Her Dream by Cathgerm Cathgerm@aol.com PG-13 (Language) Story Angst. Reyes, Doggett, Scully, and Skinner. Reyes POV. Monica Reyes is introduced to the strange ways of the X-Files. Usual disclaimers: All owned by Chris Carter, borrowing the characters with no intention of turning a profit. Author’s note: Not sure what will happen with Mulder next year, so I just chose to ignore him. But that’s okay, because it’s not about him anyway. Her Dream - by CathGerm The third time was a charm. Definitely. The third time did it. Once, no big deal. Even twice, just a karmic coincidence. But three times? Same dream? Doubtful. The world was full of noteworthy trios: cosmic triangulations, triumvirates, three on a match, father son and holy ghost - and this dream, three nights straight, was an- other one. This dream deserved her attention. Monica Reyes understood symbolism. She understood dreams as well. She understood also the stresses that she was under in her new position with the X Files, and that if her family and friends had thought she was skating on the fringe before ... well now she'd popped right through the ice and was bobbing in cold, dark waters with sharks and strange glowing fish and a sea floor so far be- low her and so unknown to her that it made her toes curl just thinking of it. And she knew that that kind of stress could produce insomnia and binge eating and smoking and drinking. And maybe dreaming. She'd been under stress before. And she'd dreamed before. But this one: the white shirt, the maroon and gold tie, the blood ... this felt different. It scared her. Unlike her usual dreams, this one did not render her introspective. She did not cast her thoughts inward to look for meaning or attachment to her own psyche. This time, she would cast outward and look for the particulars and the participants. Because this dream was a harbinger of things to come. This dream was going to happen. Unless she could stop it. And she was sure go- ing to try. ~~~~~~~ "You look terrible." "Thanks, John." John Doggett hung up his coat and walked to her desk, frowning, his head cocked. He put his fists on his hips and looked down at her. "No. Seriously, Monica. You don't look so good." She was staring at his tie. Of course she was staring at his tie. She'd been aiming unerr- ingly at male chests ever since she'd come to the Hoover building that morning. Tie designs ran on a constant loop in her brain: the secu- rity guard near the elevators, Lenny, the one who had developed an instantaneous crush on her: bureau-issue navy wool. Neil Anderson, in the coffee room: red solid. David DeHart, in the hallway: maroon, with some detailing that made her heart stop, but the shirt was blue, not white. Assistant Director Skinner: yellow with red fluerdelis. Bob Frey: Marvin the Martian on a blue background, definitely not Bureau-approved. Doggett looked down at his chest and back up. "What?" She blinked and shook her head, peeved at her- self. There were steps that she needed to take here, and staring blankly at male chests was not one of them. She grabbed a piece of paper from the clutter on her desk and began drawing. "Do you have a tie like this?" she asked as she drew. Doggett moved closer. Art had never been her strong suit. She hur- ried through a drawing, rethought it, pushed that page aside and started again. The design on the tie from her dream was simple and yet intricate, impossible for her to commit to the page. It was simple in that the design was made up only of diamonds: a small gold outline of one on a larger solid maroon one on overlap- ping maroon ones shot with gold - diamonds on diamonds on diamonds, but intricate in that simplicity, with the diamonds defined by sub- tleties of maroon shading and gold thread, and she furiously scribbled away until Doggett's hand on her arm stopped her. "You wanna tell me what this is about?" Still clutching the pen, she looked up at him. He was worried about her and it showed in his eyes and she hated that. She knew how John saw himself: Simple John. Yes sir. No sir. Marine, yes sir. No I'm not deep. No I don't get that heavy stuff. Shit happens but I'll always do my best. True blue. My own man. And she knew how he sometimes saw her in spite of their friendship and partnership, in spite of all that they'd been through together: Nuts. Nuts as in she sees things, she hears voices, she listens to that dopey new-age music and it creeps me out nuts. She's loopy, she's loony, she does yoga and eats wheat germ and I think a thick steak might do her good nuts. She's into symbols and all kindsa ya-ya and the only thing I get about her is the smoking, and she's tryin' to quit that nuts. He'd dismiss this, she knew. He'd say "bah!" and wave a hand at her and that would be that. And she'd stick on another patch and chew some gum and feel her stomach roil until whatever was going to happen would happen. And it would. She had to try. "I had a dream, John-" Wasting no time, he re- leased her arm with a push in it and rolled his eyes. She dropped her pen and grabbed at the arm of his suit. "Hear me out, John. I had this dream three times, three nights in a row, exactly the same." "Jeez, Monica-" "And something's going to happen. I know it." "To a tie?" "Please, John." She still had his sleeve mate- rial in her fist and she shook it for emphasis. "Please. Take a look at this. Do you have a tie that looks like this?" She pulled him closer and he frowned at her, clearly peeved, his lips in a thin, disapproving line. She shook his arm again. "Do you?" With a heavy sigh, his eyes left hers and dropped to the paper while her eyes stayed glued to him. He gazed at the sheet without comment, his face impassive, and after a mo- ment, he pursed his lips. He didn't look at her as he spoke. "So what color is it?" Oh shit, she thought. "Maroon," she whispered. He nodded as if only minimally interested and waved a finger at the diamond in the center of the design. "And that?" "Gold." He nodded again. "So what if I did have a tie like that?" Oh shit shit shit, she thought. "I saw blood," she said, her voice quavering through tremulous lips, and she kicked herself for going right to the heart of the matter without preamble, for showing such effusive emotion. She could almost hear the John Dog- gett doors of Possibility and Acceptance slam shut. She took a deep breath as he stared