scully said quietly, snatching the mitten back from
Mulder and stuffing them in her pocket.

A customer, previously hidden behind a double shelf of yarn and books, poked
her head around the corner and Leah excused herself for a moment. Mulder
pulled one mitten from Scully's pocket and looked closely at it.

"Give that back," she hissed.

"Why didn't you tell me you could knit?" he asked.

"Why would you care?"

He glared at her and held the mitten out of easy reach. Scully had made
this. Scully's hands had held the needles and pushed the yarn along them and
created this extraordinary thing. How precious creations become, Mulder
thought, when we value the creator. He tried to picture her knitting, but he
could only conjure vague images of his grandmother, sitting in front of the
fireplace in her sagging neutral stockings and holding two long pieces of
bamboo like an aged geisha.

"When did you learn to do this?" he asked.

"My mother just taught me," she admitted and he finally relinquished his
prize. "She thought I would enjoy it."

"Have you made anything else?" He examined her quickly, scanning for
sweaters or scarves, something he might have missed.

"I'm making a sweater, but for heaven's sake, Mulder, it's not that big a
deal."

"What are you talking about?" he said. "This is huge. You knit. Don't you
understand why that's huge?"

She sighed and looked up at him, a smile playing at the edges of her mouth.
"Because now you know a secret."

"Exactly," he said. "Will you make me something?"

It was crazy. It was out of his mouth before he could stop it and then he
realized Leah was standing just a few feet away, listening. Scully seemed to
sense it too and drew back from him slightly.

"She already has, I think," Leah observed. "These are not mittens one makes
for oneself."

"Don't be silly," Scully said quickly, so quickly it was clear she was
lying. "I made them because my mother had the pattern and it appealed to
me."

"Her father was a sailor," Mulder added, not knowing why his tongue was so
loose.

Leah simply nodded at both of them, as if they were children and it was best
to humor them before putting them to bed.

"So have you decided to help me, Mr. Mulder?" she asked.

He nodded. "Agent Scully and I feel the case may be something we can assist
with."

Leah eyed them both for a moment, critical. "Agent Scully,  I can tell you
would like to take a look around. Why don't you see if you can find
something you like? We have some lovely items."

Scully glanced at him, and sensing his acquiescence, nodded. The greedy look
had returned. He watched her moving away, her small hands darting out to
feel the yarns in front of her, lifting one occasionally to brush it across
her cheek. It was the ultimate test in softness; how something compared to
the silk of Scully's skin. But he noticed that in between her gentle
caresses, she watched him, glancing at him from behind a thin veil of red.

"She is very protective of you," Leah noted, her voice completely without
judgement. Mulder nodded.

"She's had to save me on more than one occasion. I suppose she's just
watching out for me."

"She was born to protect you, it is her role," Leah said.

Shaking his head, Mulder replied: "I don't think Scully would agree with
your estimation of her career goals."

Leah smiled. "It was meant as complementary, but don't worry, I won't tell
her. Come, I have my sister's information in the back."

As they passed Scully, Mulder reached out and snagged one of the mittens,
tucking it into his pocket. She glared at him, but followed, clutching a
hank of unbelievably dark green yarn.

xxxxx


end part 2 of 6

TITLE: The Thirty-Sixth (3/6)
AUTHOR: Jess Mabe
EMAIL ADDRESS: snarkypup@mindspring.com

Email me, I make them into little boats and send them off like "Paddle to
the Sea!"

Email me and I'll expain who "Paddle to the Sea" is.


In the car, Scully took the mitten back again.

"Stop stealing. If I'd known you'd like them, I'd have made some for you."

"Would you?" he asked, and he sounded wistful.

She was feeling strange. The pictures of Leah's sister, Esther, had unnerved
her. She had a large, sweet face, with dark eyes and a mass of black hair.
She looked surprisingly like Mulder's sister, grown. Though that was not, if
she were to admit it to herself, which she was very close to doing, what had
really set her off.

"Of course," she said. She was fingering the cuff of the mitten, hiding her
face in her hair and aware she was doing it. The day was eating at her. She
felt light-headed and silly, as if she were being squeezed. Though she put
it down to too much coffee, it could also have been the inevitable result of
revealing a portion of herself to Mulder. It felt sometimes like he was
consuming her, and each time she let him have a bit of who she was, she knew
she wouldn't get it back. She was shrinking, becoming ever smaller until
there would be nothing left to her but her little feet. "You didn't mention
Leah was so lovely. I had pictured someone older, like the woman who runs my
yarn shop."

"What was I supposed to say, Scully? 'Oh and by the way, the woman we'll be
interviewing is attractive?' Come on. Why should it matter?"

She looked out the window of the car and could see her reflection there,
just the edge of her face in the glass, like a ghost. Maybe that's where she
was, whole and undisturbed.

"It shouldn't," she said.

"But it does," he added.

"No it doesn't," she said at last. "Just forget I mentioned it."

"Right," he said.

But they both knew why it mattered. Diana, their new relationship, all the
crap of the last year and still, there was no word for them. No expression
of who they had become to one another. So where did it leave them, she
wondered? In some sort of nameless limbo, unable to claim one another,
unable to let go. They drove silently to the city, their unspoken
conversation wearing at her. Why couldn't they just say what they meant?
What kind of adults could they claim to be, staring straight ahead, bouncing
around internally like sparks in a stove?

They pulled up outside her apartment and Mulder shifted restlessly as she
made no move to get out of the car.

Finally, he spoke.

"You know I... care about you."

"I know," she said and he stilled her with his hand. Apparently, any
response from her might endanger his new-found emotional courage.

"I don't... care... about anyone else, anymore. Only you."

She nodded, her mind racing. She realized he had finished. That was it? That
was the confession she had driven in silence an hour to hear?

"I understand," she said. "I'm sorry for what I may have implied earlier."

 "May have implied." Could she possibly be more non-committal? How about:
"I'm sorry for my raging, irrational jealousy." She didn't say it.

"You realize," he said, suddenly taking her hand and stroking it like an
animal, "that we can never really be together."

She was astonished, sucking in air. It was like being slapped.

"For heaven's sake," she gasped before she could stop herself, "why the hell
not?"

He stared at her then, as if it had never occurred to him that she wouldn't
get it, and perhaps, she realized, that was what had held them back. All
this time she had been assuming he would, at some point, in some way, come
around to be with her. And he had believed, with equal conviction, that she
could see the impossibility of it all. But Scully had never believed in the
impossible, not really. That was Mulder's realm. All things were possible in
Scully's world, it's just that some of them were difficult to explain.

"Are you serious?" he said. "Look around you, Scully, look at the world. How
can we step away from what we have seen? When have you been happy with me?"

She saw the pain in his face, felt him twist in her grasp, though she wasn't
really touching him.

"Oh Mulder," she sighed. "Life is never just one thing, just happiness or
pain. We are always experiencing both. When I'm with you, when you touch me,
you make me happy. I'm still barren..." He tried to stop her, but she kept
on, plowing ahead toward the light. "I'm still sad about Emily, about
Melissa, about all the deaths, but you are the one thing that makes that
bearable. And now, Mulder, don't you see, even if you left me behind and I
went on to live somewhere without a single mutant or killer or death, I
would still have those memories, those pains. They are as much a part of me
as my skin. And I would be overwhelmed by my own pain. You, having you near
me, saves me from that."

