Sunday morning is pancake morning, and William charges into his parents’ room just shy of 7 am. They are sleeping, his mother visible only as a tumble of red hair above the gray blankets, his father sprawled across two-thirds of the king sized bed. The cat, Scorn, is curled up between them. William cannot understand why anyone would squander a perfectly good weekend morning this way.

“Pancakes,” he says loudly, hands on his hips. He is clearly built on his father’s lanky frame, and inches of thin wrist and ankle emerge from his rocketship pajamas.

Silence from the bed. Scorn opens her green eyes to glare, then closes them again.

William lobs a few pairs of balled socks from the dresser. They bounce off of his father’s bare shoulder, but have no effect. William sighs, then focuses himself. He squints at the bed, fingers curling and uncurling at his sides.

Scorn and the bedding rise slowly into the air, then lower themselves down to the floor several feet away.

Scully yelps, then sits up. “HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU NOT TO DO THAT?”

Mulder wakes now too, blinking. “Will,” he mumbles. “Not a safe habit to be in. And you know I don’t mean waking your mother up early.”

William kicks the edge of the rug, sulky. “I’m hungry.”

“It’s not even seven,” Scully mutters, squinting in the skim-milk light. “Go…go watch some cartoons and eat sugary cereal.”

“You won’t buy any sugary cereal. We have Special K and Fiber One. And hemp granola.”

“Put some chocolate syrup on them,” she suggests, rubbing her eyes.

William scowls.

“Go get the ingredients out,” Mulder says, yawning. “And we’ll be down in a minute.”

William pads out to the hallway and heads downstairs. Scorn, also hungry, winds around his ankles.

***

Scully is in yellow pajama pants and a t-shirt from a 5k race, fiddling with the coffee pot. The great love of her life, across the kitchen in boxers and a Knicks shirt, is making deformed Mickey Mouse pancakes.

“Wow,” William says. “It looks like there was a radioactive meltdown at Disney, Dad.”

Mulder swats him with the spatula. “Let’s see you do some work here, Anthony Bourdain.”

“No, I’m happy to give feedback no one asked for. Mom, I like your freckles better than your Work Face.”

Scully adds soy milk to her coffee. “Thanks. I think.”

“Never comment on a person’s appearance unasked,” Mulder advises. He blobs batter onto the skillet, his forehead smudged with flour. Eggshells litter the kitchen island, and the cat is licking them.

“First day of spring,” Scully says, ambling over with her steaming mug, barefoot on the terra-cotta tile. She strokes her son’s head. “I was thinking we could look for a new bike for you, Will. You’ve outgrown yours.”

William looks up, gap-toothed and delighted. “Yeah? Can I get a mountain bike this time?”

“Let’s see what they’ve got, okay? But we can check out the mountain bikes. And you need a haircut for school pictures on Wednesday.”

William scoops Scorn off the counter and dances around the kitchen with her. She hangs limply from his arms. “Gon-na get a moun-tain biiiiike,” he sings. “Yeah, yeah, yeah!”

Mulder sets a plate down on the counter, then frees the cat. “Eat your radioactive pancakes first.”

William pours a generous amount of syrup on his breakfast. “I hope they mutate me. I hope I can shoot ICE out of my FACE.”

“I think you’re mutated enough,” Mulder says. “I wasn’t kidding about the blankets, bucko. It’s not a game.”

“I knowwww,” William says. “Scorn, you want mousecakes?”

Scully’s phone rings, and she mouths Skinner over William’s head. Mulder wrinkles his nose, pouring more batter onto the griddle.

“Scully,” she says, relieving her son of the syrup bottle.

“Agent Scully, this is the President,” William growls. “We need you to punch some bad guys in the butt.”

Mulder claps a hand over the boy’s mouth.

“Agent Scully, we have a rather unusual situation in Baltimore,” Skinner says, like he ever calls for usual situations. “Mmm,” she replies, putting the syrup away. She looks at William, and slowly draws a line across her throat. He nods, solemn, and his father releases him.

“An unidentified woman was found in a tree at the Cylburn Arboretum this morning,” Skinner continues. “Well, her remains.”

Scully jots this down and holds it up for Mulder to see.

“In a tree? Up in the branches?” she asks. She will not put the phone on speaker with William in the room, but holds it out so Mulder can try to hear too.

“No, inside. A hollow in the tree. There was a wedding at the arboretum last night, and the grounds crew found her this morning. A piece of fabric from one of the bridesmaid dresses was in her mouth, but the victim wasn’t a guest at the wedding.”

Mulder takes the pencil and chews on it for a moment. He writes wych elm? on the pad. Scully looks confused, then her eyebrows raise in understanding. “Sir, do you know what kind of tree it was?”

There is a long pause. “That question suggests to me you have some knowledge of what I’m about to say.”

Scully gives Mulder a thumbs up. “Have the body shipped to DC and I’ll take a look tomorrow.”

“We’d like you to see it in situ,” her boss says.

His confidence flatters and displeases. She glances at William, who is feeding pancake morsels to the cat. There is so much morning left to savor, so much glorious spring weather ahead.“Sir, we really ca-”

“Agent.”

Scully sighs. “We’ll meet you at the arboretum,” she says, then hangs up. “Shit,” she observes.

“Swear pig!” William calls out.

“William.”

“Swear pig,” he repeats, stubbornly.

Scully pinches the bridge of her nose, then withdraws a dollar from her wallet. She folds it up and stuffs it into the small ceramic bank painted like a pig in a spacesuit. “We have to go to Baltimore, buddy,” she says.

William’s face falls. “A case?”

She nods. “I’m sorry.”

William drops his fork and pushes the plate away without using his hands. “Can I go? I’ll stay in the car. I’ll be quiet. I won’t look at the gross stuff.”

“I saw the plate move, William. I’d much rather we spend the day together too, but your dad and I have to check this one out. Boss’s orders.”

“Stupid FBI. Sylvie’s mom is an accountant and Max’s mom has a cupcake bakery and Juan’s mom is a cop but not a weird cop. Can’t you have a normal job?”

Scully has often asked herself the same question, though retirement’s not that far away. Two federal pensions, cushy benefits…they could do some light consulting work if they wanted to stay in the game.

Mulder begins cleaning up the breakfast mess, loading the dishwasher as he talks. “You know, your mom and I were on COPS.”

“Mulder!” Her mouth actually falls open.

William stares. “What? You were? You were on COPS, that’s so cool!”

Mulder looks smug, while Scully seethes. “Oh, yeah,” he continues.”One of our cases kind of coincided with filming, so we ended up on the show. The camera loves your mother. Knockout.”

“Ew, Dad.”

“Mulder, I swear to God…”

Mulder shrugs, plating his final pancake. “He was bound to Google us some day.”

Scully puts another dollar in the swear pig. “That’s for what I was thinking,” she says. “William, listen. I need you to get your stuff together. Grandma or Gunmen?”

William considers this. “Do the Gunmen have the COPS episode?”

Scully glares at Mulder, her arms crossed. “I don’t know.”

“You know Frohike does,” Mulder chuckles.

He stops chuckling at the look she gives him.

***

Mulder drives their Honda Pilot well above the speed limit, hoping this mystery will unravel itself quickly. He has developed a strong taste for lazy weekends and clean sheets.

Next to him, Scully sits in a navy blue suit, wide cuffs of the trousers pushed up to reveal her shapely ankles. She’s got on Bond Girl Ray-Bans, her long hair pulled back in a loose braid. She’s sucking on an Altoid with an intensity that draws her cheeks in and purses her lips out. He finds it alluring.

“That show’s going to give him nightmares, I hope you’re happy.”

“Scully. Scully my dearest, tender angel. The child has been reading Stephen King on the sly since last year. He’s the only kid in the world who thought the flying monkeys in Oz were funny instead of being Satan’s own horde.”

Scully laughs drily. She still doesn’t like the monkeys.

“William will have a good time,” he assures her. “They can take him to get the bike. You left cash, right?”

She nods, shifting the mint in her cheek. “Yeah. It’s just…”

“I know.”

“Less fieldwork. They told us there’d be less fieldwork as he got older, but this is the fourth time since January, and it’s only late March.”

Mulder rubs a hand over his hair. “I’ll talk to Skinner again.”

“I can talk to Skinner just fine on my own. But he’s William’s godfather, and he should understand that it makes such a difference as kids get older. My dad was-” Scully bites off the end of the sentence and shakes her head.

They share this, the two of them. Fathers called away by the ring of a phone, disappearing for weeks and months. They’d promised themselves it wouldn’t be like that for William, promised themselves the pretty white house in Spring Valley would be a home.

“His life is nothing like that. But he’ll always be a Bureau kid like you’ll always be a Navy kid,” Mulder says. “Even I’ll admit the tiny badge they made him is cute. Poor Skinner though, putting another Mulder man on the force. Even unofficially.”

Scully laughs. “Quantico sent enough t-shirts to get him through college.”

“Remember that time Kersh came for his fourth birthday and you asked him to take off his shoes because of the new floors?” Mulder asks.

Scully leans back and smiles at the memory. “I didn’t know there were so many Legos on the rug,” she says.

“Liiiiarrrr,” Mulder sings, falsetto.

She pats his hand. “You’ve got nothin’ on me, copper.”

***

Cylburn Arboretum sits at the northern edge of Baltimore City, just below stylish Mount Washington and across from Sinai Hospital. The manicured grounds are presided over by a stately Victorian mansion that has alternately been a private home, an orphanage, and an event hall.

Mulder parks, jolting his pretty partner awake.

“Mmmfff,” she slurs, then tidies her hair in the side view mirror. She’s become less fastidious about styling it over the years, relying on hair ties more than hairspray. She splurged on a Brazilian blowout.

“Giddyup, buttercup.” Mulder takes one of her Altoids, crunching it loudly between his teeth. He knows this disgusts her.

“Animal,” she says, then steps out of the car. She smooths her jacket over her hips, centering herself. Working with local law enforcement strains her patience and Mulder’s manners.