at her with flat eyes, his fists back on his hips. "This tie," she said, pointing at the paper, "a white shirt, and then blood. Lots of it. In that order." She licked her dry lips. "I don't know where and I don't know how this will happen, but I had the dream three nights straight." She'd spare him the details. Dog- gett wasn't into details on something like this. He just wanted the facts. And from the looks of him standing in front of her right now, she wasn't even sure he wanted those. So she didn't describe the cloverleaf pattern of the blood on the white shirt, the muffled sound of a gunshot accompanying it, the ache in her heart when she would awake in the dark, whimpering. "So maybe I cut myself shaving or something." Maybe some detail was necessary. She looked up at him and shook her head. "Gunshot. I can hear it in the dream." He used the nod again, the one that tried to say: Yeah. Whatever. But he was interested, she could tell. She realized that he was thinking about this, mulling it over, and that she wasn't being totally dismissed as out of turn. Her heart beat a little faster. "Listen to her, Agent Doggett." They turned to look towards the voice. It was Dana Scully. How long she'd been there they could not know, but the luminescent paleness of her skin, obvi- ous even from the back of the office, told Monica that she'd been there long enough to hear the meat of the conversation. She'd not taken off her coat or dropped her briefcase, but stood there at the door, her eyes telling them that she'd been here before, many times before, and that she had played both roles, and that in her experience there was no omen worth overlooking, no symbol too trite, no care comprehensive enough. She had seen it all. She had dismissed it all at one point in time as well, in her naivete. And now she could not afford to dismiss anything, and neither could they. Monica felt her stomach muscles relax. It was two against one now. She liked those odds, and for a brief moment, she forgot the make of the man standing next to her. But then as she looked back up at his face she realized that Scully's rush to her defense had been a welcome but grievous error. John Dog- gett did not like the odds. John Doggett did not like to be pushed. He could be a contrary man, stubborn for stubborn's sake, and she saw his eyes spark flint as he turned his back to them and went to his desk. "I don't have time for this," he said, pulling files from his desk drawer and slamming them on the desktop. "I have work to do." Scully stayed at the door, still in her over- coat, briefcase handle in a white-knuckled grip. Monica shot her a tortured look, hoping for some kind of salvation. Monica had read through the X Files. She knew now some of what had occurred over the past nine years. She knew of Mulder's insistent paranoia and Scully's initial dismissal of it all as over- wrought mumbo-jumbo. She knew that - slowly but surely - Agent and Doctor Dana Scully had edged closer to the pit of paranoia with her partner, and then paranoia became reality, and then she and her partner - and even Assistant Director Skinner - leapt right into it and never looked back. And now the X Files was continuing, and Monica was Doggett's Mulder, and Doggett was her Scully, and Reyes waited for some wisdom to tumble from those parted lips, waited for Scully to gently tug Doggett back to the doors of Possibility. But it didn't happen. Dana quietly put her briefcase on her desk, hung her coat, and helped herself to a cup of the coffee that Monica had made when she'd arrived in the office. Scully's actions were a study in spareness, each action measured - the walk to the coffee, the pouring, the walk back to her desk - all neat and tidy. She sat down and looked across the dimly-lit space at Monica as Doggett busied himself with his files and Monica saw unshed tears there, and it made her breath catch in her throat, and Dana shook her head almost imperceptibly, as in not now, as in we will deal with this, but not now, and Monica nodded back and watched Doggett pick up his ringing phone. At least he knew. At least he knew, and even if he thought she was an idiot, it might keep him from wearing the tie to work. Or wearing the tie ever again. She could hope. ~~~~~~~~ "I can't believe you!" Curious Fibbies walking in the hallway slowed and craned their necks to see what was happen- ing. Monica felt her face flush. She knew the reputation that the X Files had at the Hoover, and she knew that having an emotional meltdown in the hall was going to feed fresh grist to the rumor mill. She didn't care. When she spotted Doggett walking towards her with a file and a cup of coffee and a barely concealed shit-eating little grin on his face and the tie - the tie - screaming at her from the center of his chest, she exploded. They stopped opposite each other. "I cannot believe you," she growled, folding her shaking arms across her chest. She was amazed. She never growled. Never raised her voice. But she was officially undone, unravel- ing in a main artery at the Hoover. She wanted to rip the tie off. Rip his face off. "I cannot believe you. Do you have so little respect for me?" He looked down at his tie and then back up. His face was bemused and tight. "But my shirt's light gray." "You son-of-a-bitch," she whispered, amazed to find herself on the verge of tears. "Has Scully seen you?" Seemingly unconcerned, he put his file under his arm and leaned down and took a careful sip of the steaming coffee. "She doesn't dress me, Agent Reyes," he said slowly as he looked back up at her. "And neither do you." Monica sobbed. It came out of her unbidden, came from deep in her soul and came out of her right there in the hallway, and workers popped out of office doors to see what was up. It was one, brief keening sound, something that you might hear at a funeral before the widow throws herself on the pyre, something animal- like in its intensity and purity. Even Doggett was clearly shocked at the depth of it, and she watched - with some small nugget of satisfaction - as the surface in his coffee cup experienced a minor tsunami. He moved closer to her, acutely aware of the unabashed interest of their co-workers. "Come on, Monica-" he whispered out of the cor- ner of his mouth, but she spun away from him, thought briefly about throwing her arm out to knock away the