He had lowered his head during her speech, but raised it now.

"I suppose I knew that," he said quietly. "After the last few months, I
should know that."

"Yes," she said. "You do know it. You just need to hear it out-loud
sometimes. We all do. We can be together, Mulder, if that's what we want. It
just takes both of us believing in it to make it happen."

"I'm glad you're with me," he said and then he was coming toward her,
leaning in. More than New Years, when she had, really, expected the kiss,
she was waiting for this one. It meant something to them, this second touch.
She met him halfway.

He tasted, she discovered, like nothing she had ever known. He was as unique
as a fingerprint, and he left traces of himself all over her mouth as
evidence.

"I'll see you tomorrow," he whispered. "We can go check out Esther's house."

"Yes," she said, clutching the armrest of the car to force herself back to
reality, like pinching her own leg. "Tomorrow."

xxxxx

Esther's apartment was really two small rooms in a shared home, compact and
tidy in a way that tugged at Mulder's messy heart. Someone had lived here,
cleaned it up and yet left traces of themselves all over the rooms. Esther
liked boxes. They ranged in size from tiny, gold rectangles to old tin candy
boxes from the Thirties, scattered on every surface from dresser to
windowsill. He wondered if she put something in every one or if some of
them, the lucky ones, she kept simply because they appealed to her and not
because they were useful. He examined one, a little, round, gold box, just
the size for pearl earrings or maybe pills, with the symbol for Ohm on the
top. How odd to see the eastern mystical symbol here, in a nice Jewish
girl's room. But it is the small personal choices, Mulder knew, not the vast
truths of religion or background, that define us.

"She was here when I checked in on her at nine that night," the caretaker
said from the doorway, as if hesitating to come in. "But she was gone the
next morning. I can't tell you how distressing this is for the other
residents. They're all convinced someone's going to creep in during the
night and steal them from their beds."

And perhaps someone would, Mulder thought. That was the terrible irony of it
all. There was no safe place, despite what we had all been told as children.
That was the root of our desire for fairy tales, for the big, bad wolf. An
evil defined no longer frightened. What scared the residents of the group
home was that no one knew who had taken Esther Levich, or why.

"Mulder, look at this."

Scully stood in the second room, the bedroom, holding a small stack of
paperback books. She had worn a new suit today, eggplant-colored to his
eyes. Aubergine. The word came to him unbidden from his days in England. He
was glad to see her in color again, instead of a faded black and white,
chromatically empty, corresponding, he supposed, with her emotional state.
What does it mean when someone is aubergine? He stepped up and peered over
her shoulder.

"'Modern Zion'," he read the titles out loud. "'The New Lion of Judah'.
'Reclaiming the Holy Land'."

"There are more," she said. "All by the same man. Saul Kohen. Weren't the
kohens religious holy men?"

"Yes," he answered, taking one of the books from her and examining it.
"Technically, they still are. You know, I heard there was an interest in
genetic testing among some branches of Judaism recently. Apparently there
are Kohens who wouldn't mind finding out they aren't direct descendants of
Aaron and therefore don't have to keep up with the responsibilities that go
along with being born into that particular family tree. Seems being charged
with specific religious duties simply because you were born that way doesn't
appeal to everyone."

She glanced over at him and raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

"Scully, these books read a bit like white supremacist literature."

"I know," she said. "I was thinking the same thing. Full of hatred and
anger. What would Esther Levich have been doing with these? From what little
I saw of her sister, they come from a loving and peaceful family. This
man..." She flipped through one of the texts, shaking her head. "Mulder,
this man is nuts."

"I agree," he said. "But people like Esther, with difficulties learning and
understanding, are often easy prey for extremists. Maybe she became
interested in this stuff after meeting him."

Scully nodded and tucked the books under her arm. Looking up at him, she
cocked her head to one side when he stared at her as if to acknowledge what
had passed between them the night before.

"Let's go back to the office and look this guy up. If Esther Levich was
kidnapped by religious extremists, it would seem that Saul Kohen is as good
a place to start as any."

xxxxx

Leah Levich sat in her father's home, dark clothes blending into the rich
darkness of the old-world furnishings, the mahogany and oak. Her normally
passive face grimaced as she examined the books they had taken from her
sister's room. She passed them to her father, a stout older man with glasses
and bright, twinkling eyes. His hair stuck up a bit around his head,
reminding Scully of Albert Einstein.

"I am familiar with him, of course," Rabbi Levich said, handing the books
back to Scully with a roll of his eyes. "He is not a very wise young man,
despite years of expensive schooling."

"We grew up with Saul Kohen," added Leah. "He went to Hebrew school with us,
played basketball at the community center with my brother Morris. He was a
nice boy, when he was young. Quiet and a bit too fond of the mystical. I
don't know the man he has become any longer, but I suppose my sister must
have harbored some remembered fondness for him. He was kind to her when we
were children."

"We looked him up in the FBI database," Scully said, placing the books
beside her. The chair she sat in was enormous, well-made and almost opulent.
The Levich family had done well for themselves, and lived with the quiet
grace of people comfortable with money. They reminded her of Mulder's
family, with their summer houses and understated good taste. "He has ties to
all sorts of extremist religious groups and was implicated but never charged
last year in a planned attempt to blow up the Dome of the Rock. It would
seem he is only peripherally involved with actual terrorists, but is most
certainly a terrorist sympathizer."

"And you believe he may be implicated in my sister's disappearance?" Leah
said.

"It would seem like a logical conclusion," Mulder added. "He knew her, he
would certainly have known how you felt about her."

Leah rose and walked slowly to the window overlooking the neighbor's house.
She was undeniably elegant, but she struck Scully as a little vapid, as if
all her energies were bound up in her sister's fate, not in her own
personality. It was strange, but Mulder seemed sometimes to be just the
opposite. He projected, sending energy out around him like a downed power
line. His quest made him crackle with life.

"We're heading over to Saul Kohen's in a few moments to question him,"
Mulder said. "We just wanted to know what you thought of the possibility
that he might be involved."

Rabbi Levich answered for his daughter, his face grave.

"I have come to realize," he said, "in my many years in this community, that
any level of evil is possible, even from those who know us."

Leah sighed and shook her head sadly. "I used to like Saul. He used to tease
me, to say we might marry someday."

Her father nodded and looked toward the window with his daughter. In the
street beyond Leah's thin figure, Scully watched two young boys ride past on
their bicycles, pumping the peddles by standing up. They raced by the house,
shouting with joy. The Rabbi removed his glasses for a moment and wiped them
clean with a handkerchief from his breast pocket. It was a movement Scully
had seen her own grandfather repeat a thousand times.

"Have you studied the Holocaust, Mr. Mulder?" he said suddenly.

"Of course," Mulder said, and Scully could hear the slight nervousness in
his voice. Mulder didn't like to be reminded of his connections to history.
He lived in the future, in a time when the pain that consumed him would no
longer exist. It was how he survived.

"I am reminded of a quote, perhaps you know it," the old man said. "'And
then they all come along, the eighty million good Germans, and each one has
his decent Jew. Of course the others are swine, but this one is a
first-class Jew. Of all those who talk like this, not one has watched, not
one has stood up to it. Most of you know what it means to see a hundred
corpses lying together, five hundred, or a thousand. To have gone through
this and yet - apart from a few exceptions, examples of human weakness - to
have remained decent fellows, this is what has made us hard.'"