It’s easy to find the crime scene on the massive grounds, cordoned off by yellow tape and police. Paper lanterns still hang from some of the trees, and the grass is littered with ribbons and crushed flowers. An angry woman is shouting at an officer.

“I don’t care about the damned crime scene,” she says, stamping her foot. “We’ve had this booked for fifteen months, do you understand? FIFTEEN MONTHS. What am I supposed to say when my guests show up? What am I supposed to say to the caterer?”

“Ma’am, we need to keep this area sealed. As I said, I’m sorry about your party, maybe you can get your deposit back or something.”

“I have people in from out of town!”

“You’ve been causing a scene here for thirty minutes and we need to get a move on. Leave, or I’ll arrest you for impeding my investigation.” The officer crossed his arms, unimpressed. He turns his back on her, then steps under the tape.

The woman starts to cry, and Scully approaches her before the cop loses patience entirely and things escalate into a sideshow. “Ma’am? Excuse me, but what time is your event?”

The woman wipes her nose on her sleeve. “Two o’clock.”

Scully bites the inside of her cheek as she checks her watch. “We’ll be out of here in time for you to get set up.”

“I know I seem like a real bitch if someone got murdered and all, but I don’t even know the person and this is my twentieth anniversary party, you know? Like I have a right not to be inconvenienced like this.”

Mulder is perpetually amused by people who hold the genuine belief that this is a right.

“I understand,” Scully says. “I do.” She shows the woman her badge, which has an immediate calming effect. “I’m with the FBI, okay? These guys have to do what I say. I want to get home too, and I’ll make that happen as fast as possible. Right now, though, I need you to head out so we can get this taken care of.

The woman nods, sniffling, and walks back towards her car.

Mulder takes her spot. “I have a right not to be inconvenienced,” he chirps. “Missed that one in Constitutional Law. They all think it falls under the Eighth.”

Scully snaps her badge against her palm. She knows what big cities can do, how they can desensitize, but the callousness angers her still. “Must be nice to be so damn entitled. Sorry this rude dead woman is hassling you. You know she’d be the one screeching about victims’ rights if the shoe were on the other foot.”

Mulder makes a jerking-off motion with his hand. “Okay. Let’s go run this circus.”

He follows slightly behind Scully to diminish the size differential; she wore flats for the grass. She strides right up to Skinner, wisps of hair coming loose from her braid and blowing around her face.

“Sir,” she says, feeling eyes on her.

“Agent Scully,” their boss intones. “Agent Mulder.”

“Ahoy-hoy.”

Skinner looks pained. He introduces them to the assembled officers and the woman from the ME’s office.

“Rani Abdelnour,” she says. “You the pathologist?”

Scully nods, and the two women walk to the wych elm. Mulder follows, pulling on gloves from his pocket. It is the platonic ideal of a tree; straight-trunked with a tremendous mounded dome of vividly green leaves. Sunlight dapples the ground beneath with patches of gold as the branches sway in the light spring breeze. It’s a tree for tire swings and clubhouses, for cardinals in winter and robins in spring. Mulder is unaccountably disgusted by its desecration

In the hollow of the wych elm is the body of a slender woman, about Scully’s build, really, with a thick fall of long, dark hair. Her arms and knees are drawn into the fetal position, and blowflies buzz around her face. Her eyes are open and cloudy, lips blue. In her mouth is a piece of what looks to be pale purple satin. She’s missing her left hand below the wrist.

Scully pulls on a pair of gloves and pokes at a small, round wound in the woman’s lower abdomen. “Temp probe?”

Abdelnour nods. “Based on the weather, with her cooling, I’d put time of death around 10 PM.”

“Hmmm,” Scully says, prodding a cluster of fly eggs near the mouth. They look like tiny grains of rice.

Skinner strides over next to Mulder. “They found her about 6 this morning.”

“You didn’t call until after 8.”

They both watch Scully gently brush the woman’s long hair from her face, searching her slender neck for injury. They both wince when Scully probes the eyeballs up under the lids.

“Get you a girl who can do both, sir.”

Skinner makes a face that could either be indigestion or a smile. “I called after 8 because I’m not a damned wizard, Mulder. I got a call from a friend in Baltimore Homicide who knows your work. Right now we’re just here to lend support. It’s their investigation.” He holds out a small paper gift bag, silver and purple, ornamented with silver and purple ribbons and tulle.

Mulder takes the bag. From it he withdraws a champagne flute, a small box of chocolates stamped with the couple’s name, a flash drive similarly labeled, and a rectangular card posing the question Who put Bella in the wych-elm?

Mulder opens his mouth to speak when his phone rings. It’s Byers. “Hey,” says, glancing at Skinner. “Everything okay?”

“Sorry to bother you, Mulder. William wants to know if he can get a new helmet too. There’s one with a green mohawk on the website and I said I had to ask. Scully didn’t answer.”

Mulder glances at his beloved, who is unspooling purple fabric from a dead woman’s mouth. “Go for it,” he says. “Gotta run.” He disconnects the call.

He puts the bag and its contents on the ground, save for the card. He turns it over in his gloved hands, and sees smudges of black powder. “No prints, I take it?”

Skinner shrugs. “Nothing with powder or ALS, though it’s so bright out that doesn’t mean anything. We’ll take it and the others back to the lab for ninhydrin once they get them all in.”

“Others?”

Skinner nods. “One in every guest bag, we believe.”

Mulder groans. The amount of contamination will be staggering. Luckily, crime scene processing isn’t his problem.

“Sir!” Scully calls. “I need a tarp.”

Skinner yells for someone to fetch one, then addresses Mulder. “Tell me what the fuck is going on.”

“Swear pig,” Mulder says.

Skinner smiles genuinely this time. “Sorry I had to drag you away. I’ll get you some baseball tickets, skybox. Make it up to the kid.” His affection for William is deep, unmitigated by any prior frustration with his parents.

Mulder shrugs, knowing it’s not a matter of simple arithmetic or substitution. “You must know a bit or you wouldn’t have called.”

“Googling wych elm turned up a lot of weird conspiracy theories. Let’s hear your distilled version.“

Mulder cracks his knuckles. “In April of 1943, four boys were poaching birds’ nests in Hagley Wood. Upon climbing a tree in pursuit of a nest, the youngest of the boys looked down into the hollow of a wych elm and was horrified to see a human skeleton curled inside. The boys fled in terror, and agreed upon a pact of silence to conceal their own illegal activity.

“One of their number, however, was frightened beyond loyalty and revealed all that had occurred to his parents. The police then made their way to Hagley Wood and recovered the body of the long-dead victim. They discovered several curious facts about her.” Here Mulder pauses to watch Scully attempt to tug the woman from the tree onto the tarp.

“Like what?” Skinner asks. “Curious facts solve cases.”

“Item the first,“ Mulder says, holding up a finger. “She had a gold ring upon her finger, eliminating robbery as a motive. Item the second, there was taffeta wedged in her mouth. Item the third, despite seeming to have had recent dental work, her dental records matched none on file. Item the fourth, she was estimated to have been dead about a year and a half, but thought to have been placed in the tree almost immediately after her death. Item the fifth, one of her hands was found some ways away from her wrist.”

“But why’s she called Bella? That’s where I lost the story to subreddits and a bad wifi signal.” Skinner grimaces at the memory.

“Reddit isn’t good for you, sir. In Agent Scully’s expert medical opinion.”

“Nobel Prize for Agent Scully.”

Mulder scans the sky. He could be putting together William’s new bike right now, could be living hundreds of different lives, but here he is in this one. “Well, the story was strange, to be sure, but after the woman and her killer remained unidentified, it sort of faded away under the grim specter of World War II. But six months after the unlucky boys , found her, graffiti appeared. The first asked Who put Luebella down the wych–elm? Next came Hagley Wood Bella. Finally, our mystery artist settled on the now familiar Who put Bella in the wych-elm? And Bella she’s been ever since. The graffiti appears every few years, apparently in the same handwriting, but little more has anyone learned of her, or how she ended up in that lonely tree at Hagley Wood.”

Skinner whistles. “You must have been a son of a gun at Boy Scout campfires, Mulder.”

“Indian Guide, sir.”

Scully, sweaty and irritable, stalks over. Her braid has been converted to a messy bun at the nape of her neck. “She’s in full rigor. You’ll have to either wait or cut the tree if you want her.”

Skinner looks put out, his imposing brow furrowed. “How long?”

“It’s still cool at night, so onset of rigor was delayed some. With her mass and the shade temperature….you’ve probably got most of the afternoon before she’ll be flexible enough to pull out.”

Skinner crosses his arms. “I’m not leaving her in the goddamned tree all day.”

Scully looks at him with frank gratitude. She is protective of the dead.

“Do you have to cut the whole thing down, Scully?” Mulder asks. He doesn’t believe the tree should die for this crime.

“Goodness, no, it’s just her shoulders that won’t fit. If you can get her shoulders free, the rest will come.”

Perversely, Mulder recalls Lamaze, where they’d had a similar conversation. He couldn’t imagine an entire person passing through Scully’s narrow hips.

“Do it,” Skinner says.

Scully heads back to the officers, organizing them to do her bidding. She’s brisk and efficient, nipping at their heels like a herding dog. “So. The cards in the bags,” Mulder says. “Tell me about those. Obviously a bonus gift.”

Skinner nods, watching the proceedings at the tree. He’s always looked at Scully with a certain wistfulness that Mulder can simultaneously appreciate and resent.

Skinner shakes his head. “That’s the question. The bags were in the bride’s mother’s care until she gave them to the caterer to set out at each place.” Mulder considers this. “Putting one in each bag once they were on the tables would have been awfully suspicious. So let’s focus on the window of time they were out of her sight, unless we think Mumsie had a thing against Bella.”

“Mumsie’s a paraplegic,” Skinner replies.

“Let’s exclude her for now, then, shall we?”

“It seems polite.”

They stare across the grass a while longer, watching as Bella is drawn back into the world by the hands of the waiting doctors.

***

As the case still officially belongs to Baltimore, OCME takes the body downtown to Pratt Street. Mulder and Scully follow, with Scully grousing behind the wheel of the Pilot. She likes driving when she’s angry.