coffee and the file, just on general principle, but in the end just spun away on her heel, clicked away from him and from the Fibbies attracted to the possibility of a new plot line being added to the ongoing story called The Days of Our X-Files Lives, and made an exit into the nearest empty elevator. She punched a button. It wasn't random. She was going to a higher power. She was going to Skinner. ~~~~~~~ "Can I get you anything?" Monica looked up. She could see kindness and sympathy in the eyes of Skinner's Administra- tive Assistant - Kim was her name, according to the nameplate on her desk - but there was also something else there that was harder to define. Curiosity? Pity? How often had Mulder and Scully cooled their heels in this office anteroom as Kim watched? How many outrageous claims had she overheard? How many 302s had she scanned when they'd landed on her desk? Was she amused by claims of a mutated man living in a sewer or terrified by it? "Agent Reyes? Are you all right?" She wanted to say No. But with Skinner's help, I might be. But instead she gave Kim a smile and said: "I'm fine. And I don't need anything, thanks." Kim nodded and went back to her computer. Monica watched the dust float in the beams of sunlight shooting between the splits in the window blind and listened to the click of shoe heels on the floor in the hall outside. She tried to ignore the swell and flow of voices coming from Skinner's office. Someone was be- ing reamed. Someone would come out of the of- fice soon with his or her head on a platter and stumble past her for the outer door. But she was calm and sure, wrapped in a warm cloak of righteousness. And Assistant Director Walter S. Skinner did not scare her. There were not many people under 50 and under Assistant Director level at the Hoover who could say that. She had met him for the first time in Montana when they were searching for Agent Mulder, saw him first on a wind-whipped hill with Agents Scully and Doggett. He had been in his FBI uniform: starched white shirt, expensive suit, smart tie, long black raincoat. She was not intimidated. She was an excellent reader of people, and she instantly knew that this was a good man, a strong man, a man to be trusted. A man also of infinite patience and no small measure of sadness. She had felt an instant rapport with him and she wasn't sure why. But she'd learned long ago to not overthink things and to go with her instincts. That was why she was here. Her instincts and the dream told her that they were headed for tragedy. She hoped that he would understand. She wasn't quite sure exactly where Skinner sat in the X Files scheme of things. She had gained some insights from her file-perusing and what she had heard from Doggett. Skinner had had the X Files, and then the responsibility for them had been yanked. He'd been investigated and blackmailed and beaten and shot and had been ill with something that was in his bloodstream. All of those things were part of public record. He had also schemed and pulled strings and protected Mulder and Scully's backsides. That was not part of the record. He'd been there when Mulder disappeared in Oregon. That was pub- lic. But beyond that, there was not a lot to go on. So much was unspoken in regards to him and to all of the X Files history. Scully was mum, but it was clear to Monica when she saw them together that they had been through a lot - much like she and John - and that their shared experiences had brought them to some kind of understanding. What form that understanding took, she could not know. And it surprised her that she was curious about it. She usually wasn't interested in rumor and innuendo. "Agent Reyes?" "Hmm?" "Assistant Director Skinner will see you now. Please go on in." Had she missed the exit of the previous visitor to his office? She had been deep in thought, but found it hard to believe that someone might have passed her without her noting it. Had he been on the phone? But there had been at least two voices, she was sure of it. She shook herself from her reverie. It mattered not. She was on a mission. She rose and smoothed down her skirt. "Thank you, Kim," she said, and walked to the big door. She opened it, strode in, and was instantly intimidated in spite of her sureness as she had waited. It was the desk, she decided. It was huge. And it was him behind the desk, the white shirt blinding in its intensity, his eyes hidden behind glasses as he looked down at an opened file. And it was the tension in his body, the rigidness of his shoulders and how he held himself. He'd been softer in Montana, concerned and fluid, his coat whipping in the wind, no desk between them. He had seemed smaller there, diminished by the search and by his worry. Here he was immense and carved in granite, and it scared her. Until he looked up and the reflection from his glasses fell away. Then she breathed a sigh of relief. It was okay. His eyes were as she remembered them. And the eyes were the windows to the soul. She hadn't mis-read him. She was all right. "Agent Reyes," he said rising slowly as if it had been a long day. It was only ten a.m. He held out a large hand and gave her own hand a warm and firm shake. "Have a seat." "Thanks." She smiled, nodded at him, and dropped to the seat nearest the door. "What can I do for you, Agent Reyes?" he asked, leaning back and rocking his chair slightly as he looked at her. How should I do this? she thought as she lis- tened to the creak of his chair and gazed at his strong wrists showing under the folded- back shirt cuffs. Do I try to make this sound rational? How would Scully do this? What would Mulder have done with this information? She briefly shut her eyes. "Agent Reyes, are you all right?" "I'm fine, Sir," she answered, and opened her eyes to see the flash of one corner of his mouth rising and falling in a brief sardonic smile. "I've had a dream three nights straight," she stated flatly, as if talking about traffic on the Beltway or a case in which she had a marginal passing interest. It was the only way she could get it out. "In this dream I see a maroon tie, and a white shirt, and blood. There's gunfire. I'm certain that something is going to happen, that someone will be hurt. And Agent Doggett is wearing that tie today." The creaking of his chair stopped briefly. His hands, which had been resting on the chair