"I know it," Scully said quietly. "Heinrich Himmler said it to the men in
the SS."

"Exactly," Rabbi Levich said. "We make our children memorize it in school as
an example of the rationalizations men will use in order to make their
actions acceptable. What happened to those 'eighty million good Germans'?
What do you think would have happened if each of them had tried to save that
'one decent Jew'?"

There was no reason to answer him. After a moment, he continued.

"You are asking me if Saul Kohen, who I teased as a child, who came to my
son's bar mitzvah, who ate at our table, whom I taught to study the words of
God, could have abducted my daughter to kill her? Yes, he could have. We all
could have, I think, if we believed what we were doing to be right. That is
the lesson in Himmler's words. We only need to lose ourselves in our
beliefs, and we lose our ability to see the needs of others."

Mulder nodded, standing slowly and shaking the old man's hand. Scully
followed him, and was given a double-handed caress.

"We will find your daughter," Scully said gently.

"I know you will," Rabbi Levich replied. "It is what you will find that
worries me."

Leah turned her head back to the window.

xxxxx

Saul Kohen lived just a few streets down from the Leviches. Mulder knew
immediately why Leah had gone to stand at that particular window. The Kohen
house was very nearly visible from there, it's red roof bright in the
afternoon sun. Saul lived in the basement, his own apartment in the family
home, decorated with the austerity of a monk.

"Yes, of course I know Esther Levich," he said, still standing in his
kitchen. He had resisted Scully's gentle attempts to get him to sit down.
Dressed in jeans and a dark turtleneck, he hardly looked the religious
extremist, more starving student. Mulder disliked him immediately. He seemed
to radiate arrogance and bravado, as well as the deep-seated insecurity of a
violent man.

"Are you aware, Mr. Kohen," Scully said quietly, "that she has been missing
for several days?"

The man's face did not change. No shift, no reaction of any kind to give
himself away. That, in and of itself, made Mulder suspicious.

"How tragic," Saul said. Beneath a mop of dark curly hair, Saul Kohen had
piercingly blue eyes, a darker version of Scully's own ocean. Pock-marked
skin kept him from being handsome, but he had a certain air of authority
that Mulder supposed attracted some people, particularly someone with poor
judgement, to him. "I haven't heard anything about it."

"Are these your books?" Mulder asked, drawing the bundle out of his coat.

"Yes," Saul said. "So what?"

"We found them at Esther Levich's apartment," Mulder answered. "Did you give
them to her?"

"Maybe." Saul crossed his arms and glared at them both. "I've known her
since childhood. She lives in the neighborhood. I could easily have given
them to her one day, how should I remember?"

"This one," Scully said, plucking 'The New Lion of Judah' from Mulder's
pile, "was published just four months ago. I would think you'd remember
whether or not you saw her and gave her a copy within that period of time."

"Fine," Saul said, rolling his eyes. "I gave her the book. So what? She
liked me and was always asking what I was doing. So I wanted to let her see
my work. It isn't as if she'd have understood it."

"Are you aware of how her family views her?" Scully asked.

"What, that she might be a lamed-vovnik?" Saul sneered. He moved over to the
small stove behind Mulder and turned on a burner beneath a battered tea pot.
"That's just superstitious religious mysticism. It means nothing."

"I would have thought," Mulder said, "from the tone of your own writing,
that you were intrigued by the mystical side of Judaism."

"I am," Saul agreed. "But not to the point of taking it seriously. And
besides, even if she is, not even a lamed-vovnik knows for sure that they
are one, so why bother?"

"Why bother what?" Scully said slowly.

Saul looked from one to the other. "Why bother believing."

"That's funny," Scully said. "I could have sworn that wasn't what you were
referring to."

"Well you'll never know what I was referring, or not referring to, since I
didn't say," he pointed out. "I'd ask you to stay for tea, but I don't like
you, so I won't. Do you have any more questions for me?"

"Just one," Mulder said. "Are you in any way affiliated with a group known
as the Yester Hara?"

"Never heard of them," Saul said. "Though I can translate the name easily
enough, so I know what they must be. Yester hara is 'bad inclination' in
Hebrew."

"I know," Mulder said icily, "what the name means. Have a good day, Mr.
Kohen. I'm sure we'll see you again."

"Anytime," he said, and slammed the door behind them.

"Mulder," Scully said quietly as they skirted the edge of the old house and
climbed the stairs back to street level, "who are the Yester Hara?"

"No one, as far as I know," Mulder said. "But I expect he will be curious,
and maybe just curious enough to try asking a real expert on the subject."

"So you want to stake him out tonight," Scully said.

"I was thinking about it, if you're up to it."

They paused at the car, Scully smiling up at him. "Oh goody, an
old-fashioned stake out. We haven't been on one of these in I don't know how
long."

"Just like old times, Scully," he said, and his heart seemed to constrict
briefly in his chest.

"I'll buy the iced tea," she told him, placing one possessive little hand on
his chest. "You buy the liverwurst."

xxxxx


end part 3 of 6

TITLE: The Thirty-Sixth (4/6)
AUTHOR: Jess Mabe
EMAIL ADDRESS: snarkypup@mindspring.com

Email me, I'm collecting them to prove to Santa that I was a good girl in
2000.


It was nearly six before she finally got up the courage to pull the bag of
knitting from the back seat and set it on her lap. Mulder, hands drumming
characteristically on the steering wheel, turned to look at her.

"What'cha makin'?" he asked, goofy.

"It's a sweater," she replied and handed him the magazine. "That one there."

He stared at it for a moment, then looked at her as if trying to picture it
on her body. She blushed slightly at the examination.

"It's pretty," he said. "But it's so black and white."

"So?" she said, pulling the knitting from the bag and setting it up on her
lap. Lighter color on her left, darker color on her right. She popped the
point protectors off the ends of the circular needle and slipped them into
the bag, then picked up a strand of each color and wrapped them around her
fingers. Mulder watched her, fascinated.

"So, you wear too much black. You ought to branch out, go for a color or
two."

"Really," she said, noncommittal, pleased he noticed what she wore and
vaguely offended at his presumption at the same time. She slid the stitches
forward to the tips and began to knit, following the pattern graphed out in
the magazine.

"Yeah, really. Stop being so dour, Scully."

"Dour?" she said, catching the black yarn in back of the gray, holding it in
place behind the pattern. "I hardly think of myself as dour."

"You do have a tendency toward seriousness, Scully."

"This from Mister 'I'm on a quest'," she replied. "When was the last time
you laughed at anything, Mulder? Aside from your own jokes."

"I happen to believe I have a marvelous sense of humor," he said, wounded.
"Though I admit lately, I may not have been a bundle of yucks."

"No," she said. "You've been rather more serious lately. But that's the
nature of the case. I'm speaking overall. A life pattern, Mulder. You burn
serious for fuel."

"How poetic," he sighed, back to drumming on the dash. For a while, they sat
in silence together, the only sounds the gentle clicking of the needle tips
against each other, the soft swishing of the yarn as it slid along her
clothing. "Scully," he said suddenly, "who is God?"

She paused, laying the knitting on her lap, and looked over at him. It was
such a Mulderish question. He was watching her with that particularly
intense look she knew to mean he was shivering inside.

"What do you mean?" she said. "Are you asking how I picture him?"

"Yes, I guess so."

