Rating: PG-13

Spoilers: None

Disclaimer: All Animorph characters belong to K.A. Applegate. All X-Files characters belong to Chris Carter, the Fox Network, and Ten Thirteen Productions. Both sets of characters are used here without permission for the purpose of non-profit entertainment.

A Note: This story is impossible. Not just because it mixes Animorph characters with X-Files characters, but because it implies that either the Animorph books took place in the 70's, or else the X-Files takes place in the 20's. (The ones coming up, boy is it ever weird to see that in print.) And anyone who has seen either knows that there are too many damn pop culture references for either to be possible. But hey, indulge me.

Sorry, no brutal gay sex here. Maybe next time. September, I apologize ahead of time for killing Scully.

My name is Tobias.

Twenty years ago, I would have refused to tell you my last name. I would have come up with a whole list of reasons why it was imperative that you not know who or where I am. I would have spoken of the danger, the horror, the insanity of the situation that my friends and I were thrust into.

But as I said, that was twenty years ago.

The only reason I didn't die with the rest of the Animorphs was luck. Luck, or some shameless, meaningless intervention by the Ellimist, which I deeply doubt. We were infiltrating a compound where the Yeerks were manufacturing the slime they swim in, and I was flying above, making sure no janitor remembered that he had left a computer on and driven back in the middle of the night to correct it before his boss found out the next morning. The sky was warm that night, I felt excited, as if we were truly doing something helpful that night.

I don't know what happened after Jake, Cassie, Marco, Rachel, and Ax went inside. They must have tripped some sort of alarm; the building exploded only forty-five seconds after they entered it.

A large piece of shrapnel knocked me unconscious, and I woke up three days later in an animal shelter. When I had recovered, they drove me out to the woods and set me free. I didn't return to civilization for almost a year.

Together, we had been the Animorphs. Alone, I was just a freak.

But that was a long, long time ago.

I was sitting in the bar when I met him. I had on one of my newer morphs, a thirty-two year old Asian man with beautiful dark eyes and hair that fell like silk around my face. I took to collecting people after the Animorphs died, I had dozens of guises I wore during my hours on the town. Some nights I was the ravishing blond beauty, other nights the wise old man on the corner. Children, woman, the deformed. I morphed them all. I became everyone, I was no one.

My clothing was simple, jeans a few sizes too large and a silk dress shirt in olive green that drew attention to this body's wonderfully graceful build. It was almost midnight, a Tuesday night, and I'd come to the bar because I was playing Risk again. Not the boardgame, but a personalized version of Russian roulette that had lately become the channel for my on-going attempts at self-destruction. I would morph in my apartment, and immediately go into the bar downstairs, where I handed the bartender a credit card and proceeded to get as drunk as I possibly could in an hour and fifty minutes. Then--my eyes forever glued to the watch on my wrist--I would wait until the big hand was less than a millimeter from the two hour mark, and attempt to morph.

It was always painful and sickening, and afterward I would lay broken and weak on the floor, like the roadkill I was forever fascinated by. A bird, collapsed on the carpet, too exhausted to even reach the small potted tree I kept in the kitchen where I could sleep comfortably.

I saw the man as soon as I walked into the bar. He was already drunk, but it was a kind of intoxication that one chooses to give in to, rather than being taken over by. He didn't want to be sober.

Physically, he was attractive. His legs were shockingly long, his face built with but somehow not dominated by a large nose, his hair a tumble of brown strands. He was obviously in good shape, but that quality stood out less than his stunning intelligence and immediate presence.

The bartender--her name was Cassie--hadn't met the Asian before. I sat down casually beside the man, and he didn't look up. I ordered a gin and orange juice and settled comfortably beside him, wildly aware of my reflection behind with twinkling liquor bottles lined up on the wall. My eyes strayed constantly to the mirror.

I was startled when the man spoke. "Do you believe in aliens?"