arms, steepled over his chest, and the creaking began again. He did not appear surprised by this extraordinary piece of news. A thought came out of nowhere and shot through the back of her brain. Scully, it said. "You knew this already, didn't you?" she asked. "About the dream." He nodded at her. "Scully?" He nodded again and then leaned forward, rest- ing his forearms on the desk. "He won't leave the building today, Agent Reyes," he said in a voice that was deep and sure. "I promise you. I'll talk to him." Her relief was immediate and complete. "Thank you," she breathed, and at the same time she said that, there was a signal from his intercom and someone rapped on the door hard and pushed their way in. "Sir-" the intercom chirped. "It's all right, Kim," Skinner replied, looking up at the entering Dana Scully as she came around the desk and to his chair. There were two bright spots high on her cheeks. Something squeezed Monica's heart. "Agent Doggett's gone after an UNSUB," she said evenly, not wasting even a glance at Monica, but looking only at the Assistant Director. "It's a case we've been working on, the illegal alien who claims that he's the product of genetic engineering, part of a superior race of man created from information passed down from the last World War. We've been working with the D.C. police and they think they have him surrounded at a textbook warehouse south of the city." Dana Scully's hands betrayed her then, even if her voice did not. She brought them together low in front of her, wrung them as she spoke. "He ditched us. Left us a note in the office, telling us where he was going." Watching, Monica had a feeling that this was a scenario that had played out many, many times before. "He's not answering his phone. I've called the police and told them to take no action until I-" Dana glanced at Monica - "until we get there. But you know how these things go down." "His shirt's gray today," Monica managed to blurt out, wanting to give them all some kind of hope to cling to, some fresh wind to dissi- pate the smell of panic that was beginning to waft through the office. "In the dream, his shirt is white." Their eyes went to her as she spoke, but she noted that while Walter Skinner's eyes were on her, his hand unobtrusively moved to Scully's tight fists and the back of his fingers touched them briefly, a small calming gesture, and her hands fell back to her sides. Taken by this gesture but not wanting to bring attention to it, she repeated: "His shirt's gray today." Spoken aloud a second time, it sounded pathetic and feeble. Not much to hang your hopes on. "I'm leaving now," Dana said, moving for the door. Monica rose. "I'm coming, too," Skinner said, rising and reaching for his suit jacket and coat, and Monica was surprised at how much better it made her feel to hear it. This would all be fine, she decided. Doggett would be all right. Assistant Director Skinner would make sure of it. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Monica Reyes sneezed. She was allergic to dust, and there had been enough of it raised in the warehouse when she and Scully and Skinner entered that her eyes began to water. She felt a hand on her arm. Scully. "You okay?" she asked. "Dust allergies," Monica said with a sniff, and she fumbled in her suit pocket for an ever-present tissue. Ahead of them, Skinner found the officer in charge. No sign of the suspect, he said. "Yeah, an Agent Doggett is here, somewhere back in the warehouse. Had some nutty idea that our suspect would be in the history textbooks. We've given the place a pretty good search, but he's still back there," he said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder. "And we're getting ready to pull out." Skinner nodded. "Leave a unit here," he said. "We'll get him." He turned to Reyes and Scully and pulled out his Sig. "Might as well be careful, Agents," he said as he looked down and released the safety. He looked back up at them as they took out their weapons with a strange glimmer in his eyes. "Now let's go get our bad boy, shall we?" Monica snorted, part sneeze, part laugh. She didn't know Skinner had that kind of line in him, and she was surprised and delighted. And still terrified in spite of the assurances of the D.C. police. If there was nobody back there, why wasn't Doggett here, with them, at the mouth of the warehouse loading dock? "Let's go," he said, and they each struck out down an aisle, leaving two or three aisles be- tween them. Monica shivered as she moved slowly towards the back of the warehouse and she watched the tip of her gun - held in front of her at the ready - wobble in front of her. Her nose began to run. She didn't dare drop her supporting hand from the gun to dab at it with the tissue. Her arms were too unsteady. She felt a tear run down the right side of her face. This wasn't allergies. It was terror. She could barely fill her lungs. This was the same feeling that she had had in her dream. Suffocation. Terror. Something bad coming. Something very bad. She started and stumbled as she heard Skinner cry out "Agent Doggett!" to her right. Scully called as well, on the other side of Skinner, her voice moving further away. Monica didn't even try. She knew she didn't have the breath for it. She might manage a squeak, or some kind of strangled cry. But not his name. Not two syllables. "Agent Doggett!" Skinner called out again, and from the back of the warehouse, she heard a muffled: "Back here." She ran forward on rubbery legs. It sounded as if he were somewhere between she and Skinner, and by the time she met the back wall of the warehouse and turned to her right, Skinner was already there. And Doggett was fine. He and Skinner were standing in a pool of dim light produced by multi-paned windows that sat high on the back wall. Dust motes were flying through the air, and gratified by the sight of a safe John Doggett and reminded of her aller- gies and running nose, she took the time to stop and reach for her tissue. She was glad that she did. They were having an argument. One that had come to boil with incredible speed. She backed up the aisle and took a post next to a skid of textbooks - American Short Stories, the label on the skid wrapping told her - and watched and listened as she swiped at her nose. "Do you believe in your partner, Agent Dog- gett?" she heard Skinner bark. They