She shrugged. "Like an old man, I suppose. But that's just from years of
Sunday school pictures of someone who looks remarkably like Santa without
the suit. How do you picture him?"

Mulder was quiet for a moment and then said: "I don't."

Rolling her eyes, she said: "Ok, pretend you do. Pretend you believe in
him."

"I can't pretend," he answered. "There's no reason to believe."

"That," she said, pointing the end of a needle at him, "sounds just like me
five, six years ago. And I'm not talking about God."

"Scully," he dismissed her, "I've actually seen aliens."

"And I've actually seen the hand of God in action. So pretend you believe.
What do you see?"

He stared out the window, supposedly watching Saul Kohen's house, but she
knew he was taking his time with her question. After a long moment, he
spoke.

"Do you know what I think of, when I think of God?"

She shook her head.

"There's that passage in the bible, or maybe it's in a prayer, I don't know.
'For God so loved the world, he gave his only son...' You know the one."

"Of course I do," she answered. "It's one of the bedrocks of Christianity."

"And all I can think," he continued, almost as if she hadn't spoken, "is:
what sort of man would give up his child, even if he thought it was saving
the world to do so?"

"Mulder," she said softly, "God is not your father."

"But that's how I see him. God the father. Gave his child up to terrible
pain and suffering. Why do you think I don't believe?"

Scully sighed and reached out to him, touching his arm. He was warm right
through the suit. Burning again.

"Mulder, you are forgetting that at least for me, God the father is only one
component of the whole. There is also God the son."

"I don't know what that means," he said. "I don't get that."

"God the son is you, Mulder. The child who suffers, the man who searches for
meaning. That is also a part of God. And there is God the holy spirit, who
represents the power of God in all of us; fathers, sons, mothers and
daughters. That is how I see God."

He was quiet, searching her face. "I think that's why I can believe in you
so fully, Scully. You see things that I can't."

"You could see them too, Mulder."

"The Jews don't see God that way," he reminded her. "There is no trinity."

"That's true. But to the Jews, Jesus was not the son of God. Therefore,
their God didn't give up his only son. He is not your father either."

"I suppose I should remake my version of him, that's what you're saying."

"Reconsider," she said gently. "I'm not pressing you to believe. I never
have. I'm just saying you may be blinded by notions you have held since
childhood. Preconceptions that don't reflect the truth as it is. If you..."
she paused and then smiled, "... if you open yourself up to extreme
possibilities, Mulder, it will bring you closer to your goal."

He snickered slightly. "You are the only one I could have this conversation
with," he said.

Touched, she reached out to squeeze his hand in the winter darkness.
"Mulder, this is the conversation we've been having since the day we first
met. This is who we are."

They were interrupted by the trilling sound of Mulder's cell phone.

"Mulder," he said tersely, then paused. "You're kidding. Ok, where?" He
started the car.

"Mulder!" she said sharply, watching Saul Kohen leave his home and walk
swiftly to his car. Mulder nodded and started to follow him.

"That's the other side of town," he said into the phone. "Are you sure?
Fine. We're on our way."

Without explanation, he pulled the car into a sudden U-turn, heading away
from Saul.

"What are you doing?" she asked, frantically shoving her knitting back into
the bag.

"That was Rabbi Levich. They received a call a few minutes ago from the
kidnapper. Leah's gone to find Esther. Apparently, they've decided to tell
her where she is."

Scully swallowed. "This is good news, right?"

"Maybe not," Mulder said. "They've pointed her to the alley behind a skating
rink. Does that sound like she's going to be just sitting there to you?"

"No," Scully agreed, "it doesn't."

"Scully, maybe you should say some sort of prayer," he muttered, skimming
around a corner, barely in control of the car.

She had no answer, since she had already been praying, maybe since the case
began.

They rode in a tense silence to the skating rink, parking the car in the
entrance to the alley. Leah Levich was waiting for them just behind a
dumpster, her face glazed with grief. At her feet, the bloated body of her
sister lay sprawled on the concrete.

Scully knelt beside Esther Levich and felt for a pulse, though the sweet,
cloying smell of decay told her she wouldn't find one.

"She's been dead for days," she said quietly and Leah stood on shaking feet,
sobbing.

"It was too late," she moaned. "We were too late."

Scully examined the girl's swelling features, but saw no obvious cause of
death. When she looked up, Mulder stood with his arms around Leah, rubbing
his hands up and down her back to comfort her. Any other time, Scully
thought dully, brushing a strand of Esther Levich's hair from her face, she
might have been jealous. But she didn't envy Leah tonight, merely
empathized. She dialed the coroner and arranged for transportation of the
body to the lab, then helped Mulder lead Leah to the car to wait for her
father to come and drive her home. They laid her down gently in the back
seat and stood watch beside the door.

"How long, do you think?" Mulder whispered dully.

"Three, maybe four days," Scully said. "My guess is immediately following
the abduction."

"Any ideas?" he asked.

"I can't tell what killed her yet. There may be some trace evidence, though
I doubt it. Without an examination, I'd guess injection, poison of some
sort, but who knows? It could have been blunt trauma, I just can't tell.
I'll do an autopsy tomorrow and see what we can determine."

Mulder nodded, staring at the alley. He seemed remarkably calm, Scully
thought. It didn't bode well.

xxxxx

He offered to drive her home, not because he thought she couldn't get there
herself, but because he didn't want to be separated. She let him walk her
up, pausing at her door.

"Are you ok, Mulder?"

Was he? He wasn't sure. He had believed, all along, that he would find the
girl, save the day, be the hero. Truth be told, he was dependant on heroism.
Without it, he was so filled with guilt he could barely move, as if his
limbs were made of sand. Tonight, there would be no warrior returned
triumphant, and no self-righteous wronged man, just an investigator who had
been called too late to do anything at all. He stared at the woman standing
in front of him, her hand on her doorknob, and willed her to see the truth
he couldn't face.

"Why don't you come in and I'll make you some coffee," she said gently.
"It'll keep you awake on your way home."

He nodded and followed her inside. Scully's house had always seemed so
wonderful to him. Peaceful, clean and well-lived in; not the quiet of a
museum, but of an old farmhouse on a warm, sunny day. He sank into her couch
and stared at the ceiling. He could hear her in the kitchen, banging around
a bit too loudly, so he would know she was there.

Without warning, his mind pulled out a memory long-buried and slapped him
with it.

Young Fox, before he had the authority to be Mulder, drifting in and out of
sleep on his grandmother's dark green horsehair sofa, the one she kept in
her kitchen because that was where she always was. Samantha, running past
him as he reached out to snag her shirt, but missed. She settled at the
kitchen table, kneeling on one of the chairs so she would be as high as her
grandmother.

"What are you making, Bubbe?"

"A pie." The warm, accented voice of his grandmother, deep like his father,
but with a humor that he had lacked. "Would you like to crimp the edges?"

"Yes," Samantha said. Young Fox closed his eyes then, listening only to the
creak of their chairs, the soft hum of their voices, the clink of a fork
against the glass pie dish. The sounds of home, of family, lulling him to
sleep.

"Mulder?" Scully said, pulling him back to reality. "What's wrong?"

He realized that he was crying. Large tears, trailing warmly down his cheeks
to settle in the stubble of his day-old beard. She had set their coffee down
on the small table at his feet and was leaning toward him, her face
concerned and somehow resigned in the same moment. How could he explain it
to her, she who had the gift of a childhood, what he missed in that memory?
Wrapping his arms around her waist, he pulled her close, inhaled the sweet
scent of her skin.