“Material support,” she says. “Honestly. Like we’re folding chairs loaned out to a friend.”

Mulder is wise enough to remain silent, though he shares her annoyance. But given their reputation, they’ve found it to be best practice for only one of them to be demonstrably irrational at a time.

“Abdelnour seems competent, at least,” she says, squealing off the ramp at President Street. “Superficially, I agree with her on time of death.”

“Jesus, Scully. She’ll still be dead when we get there,” Mulder yelps as they zip through a yellow light. He flinches as she swerves around a bus.

Scully ignores him and weaves past two garbage trucks to make a point. “I’m driving,” she reminds him.

“And God help us all. You want me in there while you’re working, or should I prowl around the labs?”

Scully considers this as she makes the left onto Penn, across from Shock Trauma. A helicopter is landing on the roof. “Stay with me, would you? We can bounce a few ideas around, plus they’re still gathering all those cards and interviewing people. There won’t be much to see yet.”

Mulder nods, unbuckling his seatbelt only after she’s parked and turned the car off. “I still think you missed your calling as a NASCAR driver,” he remarks as they step into the warm sunshine.

She snorts. “They just go in a circle.”

“Maybe you can be in the next Fast and Furious. They’ll call it Capital Drift and it can be about a daredevil suburban-mom-slash-FBI-agent who curb jumps to get a prime spot in the carpool line while also pursuing fugitives from justice.”

“You baby,” she says, as they head inside. “I didn’t even lay any rubber.”

***

Scully, scrubbed in borrowed gear, surveys Bella. The woman is curled on her side on a stainless steel table. Skinner has managed to get them into the one private room at OCME, usually reserved for decomps, and she sensed the resentment in the general bay. The room was cramped and poorly lit by fluorescent lighting, and she stalked through it with her chin up. She is not interested in making friends.

“I wish the new building were done,” she grumbles. “This place is a dump.”

Mulder does not disagree. He pulls on purple nitrile gloves and wiggles his fingers. “Whatcha need?”

Scully sighs. “She’s still in rigor, so this is a challenge. I’m going to do my best, but it won’t be great. Take notes while I talk for now. There’s no mic in here.”

Mulder poises his pen over the clipboard.

Scully crouches down behind Bella, examining her back and legs. They are lean, but not particularly muscular. “Note that livor is fixed in her buttocks and upper legs. Wherever she was killed, she wasn’t there long. All the blood pooled while she was in the tree. There’s no secondary pattern to indicate movement after significant delay.”

She examines the bloody stump where Bella’s left hand used to be. “No blood at the scene, which doesn’t necessarily indicate it was removed elsewhere. If she died there, our killer could have waited a bit, then come back and lopped it off over a bag or something. I doubt she was alive, or there would have been arterial spray.”

Mulder looks up from his clipboard. “Seems risky.”

“Yeah, it does. I mean, the timing of the whole thing is weird though. Hang on, I want to look at the wrist again.” She squints at the blunt end of the wrist, rubs a gloved finger over it. “There’s no crushing of the bone, no saw marks, and the soft tissue is cut perfectly with the bone itself. I’m going to say a limb cutter, one for thick branches, did this.”

“Probably easy to find at an arboretum. If you know where to look.”

“If you know where to look”, she repeats.

Mulder finishes writing. “So tell me about the timing.”

Scully sighs, frustrated. The timeline has been irking her since they arrived on the scene. “Well, here’s what I know. Based on her temperature, based on rigor and lividity and the insect eggs, I’m in agreement that 10 PM seems a reasonable time of death. They’re running vitreous upstairs, and Abdelnour says they’ve got the new SVM regression analysis software.”

Mulder looks at her blankly.

“The potassium levels in the vitreous humor in the eyes changes in a predictable way,” she explains, wishing he shared her appreciation for the elegance of the human machine, both in its structure and its eventual breakdown.

“Ah.”

“Speaking of her eyes, incidentally, I see no evidence of sufficient petechiae to suspect manual strangulation. But going with 10 for our TOD, even with plus or minus an hour on either side, here’s what I know. The guests finished dessert around 8:30. There was dancing until almost midnight, on an outdoor dance floor. So based on external observations thus far, she either died in the tree, or was put into it very shortly after death. There’s no way she went in there after 1:30 AM.”

Mulder is thoughtful. “The pathologist who examined Bella the First in ‘43 said she must have been put in right after she died because she wouldn’t have fit after rigor set.”

Scully shakes her head in exasperation. “That’s bad science, Mulder. It’s assuming. She might well have been put in after she left rigor; that body was skeletonized. It’s a classic case and they did a reasonable job, but forensic science then wasn’t what it is now. For all we know the original Bella was refrigerated for months and months before she was put into the tree. They estimated the PMI to be about 18 months in that case.”

“Any signs of refrigeration on this body?”

“Fresh as a daisy.” Scully examines Bella’s face and the fingertips of her right hand. She sniffs at her nose and mouth, speaking slowly as she does so. “Thus far, I see no evidence of corrosive agents, poisoning by cyanide compounds, ethers, paraldehyde, phenols, copper, endrin, phosphorus compounds, aniline, nitrates, potassium chlorate, camphor or carbon monoxide asphyxia.”

“Got it,” Mulder says, scribbling rapidly. “So what the hell did kill her? You’ve ruled out most everything I can think of.”

“Oh, we’ll tease it out.” Scully says, warming to the challenge. “She’ll tell us.” She tries unsuccessfully to pry the dead woman’s arms apart. “Might have to get you to help me dislocate her shoulders.”

Mulder grimaces, impressed that Scully can still find new ways to disgust him. “Not exactly on my bucket list. So, okay. She’s dead by 10-ish, in the tree by 1:30 at the latest. That’s a small window, but I’d like it narrowed. No one the cops talked to recognized her, including the bride and groom. She wasn’t a bridesmaid, but the fabric in her mouth, the purple taffeta, looks the same as the bridesmaid dresses. Any of the bridesmaids missing their frocks? Forget it during a quickie with the bartender?”

Scully, massaging the scalp, shakes her head. “No. And it’s hard to narrow the window on the front end. The bags were already on the tables by the time she was dead. The killer took a chance that someone would see the cards and investigate the wych elm before Bella was in it, or possibly even catch him in the the act. I guess if we put her in the tree after everyone leaves it makes more sense. The place was completely cleared by 12:15 according to the grounds crew. So we can narrow it to an hour and fifteen minutes to get her in the tree.”

Scully’s deft fingers sense an irregularity on the scalp. “Aha!” she says, and peels it open with a scalpel. Bella’s thick hair is in the way, and Scully cuts a long hank off. It drops pitifully to the linoleum floor.

Mulder looks over her shoulder. “What is it?”

“Hematoma. She got hit fairly hard with something, like a sap or a little blackjack probably. There’s blood matted in her hair. My money says she was unconscious when she died.” Scully is comforted by this development. It was sad to think of Bella alert to the festivities surrounding her.

Mulder’s phone rings. “Ah, shit,” he says. “Gunmen trying to FaceTime.”

Scully pulls off her gloves. There’s no blood on her scrubs yet. “Here, just…Mulder. Stop. Face that way because we don’t need the body on full display.” She positions them both safely, and Mulder answers.

“Hi!” William says. He is beaming, wearing a black bike helmet with a green rubber mohawk on top. “Look what they got me!”

“Mulder said it was okay!” Langley calls from the background.

Scully hides a smile. All this time, and Langley is still somewhat afraid of her. “It looks great, buddy,” she says.

“Very cool,” Mulder assures him. “Tres punk. Did you pick a bike?”

“Yeah! It’s so cool, it’s designed by this guy who was in the X Games? And it has this, like, spinny part on the handlebars? It’s metallic blue.”

“Let’s see it,” Scully says. She is happy that she can give her son these things, that Mulder’s appalling family history has done some small good after all. Her own childhood was hand-me-downs and thrift shops.

William scratches his chin under the clasp. “They’re having the guy at the store put it together. We’re home now though, at our house, and we have your COPS episode.”

Scully groans. “William, I really think you-”

“You SAID I could!”

She hadn’t, but she hadn’t said no, either.

“It’s on now. Whoa, mom! Your HAIR!”

Mulder takes the phone. “Lemme see.”

William, cackling, turns to show the television.

Mulder grins as he watches himself. Scully is pleased to see she looks as annoyed as she remembers feeling. Hand over the lens, very nice.

“We look good,” Mulder says. They were so young, he thinks. So earnest and sharp and young.

“Werewolves,” comes William’s voice, off screen. “Why are you so weird?”

“The greatest mystery of them all,” Scully remarks fondly.

William pauses the show, turning the camera back on himself. “Are you doing an autopsy?” he asks. “Is there a dead guy with with you right now? Can I see?”

“No dead guy,” Mulder says, which is, at least, technically true. “Now hang up and go do something wholesome, like watching your parents chase a werewolf with your degenerate uncles.”

“I’m not a degenerate,” protests Byers.

“I am,” Frohike says, cheerful.

“Bye!” shouts William, and the screen goes black.

“He’s going to be in therapy forever,” Scully observes. “And it wasn’t a werewolf.”

“Spoilers,” Mulder chides.

Scully returns her attention to the body. “Anyway. Where was I?”

Mulder consults his notes. “Unconscious when she died.”

“Right. So we have three scenarios. He gets a dead woman in, he gets a live woman in and kills her, he gets a live but unconscious woman in and kills her.”

Mulder considers this. “Maybe she was somebody’s plus-one? New girlfriend, and that’s why no one recognized her?”

Scully probes the scalp further, and is satisfied that there is no other damage. She peels it down Bella’s forehead to expose the skull. “Also risky. Someone might remember who showed up with her.”

Mulder sticks his tongue out. “Aren’t you a little killjoy?”

She smiles and bats her lashes. “Don’t stick it out if you’re not going to use it.”

He is delighted. “Dana Scully, are you flirting with me over a corpse?”

“I think that describes approximately forty percent of our relationship.”

“Probably more like fifty.”