were toe to toe, eye to eye, weapons down at their sides. She could see that Doggett had a streak of dirt high on his cheekbone. It twitched. "Yeah. I believe in stuff that makes sense, but this stuff - these dreams - I don't get that," he said with a dismissive wave of his free hand. "I don't get that kinda mumbo- jumbo." "Do you know what this did to her, Agent Dog- gett?" Skinner growled. "To see you in that tie? Could you have humored her, no matter what your personal beliefs? Would that have been so goddamned hard for you to do?" She watched John's shoulder's slump. Skinner had wounded him with that one. "Get him, big guy," Monica whispered under her breath as she watched. Friend or not, partner or not, John Doggett deserved every bit of this. "I've seen things, John, that you wouldn't be- lieve," Skinner said firmly but with less vit- riol as he holstered his weapon. "The X Files ... " His voice faded and he sighed and looked up at the high windows above them and then back down at the agent. "Just take care. Listen to her. Trust her. And if you can't believe in her-" he reached out and put a hand on John's shoulder "-then believe in me." He squeezed then, and gave Doggett a shake as he spoke through clenched teeth. "Because if you ever do something like this again, I will find you and I will personally beat the living shit out of you. And I can do it." Monica stifled a shocked laugh with her hand. She watched John stiffen. He did not take well to threats. But there had been a distinct lack of enmity in what Skinner had said, and fondness and concern beneath the anger, and after a quiet moment John slowly nodded and gave Skinner a rueful grin. "Okay," he said in a rough grumble. "Message received." He lifted the offending tie from his chest. "You want it?" he asked. "Doesn't go that well with gray. Looks better with white." And in slow-motion through the dust motes Monica saw the maroon tie and saw the gold threads running through it and saw the light from the windows bouncing off of the broad white chest of Walter Skinner and felt her blood freeze in her veins. No. No. This was her dream, and she cried out a warn- ing, too late. The shot came from above her, straight above her, above Willa Cather and O. Henry, and it blasted into the chest of the Assistant Direc- tor. Blood and chunks of flesh made the leap to John Doggett and his tie, and Skinner folded over into John and dropped to the floor like a sack of spilled grain, John going with him. "Jesus. Jesus Christ." She could hear Doggett swearing as he struggled to pull Skinner up, pull him away from the open space at the back of the warehouse. No need, she wanted to yell, because she was already braced, aiming at the perpetrator, aiming up through the skids of textbooks where she could see him crouching. One shot, and she heard it hit flesh and heard a cry. She was taking no chances. They were sitting ducks on the warehouse floor. She shot again. And again. After the third shot, the gun came down and clattered across the floor, and the faceless man who had authored her nightmare fell across the top beams and his blood began to spill down the skid below him. American History, 1900 through World War II, the label said. Doggett had been right. She holstered her weapon and ran to them, dial- ing 911 on her cell phone and giving directions as she ran. When she reached them, she plopped down cross-legged on the floor and struggled to pull Skinner off of Doggett, turning his torso back over onto her crossed legs to get a look at his wound. She gave Doggett a quick once-over first. If she didn't know better, if she hadn't seen it herself, she'd believe now looking at him that it was John Doggett who had taken the bullet and not Skinner. His face was a study in agony, a tight grimace, and she could see his Adam's apple working. He was looking down at Skinner, his tie clutched in his hand. "I never thought-" he rasped. "I thought it was me. I never would have-" "Get Scully," she shot at him. He could save the self-recriminations for later. She'd have some of her own. She looked down at the hole in Skinner's chest as Doggett stumbled to his feet and called for Scully, watched the blood pulse from the red/maroon pool there as his heart beat. It was spilling out of its little pool as she stared, creating an untidy four-leaf clover as it spread into the threads of his white shirt. She took the tissue that she'd somehow managed to hang onto through everything and pushed in down on the hole. It was soaked immediately, and she clumsily pulled off her suit jacket, folded it, put it over the tissue, and pulled it close to his chest. In the awkward posi- tions she was in, his chest was too broad for her to hold it onto him by grasping him around the back, so she put her left arm under his left arm and put her right arm over his right shoulder and tucked herself further under him, and then she pulled and pressed on her suit coat like there was no tomorrow, as if her life depended on it, her left cheek hard against his right. She could feel his light, late-morning beard stubble. She could smell his after-shave. And somewhere around the adrenaline-stoked pulse in her own throat she could feel the feeble pulse in his, and she suppressed a momentary vision of a weak newborn kitten. Monica heard the sound of Scully running to- wards them and looked up. John was leaning against the racking at the end of one of the aisles, his eyes fixed on the bloody tie that he held out in his equally bloody hands, and Scully spotted him as she careened around the corner. "Agent Doggett!" Scully said, her voice hoarse, her insistent hands trying to pull Doggett's hands away from his chest. "John! Where were you hit?" Monica tried to make her aching throat work, tried to call out to Scully, tried to give her some warning of what she was going to turn around and see. She watched John's diamond bright eyes meet Dana's and he took her wrists and pulled her searching hands away. His mouth moved. "Not me," he said. If he produced sound, Monica couldn't hear it over the blood pounding in her ears. She watched Dana Scully's back go rigid, watched her turn away, just slightly, as if she knew what she was going to see and wanted instead to run down the racks away from whatever was behind her, and then the Assistant Director gasped and Monica pulled away from his