"Mulder," she said softly, stroking his hair. "Mulder."

He lifted her shirt and placed a long, tender kiss on the skin above her
navel. She tasted of sweat, of perfume -  she sprayed it there? How
marvelous! - of oranges and cloves. He felt her begin to shake as he
scrolled leisurely up her torso, pausing to nuzzle her ribs before opening
his mouth over her breast.

"Mulder," she gasped and pulled at his hair. When he refused to be tugged
up, she sank down to her knees in front of him, her face flushed and bright
and puzzled. "What are you doing?"

He didn't answer her, partly because he knew it was really self-evident what
he was doing and partly because he'd wanted to do it for so long and was no
longer open to silly objections. Instead he kissed her, clasping her face in
his hands and lapping at her lips and tongue like a drowning man. Even
there, she was salty, though it could have been his own continuing tears he
tasted.

She jerked away again, pressing back like a contortionist to get away from
him.

"Not like this," she gasped, "not out of desperation."

Was he desperate? He didn't think so. He had been thinking of home and then
there she was. It was that simple.

"It's not desperation," he soothed, at last finding there was a reason to
talk instead of kiss. "I mean, yes it is, in a way. But I have been
desperate for you for years, I have needed you for years. I have desperately
needed you, Scully, from the moment I met you and I'm just tired and lonely
enough to finally act. But it isn't because I am a desperate man, and I
won't wake tomorrow and tell you that it was."

She stared at him, trembling, which he was also doing. It seemed they were
shaking in unison, as if buffeted by the same wind.

"Then you love me," she said, not a question, exactly, but more of a
realized statement.

"Of course I do," he said.

"And I love you," she said, with the same tone.

"Of course you do," he answered.

And then she stopped talking and leapt on him like a cat.

They were wild. Desperate, but it was ok to be that way, as long as they
were desperate together. He found himself shaking from the inside out, his
hands quivering so badly he could barely undo the buttons of her shirt. She
was lovely. Soft colors, like a baby, pink and white and cream with flashes
of that ocean blue that never ceased to floor him. Strawberry. She was
strawberry and peach, and aubergine in the shadows beneath her breasts. He
realized suddenly, staring at her heaving chest, that Scully had always been
awash with color, underneath.

She made no sound as he teased her, touching her breasts, her belly, the
warm skin on the inside of her thighs. Just gasping breaths, like a runner.
Panting, and he was making her pant, driving her forward. It was wonderful.
He'd never really thought she'd be a shouter, after all. When at last he
slid his finger inside her, felt her shudder from the inside out, she moaned
aloud. Ah ha, he thought, and ran his thumb between her parted lips until he
found just the right spot.

"Oh god!" she said, not loud, but fiercely.

Right, he thought, and swirled around her until she was saying it in his
ear. "Oh god, oh god, oh god," and then she was coming, never saying his
name or urging him on, but just those same two words, again and again. She
stopped for just a moment until he slid into her, when she began to pant and
then to whisper and the cadence of her voice brought him to the edge,
because she sounded moved by him.

"You," he said urgently, sinking into her body, "I have faith in you."

"Yes," she whispered, and tightened around him until he forgot to breathe.

After, with sweat still curling around their limp limbs, they settled onto
each other and he found his voice again.

"You ought to wear more colors," he said. "They suit you."

"That again?" she said sleepily. It was well past midnight now, dipping
toward morning.

"You wore more color when I met you," he pointed out, circling the small
rise of her breast against his chest.

"I also wore plaid hunting jackets when I met you."

He smiled. "I've seen your wonderful colors, Scully, and I won't have you
hiding them from the world."

She raised her head and looked him in the eye. "First of all, Mulder, you
saw strange shades of gray that your mind is interpreting as red and pink
because you've never seen the actual color, and secondly..."

He cut her off by kissing her.

xxxxx

It didn't seem right to feel so joyous in the face of death, Scully thought,
burrowing into a poppy seed bagel. She had an autopsy to do, and quite a
terrible one, at that. But here she was, wandering around the lab like a
chirpy little fairy, sprinkling happy dust on everything she touched.

They had made love. Not once, mind you, but twice. During the night, he had
awakened her from her nearly drugged sleep by actually slipping his fingers
inside her so that when she opened her eyes, she was already wild with lust.
She had always known Mulder would be her best lover, not because he was
particularly talented with his hands or because he knew some secret
position, but because she loved him best. Better than best, actually. Her
love for him had stretched into the stratospheric realm, had become of the
sort that people say "transcends time." Nonsense, really, since all things
must die, even love, but she knew what they meant.

That, and he seemed to think about sex all the time, like the wolf in a Tex
Avery cartoon. Maybe that was why he sometimes called her "Red".

She finished the bagel and washed her hands. She hated scrubs, hated how
short and dumpy they made her feel. The stupid hair cover, like she was
working as a fry cook at McDonalds. But she enjoyed doing an autopsy, in a
way. She liked puzzles, liked to find the various clues and bring them to
their natural conclusion.

Slipping the little booties over her sensible shoes, she stepped into the
autopsy bay and lifted the sheet from Esther Levich's body. Jews, she knew,
were not terribly fond of autopsies. However, it seemed that Esther and her
family were willing to make a logical exception in this case. She admired
the flexibility of their beliefs, the practicality of them. Catholicism, so
indefinable and amorphous, could also be remarkably rigid and impractical.
But, Scully thought, she would not have been so challenged had she been
raised in a religion like Judaism. And being challenged meant being
enriched. Perhaps God had his reasons for choosing her religious background.
She could just picture him, gazing at the bright, shining thing that was her
soul before her birth and saying: "This one is too logical, too pedantic.
Make her a Catholic. That ought to shake her up."

She read her findings into the microphone over her head, seeing, as she
always did, a momentary memory of Mulder ranging around her with a camera,
feral in his desire for proof, already annoying though it was only their
first case. She smiled and then stilled herself. It wasn't appropriate to be
happy. Jews took funerals, took deaths solemnly, seriously, with simplicity.
No flowers, no singing, just a burial. The end of life, the return to the
business of living for those in mourning. Why waste flowers on someone who
is already dead? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, she thought, and concluded
her initial examination.

Trace evidence was something else entirely, something harder to define. She
spent the lunch hour with Esther's clothing, pouring over it for any fiber
samples, assisting the forensic lab. At two o'clock, her phone rang and she
was able to step into the hallway to answer it.

"Scully," Mulder's warm voice said and her stomach immediately dropped down
into her shoes like a teenager. She fought the urge to whisper. "Find
anything?" he asked.

"No," she said. "There's no evidence that Esther was injected with anything,
nor was she beaten to death, or smothered, or strangled. My guess is still
poison and I've got the boys over at the lab looking at hair samples and
fingernail clippings to see what they find. She doesn't appear to have eaten
anything before her death, but I did find fruit juice residues in her
digestive system, so I'm guessing she may have been given cyanide in a
drink. I'd say within two or three hours of having been taken, maybe sooner.
I can't pin it down closer than that, but she was definitely dead that
night."
      
"Well," he said softly, "keep looking, ok?"

"I will," she told him. "I'll keep you updated. What are you doing?"