“Mmm. I think this is a guy who used the wedding as a cover. Found a place with a wych elm, then made it work. Hand me that bone saw, would you?”

He passes it over, stepping back when she turns it on. “The date’s interesting. Vernal equinox.”

Scully makes quick work with the Stryker and skull key, removing a cap of bone so that she can get the brain out. “Hematoma is subdural but relatively minor and unlikely fatal,” she reports, prodding. “About two inches in diameter. Write that down.”

“Yes’m.”

“Now, why is the vernal equinox interesting? Is there some history of sacrifice? I thought that was more a solstice thing.” Scully cuts through the brainstem with her scalpel, cupping the organ gently.

“That’s mostly among Celts. Norse pagans and some Germanic tribes had four blót sacrifices a year, on the solstices and equinoxes. Equinoces?”

“Equinoctes.” She looks up, brain quivering in her hands as she chooses a knife and begins to dissect. “Blood sacrifices?”

“Blót. Actually, it’s kind of redundant. It was basically the word for sacrifice, though it’s etymologically related to the word blood. While those tribes did practice human sacrifice, there’s no evidence they did it at these four prescribed times. It was usually horses and cows, and part of a big feast.”

Scully adores his rambling esoterica, the earnest passion he applies to arcane affairs. She worries sometimes that it is unwise to love so profoundly.

“So a wedding feast might be a good place to conduct a sacrifice, if one were flexible about the particulars of the sacrificial mammal?” she queries.

“It might indeed. But Bella’s body bears no resemblance to the rites that would have been performed. No sprinkled blood or anything. And the hand is curious.”

“It is curious.” She sees a familiar twitch at Mulder’s mouth. “Let’s hear it,” she says.

He puts his hands on the table, leaning forward. “I have a theory.”

Scully grins, anticipatory. “Yeah?”

Mulder drums his fingers next to Bella’s head, grinning back. “Hand of Glory.”

She is surprised. “A Hand of Glory is the preserved hand of a dead murderer, taken from the condemned at the gibbet,” she says. “It’s believed to render light only to the holder.”

“Yeah, and also to stop time for everyone else.”

Scully considers this. “Help me move her arms while I think,” she says.

Mulder makes a face of dismay. “Must we?”

“‘Fraid so. I’m thinking….hmmm. Okay, so, I’m going to roll her over, then get on the table.”

“You can’t be serious.”

Scully’s already got the body on her back. “Now you just hold her steady so I have some leverage, okay?”

Mulder, wide-eyed, does as she asks. “Is this, like, a technical procedure you learn at pathology school?”

Scully hoists herself onto the table to kneel beside the body. She huffs an errant strand of hair out of her face. “Okay, so you hold her neck and ribcage right…yeah. Like that. And I’m going to juuuuust…”

She rotates the bent arm back, as though Bella is about to pitch a baseball. The body is incredibly stiff, and Scully puts her full weight into the motion. There is a sickening pop and the dislocated arm flops back beside Bella’s head.

“Jesus fuck,” Mulder breathes, with horrified fascination.

Scully is pleased with herself. “Swear pig,” she says. “Now the other one.” She maneuvers carefully over the body to repeat the process on the right arm. She now has nearly full access to the torso, with the arms and head block stabilizing Bella.

Mulder helps her off the table. “William thinks I’m the weird one,” he says. “That boy has no idea.”

As if on cue, his phone rings again. He answers it, exasperated. “Kiddo, this really isn’t a good-”

“The FBI has nothing to hide!” William crows. “Dad, you’re a terrible marriage counselor.” Then he hangs up.

Scully crosses her arms. “Fox. William. Mulder.”

He holds his hands up, sheepish. “It may not have been my best idea, okay? But at least it wasn’t the movie, right?”

“Do not. Ever. Speak to me. Of that.” She can feel herself blushing, even after so much time. How had they ever been convinced to play along with such rubbish? At least COPS made her look like an officer of the law.

“We had fun after though, huh? On the Bureau’s dime?”

Scully admits that this is so.

“Of course, it was the least Skinner could do after he got with my woman.”

Mulder ducks when she throws a box of gloves at him.

Scully returns her attention to the cadaver, making a Y incision that stops a bit short owing to the position of Bella’s knees. While Mulder tries to look anywhere but at the body, she removes the ribs and clavicle with the Stryker. “No evident congestion of blood,” she says, poking around at the glistening organs. She presses on the lungs to check for fluid, but there’s no evidence of that either.

She’s about to begin the organ removal when a notion strikes her. Working gently from the point where Bella’s clavicles meet, she slips her hand up the woman’s neck and frees her tongue from the floor of her mouth. She pulls the insides of her throat out through the base of her neck. Carefully, Scully slices the trachea open, reflecting the delicate tissues like unopened petals on a flower bud. And there, nestled inside, she sees it. Pale pink, gelatinous, delicately foamy, it looks like a sea creature without its shell.

“Hello, beautiful,” Scully whispers to the little plug of mucus. She looks up at Mulder, her eyes bright with triumph. “Bella drowned.”

***

It was a quiet ride home, Scully making notes in the margins of his transcripts while she chugged gas station coffee, oblivious to the road outside. 95 is a dirty grey artery down the east coast, and they’ve seen nearly every mile of it, from Florida to Maine.

Mulder kept his hand at the back of her neck, stroking the tender skin behind her ear as he drove.He parks in the driveway, beneath the gold and purple sky. The Gunmen’s van is centered in the garage.

He and Scully get out of the Pilot, stretching, and head in through the front door. William, still in his bike helmet, is playing Kerplunk with Byers and Langley at the coffee table. He jumps up when he sees his parents.

“You’re home! Did you solve it already? Did you kung fu him?”

Scully crouches down for a hug. “We’re getting there.”

Mulder waves at his friends, integral members of the family he and Scully have built. “You saved the day,” he tells them. “You’ll see it in the paper tomorrow.”

Frohike straightens up on the couch. “It’s really a badass bike, Mulder. You’ll love it.”

Mulder kneels to hug his son’s narrow frame. He rubs his hand over the nubbly rubber of the green mohawk. “Have you guys eaten? You want to order something?”

William stands up, patting his stomach. “Four guys went to Five Guys.”

“Cholesterol Castle,” Langley says.

“We can’t thank you enough,” Scully says, shrugging out of her jacket. Her white blouse gaps across her breasts as she does, and the Gunmen lower their eyes.

“Dad!” William says, hopping around. “The fear monster! That was so creepy and cool. Did you ever find it? Mom told you it wasn’t a werewolf and she was right but like, it was way scarier.”

“It wasn’t a werewolf,” Scully says, prim.

Mulder untucks his shirt, his tie having been abandoned during the drive. “Whatever it was, we never found it,” he says. “But it never showed up again, so you don’t have to worry.”

“I’m not worried. I wanna catch it!” His brow furrows. “Did Steve and Edy work it out?”

“Happily ever after.”

“Good,” William says. “They were nice.”

“God, those were the days,” Frohike says, nostalgically. Scorn is kneading his thigh. “Crazy stuff. Hacking for you two, breaking and entering, black ops.”

William perks up. “Tell me stuff,” he says. “Tell me more stuff you guys did.”

Langley, on the floor, glances at Scully. “Lots of computer stuff,” he says. “We were the original Geek Squad.”

Byers rises, brushing off his argyle vest. He holds out his hand to the boy. “Let’s go show mom and dad your bike, huh?”

The six of them head out to the deck, into the gloaming. Evergreen hedges and fences separate the houses, but on the deck it is possible to see the whole patchwork of the neighborhood. Early gardens, basketball nets, decorative ponds and swingsets. The new bike is a shiny cobalt color, with thick tires and sleek lines. Mulder tells himself it looks too big for William, for his little son.

“Wow,” Scully says, running a hand along it. “Will, it’s terrific.”

William hugs himself. “I knowwwww. We can take it on trails, it’s going to be amazing.”

Mulder palms the mohawk again. “You picked a winner. Now go upstairs and get ready for bed. We’ll be up in a few to tuck you in.”

Frohike punches Mulder in the shoulder. “Nice job on the miracle baby,” he says.

***

Scully’s in bed by the time he comes up, the stairs creaky under his feet. She has crime scene photos strewn across the comforter, and there is moisturizer on her forehead.

He loves the bones of her face, the fine architecture of her straight nose and long jaw. He loves her uneven top lip, and the tendons of her white neck. He loves the haughty grace of her eyebrows.

“God, you’re hot,” he says, sliding in next to her. The sheets are wonderfully cool and crisp.

“Har har.” She moves her papers out of his way.

“No, I mean it. Those glasses….I’m thinking about hanky panky at the Library of Congress.”

Scully rolls her eyes. “I was looking at the photos again, Mulder, and it occurs to me you never finished with your Hand of Glory thought.”

He looks at her, surprised. “Really? You want to hear that?”

She shrugs, her breasts shifting under the faded navy blue tank top. “Ideas go places.”

“Come here and I’ll tell you.” He props himself up against the bank of tastefully coordinated throw pillows.

She shifts so that she is leaning against him, her head on his chest. He strokes her freckled arm with his fingertips. “So I’m thinking her hand was cut off before he brought her in. If he used it as a Hand of Glory somehow, it would explain why nobody saw anything. It lets him put those cards in. It lets him put her in the tree, unseen, and leave, unseen.”

Scully plays with the end of her braid. “Let’s entertain this for a moment. The Hand of Glory is supposed to be from a murderer.”

“Well, she hasn’t been identified. Maybe she is.”

“Taken from the gibbet. Ignoring 1943 Bella, our Bella was most definitely not hanged.”

Mulder considers this. “True. But we don’t hang people anymore. Maybe it’s the intent with which the person was killed, you know? Maybe she did kill someone and her killer he…maybe he pronounced judgement over her before killing her. Going back to the idea of Norse Pagans-”

“They would throw a spear over their enemies to dedicate the deaths to Odin.” Scully mimes this.

Mulder kisses the top of her head. “Have I mentioned that you’re hot? Talk more pre-Christian mythology to me, baby.”