cheek and looked down and around at his face and found herself staring into opened eyes, eyes almost black with pain. When she looked back up for help, Doggett still had Scully's wrists in his grip. "Dana," Monica said. Or did Skinner say it? She couldn't tell. They were one body at that moment, one throat pulse, breathing together. John released Scully's wrists and she began wheeling, turning, moving towards them, and she took three long, fast strides before she realized the full effect of what she saw, before Monica could see in her stricken face that she fully comprehended the awful vision in front of her: the streaming light from the windows, Skinner sprawled on his back, his black coat spread out about him like a waiting funeral shroud, his white shirt turning red, Monica supporting him. At stride four Dana Scully's legs seemingly refused to cooperate and she went to her knees and hands and crawled the final six feet to their side. "Flat," Scully said, her voice a thick whisper, her trembling white fingers reaching for the pulse point on his neck. "What?" "He needs to be flat on his back." Monica nodded and backed out from under Skin- ner's torso. She couldn't let his head hit the concrete floor, though, and she knelt, holding it gently in her cupped hands. His eyes were closed, his mouth slightly open, and he was taking short, hitching breaths through gray lips. "It's all right, Walter. You're going to be just fine," Dana said in a soothing patter, a familiar-sounding incantation that Monica was sure Scully had used in some form or another many times before. Dana gripped his left hand and lifted the coat to see the wound. Her eyes grew wide and then briefly closed, and she returned the coat to his chest, applying pressure with her free hand. Monica heard the sound of footfalls and looked over to the racking, hopeful that it was already the bus for the hospital. But it was the uniformed police from the unit that had stayed behind. They stood there, weapons at the ready, aiming stupidly from Doggett to Skinner, Doggett to Skinner. "Nothing you can do here," John said, holding up both hands and moving towards them. "There's a bus on the way. Wait for them and bring them back here." Monica looked back down to opened eyes squinted in pain, to an ashen face years older than the one she remembered from his office a mere two hours ago, and she had never felt more helpless in her life. "Dana," she said, looking up at her. "Is there anything else I can do?" Scully paused in her ministrations, her parted lips pale, her eyes opalescent, and she stared back at Monica through the curtain of copper hair that had fallen around her face. Yes, Scully's voice whispered in her head. You can run. You can run as fast as you can away from the X Files, because if you don't, this kind of thing will be the norm, and no one should have to live like this. Get married. Have babies. Forget you ever knew us. Go away. Monica's legs trembled on the cold cement. "I heard that," she murmured through numb lips. Scully didn't even blink. Their heads turned as they heard the siren, and Monica's heart pounded with hope. John ran down the aisle and called for them to hurry, and she found herself gently rubbing her thumbs back and forth across the temples of the Assistant Director. She hoped that it was a soothing gesture. She had no way of knowing if it was. She could see the emergency medical technicians running towards them and heard Doggett bark out the scenario as he ran with them. The collapsible gurney made metallic clackety-clack sounds as it sped over the rough spots of the concrete floor. And below all of this she heard a soft whisper. It was Dana Scully. She was kneeling tight to Skinner's side, the fingers of her left entwined in his, and her lips were at his ear. A lock of her hair had fallen free and it was a brush stroke of fire on his colorless cheek. His eyes were open wide, now soft brown, and he seemed to be par- ticularly interested in something that was go- ing on about fifteen feet above their heads. And although she couldn't hear what Dana was saying over the approaching clatter, Monica felt an interloper, felt that she should leave, but she was loathe to drop Walter Skinner's unprotected head to the cold, hard floor, so she looked up at the windows instead, watching the dust motes, and fought down a sneeze. ~~~~~ "What is?" "What?" Monica paused in her check-writing. "I’m sorry?" Mrs. Lee pointed at the suit jacket. "What is?" Monica was lost. "Um. It’s a suit jacket. It goes with this skirt." "No. What is?" Mrs. Lee said again, and she held the jacket up in front of Monica and therefore up in front of all the people in line behind her and pointed at the large dark stain at the front of it. "Oh," Monica said. She cleared her throat un- easily. "It’s ... uh ... it’s blood." Mrs. Lee’s eyes grew as round as Mrs. Lee’s eyes could grow, and she looked from the jacket to Monica’s chest and back to the jacket as Monica heard the rustle and whisper of people behind her. "You okay?" Mrs. Lee asked, clearly concerned. She felt her face burn. "Yes, yes. I’m fine," she said as she finished her check- writing. I’m fine, she thought, but I’ll never be quite the same. Mrs. Lee handed Monica her completed laundry over the counter. "Tuesday," she said. "And I try with the coat, but I don’t know. Too much blood." Monica nodded and ducked her head as she worked through the crowd for the door, using her completed laundry as a shield. "Too much blood!" Mrs. Lee thoughtfully repeated as Monica pushed her way through a phalanx of normal people, people who probably never had prophetic dreams and had never heard of the X Files and didn’t believe in extraterrestrial beings and had most probably never watched someone’s blood leak from their body and create a predicted pattern on a starched white shirt. She unlocked her car, hung her laundry on the hook above the passenger door, got in, and headed for the hospital. She’d considered tossing the suit- coat and skirt - but practicality had won out over sen- timent. It was an expensive Jones New York and one of her favorites, so she had been loathe to consign it to the garbage can. She knew also that she could have expensed it, but she didn’t think she had it in her to write "Jones New York suit ruined by Walter Skinner’s blood" on a 302 that would ultimately need