Part 3 of 3

After Scully had gone to sleep and Jake had left,
Mulder received a call from the local agents.

We could really use your help in the field on this
one, Mulder," Vandergriff said tersely.

"I don't want to leave Scully unguarded," Mulder said. "I know it's a long shot, but the killer just might, possibly, come to the hospital and try to finish the job."

"We can assign a rookie to keep an eye on her,"
suggested Vandergriff.

Mulder was silent for a moment. He knew he was
paranoid, but they were talking about the most
important person in his life. He and Scully had been
betrayed before and there weren't many people he
trusted with her life. If they were back in D.C.,  he
would have called Skinner, the Lone Gunmen or Scully's mother. However, they were in California and there wasn't. . .wait a minute, he thought to himself. Maybe there was.

"Let me call you back in a few minutes, Vandergriff,"
Mulder said briskly. Then he took a deep breath and
made a call to directory assistance. Then another deep breath. Facing down Cancer Man was easy compared to this. Then another phone call.

Scully slowly opened her eyes. She focused on the man
sitting on the other side of the room, dozing, and was startled. "Bill?" she called out. What was he doing here? She'd expected to find her husband at her
bedside, not her older brother.

"Hey, Dana," he said, crossing the room with a smile
on his face. "How are you feeling?"

"Not too bad, really. Where's Mulder? And what are you doing here?"

"Your partner is out trying to hunt down the psycho
who did this to you. The reason I'm here is because he called me, asked me to come up and keep an eye on you until he came back."

"He's not just my partner any more. You know that.
Mom's told you. I've told you," Dana said.

"I know," Bill muttered.

"Say it, Bill!"

"Fine. Your husband," the last word was muttered
through gritted teeth, "asked me to make sure you were okay."

At that moment, a nurse came in and checked on Dana.
Her injuries were pretty superficial, really. She'd
almost been strangled, but there was no permanent
damage.

Before the Scully siblings could resume their
conversation, the door swung open once again.

"Dana! You're okay?" Mulder asked, moving quickly to
her side and kissing her cheek.

"Compared to a lot of other experiences I've had, I'm
doing great," Dana replied.

"No thanks to you," Bill said, shooting a malevolent
glance at Mulder.

"Why is Bill here?"

"You know my motto: Trust No One. But when you
absolutely HAVE to trust someone, I figure a family
member's always a better bet than anyone else," Mulder said.

"But you two. . .don't like each other," Dana said.

"True," Mulder admitted easily. "But we both love you. Your Mom and Skinner were too far away, but Bill was just down the coast. He was able to get here from San Diego in less than two hours. You know, I always
thought the term 'cuss like a sailor' was just a
figure of speech until I told him where you were and
what I wanted."

"Bill!" Scully said, glaring at her older brother.

"I'm sorry, Dana, but I'm getting a little tired of
hearing that you're in the hospital - again - because
of his obsession with chasing little green men. Those
damned Z-Files, or whatever the hell he calls them!"

Scully let out a weak giggle. "It's X-Files, Bill. But this wasn't one of them."

"What do you mean?" Bill asked.

"This wasn't an X-File," Mulder said. "We were pulled
off our regular duties and sent out here to assist in
the search for an utterly human - at least in the
biological sense of the word - serial killer. It
wasn't an assignment I sought out; on the contrary, I
argued against having to take it on. But, while I'm
given more leeway than a lot of agents in choosing our cases, we DO have a boss. When he says we have to
assist in a case, we have to assist."

"One of the main reasons we were selected for this
assignment is because I resemble the victims. Right
age, right height, relatively attractive to the
opposite sex," Dana said. That wasn't the whole
reason, of course, but she didn't want to get into
details that would give Bill more ammunition to use in his one-man hate crusade against her husband.

"Well, I still don't think you should have married
him!" Bill snapped.

"You know who you sound like, Bill?" Dana asked.

"You're probably going to say I sound like Dad."

"No. You don't sound anything like Dad," Dana replied. "Who you sound exactly like is Uncle Joe. You're talking about Fox the same way Uncle Joe always used to talk about Dad."

"That's not true!" Bill spluttered.

"Who the hell is Uncle Joe?" Mulder asked. He'd met a
fair number of his wife's relatives in the years
they'd worked together before their marriage, and an
even larger number in the months since then, but this
name wasn't ringing a bell.

"He is - was - our mother's oldest brother," Bill
replied.

"He died about ten years ago; back while I was in
medical school," Dana amplified. "The point is, he
never wanted his baby sister to marry quote some
sailor unquote. He didn't want her to be dragged all
over the world and give birth to her four children in
three different U.S. states and one foreign country.
As far as Uncle Joe was concerned, Mom would have been much better off to have stayed in Baltimore. He
thought she should have married her high school
sweetheart, got a house in the same neighborhood as
him and my grandparents, and spent her life surrounded by her family and childhood friends."