Scully laughs her wonderfully goofy laugh. “So let’s work with this. What do we know about the first Bella?”

Mulder closes his eyes to think. “There was some conjecture that she was a Nazi spy named Clara Bauerle.”

“Conjecture from whom?”

Mulder opens his eyes. “There was a woman named Anna who was dribbling information to the police in ‘53 about some cabaret singer, then a guy named Donald McCormick wrote a book in ‘68 called Murder by Witchcraft. Said the woman was a spy recruited by the Abwehr, that her name was Clarabella. Supports the graffiti, anyway.”

“Well, a German spy could certainly be construed as a murderer, especially at the time. But you said Clara Bauerle.”

“Yeah, so, declassified intelligence reveals that a Czech spy arrested by the British government in ‘41 was carrying a picture of this woman named Clara Bauerle. He said she was his girlfriend, an actress and cabaret singer who had been recruited by the Nazis and was supposed to parachute into England in ‘41.”

Scully looks thoughtful. “Interesting, but hardly proof. Though it explains why her dental records never matched up. Still, though…”

“Clara Bauerle to Clarabella to Bella is hardly a stretch. And there are no more public appearances or recordings of Clara after 1941, which is when this Czech guy said her mission was going to begin.”

“So let’s go another step. Let’s say it was this spy, this Clara Bauerle. It still doesn’t answer the graffiti, does it? It still doesn’t tell us who put Bella in the wych elm.”

“Anna, our friend from 1953, sheds some light on this. She says Bella was a Dutch woman who had illegally immigrated to England in about 1941, and that she was a dance hall girl who became involved in a spy ring involving a British officer, a local Dutch man, and another performer, an acrobat, who were giving information to the Luftwaffe. Clara somehow ran afoul of them, and they killed her.”

“Dutch,” muses Scully, former German student. “Deutsche.”

“Attagirl.” He thinks of her mind as an endless library, layering back on itself like a golden spiral.

“Were any of those mentioned ever identified?” she asks. “I mean the acrobat or anyone.”

“The officer was. He died in an insane asylum right around when the coroner estimates Bella was murdered.”

She picks up a picture of their current Bella’s hand. “The book from ‘68. You said it was called Murder by Witchcraft. The Nazis were obsessive occultists.”

“The Abwehr had an entire occult office.”

Scully presses her palms to her eyes. “This is hard for me.”

“I know,” he says softly.

Scully drops her hands to her lap. “When I found out I was pregnant with William, I didn’t ask too many questions. I was…I was afraid to have them answered, you know?”

“It’s okay, Scully, if you don’t want to talk about this.”

She shakes her head. “No, it’s fine. It’s good. He was born and he did these things. These miraculous things. And I couldn’t explain them, I didn’t have you there. I tried so hard to force it all to fit into my reality and I understood, eventually, that reality couldn’t be limited to what I was willing to accept. It had to include the facts of my experience.”

He knows the breathless shock of a sudden change in worldview. The truth of Samantha’s disappearance, the sudden swell of William in Scully’s taut belly when he awoke at the hospital.

She traces circles on his forearm. “I’m never going to be like you. I’m never going to look for the same things. But if we find the same things while we look, I can accept them. I can see them now.” She wraps her arms around him, burrowed close.

Mulder unbraids her hair, running his fingers through it until she falls asleep.

***

The alarm goes off at 5. He’d drifted off with Scully propped against him, her glasses now on her forehead.

“Pssst,” he says.

She grunts unhappily. “Turninoff.”

“Not until you’re up. You’ll be mad if I let you oversleep.”

Scully turns and stretches, limbering her arms and neck from their cramped posture. “Fine. I’m up.” She pats around for her glasses, sheepish when she finds them. “Sorry I crashed.”

“I liked it.”

They dress for their run in the quiet dark, William breathing evenly down the hall. Scorn mews for her breakfast, which Scully gives her.

They head outside into the stillness of the morning, their footsteps no louder than pebbles in a pond.

The streetlamps make halos on her hair.

***

They drop William off at 7:45. Scully groans inwardly when she sees Heather outside, directing carpool traffic in an orange safety vest. She turns around to William. “Got your lunch and your picture money?”

He holds up both items. “Scully, I appreciate it. You don’t want me looking foolish.”

“Nice kid you’re raising,” Mulder says from the driver’s seat.

“Not on a Monday, boys. William, Grandma might be picking you up from after-care today, okay? If we’re running late. If so, we’ll meet you at baseball practice with dinner.”

He nods. “I have another loose tooth.” He demonstrates this with his tongue as they pull up to the curb.

“Gross. Okay, have a great day!” She blows a kiss in his general direction as he hops out of the car, slamming the door behind him.

“Nail that vocab test!” Mulder calls through the open window. They’re about to pull away when Heather walks over. She raps on Scully’s doorframe.

“Hi, Dana! Hi, Fox,” she says brightly. “So I just have a quick question.”

Scully smiles and feels like her mouth has too many teeth in it. “Good morning Heather.”

“So as you knoooooow, I’m the class mom for William’s grade.”

No shit, Scully thinks. You’ve been class mom since kindergarten. And micromanaged every bake sale and school event since. “Yep,” she replies.

“And pictures are on Wednesday and William is the only one who hasn’t turned his money in. Sooooo, it would just be a shame if he couldn’t participate so I wanted to just give you a lil’ reminder.” She completes this with a huge grin, as though she isn’t a condescending pain in the ass.

“Great,” Scully says. “Thanks. He’s actually got the envelope with him now, so he’ll give it to the teacher.”

Heather beams. “So glad you’re on top of it! I know how hard it is for working parents, my gosh. I’ll make sure Mrs. Lewis gets it from him. Kids can be so forgetful, am I right?”

“How thoughtful of you,” she says, because it’s easy. These are not the politics that interest her.

Heather waves a dismissive hand, laughing. “I mean hello, that’s what I’m here for!”

“How blessed we are,” Mulder says, eyes wide with conviction, “to have you watching over our child when we can’t be there.”

Heather’s smile dims a few watts. “Well, you know, it takes a village, right?”

Scully waggles her fingers goodbye while she rolls up the window. “They’d never convict me,” she says, as Mulder pulls back onto the main road. “A jury of my peers would understand that a person can only take so many badly photoshopped newsletters before she snaps.”

“At least our village has an idiot,” he says brightly. “As all first rate villages do.”

“And those kids of hers,” Scully continues. “I don’t think they can wipe their own behinds. She wants to imply William’s going to forget to turn in his money, but I had to tie her little Alice’s shoes for her. The child is eleven. ELEVEN, Mulder.”

“Go on, make friends with her. Drink moscato and discuss the finer points of Fifty Shades.”

Scully narrows her eyes, unamused. “It’s different for you, you know. You can laugh it off, but I have to deal with this stupid shit differently. You’re the dad. If you remember your kid’s name people act like you’re a hero. Meanwhile I make a snack that’s not nut free, gluten free, vegan, locally sourced and the Heathers of the world gossip about me at pilates.”

Mulder blinks, surprised. “Do you care if they gossip about you at pilates?”

“That’s not the point,” she snaps. She doesn’t know what the point is, just that the whole thing annoys her. And her annoyance then becomes self-propagating, like bacteria on a dish.

“Did you have coffee today?” he asks, hoping for concern rather that patronization.

“No,” Scully snaps. “But that’s not the point either.”

***

They sit in front of Skinner in their familiar chairs. Mulder wonders how many hours they’ve logged in these seats compared to other agents. He suspects the scale may have to be expressed logarithmically.

Skinner eyebrows are riding high on his forehead. “Dry drowning, Scully?”

She tucks her hair behind her ear, runs her tongue over her top lip. “It accounts for only between 1-2% of all drowning deaths. It’s incredibly difficult to diagnose without prior knowledge of the victim having been submerged or otherwise exposed to water, but I believe the mucus plug in this case is more than sufficient evidence. I also found possible evidence of pulmonary edema, which is consistent with my diagnosis.”

“And that’s because….?”

“Sir, if you examine page 6 of our report, you’ll see I’ve included a diagram and explanations, which I’m happy to clarify.” She waits, alert, as Skinner shuffles pages.

“I sketched that,” Mulder chimes in. “I’m not trying to brag, but you know, I think it’s pretty good.”

“I’ll have it hung on the fridge, Mulder. Scully, you reference waterboarding in this report. The specific point of waterboarding, I might remind you, is its non-lethality.”

Scully shifts in her seat, her brow prickling. She was afraid of this. “Absolutely, and it was not my intent to make any commentary on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques in an official report. What I intended to indicate is that the fabric in her mouth could have been used in the same way washcloths are often used in the waterboarding technique.

“Mmm,” Skinner says. “So here’s what I’m getting. She was knocked unconscious, placed in the tree, her mouth and nose were covered with this fabric, water was dribbled onto the fabric while her head was tipped back. The water flowed up into her nasopharynx - am I saying that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. And this water triggered her larynx to spasm, cutting off airflow, which made a plug of mucus and blood in her trachea.” Skinner peers over his glasses.

“Please note that I shaded the mucus plug pink,” Mulder adds. “For verisimilitude.”

Skinner glowers. “Is there evidence of this on the fabric, Scully?”

Scully, still antsy about alluding to torture, nods. “At first I just thought the fabric was wet from being in her mouth, but when I checked the levels of amylase and other salivary enzymes, they were too low to account for that amount of moisture.”

Skinner nods slowly. “This is very impressive in such a short amount of time. Scully, remove the term waterboarding from your report, but I’m otherwise happy to sign off. Can we talk suspects? I’ve got pictures of Bella all over the news and Internet, hoping someone will recognize her. No dice yet.”

“My turn,” Mulder says.

“The piece de resistance, no doubt. Let’s hear it.”

“Based on the similarities to the 1943 case and Scully’s autopsy report, I’ve worked up a profile of a likely suspect.”

Skinner frowns. “If the case was never solved, how’d you do that?”

Mulder and Scully exchange a glance. “Based on what we’ve read about the case, it seems likely that the killer in this case bears many similarities to the other. One of the most likely suspects for the 1943 case was a British officer involved in a spy ring.”