Walter Skinner’s signature for approval. She’d hope for the best at the cleaners. She had a feeling that this was just the beginning of strange and highly- demanding dry-cleaning requests, and she considered asking Scully where she took her laundry. Surely the counter people there would have seen pretty much everything by now. She parked a good quarter-mile from the hospi- tal on a side street in a neighborhood of large family homes built in the twenties, and the trees that lined that street arched and met above her creating a cathedral to normalcy. She needed to stretch her legs and she needed normalcy. Not that she’d ever felt truly normal. But she’d always managed in the past to keep one foot firmly planted on bland and pedestrian soil while the other went its curious and peculiar way. Now her world was all curious and peculiar, and she locked her car and began walking, breathing in the sweet air of lives unencumbered by anything more terrifying than mortgages and carpools, mumps and measles, and an occasional trip to the vet. Walter Skinner was going to be alright. It had been touch and go for a while. There would be no small amount of recuperative time in the near future and he was currently residing in the intensive care unit and would be there for a few more days, but Doggett had called her this morning and had announced that Skinner would make it, and did so in a voice so gravelly with fatigue and worry that at first Monica had not known who it was. She had decided then that she would take Agent John Doggett out to dinner at the earliest pos- sible opportunity, and that it would be at the most expensive place that she could afford, someplace quiet with dark burnished wood, some- place that smacked of manliness and a sure be- lief in the United States of America and in a higher power, and she would urge him to drink straight shots of high-priced scotch and would match him drink for drink. They had much to talk about, and she knew John well enough to know that his tongue would require some serious loosening before they could both deal with their cumulative guilts. She skirted a red wagon abandoned mid- sidewalk, caught a whiff of something baking in an oven, and thought briefly of her Grandmother and Grandfather Reyes. She wondered about Scully and what she was do- ing. She had hopped in the bus with Skinner almost two days ago and Monica hadn’t seen or heard from her since. Doggett had told her that Scully had been allowed - at her insis- tence - in an anteroom during the four-hour surgery. But that was all she knew. And if Kim knew she wasn’t talking. So Monica, alone and uncomfortable, had stayed in their gloomy basement office waiting for the phone to ring, wanting to make the trek to the hospital but not feeling tied enough to the shared pasts of Skinner, Scully, and Doggett to do so. She had watched the clock and had thought constantly of the three of them, and of the warehouse and the tie and the pulse in Skinner’s neck, and after Doggett’s call, she had decided to consider herself invited. Not that Walter Skinner would have known if she was there or not. According to Doggett he had only come to consciousness twice, and had been extremely disoriented and in pain. But that didn’t matter because she needed to be there; in truth had really wanted to crawl right in that bus along with Scully immediately after it happened. "Assistant Director Walter Skinner?" she said to an elderly man at the check-in desk wearing a cheerful yellow "Bob. I’m a Volunteer" badge. "He’s in ICU, I think." "Assistant ... Assistant ..." His fingers ran down a print-out. He looked up. "Assistant of what, again?" "Assistant Director. Of the FBI." His mouth made a round O of surprise and he raised his bushy gray eyebrows. "The FBI!" he said. "Holy cow. The FBI." If you only knew, she thought, and then chided herself for making the process harder than it needed to be. He wasn’t the Assistant Director of anything here. He was just a man who had almost died and had needed a hospital. "Walter Skinner," she said. He seemed to sense her chagrin and he shot down the list again, spotting it easily. "Yes. ICU. Fourth floor." She nodded her thanks and walked away, feeling his eyes follow her as she went. She punched the button in the elevator and thought of her elevator trip to Skinner’s office after she’d spotted Doggett in the tie. What if she hadn’t gone to him? What if he’d chosen to stay safe behind his desk? Would Doggett have been shot in spite of his gray shirt? Would someone else have taken a bullet in Skinner’s stead? She pictured she and Scully that day, and her legs went weak and she leaned back into the wall. They had both been wearing white shirts. It was possible that his being there had saved them both. She exited the elevator on wobbly legs and fol- lowed the signs to ICU. There was an unat- tended desk there and a sign next to a large metal button on the wall. "Push here for entry to ICU," the sign said. "Authorized visitors and personnel only." She paused for only a moment before deciding she was authorized. She leaned into it and the double doors swung open and she entered. She didn’t have to search. He was in the first room on her right, the first place she had naturally looked. And he was alone. She felt a rush of sadness and anger. Where was Scully? Where was Doggett? Where was Skinner’s family? She stood trembling at the threshold to his dimly-lit room, angry at his friends for abandoning him, angry at the FBI for giving him the X Files and making him a so- cial pariah, angry at Skinner himself for choosing to live his life in a fortress, for walling himself off from a gentler, kinder world. Her misting eyes first flew to his chest, be- cause she was sure that he was dead. He cer- tainly looked dead - eyes sunken and bruised, skin chalky, cheeks drawn hard over his cheek- bones - but his chest was moving slightly, up and down and up and down. He was breathing. Not on his own yet. There were tubes coming out of him and going into him all over his body, and the machinery around him was humming and clicking away in a very business-like fash- ion. Afraid to look at him any longer, her eyes were drawn to flowers on a stand in the corner: a big, flamboyant thing that lacked only a feather to put it totally over the top, and she was sure that was from the FBI; a smaller batch of