I glanced at him uncertainly. He was miserably drunk, too sloshed to control himself and too rational to forget his woes. His hand, with long dark fingers, was wrapped around a bottle of Heiniken.

"Yes," I said finally.

He nodded. "So does seventeen percent of the American population. Have you ever been abducted?"

I paused to reflect on that one. Surely, there had been times when I had been captured by the Yeerks against my will, but did that really count the way he meant? I had never been involved in a typical abduction situation.

"No," I told him.

"Then how do you know they exist?"

"I've had other experiences."

It had been so long since I'd spoke to anyone about my life as an Animorph; I had a strong sudden urge to blurt out everything.

The man nodded, then threw back his head and finished the beer. "Amy," he said, "could I have another one of these?"

"I think her name is Cassie," I told him.

He shrugged. "They're all named Amy, as far as I'm concerned."

I sipped slowly at my vodka and orange juice, no longer interested in gambling. "Do you believe in aliens?"

"I have to." He sounded miserable. "Everyone I know seems to get abducted. My sister, my partner. My replacement's mom." He ran a hand through his hair. "Today my college roommate called to say he had been abducted. He told that one of the aliens was a clone of Heather Locklear, only with six breasts instead of two. She gave him an anal probe and pierced his left nipple."

I remained silent. This man was talking non-sense, but he still appeared, under the anger and wooziness, strangely sober. As if he were drinking to give himself an excuse to act crazy. We were alone in the bar, and I realized I had made a mistake in staying up to watch the late news; the bar would close in half an hour. Well, never mind. This man was more interesting than my petty suicide attempts.

"You know what I am?" the man asked, his voice suddenly stronger. "I am the guru of the abductee fanatics. My office is their temple, and my badge is a fucking holy relic."

"Your badge?" I asked hesitantly.

He twisted, swallowing unevenly, and dug a hand into his pocket, from which he removed a wallet. Flipping it open, I was greeted with a photograph of him and the bright blue letters F, B, and I.

Before he closed it, I noted that his name was Fox Mulder.

"I'm a joke to them," he said. He shoved the wallet blindly in the direction of the pocket and it fell onto the floor. Mulder didn't seem to notice. "I'm a joke to everybody."

Cassie caught my gaze and rolled her eyes, as if to say, "Ignore him, he's raving."

Mulder leaned close to me, until I could smell his breath, and whispered, "Amy doesn't like me. The last time I was in here, I tried to tell her about the government conspiracy and she kicked me out. Have you ever seen a UFO?"

"No."

"Don't believe what you see on television. They aren't all smooth and curvy like an Eggo-waffle. They look like...." He drifted off and then murmured vaguely, "Borg cubes."

I nodded slowly, turning my attention to my drink, and I jolted when he again threw his head back, this time shouting out, "Borg cubes! It's Star Trek! Captain Picard is responsible! Captain Picard is the evil one!"

Startled, I saw that his face had flushed with dark color and Cassie had gotten up from her station behind the cash register. "Doctor Crusher," Mulder cried. "What's this thing in Scully's neck? Are those pickled ovaries you're munching on?"

His right hand lashed out and knocked over his fresh bottle of beer, sending the icy cold liquid splashing across the bar-top and into his lap. Cassie stood up, shaking her head and starting toward us with a determined look on her face.

"What does the Prime Directive say about experimentation on unwitting human subjects?" Mulder cried.

"Get out of here," Cassie told him firmly.

"Were you vaccinated for polio?" Mulder asked her. "Because if so-"

"I'm calling the police if you don't leave," Cassie warned.

"You, too, could be the victim of a terrible experiment. And the police won't help."

I grabbed his arm. "Come on, Mr. Mulder. Better just leave now."

"They'll try," he said, "but they're a government agency, and the conspiracy has a hand in them, too. Just like they have a hand in the FBI, and they keep trying to thwart my work."

"This is your last warning," Cassie said.