“So you’ve solved two murders since yesterday morning? Shall I ring MI5?”

“It’s true, sir,” Scully says. “His name was given to the Home Office, and when those files were declassified, it’s found that he died in a mental institution in 1942, not long after the the woman in the tree is estimated to have died.”

“It’s possible killing Bella was the apotheosis of a mental breakdown that led to his being institutionalized.” Mulder, in fact, has far more conspiratorial thoughts about why the man might have ended up in an institution, but chooses not to share them with a government man.

“All right,” Skinner says. “ So you’re thinking a military guy?”

Mulder nods. “Specifically suffering from psychological trauma, likely PTSD with episodes of extreme paranoia. This will be a guy who has withdrawn from his family and friends, probably living in seclusion. I’m thinking white, mid thirties. He’ll be educated, and likely have a degree in history. The past will be very real to him, and he’ll be pleased with making a connection to a case as relatively obscure as 1943 Bella. My guess is a special ops guy, given Scully’s report. He’ll feel the woman has committed a crime.”

Skinner appears to be digesting this. “So I need an APB out for a mentally ill soldier using one of the most controversial interrogation techniques on innocent women at weddings. Do you know the level of shit this is going to bring down?”

Mulder winces. “It sounds pretty bad when you say it like that,” he admits. “Though as to her innocence, I did make a note on that.”

Scully cuts him a warning look.

Skinner flips a few pages. “Yeah, this Hand of Glory thing?”

“We found the symbolism significant,” Scully interjects hurriedly. “We thought that if we have someone with a high level of paranoia, it’s conceivable that he may be passing judgment on her. Cutting off the hands of criminals has a long-”

“Got it.” Skinner eyes her suspiciously. He closes the thick report and passes it to Scully. “I want you to continue to look into this, but keep it low profile. I don’t need the Pentagon up my ass.”

“It would be very uncomfortable,” Mulder says. “Pointy.”

Skinner, to everyone’s surprise, laughs. “Godspeed, agents. Keep him in line, Scully.”

They thank him and leave the office. Scully hits him with the rolled-up report on their way to the elevator.

***

They stopped at the taco place William likes on their way to the field. They have to park a block away from practice, and trudge over laden with camp chairs and fragrant paper bags.

“I really need to keep a change of casual clothes in the car,” Scully sighs. “My emergency trunk wardrobe needs expansion.” Her heels sink into the mud.

“Here, give me that chair.”

She passes it over, scanning the fields. “There, that’s his team. My mom’s on the bleachers.”

They pick their way over, Scully cursing the soft earth with every step. “Hi, Mom,” she says.

“Hello, dear,” Maggie says, getting to her feet. She kisses her daughter’s cheek as Mulder sets the chairs up.

“Hi, Maggie,” he says, bending down for a hug. “Sit in one of these, they’re better for your back.”

“Thank you,” Maggie says, patting his shoulder. She moves to one of the canvas chairs. “Oh, that’s much better.”

Scully unpacks dinner, distributing plastic wear and water bottles. She had different notions of herself when William was tiny, saw herself as a superwoman who made everything from scratch. The reality used to shame her, especially in front of her mother, but she’s well past it now. “Dig in,” she says, flopping into her seat. She chugs half a bottle of water.

“William got a nine out of ten on his vocabulary test,” Maggie says.

“What did he miss?” Mulder asks, loading his plate.

“Cooperation.”

Scully laughs, dribbling water onto her lap. “Figures you’d drop the ball there, coach.”

Maggie clears her throat. “He told me he watched that TV show you were on, Dana. Are you sure that was wise?”

Mulder stares at his tacos, but catches Scully’s face out of the corner of his eye. Her expression is about what it had been for the film crew.

“Mom,” Scully says, with testy politeness. “he’s shown an ability to handle material that would be too intense for most kids his age. He knows what we do, and he watched it in broad daylight with people who make him feel safe. This was not gratuitous violence.”

Maggie’s lips are pursed. “Well, it just seems very scary.”

Scully sips at her water, counting to ten. “I always appreciate your input, but it’s a decision we considered very carefully, then made together. And thus far, William has shown no ill effects or concern.”

Mulder is tempted to take the fall, but knows Scully won’t appreciate his undermining her show of authority. Her capacity for straight-faced lies is always somewhat disturbing.

“Hmmm,” Maggie replies.

“And may I remind you that you bought Matthew some shooting video games for Christmas at the same age,” Scully says, a certain smugness in her tone.

“Well, it was on the list Tara sent,” Maggie huffs.

Scully says nothing, but there’s a gleam in her eyes.

“Anyway,” Maggie says. “He told me all about his new bike. It was very good of the, er, Gunmen to take him.” She struggles at times with the non-Bill-ness of their lives.

“You’ll have to come by and see it,” Mulder says, feeling it safe to wade in now. “Things are a little crazy with the case we’re working on, but maybe this weekend?”

“You’re working on that awful case in Baltimore, aren’t you? With that poor woman in the tree? I hope you’ll catch whoever did it.” She blinks for a long beat, thinking of her own unavenged daughter.

Mulder squeezes her shoulder. “We’re doing our best, I promise.”

She pats his hand. “I know.”

William wanders over during a break, hurling himself into his father’s lap. He smells of sweat and dirt and grass stains. Mulder squeezes him as tight as he dares.

***

William, bathed and dressed for bed, lays with Scorn on his bedroom floor. He works carefully on a picture of a fire station being attacked by a monster octopus.

“Five minutes,” Scully says from the beanbag chair in the corner. “It’s already past your bedtime.” It was a bad idea to get so comfortable. She is bone tired, but still has hours of work ahead. Plus the laundry in the washer smelled musty and had to be restarted.

“Where’s Dad?”

“Um, I think he’s doing his weights in the basement. He’ll be up to tuck you in though.”

“Okay. Hey, Mom?”

“Yep?”

“Is it true you guys get to keep like the jewels and money and stuff from cases?”

Scully sits up. “What? No. Who on Earth told you that?”

“Carter on my team,” William says, nonchalantly drawing a Dalmatian. “He says that’s why we have a nice house even though you guys work for the government. He says you all divide it up.”

Scully grinds her teeth and doesn’t say that she thinks Carter is a little shit who has no business auditing her finances. “No, buddy. All that stuff is evidence. We don’t keep anything.”

“Is our house nice?

Scully sighs. It is, and, when they bought it, she’d disappeared into Williams Sonoma and Pier 1, scarcely coming up for air. They have napkin rings, for heaven’s sake. “It’s a nice house, William. When your dad’s parents died, they were able to be very generous.”

He rolls onto his side, cuddling Scorn. “Because my aunt Samantha is dead too.”

Scully crawls onto the floor next to him. “Yes.”

“And my aunt Melissa is dead. And your dad is dead. We have a lot of dead people in our family.”

She reaches out to stroke her son’s hair. “We do, kiddo.”

“That’s sad. Are you sad about it lot?”

She smiles at him, her round blue eyes peering out of his face. The same eyes that peered out of his own dead sister’s face. “I feel sad if I think about it a lot, I guess, but I have so many good things too, right?”

He flicks his loose tooth with his tongue. “Me?” he asks, grinning.

“Especially you.” He is her happy thought. He lets her fly.

William wriggles over and curls himself into her arms.

Mulder finds them sleeping on the floor when he comes upstairs.

***

“Sonofabitch,” Mulder says. “He gave me the wrong bag.” He unpacks their breakfast on the desk, two cream cheese bagels instead of the cheese and egg white sandwiches he’d ordered.

Scully considers the bagels. “I’ll eat that raisin one.”

“Ew, go for it. Poppy’s all mine, then. Hope there’s no random drug testing today.”

“You know that’s a common misconception. It’s an entirely different-”

“Shhh, I want the cool agents to think I’m hardcore.”

They chew in silence for a time, washing down the bagels with gulps of coffee. Scully examines the photos Mulder has strewn about, marked with circles and Post-It notes. His seeming chaos has always been well ordered. Mulder lives to fight entropy in his own peculiar way.

“Hey,” she says. “Got a call from Abdelnour while you were out.”

He looks puzzled. “Who?”

“OCME lady.”

“Oh, right. What’d she say?”

Scully wipes her mouth on a paper napkin. “She said someone from the military came by to see the body. But that he was vague when she asked what branch. Basically flashed some credentials and pulled rank.”

Mulder frowns. “That has not gone well for us, historically.”

“Not so much. Should we drive up?”

Mulder considers how big of a stir they should create in advance of having even a whiff of a suspect. “Did she say whether anything was missing?”

“No, said he just asked to see the body, took a few pictures, then left.”

“Sounds like someone doesn’t trust the OCME servers. Could’ve had that emailed.”

Scully props her chin on her hands, elbows on the desk. “Something’s up. I’m just glad I got my report done before things get….well. How things get for us.”

Mulder gets up, moving behind her so he can massage her shoulders. He brushes her hair out of the way, thumbs at her neck.

“Ohhhhhh,” she moans, head falling forward. “Yes please.”

“If this office is still wired for sound, someone’s real jealous right now.”

“Shut up and massage.”

Mulder pleases himself by listening to the noises she’s making, almost purring as the knots in her shoulders are worked loose.

Their phone rings and, regretfully, he stops touching her to answer it.

“Mulder.”

“Uh, hi. Agent Mulder? I, uh, I got your number from someone in Baltimore. It’s um, it’s about that case? The tree?” The voice is female, maybe thirty, and nervous.

Mulder presses a finger to his lips and switches to speaker.

Scully nods and begins recording.

“Yeah? I’m required to tell you there’s a tip hotline set up.”

“I want to talk to you. And Agent Scully. Is she there too?”

“She is. Go ahead.”

“I think I know the girl in the tree. I think she’s this girl my cousin was dating for a while. She was uh, Russian.” There’s a soft cough.

“Okay,” Mulder says. “Is that significant?”

There’s a sharp intake of breath. “I want to meet,” says the woman in a harsh whisper. “Can you meet me?”

“Absolutely. Where?”