"I'm still looking into Saul Kohen's terrorist connections. I've found a
little dirt on three of his friends. While it seems Saul may be unwilling to
get his hands dirty, they have not been. All three are being watched as part
of an on-going investigation by the INS, though, so I don't know how free
they'd have been to move around recently. I'll keep digging."

"You do that," she said, smiling at nothing but the familiar rough sound of
his voice.

"Call me later," he said and hung up. She laughed, shaking her head. When
were they going to learn to say good-bye?

xxxxx

end part 4 of 6


TITLE: The Thirty-Sixth (5/6)
AUTHOR: Jess Mabe
EMAIL ADDRESS: snarkypup@mindspring.com

Mulder stood in Rabbi Levich's living room, unable to believe what he was
hearing.

"When was the last time you saw her?" he said.

"This morning at nine-thirty," the old man answered. "Before she left for
work. But then an hour ago I got a call from the girl who does the afternoon
shift at the shop saying that Leah had never shown up."

"She went to work this morning?" Mulder asked, incredulous.

Rabbi Levich shrugged. "She said it would take her mind off things, not have
her moping around here. I agreed it might be all right, but told her to come
home if it got to be too much for her. She's worked this whole time, you
know. Since Esther was taken..." He paused to wipe his eyes and sighed. "She
worshipped her sister. It was almost unhealthy, the level of protection and
affection she had for her. I think it was sometimes not good for Leah, but
when you believe your sister to be a saint..." he trailed off and Mulder
nodded.

"I understand, I think."

"Yes," the old man said. "I believe you do."

"Tell me something," Mulder said, "before I go."

"Yes, anything," the Rabbi replied.

"Why did she call me? I have never met your family; how did she know about
me? What is the connection?"

The Rabbi studied him for a moment, as if debating what to tell him. Then he
sat down and spread his hands out on his lap, a gesture of resignation.

"I knew your grandmother," he said.

"You what?" Mulder was amazed. "You knew Ruth?"

"Ruth Barelson, yes. She came over to this country on the same boat as my
mother. They were good friends, though Ruth was older I think, by ten years
or so. Before they were married my mother used to say Ruth was like a sister
to her. After their marriages, they were both pregnant about the same time.
Your father and I were to be brought up together, but then your grandmother
moved away after your grandfather died."

"Of polio," Mulder said.

"I gave it to him," Rabbi Levich said quietly. "They thought it was just a
cold, and for me, it was. But adults who get polio are much more severely
affected. I don't think your grandmother could face us, after that. She
moved north to be with her sister."

"Esther," Mulder remembered.

"Yes. I named by daughter for her. My sister's name is Ruth."

Mulder sighed. "We are connected."

"Inextricably," the Rabbi said. "Your father was never the same after his
father died. It changed him, hardened him. I watched him through the years,
kept an eye on his progress, on his government position. I got the
impression he was unhappy, and then when your sister was taken... Fox, I
have watched you from your birth. Prayed for you, prayed that you would not
turn out to be the man your father was. I see something in you, something I
don't think you will ever fully understand. You need to help people. You
were born to do it."

"I have failed," he said, suddenly miserable.

"No," the Rabbi said. "We called you too late. We waited too long with the
hope that evil would not touch one so innocent. I may have been wrong about
my daughter, about her special gifts, Fox. After all, she is dead and here
we are. The world has not ended, at least not for everyone else. But I am
not wrong about you."

The shrill sound of a telephone interrupted the old man. Mulder snatched it
from his pocket and hit talk.

"Mulder," he said.

"Mister Mulder," an man's voice said. "This is Saul Kohen. I know where you
can find Leah Levich."

xxxxx

Scully scrubbed wearily at her hands. She was exhausted, and only a step
closer to the truth. Why couldn't anything come simply anymore? Why no
smoking guns or latent prints? She had to snatch a towel and run to reach
her cell phone as it began to ring.

"Scully!" It was Mulder's voice, shouting over the sound of a car engine.

"What? What's wrong?" she said, panic surging through her. Where was he? Why
was he shouting? Not now, she thought, feeling a desperate sense of
finality. Not now.

"I just got a call from Saul Kohen. Leah's been kidnapped by the same people
who took her sister."

"What? Why?" she said.

Mulder paused for a moment, as if he hadn't considered that very vital
question.

"I don't know. But she's missing and Saul says he knows where they're
keeping her. I'm headed there now."

"No!" she shouted. "Not by yourself."

"Meet me there. It's a warehouse on the corner of thirty-sixth and Pine.
There's no time to come get you, but if you leave now, we should get there
at about the same time."

"I'm calling for back-up," she said.

"No, don't. I don't know what this is yet, Scully, and a bunch of uninformed
cops wandering around down there could end it. Do you understand?"

Of course she understood. He was so pushy when he panicked. She sighed.
"I'll be there in ten minutes. Don't you dare go in there without me."

"I won't," he said, but he sounded very distant all of a sudden, as if he
wasn't really paying attention. Typical Mulder, not to listen when she was
most trying to tell him something. She jammed the cell phone into her pocket
and fumbled out of her scrubs, frantically tossing them into the bucket near
the door.

"Dana?" a technician popped his head around the door. "I've got the results.
You wanna hear them?"

"Tell me as I walk," she said, pulling on her coat. "What's it look like?"

"Cyanide. Massive dose, administered orally. She died instantly."

"Shades of Jim Jones," she said bitterly, opening the door to the parking
lot and searching for her keys. "Fuck! Where are my fucking keys?"

"Are they in your purse?" the technician asked carefully.

She dug her hand into her purse and felt the sharp jab of familiar metal.
"Yes," she said. "Thanks. Get the report ready. Call Mindy and see if she
can come up with the nearest chemical lab to one-eleven Broad street. I want
to see if a Saul Kohen purchased any cyanide in the last thirty days. Tell
them he's about five-ten with dark, curly hair and very blue eyes. Acne
scars. See what you can come up with and call me with the results."

"Gotcha," the tech said. "Drive safe."

"Yeah right," she muttered, pulling violently out into the garage.

xxxxx

Mulder tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. Where the fuck was Scully?
He had been there nearly ten minutes now, pounding miserably on vinyl. A
dark sedan pulled up next to him and Saul Kohen stepped out. Reluctantly,
Mulder opened the door and stood to face him.

"Where is she?" he said.

"Inside," Saul answered. "Come."

"She'd better be alive," Mulder said, following Saul toward the door.

"I didn't do this, Mister Mulder," Saul said. He paused on the stoop. "I
believe in the eventual triumph of good over evil, but I didn't murder
Esther Levich, nor did I kidnap Leah. That I know where she is, that I am
willing to bring you here, is proof of my belief. I do this at great risk to
myself."

"Yeah, yeah," Mulder sighed, "That's what they all say. Where is she?"

"Quiet now," Saul said, and slid a key into the warehouse door. The interior
was dark and dusty, stereotypically creepy. Mulder shuddered. Why couldn't
they hold someone in a Holiday Inn? Somewhere bright and clean and sanitary?
Saul slipped forward and then motioned Mulder further inside. "We store
things here, on occasion," he said.

"We?" Mulder whispered back. "Who, you and Donald Duck? Or you and a few
right-wing extremists bent on say... blowing up the Dome of the Rock?"

"Me and Donald Duck," Saul said. "Come on."