I took a few dollars from my pocket and tossed them onto the counter. "I'll get him out of here," I told her.

She nodded. "And tell him not to come back."

Dragging Mulder, we made our way into the lobby and onto an elevator. He was still mumbling, and now he was hanging onto my arm just to stay standing, as if the alcohol were just now kicking in.

"Oh my god we're going up," he said, slumping against me. "We're going up up up up."

"Is there somebody I can call to come get you?" I asked as the elevator doors opened. My apartment was only a few feet away, but he wasn't able to make it without falling to his knees.

Mulder shook his head again and fell heavily onto my couch. It was the only piece of furniture in the room beside the TV and the telephone table where I worked as a tele-marketer during the day.

I was breathing a little hard from carrying him most of the way to my apartment, and now I leaned against the wall. I realized that this was the first time I'd ever had anyone into my apartment, that I had been alone for a very long time. It was strange, and intrusive, and it felt vividly for a moment like those night when I would perch on Rachel's window sill and watch her sleep had. Mulder's eyes closed now, closed and fluttered as if he were already dreaming.

"They killed her," he said. His voice was muted and slurpy, but laced with anguish just the same.

"Who?" I asked, pushing myself away from the wall and stepping toward him. I stopped by the side of the couch and crouched down.

"He doesn't have a name. He has a million names, and he kills people all the time. And he smokes like the Marlboro man."

"I meant, who did he kill?"

"Her, Scully. My partner." His eyes opened, blazing hazel. Their stare was dangerous. "That bastard killed my partner, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. He's working with the aliens to let them take over the planet, he's working with the government. He's untouchable."

Mulder and I stared at each other a moment, and then tears filled his eyes and he closed them. He face turned away, his head hung from his neck against the arm of the couch.

I stood up and back up a few feet. Mulder groaned and went gently limp, and I knew he had passed out.

Trying not to wake him, I leaned over and turned out the lamp. Street light came rushing through the window and tinted everything brown and tan. Cars drove past outside and I watched them, fascinated. I knew there were Yeerks in those cars, just driving past, heading for their next assemblage of evil. And here I was, playing human, doing nothing.

I realized that I still had Mulder's wallet in my pocket and removed it. As I went to put it on the floor beside the couch, should he wake up and find only my pet hawk for company, a little paper pouch fell out. It was a cheap, coffee-filter type of paper, pressed to seam at the edges but raised in the middle, as if it held salt. I lifted the slip carefully and saw that a note had been scratched onto the back with a blue pen.

What do you have left now?

There was a spot of dark brown fluid dried onto one corner of the packet, and suddenly I knew. This was poison. Whoever had killed Mulder's partner had left if for him to find, in the hopes that he would do away with himself. And Mulder had to at least be thinking about it to be carrying such a deadly weapon around with him.

I stared at him in the dark, and realize how alike we were. Both of us alone, both of us too tired to keep fighting the impossible fight.

Before I even knew what I was looking for, I was in the spartan bedroom, digging through the leather-bound trunk. Under old clothes and paper was a non-descript cardboard box, filled to the brim with photographs. I dumped these out and removed the smaller box within, tearing at the duck tape with my teeth until it came away. Inside this smaller box was a metal safe, fire proof, theft proof, and strung with pad locks. My morphed hands trembled as I rolled in each combination, and when the door finally swung open, I was almost afraid to look inside.

My finger touched the smooth edges of the blue box. After the Animorphs died, I had retrieved it and taken it with me to Washington D.C. I had taken safety precautions to see that it never fell into the wrong hands, and now here I was, after all these years, holding onto it and aching to see it glow.

Mulder had said he was a joke, that everyone saw him as a joke. His partner was dead. He was contemplating suicide.

And if I could give him the tools to fight with war? And if I could inspire myself to again begin fighting?

I stood in the living room doorway, staring at him sleeping on my couch. The blue box was warm in my hand.

I don't think I'll tell you my last name. Not today.

The End