“The zoo,” she says. “By the pandas. I’ll meet you in an hour.” The line goes dead.

Mulder puts the phone back in the cradle he gazes at his partner. “Well,” he says. That was something.”

Scully shakes her head, swiveling slowly in her chair. “Why’d she call us?”

He returns to her shoulders, kneading them as he thinks. “We’re tremendously popular on certain parts of the internet,” Mulder says.

“We?”

“Well, me mostly. You’re my beautiful, brilliant cross to bear.”

Scully narrows her eyes. “I’ve told you to stay off of Reddit and 4Chan, Mulder.”

He kisses the top of her head, her ear. “Come on, Scully. Let’s get to the panda before it eats shoots and leaves.”

***

They don’t look like anything but Feds, even in a setting as civilian as the zoo. Scully is alert to her own wary watchfulness, the way she is constantly assessing her surroundings. She’s afraid it will affect William.

They’re sitting on a bench, gazing as the pandas lumber about. The animals are gentle and clumsy, sweetly silly as they move around the enclosure.

“Pandas are good, aren’t they?” Scully asks. “It’s sort of nice to remember that the world has pandas in it.”

Mulder sheds his jacket, loosens his tie. “Yeah, it is. I like those red ones though. They call them firecats in Nepal.”

“The giant panda is the only member of the genus Ailuropoda,” Scully remarks, scanning the crowd. “It means cat-foot.” She spots an anxious looking woman in a green hoodie edging around the exhibit.

“That’s her,” Mulder says.

The woman spies them seconds later, ducking her head as she approaches. “Hi,” she says, sitting next to Scully. “I’m Fiona.”

“You okay?” Mulder asks.

“Nobody followed me.” Fiona wears khakis, her sharp knees pressing against the threadbare fabric.

“Has someone been following you?”

Fiona nods, her lank blonde hair sweeping her shoulders. “Off and on for about a day. Military guy, maybe. Maybe one of the Russians.” Her hands are shaking, and tears fall in dark splotches on her thighs.

“Fiona?” Scully says, her voice soft.

“I’m okay, I’m okay. I just, this is hard.”

“You’re doing the right thing,” Mulder says, gently coaxing her. “Take your time.”

A gulp. Then, “They were dealing arms, him and Tatiana.”

“Him?” Scully asks. “Your cousin?”

“Yeah. He’s real smart, went to West Point even. They put him in some elite unit he couldn’t tell us about, but my dad says he was interrogating guys at Gitmo.”

Mulder and Scully exchange a glance.

“And then what happened?”

Fiona sniffles, waves a thin hand. “They use these guys up, they break them and send the pieces home. He was so angry when he came back from his third tour, just a quiet, mean angry. We were so close as kids.”

Scully tamps down her own frustration on the subject. “I’m sorry that happened.”

“Yeah, well. Anyway, he said if he was gonna work for a bunch of fucking fascists, he wanted better pay. Got in with this guy Anatoly, they were running guns to the Russian mob and stuff.”

“How do you know this?” Mulder asks. “I can’t imagine that would go over well in the West Point Alumni newsletter.”

Fiona laughs a little. “No, like I said, we were close as kids. My husband had gotten laid off, he knew money was tight. Offered to cut us in.”

“And?” Scully asks.

Fiona looks offended. “Fuck no. So anyway, he meets Tatiana, she was here illegally for sure by the way. Didn’t work, hung out with the other Russians at the pool hall. But then my cousin, he started talking about Chechnya and stuff. He wanted to help those guys, and the Georgians. Do some good for the little guy.”

Scully wonders if this is meant to be redemptive in some way, to stir her compassion for a traitor and murderer. Disgust is sour on the back of her tongue, like blood.

Fiona squeezes her hands between her knees. “Shit got bad with him and Tatiana. He, uh, he hit her sometimes. They had a big fight around New Year’s about something. I heard Tatiana screaming that he was an anarchist and he said she was a killer. They threw some stuff.”

“Why’d he call her a killer?” Mulder asks.

Fiona favors him with a withering sideye. “I guess because she was selling guns to the fucking mob.”

“Nice to know he’s principled,” Scully says drily.

“Hey, I’m not defending him, okay? He’s into some dark shit, which is why I called you. Started getting into black magic type stuff, I don’t know what you call it.”

Mulder’s eyes light up. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, it’s how I got your names, actually. He was obsessed with some case you worked on in New Hampshire in the 90’s. Satanic PTA or whatever. Anyway, then I see your names in the paper for this case and it’s like, fucking kismet.”

“Fucking kismet,” Mulder repeats. “So why do you think he killed Tatiana?”

Fiona looks down at this, squirming. “I heard him on the phone last week. I was at his house and he was saying something like baby, you push people hard enough and they push back. Then they were arguing some more and he goes I’ll fucking kill you before I let you fuck this up!”

She begins to cry again.

Scully offers Fiona a tissue from her pocket, which is gratefully accepted. “Did you contact the police about this?”

“No. I should have, I know that. I’ve got kids though, so I just got the hell out and went home. But when I saw the picture on Facebook…”

“Kismet,” Scully murmurs.

“We need a name, “ Mulder says.

Silence, then muffled sobs.

“Fiona,” Scully says. “I know this is hard, but you’re doing the right thing.”

“We used to play together as kids,” she wails. “We were lifeguards together every summer.”

They let her sit, let her cry out her grief for the boy she knew. The pandas roll a large red ball back and forth.

“Drew,” she mumbles at last, sounding defeated. “Lieutenant Colonel Wesley Drew.”

***

Scully calls her mother from the parking lot. “Mom, hi, it’s Dana. Can, um, can you watch William overnight?”

She listens for a moment. “Yeah, no, it’s just that we have to-”

Mulder feels like he’s intruding somehow, even through the phone.

“Our house is good, sure,” Scully continues. “He can buy lunch tomorrow if you pre- oh. Okay, you can pack it, that’s fine. Yes, he likes peanut butter. Uh huh, we’ll be home to get him tomorrow after school, we just need to go to Baltimore and ask a few questions.”

She fumbles in her pockets for gum. “Okay, thanks Mom. Love you too.” Scully hangs up, then pops the gum into her mouth. She offers Mulder a piece which he takes.

“God bless Maggie,” he says, before blowing a bubble

Scully sighs. “They do seem pretty close,” she observes.

***

The fug of low-rent pool halls has been scrubbed from her pores, and even hotel toiletries beat stale smoke and beer. She thought of Fiona in the shower, of the sacrifices and betrayals entangled in love.

Scully emerges in a cloud of steam, wearing Mulder’s discarded dress shirt in the absence of a robe. She feels like one of those women in a 90’s music video.

“Hel-lo,” Mulder says, with voyeuristic joy. He has opted for boxers alone, hair still wet.

She tosses her head, striking a pose. “Dana wears a blue Oxford from the 2008 Joseph A. Bank collection,” she narrates in a husky voice. “And gray cotton briefs by Target.”

“Perfect for a romantic evening in a 2 star hotel,” Mulder adds, grabbing a handful of shirt fabric to tug her close.

She rises on her toes to kiss him. “Maybe so,” she says, pulling away. “But business first, I’m afraid.” She bends to her briefcase, gathering files. Today’s research needs color coded tabs and highlighters before it can be truly processed.

“Remember what a luxury this used to be?” Mulder asks, sprawling on his side of the bed. “A shared hotel room? So scandalous.”

Scully sits next to him, propped against the pillows with her knees up. “I remember the first time we shared a room,” she says, underlining an address. “I was so nervous.”

He rolls onto his side, rumpling her work. “Seriously? Scully, I’ve seen you stare down Congress and a Flukeman.”

She is strangely shy about this. “It’s funny, isn’t it? After all we’d been through, and I was anxious about sharing a room. We were in some little town in Iowa. Deborah, I think.”

“Decorah,” he supplies.

She smooths out the papers he’s crushed. “Mulder! If you remember, why am I telling you this?”

“Because I love listening to you talk,” he says, readjusting to rest his head on her belly. He nuzzles under the hem of her shirt.

“Okay. Well. We were in DeCORah, and there was some kind of Norwegian festival. Everything booked. We finally found a single room at this tiny inn.”

He remembers it well - the carpet like lumpy oatmeal, the bed not much better. The chaste thrill of Scully in the shower on the other side of the bathroom door

She strokes his hair. “It was while I had cancer, and I was still getting those nosebleeds. I was so afraid I’d get blood on the bed and you’d see and remember I was sick and, oh, I don’t know. ”

As though he ever forgot for even a second. “Oh, Scully…” He runs a hand over her kneecap, down her calf.

It was more than the nosebleeds, she recalls. It was lying with their backs to one another in the thick darkness, each with an acute awareness of the other’s heat. She remembers the wild, fleeting impulse she’d had, that she was dying and wouldn’t it be a shame…

“I don’t know that I’d owned up to wanting to jump you yet,” she says, interrupting her own thoughts.

“You wanted to jump me the first night. Your little mosquito bite ruse didn’t fool me. You thought I was a stud.” He licks her navel, the faint stretch marks like parentheses.

She strokes his nose with her fingertip. “Mulder, I admit that your pulchritude has never been in doubt. But I had recently disembarked from Jack Willis’s FBI Love Train and wasn’t looking for another ride just then. So to speak.”

“So when did you own up to it?”

“I don’t know. I mean, after Dallas I think I was ready to commit the great sin of sleeping with my partner. You were looking pretty good in the hallway that night.”

Mulder trails kisses up the inside of her thigh, tugging her underwear off. “You’ve said that before. But I find it hard to believe one single move on my part changed your mind entirely. Fess up.”

“I guess it might have been…..ohhhh.” His fingers slip inside of her and she squirms against his palm.

“You were saying?”

“That I should have nailed you that first night,” she replies, breathless. She unbuttons the shirt, which frames her lovely body against the bedding.

Mulder’s head, sleek as an otter, is between her legs in an instant.

His tongue travels the slick flats and ridges of the landscape between her thighs, an oscular playground he knows by heart.

