***Chapter Five***
Radisson Inn
I could feel the blood pouring over my hands, followed by the lighter waters, the waters of life as they flowed from the screaming woman. It was rich and warm and cleansing, cleansing me and her and the innocent one. Her screams were changing now. They were louder, deeper . . . they were coming . . . coming from . . . me. Strong arms were gripping me gently, firmly and it was warm, as warm as the blood . . . no!!!
"Fox. It's okay, Fox. It's all right. I'm here. I'm here. Shh." The arms were rocking me. I felt lips on my head. The screaming stopped and I opened my eyes to an unfamiliar room. I could see Scully in her robe, looking worried. The arms gripped me tighter. Whose arms? I saw black coat sleeves. I began to panic again.
"It's all right. I'm here." Walter. It was Walter's voice. He was here. He was holding me. I was safe.
"Walter?" I twisted around on the couch so I could bury my head on his shoulder.
"Yes. It's Walter. Shhhhhhh. It's all right." He began to stroke my hair. "It's okay. Everything will be okay, Fox. I'm here." My heart slowed to normal as I held him tighter.
I relaxed into him. It's hard for me to do this. It's something I'd learned to not need since I was a child. My dad would come to my room and look disappointed. *His* son would not react that way to a mere dream. Sometimes he'd scold me, sometimes he'd make me dress and sit up with the television, sometimes he'd say nothing and take away the nightlight and leave me alone in the dark. My mom never came to me at all. Sam would at first, but Dad found out and that stopped.
Walter doesn't think twice. I need him, he's there if he can be. This time it felt like magic, or even one of Scully's miracles. Scully was still there in the room. That was okay, too. Walter or Scully equal safety.
"Mulder? Do you want some water?"
I nodded against Walter's shoulder, and pulled myself away. I raked my hair away from my face. It was soaking wet from sweat. Scully poured some water into a glass and handed it to me. She must have noticed that I was still shaking, because it was only half-full. I took a careful sip.
"Thank you."
"Do you remember anything?" Walter got up to take off his trench coat, and Scully took his place next to me, with a gentle hand on my shoulder.
I stared into the water glass. It was cool in my hands, and hard. I focused on how different it was from what the dream had given me, the heat and the softness.
"Mulder?"
"Fox?" I could feel Walter settling in next to me, how crisp his shirt felt next to my skin. I began to shiver. I couldn't hold onto the glass anymore.
"Cold. I'm cold."
Scully felt my forehead and looked into my eyes. "He's in shock. Get him into the bed."
I let them take me to the bed and tuck me under the covers. Scully said something about getting a towel and disappeared, while Walter climbed into bed with me. He was warm.
"Good idea, Walter. Better than raining sleeping bags, isn't it, Mulder?" She began to towel my hair.
"Walter sings better. Ow, stop pulling. Walter, make her stop."
"I need to get your hair dry. There, that'll do." She patted my hair and began to rummage through my bags.
"Do you seriously think I could have stopped her?" My head was buried in Walter's chest. I could feel his chuckle.
"I'd like to have seen him try. Here, put this on." She tossed me a sweatshirt, and sat down on the bed next to us to feel my forehead. "Your color is better, and I think your temperature is normal."
It takes an extraordinary person to calmly sit on a bed where two men were embracing like the lovers they were and think only about medical matters.
"I feel better."
"Fox . . . are you up to telling us what that was about, or do you want to wait until morning?"
I considered. I wasn't about to forget it, but maybe talking would help. I pulled out of Walter's arms and sat up on the bed. It was chilly, so I put on the sweatshirt. Walter sat up with me and held my hand. Scully just looked on calmly and attentively.
They listened without comment as I described the dream - the struggling woman, the screams and prayers, the blood and fluids and how they felt, the texture of the knife in my hand. When things got rough, I held his hand tighter, and when I came to the blood and found it hard to breathe again, he rubbed my back while she squeezed my shoulder. When I finished, I buried my head in my hands and sobbed. Scully kept her hand on my shoulder.
"He's exhausted, Walter. He nearly died in Wyoming when Bi . . . that thing went after him, and he hasn't had a night's sleep in over a week. And now . . . now he's trying to crawl into a madman's head again. I don't like this."