They wound their way through several hallways, coming at last to a large
open space. Mulder could see around the door, where several men stood in a
circle. In the center of the circle, sat Leah Levich, her lovely head jerked
back by the hair, her arms and mouth bound. Mulder pushed Saul back and
again scanned what he could see. Three men. One woman. He would wait for
Scully.

And he would have, if one of the men hadn't reached forward and fondled
Leah's left breast. Perhaps it was nothing, just a terrorist intimidating
his victim. Perhaps it was a prelude to something more. But in that moment,
Mulder's better judgement went skittering across the dusty floor to land at
her feet and he pushed his way, shouting, past an astonished Saul.

"Drop your weapons! Federal Agent! Put your hands above your heads and get
on the floor."

They didn't, even for a moment, look like they were going to do it, though
the man did stop mid-grope to grab his gun. For a moment, the three of them
stared at him and he stared back, willing them to be intimidated.

"I have back-up on the way," he said.

"No you don't," Saul said, from behind him, and Mulder realized he'd been
had.

"Let her go," he said, ignoring the interruption.

"Is this the infamous Fox Mulder?" a tall, thin man with blond hair asked.

"The very one," Mulder replied, still training his gun on them.

"Well that's just wonderful," the thin man said. "We've been waiting for
you."

Mulder pondered this for a moment, then decided he didn't care.

"Let her go," he said again.

"Oh I intend to, one way or another," the man nodded. Mulder saw Saul creep
past him out of the corner of his eye. "Mister Mulder, can I ask you a
question?"

Mulder nodded, training his gun on the man's head.

"Do you like Leah Levich?" the man asked, and to Mulder's horror, drew a
small knife from his pocket and in one swipe sliced a thin red line across
her throat. Leah whimpered and struggled to move.

"Jesus!" Mulder said. "What do you want?"

"Answer the question!" the man shouted.

"Of course I do," Mulder answered, frantically moving the barrel of his gun
from one man to the next.

"Would you die for her?" he asked.

"What?" Mulder said, feeling a sinking in his stomach.

"Would you die for this woman, whom you hardly know?"

Mulder stared at Leah, who was wildly shaking her head. A sheer veil of
blood had seeped from the cut down her throat like a chiffon scarf.

"Yes," he said, knowing the answer. "Yes, I would."

"Lay down your weapon," the man said.

"Let her go," Mulder answered.

The man shrugged and jerked Leah to her feet. He shoved her toward Saul, who
caught her and held her up.

"Take her outside and drive her home. Then come back here."

Saul nodded and stepped forward with Leah.

"And watch out for Mister Mulder's 'back-up'," the man chortled. "Now," he
said, turning back to Mulder, "lay it down."

He did, slowly, lowering the gun to the floor and standing back up with his
hands in the air.

"What do you want from me?" he asked, but before he could register an
answer, a bullet slammed him in the stomach, knocking him to the floor.
Mulder looked down in disbelief at the small, dark whole in his belly, just
above his belt. He felt no pain, not yet, but was aware of a strange jarring
sensation and the warm wetness of urine seeping from his underwear. Christ,
he thought, I've pissed myself, and it sounded in his own head like a laugh.

"What do I want from you?" the man said, strolling forward, gun cocked, to
look Mulder in the eye. "I want you to die," he said, and aimed at Mulder's
head.

The last things he heard before the world went dark seemed in an odd order,
as if he'd gotten them all wrong. From the hallway he heard Scully's voice
shout something that sounded like "freeze" or maybe like "no", he couldn't
decide. And then he heard the sound of a gun shot and felt the bullet enter
his skull like a punch to the head. But then there were more shots, hundreds
it seemed, coming from very far away, and screaming, and then Scully's voice
shouting his name. But that couldn't be right, could it? How could he still
be hearing her voice after the bullet had entered his brain? But it didn't
matter anymore, he thought, as the world narrowed down to a low, grating
roar.

xxxxx

end part 5 of 6

Holy Smoking-Man! Will Mulder survive? Will Scully rescue him in time? Tune
in to Part 6, same X time, same X channel! And email me!


TITLE: The Thirty-Sixth (6/6)
AUTHOR: Jess Mabe
EMAIL ADDRESS: snarkypup@mindspring.com

The saga continues! You can stop biting your nails now and let your fingers
heal while you email me.


Everything hurt. Scully stretched slowly, rolling her neck and shoulders,
trying to erase a cramp so thorough it seemed to involve muscles she didn't
even have.

"You know, if you slept at home, you wouldn't hurt so much," the nurse said
kindly.

Scully ignored her and yawned. There was no way she was going home. Not when
Mulder lay there in a coma, unresponsive, with at least thirty tubes flowing
out of his body so that he bristled like a hedgehog.

The nurse finished changing his bag of antibiotics and smiled gently at her
as she passed. Scully felt like growling back. How dare they be kind to her?
She knew she was being irrational, but she also knew they thought he would
die, or perhaps never wake up and it annoyed her. He would wake up. He had
to.

She waited until the nurse was gone before slipping up next to him and
stroking the hair back from the side of his head they hadn't shaved. She
didn't talk much to him. After the first week, she had run out of things to
say. Hi, how are you doing, much the same, my day was spent here with you,
wake up... She leaned over and kissed him on the mouth and told herself she
was only rubbing a little lip balm there because his lips were cracked and
dry. He was so ugly like this, half-shaved and bandaged and there was a
salty white crust around the corner of his mouth and his eyes. He smelled
like a baby, like powder and pee. And god, how she loved him. It tore at her
and made her want to weep or shake him or scream.

Maybe she was going mad. It had been over a month since the bullet sliced
through just above his eyebrow. The stomach wound was practically healed
completely, just an ugly pink pucker and a few gray stitches, but something
in his head refused to heal and it was making her crazy with worry and with
sleep deprivation and with grief.

The first few days had been all right, with everyone around, relatives and
Skinner and even a few visits from Leah, but after that, when it had tapered
off to only her, the solitude was terrible and cleansing, all at once.

"Mulder," she whispered, and was surprised by the tenderness in her voice,
"come on back to me."

She stroked his hand and waited for a response. There wasn't one.

"Come on," she said. "You know you're just being stubborn. As soon as you
wake up, they'll let you eat green jello with little pineapple bits in it
and powdered potatoes."

Nothing.

"Damn it, Mulder," she whispered fiercely. "I want to have sex at least
three times before you go out on me, do you understand?"

There was a throat clearing behind her and she stood up slowly, feeling
vaguely embarrassed, but more annoyed than anything. It was Rabbi Levich.

"How is he?" he asked, stepping forward. This was his first visit, as far as
she knew.

"He's not waking up," she said, and for some strange reason, she began to
cry in front of this old man, who reminded her of her grandfather, of all
grandfathers.

"Oh, now, child," he said and pulled her into his arms gruffly, the way
priests used to but weren't allowed anymore. "He's not gone. He's just
resting. That was an awful lot to handle for one small man."

"He won't wake up," she said, sniffling into the warm black wool of the
Rabbi's coat.

The old man pushed her back a bit to look her in the eye. He had such a soft
face, like a pillow molded into flesh. Except for his eyes, which were dark
and bright and sparkled like mica.

"He will. It is part of his destiny, part of his role. That's why he lives
today, after all the things they have tried to do to him."

"Who?" she said, wiping her nose on her sleeve. She had regressed that far.

