The tumor was her explanation of choice. Mulder was doing his best to be solicitous and understanding, but he wasn't exactly at his mental best either. Come to think of it, Scully had no idea WHAT Mulder would be like if he ever WAS at his mental best. She slapped herself a bit and unrolled her bedding. Realizing that she was running somewhat late, Scully ran into the bathroom to brush her teeth and thought she caught a glimpse of raven hair in the mirror. She pretended she hadn't seen it and made a mad dash to work.

Mulder seemed a tad dazed that day, but really no more so than usually. They moved through the motions of their appointed tasks in the robotic fashion that had prevailed ever since the Eddie Van Blundht incident. She didn't like it, but what could she do? What could be said to rectify such a bizarre situation? It looked like the relationship between Scully and Mulder had some...er.... knots to work out before they'd be on joking terms again.

"Mulder? What's wrong?" She mumbled. And of course, something WAS wrong. Incredibly so. Only Mulder would wake up in a strange hotel room covered in someone else's blood with no memory of what he was doing there. Scully made a mental note to check his water supply again before she took her big red ‘vette on a pell mell drive to a holiday inn. She found Mulder sitting in the shower with the hot water turned all the way up, shivering.

GRREEEEAAAAT.

Things only went downhill from there. The man was so pigheaded. He thought he could drive when he might have been suffering from an aneurysm. Mulder also thought he was remembering things. Things from his somewhat cloudy childhood that might shed some light on the shadowy men that both of them were working so hard to expose. He wanted to go to the town his parents used to spend their summers in. They went to a house he claimed to have been in previously. In spite of its overgrown state, inside the agents found two corpses, and inside those corpses they found slugs from Mulder's gun.

So Mulder spent the night in jail keeping his fellow inmates awake most of the night yelling for Scully. Scully, on the other hand, spent the night working to get her partner out of jail. She found enough traces of a hallucinogenic drug in Mulder's blood samples from the previous morning to have him released. He left her at the police station, but she followed him back to the overgrown summerhouse.

In the gloomy interior, Mulder was besieged by his memories. Memories so terrible as to have been buried since childhood. Scully tried to talk to him.

"Scully, go AWAY!" Mulder groaned, drawing his glock. She tried again.

"GO AWAY!" Mulder bellowed, leveling the pistol.

"Are you going to kill me too?" She watched her pain crazed partner wrestling with his subconscious. Teach me how to kill her Xena, teach me how to kill her.... kill her..... Scully's eyes widened.

"Its you." She whispered, as her eternal partner pulled the trigger.



THE END. Sort of.