"Neither do I. I can feel his bones again." I hate being talked about, but I didn't have the energy to form words. "It's all right, Fox. I'm not going to take you off the case." I nodded to show I'd heard and hugged my knees. I could feel his hand in my hair.
"If the people here only knew what they were doing, it wouldn't be so bad."
"You look exhausted yourself, Dana. Why don't you go back to bed? We'll talk more over breakfast."
"Good idea. Walter . . . I'm glad you showed up."
"Good night, Dana."
"Good night, both of you. Mulder, sleep." And she was gone.
"Fox, mind if I undress?" He was still wearing his suit pants and dress shirt - he was even wearing a tie.
I shook my head. "J . . . just don't take too long." Moments later, he was back in bed. I kept to my side of the bed, happy just to know he was there. He reached out to me for a moment, and then pulled back.
"No wonder you're cold. You have no insulation at all. I had to fall in love with the world's most beautiful scarecrow."
"I don't scare anything. Walter . . . why are you here?"
"I decided that the incompetence around here warranted a special investigation. You think you can get to sleep again?"
"I'll try."
He nodded, and kissed me on the forehead. Before I settled down again, he was fast asleep and, somehow, I joined him there, and finished the night with only vague memories of the intervening nightmares.
***Chapter Six***
Walter was already awake and looking at me. He likes to watch me sleep. I don't know what attraction a drooling scarecrow with a big nose holds for him, but he likes to watch me sleep. Walter, now - when he's asleep, all the furrows in his face smooth away and all those muscles relax and I can watch that for hours.
"Morning."
"Good morning, Fox. I hope you're awake enough for this." And he leaned over and kissed me quite thoroughly. When he was finished, I grinned at him.
"Hi to you, too. If I wasn't awake before, I am now."
He laughed. God, I love his laugh. I think I'm the only person who gets to hear it. It's big and powerful, just like him.
"If we had the time and you were up to it, I'd really show you how to wake up. But we don't. I've already spoken to Scully. As soon as we're ready, we'll go down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast." And he kissed me again.
Ready didn't take much time. Twenty minutes later, we were seated at a table, looking at menus.
Scully had her usual fruit and cottage cheese; I dithered and settled on scrambled eggs and bacon, fries on the side. It's easy to play with scrambled eggs. Walter surprised all of us by ordering, and I quote "One soft-boiled egg, cooked for four minutes and two slices of rye toast, butter on the side. A banana if you have it and a small orange juice. And coffee, of course."
He surprised me even more when our breakfasts arrived and he calmly exchanged mine for his.
I looked at him.
"How long has it been since you ate something more substantial than sunflower seeds?"
"I had dinner with Scully last night."
"Mulder, *I* had dinner. *You* built that mountain from Close Encounters with your mashed potatoes."
"Scully!"
"Dana told me all about it. And I do have a right to know. Now, then. You are going to at least try to eat some of that egg and toast." He glared at me until I cracked the egg and sliced off the top.
"One bite, Fox." I grimaced but Scully was glaring at me, too. And Skinner was starting to eat my breakfast. I salt and peppered the egg and crumbled a little toast in it, but then I ran out of toys and had to eat some of it. One spoonful.
"When did you get in, Walter?" Scully dug into her cottage cheese.
"Only a few minutes before I got to your rooms. I used my badge to get your room keys and thought I'd surprise Fox." Two spoonfuls. It was getting easier. I peeled the banana.
"It didn't turn out that way." Scully tried to steal Walter's fries, but he didn't let her.
"Get your own, Agent Scully. I plan to eat these." She smiled and signaled the waitress, and actually ordered her own potatoes. I tried to get more egg out of the shell, but there was none left. There was toast, though. I buttered it and took a bite of banana.
"So what are you going to do with the local agents?"
"I thought I'd walk in and look menacing while you did all the talking."
She nodded. "Well, I do have them properly cowed. However, something tangible needs to be done."
I looked at my plate. Walter's plate. Whatever. The egg was empty, and one piece of toast was gone, and half the banana. I'd even managed a couple of sips of juice. I sent testing thoughts to my stomach and found it was full and happy to be so. I pushed the plate away and picked up my coffee.