"When a man is designed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders,
there are plenty who would add to the load."

She stared at him for a moment, her mind spinning. "That was why you called
him," she said softly.

"That is why he was called," the Rabbi corrected. "Actually, I came here
today to see you. He doesn't care if I visit or not, but you might."

She smiled, briefly. "I might like a little company," she affirmed.

"When did you eat last? Don't I sound like a stereotypical Jewish mother?"
he twinkled. "Come, I hear they have excellent donuts downstairs."

Pleased he hadn't suggested yet another jello salad, like the nurses, she
grabbed her purse and kissed Mulder's cheek.

"I'm just going to go downstairs and have something to eat with the Rabbi.
Stay here," she said.

"Where would he go?" the Rabbi asked.

"It's an old joke," she told him. "Mulder is prone to wandering out of
hospitals when he's not supposed to."

"So you are here to keep him in line," the old man said. "To make sure he
walks the straight and narrow."

Pulling her hair back and fastening it with a band, she hit the down button
on the elevator and nodded. "I guess you could say that. It's who we are."

"Indeed," the old man said. "It's as plain as the nose on his face."

xxxxx

The room was silent when Mulder finally opened his eyes. The monitor near
his head was beeping, yes, but the sounds of life, of hospitals, were oddly
absent. Maybe he had been sent home to die, he thought, but then realized
that it was merely night and the quiet he felt around him was the shuttered
result of fewer staff, fewer visitors.

He was groggy, and his head hurt like hell, pounding and shivering like he
was running downstairs with a bowl of jello.

Jello. He had some strange thoughts about that, but couldn't put them
together enough to really see them.

"Well, hello there," a voice said and he saw a nurse in a bright white shirt
with blue snowflakes on it, bending over his bed. "Where have you been?"

He blinked at her. His mouth didn't seem to work. That was ok, though,
because he really didn't have an answer.

"Let me go get Miss Scully from the dining room," she said. "I'm sure she'd
like to know you're back with us, at least a little bit."

Scully. That was what the silence was, he reasoned. The absence of her. He
wouldn't mind a little water, and then maybe he could talk to her.

Christ, he was tired. Maybe no talking. Just see Scully, and back to la la
land. Yes. Maybe. No, he was waking up now. He had been sleeping forever.
Why not be awake?

"Oh my god."

Her voice bounced around his head like... like a bullet, he thought, but a
good one. Yes. That was what it was like. A good bullet.

"Oh Mulder," she said, and then there she was, leaning over him, pale and
dusty and his Scully, loyal to the end. Or to the beginning. Did that make
sense?

"Hi," he croaked and she burst into tears, sobbing against his chest. Jesus,
had he been out that long? He closed his eyes. Talking was hard.

He was out again. Or he had been. He opened his eyes and saw her sitting
next to the bed, knitting. The sun was shining, the window was open a crack
and sweet, fragrant, foul DC air slipped past his newly-tender nostrils.

"Scully," he said, and his voice sounded dry as an old lakebed. He choked at
the end, but she understood immediately, bringing a glass of
room-temperature water to his mouth and letting him down about half of it
before easing it away.

"Mulder," she said, grinning. "Welcome back."

"It's the return engagement," he cracked. "I seem to play this venue a lot."

"Oh thank god," she said, and he knew she'd been worried about brain damage.
Hell, after that last crack at waking up, so had he. "How are you feeling?"

"Spiffy," he answered. "Just great. How long..." and he trailed off.

She looked down at her lap and then back up at him. "You were in a coma for
a month and a half. You woke up a bit three days ago, and you've been in and
out since."

"Really?" he said. "I don't feel like I've been out that long." He tried
moving his arm. It was leaden and weak. "Ok," he said, giving up, "maybe I
do."

She laid the knitting down on the chair beside her and hopped up on the bed
next to him, stroking his hand.

"I've missed you," she said. Her hair was longer, he realized, and she
looked thin.

"Pining away, Scully?"

"A little," she said. "But I knew you'd come back. Eventually. You always
do."

"Guess you got ditched," he said and then choked again. She gave him more
water, grinning.

"Classic ditch, Mulder. Not only did you go into that warehouse without me,
but you've been gone for weeks now and I bet you won't even be able to tell
me where you were."

"The Land of Nod," he answered immediately. "You'd like it there Scully.
It's very restful."

"I'll bet," she said and squeezed his hand affectionately. "Tired?"

He shook his head, which wasn't such a wise move, but had no serious
repercussions.

"How's Leah?" he asked suddenly. "Did she get out ok?"

Scully nodded. "She's fine, or as well as can be expected. She's been by a
few times, as has the Rabbi, to see how you were. Skinner's been in and out
and the Gunmen keep trying to sneak past the nurses after visiting hours."

"Typical," he said. "They couldn't just come during the day like everyone
else. Did we get the bad guys, Scully?"

"I got 'em, Mulder, as did the back-up I was smart enough to come to my
senses and call."

"You're so wise," he said affectionately. "I don't deserve you."

"Yes, you do." She was quite serious again. He sighed.

"So here's what I don't understand," he said. "Why trade me for Leah? I
mean, I can see the possible hostage ramifications, but not if they were
just going to shoot me."

She shrugged. "Maybe they saw something in you of value."

"Huh?" he said. "What does that mean?"

"The Rabbi said something interesting to me. He said that people who were
designed to carry the world on their shoulders would always attract those
anxious to add to the load."

Mulder processed this for a second and realized that the obvious conclusion
was going to give him a headache.

"He thinks I'm a lamed-vovnik."

She nodded, happily, threading her fingers through his. "Why not?" she said.
"It could be anyone, right? And you certainly have the qualifications."

"I have no faith," he said.

"Bullshit," she answered succinctly and patted his chest with her free hand.
"You have so much faith, it's blinding."

"God, this shit is exhausting," he said, rolling his eyes. "Why can't I just
be Fox Mulder, accountant, or Fox Mulder, pet detective, for a while? Why,
Scully, do I always have to save the world?" He was kidding, of course, but
she wasn't when she answered.

"It's what you were born to do. It's who you are."

He sighed and glared at the ceiling.

"Hey, do you feel up to a surprise?" she said suddenly.

"Only if it doesn't entail green jello with little pineapple pieces," he
replied and she raised an eyebrow.

"Ta da," she said, and reached under her chair to produce a small package,
which she dropped gently on his chest.

"Ah Scully," he said, "you shouldn't have. Is it a birthday present?"

"Your birthday was in October," she said. "It's March."

He opened the paper and lifted out her gift.

"Oh," he said softly, holding them up to the light, "they're lovely."

"I made them just for you, while you were gallivanting around coma-land,"
she said. "Leah donated the yarn."

She had made him socks. Not just any socks, he noted, but socks with waves
on the feet and stars around the ankles.

"'Safe Return'?" he asked.

"'Safe Return'," she confirmed.

"Then what are the stars? Here, around the calf? They weren't in the
pattern."

She smiled at him and leaned over to kiss his forehead, pressing her lips to
his uninjured eyebrow.

"Those are the future," she said. "Once you came back to me."

end part 6 of 6

Ok, you've made it to the end. You're sweaty, your pupils are dilated, you
hardly know up from down... but wait! There's the keyboard! You grasp it,
you point and click "reply", you type me a message of affirmation! Your
pulse returns to normal, your kidneys begin to function again. You know...
it's all going to be ok.