Scully’s hands clutch at the grainy hotel sheets, her thighs radiating warmth against his flushed face. She smells of soap and salt and sex.

He glances up and her shoulders are rolled back, her head turned and cheek pressed against the pillows. Her hair is a mermaid tangle down to her breasts.

Mulder dips his head again, fingers curling and flexing in the wet heat of her body as he does. His tongue nudges at the hood of her clitoris, which he then licks with the steadiness of a metronome as she writhes and twists.

Scully is panting, her whole body a drumbeat in his ears. She isn’t vocal, his wife, but he can read her trembling and tremors like a seismologist. He quickens his pace, grazing her lightly with his teeth. His fingers beckon inside her, a come-hither motion to the little death.

Her back rises, pressing her body tighter against his mouth. Scully’s name, when he says it, is lost in the clench of her thighs. He rides it out with her, drinking her orgasm down as she shudders and sighs. She tastes of the sea, where he’d made his earliest memories of happiness.

Mulder slides his fingers out, rests his head on the saddle of her pelvis to catch his breath.

“Love you,” she mumbles, fingers twirling in his hair.

“I bet you do.”

“No, I really-”

“I know,” he says.

Later, deep in the liquid fire of her body, he remembers the way her back curved in Decorah. He’d thought about her like this that night, and had pressed his erection against the mattress until he finally was able to sleep.

***

Wednesday morning finds them back in Skinner’s office, stacks of neatly typed interviews in a binder.

“There’s still a lot more to do,” Scully says as she passes it to him, “but I think it’s enough for a warrant.”

Skinner scans her careful annotations. “Busy day yesterday.”

“Sir, when do you want to move on this?” Mulder asks.

Skinner sighs. “The sooner the better. Any indication of what he feared this Tatiana person was going to, if you’ll pardon me, fuck up?” he passes Mulder a dollar for the swear pig.

Mulder shakes his head. “No, though we kept the questions light, didn’t want to spook anybody. We tried to keep a vague missing person feel about it.”

“Good. Scully, any word on the guy at the morgue?”

She shakes her head.

“All right. I should be able to get the warrant by this afternoon. I want you to keep me posted on whatever comes up in Baltimore. Fiber confirmed the fabric in Bell- sorry. In Tatiana’s mouth was a match for the bridesmaid dresses. One of the women had ordered a matching wrap, and that went missing.”

Scully nods. “Prints?”

“We left the cards to Baltimore. They’re fuming them all, but it’s slow work and I don’t think we’ll find a damn thing. If this is the guy you think, he’ll have worn gloves.”

“Agreed,” Mulder said. “I’ve been calling around to printers to see if anyone had an order matching the cards, but nothing yet.”

“Let’s hope he went online,” Skinner says. “Credit card. Though I doubt he’s that dumb.”

“Everybody’s that dumb somewhere along the line,” Scully says, mustering a confidence she doesn’t quite feel. Lieutenant Corporal Drew’s treachery sickens her, violating her moral code at its very core. She looks forward to finding him.

“All right, agents. We’ll be in touch.”

“Thanks, sir,” Mulder says, as they rise.

Exiting into the waiting room, Scully freezes “Dammit!” she exclaims, startling both Kimberly and Mulder.

“Scully, you okay?”

“Yeah,” she sighs, rubbing her forehead. “But I forgot to get William’s hair cut for picture day.”

***

Back in the basement, Scully paces. Mulder throws darts at the board they’ve hung on the back of the door.

“Black magic,” he says. “I think that’s our only explanation for how Drew accomplished this unseen.”

“The only explanation? Mulder, look. I’m a lot more open minded than I was in my youth, but let’s not be dramatic.”

He stares. “The other night you accepted the Hand of Glory as the most plausible explanation! It drives me crazy when you do this.” He hurls the rest of his darts at the door.

She stops pacing, hands on her hips. “You’re as bad as William! Mulder, I said I was open to your ideas when all the pieces fit. It doesn’t mean I’m going to stop developing other hypotheses.”

Mulder rolls his eyes, gets up to retrieve his darts. “You caved as soon as soon as Skinner challenged you, had to play teacher’s pet as usual.”

She walks over to him, glaring up with her arms crossed. “Excuse me? Teacher’s pet? Is this middle school?”

He glares right back. “Look. I’m just saying that after all these years, even after William, it’s still like pulling teeth to get you to admit anything.”

“The existence of one phenomenon doesn’t necessitate that another be true! Why is it all or nothing with you?” He exasperates her with this, his seeming inability to give the mundane equal weight.

Mulder rubs his face, frustrated. “I thought we had talked this out. Clearly I misunderstood.”

Scully begins pacing again. “I’m open to the idea, okay? But we’re going to need something better for court.”

Their phone rings, and Scully answers. It’s Kimberly, summoning them back upstairs.

***

“Son of a bitch!” Scully exclaims. She slaps the papers down on Skinner’s desk.

“Scully!” Skinner says, shocked.

Mulder watches, intrigued.

Scully breathes through her nose. “I’m sorry, that was totally inappropriate. But they must have been waiting to pounce with that injunction as soon as the judge issued the warrant. It’s ridiculous!”

Skinner sighs, tapping his pen on the blotter. “It’s absolutely ridiculous, but this comes from above my pay grade from the guys at the DoD.”

“Well, we’re DoJ. Why do we have to answer to them?” Mulder asks.

“We aren’t answering to them. It’s a pissing match over the warrant and besides, it’s not technically our case. Murder’s not federal.”

“Arms dealing is, come back with that.”

“We can, on separate charges, but Maryland will get precedence for the murder in court, you know they will. Besides, you two haven’t been building a case for arms.”

“So the Pentagon is up our collective asses after all,” Scully sighs. She feels cheated. She wanted this one badly, even though the case was never really hers to begin with.

“They don’t like it when their honor students go bad,” Skinner says darkly. “Listen, Scully. As a Marine, I understand how you’re feeling about this. But they’re going to deal with him and it won’t be pretty, make no mistake.”

She feels like Veruca Salt, wants to stamp her foot and demand that Skinner get her body and her files and her suspect back now. “I understand, sir,” she says.

“Well,” Mulder says. “It’s been real.” They both shake his hand before leaving.

“Make sure I get a copy of William’s picture,” Skinner says.

***

They go out for ice cream after picking William up.

“Uh oh,” he says. “Did something bad happen?”

“So paranoid, just like your father,” Scully teases.

“Doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you,” William replies. “Can I get a banana split?”

“Sure, why not?”

Mulder opts for a hot fudge sundae, Scully a scoop of mint chocolate chip. They take their ice cream to one of the tables outside.

“So you really don’t have bad news?” William asks, whipped cream on his chin. “This is just for fun?”

Mulder wipes his son’s face with a napkin. “You really are paranoid. No, William. We’re not about to tell you that we sent Scorn to live on a farm where she can run free with other cats.”

“Scorn hates other cats.”

“It was just a rough day,” Scully confesses. “We wanted some down time with you, especially since we didn’t see you yesterday.”

“Yeah, Grandma said you got stuck in Baltimore. Did you go to the aquarium?”

“Work stuff,” Mulder says. “I wish it were the aquarium.”

“Did you catch the bad guy?” William asks around a mouthful of banana.

“We did,” Scully lies. It’s essentially true. Sort of.

“Cooool.”

“I thought our jobs were stupid,” Mulder says. “I thought you wanted your mom to be a baker or an accountant.”

“I did,” William says. “But I saw that COPS episode and honestly Dad, you need her out there.”

***

It’s nearly a week later, after a family bike ride, that Scully hears the news on TV.

“…killed in the explosions inside the Moscow Metro stations, believed to be the work of Chechen separatists,” the newscaster says.

“Mulder!” she yells. He runs over, helmet still on. “What? What is it?”

She points at the TV.

Mulder stares. “He knew,” he breathes. “That’s what Tatiana was talking about.”

“The question is,” Scully says, “whether the DoD bogarted him in an attempt to prevent it.”

“Or in an attempt to make sure we didn’t prevent it,” Mulder says.

The choices seem equally plausible to Scully at this point in her life. She says nothing, just stares at the television, at the rubble and destruction half a world away.

***

“Is he out?” Scully whispers.

Mulder nods. “All clear. I’ve got your back.”

Scully, being lighter of foot, picks her way across the floor to William’s bed. She slips her hand under his pillow, depositing the rumpled five dollar bill.

William stirs, and she freezes, wide-eyed.

When he doesn’t wake, she feels around for his tooth, then stealthily retreats to the hall.

“Mission complete,” she says, holding the tooth up for inspection.

“Nice work, Agent. What a weird ritual, though.”

“It is, isn’t it? Paying him for his skull fragments? I wouldn’t have minded a Hand of Glory though, I’ll tell you that. That was tense for a minute.”

“Yeah, well, it’s probably down in the bowels of the Pentagon with Oswald’s magic bullet,” Mulder says.

Scully hides the tooth at the bottom of the trash can. “Probably,” she agrees. “Big Indiana Jones warehouse.”

“Lost Ark or Temple of Doom?” Mulder asks her.

She looks surprised. “Lost Ark, is that even a question?”

“No, not really. I have to confess, Marion might tempt me away from you.”

Scully laughs. “She’d shoot you more than I have.”

He grins. “Yeah, maybe. But you know I love a girl who punches Nazis.”

Scully groans. “Are you going to tell me about the Queen Anne again?” She secretly hopes he will. She loves both the story and his telling of it.

“Yeah,” says Mulder, who knows her better than she thinks. “Yeah, I am.”

Scully follows him to the bedroom. “Just don’t leave out my surprise right hook,” she warns. “That’s my favorite part.”

Mulder pulls the bedding back, sighing happily as he lies down. “Get over here, Scully.” He holds an arm out to draw her close.

She curls up next to him, her head pillowed on his warm chest.

“Do you think he really believes in the Tooth Fairy?” Mulder asks.

She smiles. “Oh, he’s like you that way too, Mulder. He wants to believe.”

Scully closes her eyes in the dark, sliding softly into sleep. She dreams of Mulder’s ship, of a man and a woman who tried to save the world.