Walter didn't even glance at the plate. He and Scully kept discussing their plans as he scarfed down my breakfast. Even if I didn't intend to eat it, it was mine. Except for the fries, which were Scully's. At which point I laughed to myself. I figured out Walter's nefarious plot.
"Finished, Fox?"
"You know, Walter, some might construe what you did as bullying or even harassment."
"Yeah, but you ate more than I expected. And I had to eat your choice of breakfast."
"Tomorrow, I'll order pancakes instead."
"Good. I like pancakes."
"Maybe I'll want them." I wanted to kiss him right there, but I didn't dare touch him at all. Big, strong, macho FBI agents don't fondle their bosses in public. Neither do skinny, whiny, closeted FBI agents.
"I'll let you have half."
He signed for the bill and we went off to terrorize the muni building. It was amusing to see the locals sidling over to me for protection from both Walter and Scully. I sat on a desk with my arms folded and watched as my partners ripped into them. Neither used profanity; neither raised their voices. They just stated the facts of the matter with controlled anger - Scully going into detail about the missing data and the fact that one family was unwilling to have a second autopsy; Walter stating what he expected from an FBI office; both making sure they knew that the next death would be on their shoulders.
Matt Stein gave *me* a sympathetic look. I just smiled at him. So far as I could tell, he had nothing to feel guilty about - he'd done whatever competent fieldwork had been done, and he'd worked to get the autopsies. Walter caught me smiling and frowned.
"Okay, people. Let's see if you can redeem yourselves. Agent Scully found traces of fibers and skin under Mrs. Browne's fingernails. The lady was a fighter. Good for her. The field office should be finished - at least I hope your labs know what they are doing. Send someone there as soon as possible to pick the results up. We don't want to waste the first solid clues we have."
The ASAC had the presence of mind to send Stein out to Philadelphia. Someone else was detailed to take us all to the various dumpsters where the bodies had been found. Not that we expected to find anything with this ice cold trail, but we could hope.
Nothing. He used two McDonald's, a Wendy's and a Burger King. They were miles apart. The only thing they had in common was that none had twenty-four hour drive-through windows, which meant that none had twenty-four hour staff, so no one could see the UNSUB dump the bodies. This said that he had some common sense. They were even miles from where the victim's cars had been abandoned.
When we got back, I spent the rest of the morning playing with maps while Scully analyzed the forensic findings and her own reports, and Walter began investigating the investigators.
There was nothing. I drew lines from the abandoned cars to the appropriate fast food restaurants. I drew lines between the fast food places. I drew lines between the abandoned cars. I even tried to find something located centrally from either place, and all those places, and since three of them were miles apart on the same strip, that didn't work at all. I ended up taking all those maps with the meticulous color coded lines and balling them up in a fit of frustration. And then I shuddered.
Scully noticed and sat next to me.
"You okay, partner?"
"Tell me that you have something, Scully. I have a bad feeling."
"We have something, all right. What's the bad feeling?"
"Someone's going to die tonight. He'll be checking her out this afternoon, and she'll be in a fast-food dumpster by morning."
"You think so?"
"It's been a couple of weeks. It's time. What do you have?"
"Blue polyester fibers. No match for the DNA, though, which means he's not in the data banks."
"Someone who's never been in trouble, or at least not in recent years. Blue polyester . . . like a uniform?"
"Yes. There shouldn't be that many people with such a uniform."
"We won't find him tonight, though. Damn."
"Dana, you have something?" Walter came toward us.
She told Walter what she'd found. He motioned to Stein, who walked over, fear in his face.
"Yesss, sir?"
"Stein, start looking for blue polyester uniforms. Call restaurants, security guards, supermarkets . . . whoever might have a uniform." Stein nodded and went back to his phone.
"Only one here I trust, besides you two."
I looked at him with surprise. "You *trust* me, Walter?"
"Only in comparison, Fox." But he was smiling. "Lunch, people. Stein! Where's the closest diner?"
New Jersey is the diner capital of the world, it seems. We had a choice of where to go. So we just pointed the car at random.