"Well, Mom never ended up in the hospital from her
association with Dad - not unless you count the four
times she went into give birth! She had a wonderful
life with him," Bill said.

"By her standards, yes," Dana agreed. "But I'm sure it was hard at times. She got pregnant with you on their honeymoon, Bill. For the first ten years of their marriage, she was either pregnant or had a child under the age of three; sometimes both at the same time. They moved five times in those ten years. Dad was at sea six or more months out of every year. In one sense, Uncle Joe was right when he said she would have had an a easier life if she was living in Baltimore, with a husband who came home every evening at five and her extended family available to help out with us kids. Just as, in one sense, YOU'RE right when you say I'd have an easier life if I'd married a doctor or a professor or, hell, probably any man on the face of the planet other than Mulder! But the point is, Mom didn't want 'easy'! She wanted the life she chose, with the man she loved. Just like I want the life I've chosen with the man I love."

The room was quiet for a few moments after Dana ended
her tirade. Finally, Bill said, "That was some speech, little sister."

"I think you need to get some rest before you raise
your blood pressure," Mulder said, with a small smile
lurking at the corners of his mouth.

"It ruined their relationship, you know," Dana
murmured, closing her eyes.

"Whose?" both men asked simultaneously.

"Mom's and Uncle Joe's," Dana said softly. "They'd
been close the whole time Mom was growing up, but by
the time he died they were barely on speaking terms.
She told me once that at some point it ceased to be
about Dad and was more an attack on her; as if Uncle
Joe thought she was too stupid to make her own
decisions about life. Just like,"

"Okay, Dana, okay!" Bill said. "Point taken. Whether
or not I happen to approve of Mulder, he's the man
you've chosen to share your life with. And if I want
to continue to have a good relationship with you, I've got to. . .well, not LIKE him, maybe, but at least accept him."

"Exactly."

"Dana, you need to rest," Mulder said softly.

"There's just one more thing. I've got to tell both of you, because you both do it."

"Do what?" Mulder asked.

"Bill, I think it's hard for you to understand my
having a career that means as much to me as being a
Navy officer does to you. Mom never worked outside the home and Tara - well, I know she had some part-time jobs before Matthew was born, but she never had what I'd actually call a career. I'm not criticizing them. What they do takes a different kind of courage than chasing criminals, but it takes courage nonetheless. A kind of courage I DON'T have."

"I know what you do is important to you," Bill said.

"Then know this. I'm an F.B.I. agent. It's a dangerous job, but it happens to be a job I get a lot of satisfaction out of and a job I'm very good at. Mulder had NOTHING to do with my decision to join the bureau. Hell, I didn't even MEET him until I'd been through Quantico and spent two years as an agent. He did NOT request my help on the X-Files. It was a job I was assigned to do by my superiors. In fact, the first few weeks we worked together, he made it pretty obvious that he resented my presence. Working with a partner - especially a partner who'd never been in the field before and had to be taught things that were already second nature to him - was more of a hindrance than a help, at least in the beginning. Yet you tend to blame him, Bill; Mulder, you tend to blame yourself, for things that have nothing to do with our personal relationship. Misfortunes that befall me because of my career. The career I made an independent decision to pursue."

"Dana," Mulder said, "Go. To. Sleep."

"Mmmhmm," Dana said. She felt her husband lean down
and brush her lips with a soft kiss, then she drifted
off into her dreams.

Mulder backed away from the bed, then turned to face
Bill. "You can go now," he said.

"She may be your wife, but she's still my little
sister," Bill said quietly.

"Sorry. That didn't come out right. I just meant I'll
be here. I don't have to go back into the field
office. You're welcome to stay, if you want."

"Do you know when she'll be released?"

"Yeah," Mulder answered. "I stopped by and talked with the doctor on my way in. She should be out tomorrow morning. We'll stay in L.A. for a day or two; she can rest up at the hotel and I'll finish all our paperwork. Then we'll head back to Washington."

"I should be heading back, I guess. I've only been
home a couple of days. I'd like to spend as much time
with Tara and Matthew as possible."

"Bill. . .I know I'm not good enough for her. You
don't have to tell me that. But I do love her."

"I know. It took guts for you to call me, ask me to
come up here, knowing the way I feel about you."

"Well, I wanted her to be safe. It wouldn't have been
hard for the perpetrator to have found out where she
was. I could have requested security from the local
field office or the LAPD, but they might have slacked
off. I knew you wouldn't," Mulder said.

"I want to ask you something," Bill said abruptly.
"You'll probably say it's none of my business and tell me to take a long walk off a short pier, but it's something I've wondered about for a long time; even more so since you two got married."

"Shoot."

"How long were you and Dana involved before you got
married?"

"Depends on how you define the word involved," Mulder
said.

"You sound like President Clinton," Bill snapped. "How long were you sleeping together? Is that specific enough for you, or do you want me to use explicit four-letter words?"

"I'll tell you, but you're probably not going to
believe me," Mulder said with a sigh. "Because we
weren't. First time was our wedding night."

Bill was quiet for a long moment, staring at his
brother-in-law. Finally he said, "You're serious." It
was half-question, half-comment.

"But. . .why?"  Bill asked. "I mean, as much as I
didn't like you, it was obvious from the first time we met how much you and Dana cared for each other. And you worked closely together for years."

"Your brother asked me something similar, back before
we were married. Said he could tell I was attracted to her, asked why I never did anything about it."

"You going to explain to me, or do I have to call
Charles?" Bill asked.

Mulder sighed. "At first, during the first year or so, there was the whole issue of sexual harassment. If I'd made a move and she'd objected, it would have been the end of our partnership; maybe even the end of my career, if she'd complained. Later, when it became obvious how much Dana cared about me, I knew she'd never do anything to hurt me. In a way, that made it harder. Because I figured if I asked, she'd say yes, but that it might be for the wrong reasons. In one sense, Dana's loved me for a long time, but I think it took her a lot longer to actually be IN love with me than it took me to fall for her. So I thought she'd say yes, but not because she wanted me. Only because she wanted to help me out, ease my loneliness. Or maybe to keep me from doing something stupid, like going to a bar and picking up some stranger who might give me a fatal disease. Eventually, very slowly, I could sense that her feelings were beginning to shift. Then, one evening when we were on a case in Las Vegas. . .well, it's a long story, we'd kind of made a bet, and the upshot of it was she ended up offering to do whatever I wanted that evening. Anything. So I asked her to marry me. Because I figured, while she might be
willing to go to bed with me out of pity, not even
Dana is loving and generous enough to MARRY a man out
of compassion.

Bill chuckled.

The next afternoon, in the hotel, Mulder asked Scully
a question that he had been wondering about since the
previous day.

"Dana?"

"Mmm?"

"You remember, yesterday, when you said your Mom and
Tara had a kind of courage you don't have?"

'Yeah."

"What did you mean by that?"

Scully sighed. She didn't exactly mind admitting this
to her husband, but it was still a tiny bit
embarrassing. "Just. . .I couldn't be without you for
months on end. Dad was at sea more than he was ever
home and Bill's the same way. Mom managed to cope and
so does Tara. I couldn't, Mulder. I go nuts when I'm
away from you for just a few days. Everybody thinks
I'm brave and strong, but I'm not. Not really.

"Of course you are."

"No. Or at least, maybe I am, but only when I'm with
you. Remember that time, before we were married, when
you went on a vacation to Tennessee without me and I
went out and got the tattoo? When you came back, you
made some remark about not being able to leave me on
my own without coming back and finding out I'd gotten
myself into trouble."

"I was mad. Jealous. Because you'd gone out on a date
with that guy. The remark was uncalled for."

"The remark was absolutely true, Mulder! I do tend to
do stupid things, self-destructive things, when I'm
away from you. I need you with me, all the time.
That's why, as much as I hate all the sneaking around
and not wearing our rings to work and stuff like that, I'm still not quite ready to go public with our
marriage. I'm scared of even being away from you all
day long! Even though we'd both still be working for
the bureau, I'd be out at Quantico and you'd be back
on violent crimes and we'd be away from each other all day and maybe sometimes you'd even have to go out of town without me and. . .I sound absolutely pathetic, don't I? This is what I meant about Mom and Tara being brave in a way that I'm not."

"You don't sound pathetic. You sound like a woman
who's madly in love with her husband. Which is
wonderful, because your husband's madly in love with
you."

Scully smiled. "C'mere."

Mulder grinned back. "I've got to finish up this
paperwork. And you need to rest. You just got out of
the hospital."

"Mulder," Scully said. "Come here. Now."

"Yes, Ma'am!" Mulder said with a grin, crossing the
room and flopping down beside her on the bed.

"You're wearing your glasses," Scully pointed. "You
KNOW what your glasses do to me."

"Why don't you remind me?"

"Why don't you kiss me?"

Mulder complied, leaving his glasses on so that they
bumped softly against her nose as their lips met.
After a moment or two of kissing, Scully gently
disengaged their lips and said, "Take off your
clothes."

"Damn you're bossy today. 'Come here.' 'Take off your
clothes.' Whatever happened to please?"

"Oh, you'll get to hear me say please. More than
once."

Mulder swallowed hard as he got up from the bed and
went to make sure the safety chain was on and the door was locked. He loved the breathy, throaty pleading sounds she made during lovemaking.

He turned to the bed and began unbuttoning his shirt.
Mulder made quick work of his clothes, then said, "You want me to leave my glasses on?"

Scully giggled and shook her head. "No. It's too
weird, you wearing nothing but your glasses and a
hard-on the size of Texas."

Mulder took off his glasses, then reached for the
oversized T-shirt - one that had originally been his - that Scully was wearing. He quickly stripped it from her, and was surprised to find that she was totally naked beneath it.

"Damn, Scully!" he breathed.

Fox lowered his mouth to kiss his wife once more. When they came up for breath, gasping, he whispered, "Close your eyes."

"Why?" she murmured, even as she did as he asked and
let her eyelashes drift against her cheeks.

"Because I want you to concentrate on what you're
feeling.  I don't want you to be distracted by your
sense of sight. Blocking off one sense tends to put
the others - like taste and touch and smell - on a
higher level of awareness. Trust me?"

"Always" she replied.

"I want to go down on you," he whispered in her ear.
He was pleased with the way her body jerked and the
little whimper she let out at his suggestion.

"Yes," she murmured.

"Yes, what?" he asked, teasing her.

It took Scully a moment to focus, she was already so
far gone. Then she remembered what she had promised
him a few minutes earlier. "Yes, please," she replied, drawing out the second word.

Mulder began moving his mouth down her body, so slowly it was almost like torture. He lavished each of her breasts with attention, licking, sucking and even nibbling lightly at them. He continued to nip and suck at her belly as he worked his way down her body. When he reached the riot of red curls at the apex of her thighs, he dropped a gentle kiss at the top of them, then scooted down lower on the bed and kissed the arch of her foot. He slowly worked his way up first one of her legs, then the other.

"Mul-der!" Scully whimpered. "Pleeease!"

Mulder grinned. How could he ever deny this angel
anything? He touched his mouth to her center, feeling
her jerk then relax under his tongue. She tasted
wonderful; he lapped and suckled at her while twirling his tongue within her.

Dana could feel her orgasm building fast. She started
to whimper. "Fox!" she managed to moan out. Then she
was splintering into a thousand pieces, pulsating
against him.

Mulder kept her tight against him until the last waves had subsided. God, he loved her like this. Her red hair was in wild disarray, her breasts were peaked and glistening and she wore a look of utter ecstasy.

Finally, Dana opened her eyes. "Your turn," she
murmured.

Mulder smiled into her eyes and gently slipped into
her wet body. She smiled.

"You can go fast if you want," she whispered. "I don't think I'm up to another round."

He grinned down at her. "I thought you liked it slow,
sweetheart."

"I like it however you give it to me, lover."

That did it. Mulder prided himself on self-control,
but this was just too damned much. He thrust into her
quick and hard and came within a minute or two.

Rolling off so he could spoon her to his side, he
whispered, "I love you."

"Love you, too," she managed to murmur before drifting off to sleep.

The next morning, the agents stopped briefly at the
L.A. federal building before heading to the airport
for a noon flight back to Washington. "So, we've got
all the loose ends wrapped up?" Mulder asked Landers.

"Looks like it," Landers replied. "The woman's
confessed to all six killings, but even if she recants we've got her on the attack on Agent Scully. Her lawyer is going to plead mental incompetence, but I don't really care if she's in prison or an asylum.
Just so she's off the streets."

"Well, you just try not to get freezer burn from your
continued partnership with the Ice Queen, Spooky,"
Vandergriff said.

"You've been out of the loop too long, Vandergriff,"
Scully said quickly, before Mulder could jump in to
defend her. "My new, official nickname is "Mrs.
Spooky". Ask anybody at headquarters."

As they left the building, Mulder laughed. "What's so
funny?" Scully inquired.

"You and that Ice Queen business. I mean, I understand how got I got tagged "Spooky". But I've never, for one minute, not from the first day we met, understood your nickname," he said.

"It was from guys like Vandergriff. Him and half a
dozen others who I wouldn't even give the time of day
to, much less hop in the sack with."

"Do you really have to put up with a lot of that
garbage, Scully?"

"Not for a long time. I did out at Quantico, both as a recruit and an instructor. But there hasn't been much of it since we became partners. Do you, by any chance, have anything to do with that?"

"I plead the Fifth Amendment."

"Well, anyway, I remember the first day we met, too. I remember thinking I was going to kill every female
agent I'd ever met who told Spooky Mulder stories."

"Why just the women?"

"Because," Scully said slowly, "you would think one of them would have had the decency to warn me how damned sexy you are!"

Mulder laughed again, checked to see that none of the
L.A. feds were in the parking lot, and kissed his
wife.