daisies with a smiling sun saying "Get Well Soon!" on a stick rising from the center of it; an even smaller arrangement of carnations that smacked of the cheapest FTD thing that could be purchased on the internet; and a single white orchid flying out of a nest of moss in a burnished clay pot. The orchid took her breath away, it was so simple and beautiful and perfect, and it was a beacon, and she walked into the room and headed for it, reaching her hand out to peak at the card. Walter Skinner choose that time to make a low noise that came from deep in his chest. It was part groan, part purr, and she turned to look at him and thought briefly of her Grandmother and Grandfather Reyes. She willed him to remain unconscious. What could she say to him if he opened his eyes? "Hi." "Hello, there." "How are you feeling?" All of these seemed woefully inadequate, but her biggest fear was that he would come to, look at her, and say: "Who are you?" He made the noise again and she shot an alarmed look at the pixilated information on the screens around him. They meant nothing to her, and she did the only thing she could think of to do. She touched him. It took her a moment to find a place that wasn’t pierced by a tube. She chose his lower chest, below the very serious-looking bandage there, and she softly laid down her right hand on the blanket and spread her fingers, feeling the gentle up-and-down movement of his breath- ing. She felt a need to touch flesh, a need that she didn’t question, and her left hand first headed for his bare forearm and then rose for his cheek, but then it naturally went up higher, up above where she’d rubbed his temple with her thumbs, up to his forehead, up to his hairless head, and she smoothed his brow and moved her hand across his scalp, stroked him, pet him, calmed him with her voice. She said nothing and she said everything. She talked about him getting better and about this being a good hospital and as she talked she looked blankly at the chair at his bedside and the table next to it and realized that there were Doggett-leavings there: Altoid tin, half- filled paper coffee cup - black, no cream, no sugar - "The Perfect Storm," a book she’d lent him. He’d probably gone to get dinner. She’d allow him that. And then she talked about Dog- gett and about the X Files and how glad that she was able to work with him and with Scully and she idly wondered again where Scully was, but she kept that to herself. And then she grew bold and asked him who he was, really, and then she asked him what was in his heart and soul, and what made him so sad, and she stroked his head and rubbed his chest and said that it reminded her of the old game from grade school where you try to rub your head and your stomach at the same time, and he seemed to sigh at that. And she thought of her Grandmother and Grandfather. "How’s the big guy doing?" Feeling guilty, her hands flew back to her sides as she turned. It was an ICU nurse, an immense black woman with an equally immense smile. "Bernita," the pin on her chest an- nounced. "He made noise. In his chest." She nodded, unconcerned. "He’ll do that," she said, and she busied herself checking vitals, humming an unidentified tune as she did. "I’m ... I work with him," Monica said, feeling that she needed to explain why she’d considered herself authorized. "Oh really? Do you work with John Doggett, then?" she asked, writing something on a form. "Yeah. He’s my partner." Bernita moved to the bed and fiddled with a kinked tube. She looked intently up at Monica and her smile faded and she stopped humming. "Were you there when ..." she raised her eye- brows and nodded down at Skinner’s chest. Monica stared down at his chest and blinked. "Oh yeah." Bernita nodded sadly, as if her an- swer explained a great deal. "Looks like John has been here," Monica said pointing at the chair and table, wanting to change the subject, not particularly wanting to revisit the warehouse scene anymore than she was already unwillingly doing. "Oh yeah," Bernita said, pushing Monica gently aside to get at another tube. "He’s been here most the time, and he’s startin’ to look a lit- tle ragged. I sent him home. Told him to take a shower." She chuckled. "He’s startin’ to scare the patients." Bernita turned to her, hands on her substantial hips. "Are you friends? You and John Doggett?" she asked. Monica nodded. "Good," Bernita said putting a warm hand on Monica’s upper arm and patting. "Honey, he’s sure gonna need you." "I’m gonna need him, too," Monica wanted to say, but Bernita was bustling for the door. "Has anybody else been here?" she said instead, and Bernita stopped, turned, and seemed to think about it, frowning and pursing her lips. "Don’t think so." She began to turn and Monica stepped away from the bed and towards the door. "A woman? Did a woman visit?" Bernita looked at Monica and then down at the bed and then back at Monica, a little smile on her lips. "No, honey. No woman." Then she turned and sailed down the hallway. Monica went back to the side of the hospital bed and clutched the railing there. She looked down at the wan face of Walter Skinner and she leaned over and she whispered, whispered into the ear opposite the one that Dana Scully had whispered into on the warehouse floor. "I will make this up to you." She wasn’t quite sure what she meant by it, but that did not weaken her desire to do so. ~~~~~~ Monica was exhausted. She actually considered sitting down in the red wagon that was still blocking the sidewalk as she walked back to her car in the fading light. She had stayed at the hospital until Doggett had arrived. Doggett had looked worse than Skinner in spite of his trip home, a shower, and a decent meal, and Monica had elicited a promise from him: He was not to spend another night there, and he would call her at 9 p.m. to spell him if no one else had arrived. Bernita’s visit had grounded her, and after she’d left the room, Monica hadn’t continued with the intense psychobabble, but instead had read aloud to him from "The Perfect Storm," ad- mittedly not the most cheering and calming of books, and she’d briefly considered running down to the hospital gift store and buying a book more benevolent and peaceful, but she’d been loathe to leave his side. Her car came into view and she dropped her tired body into it and released a deep sigh as she folded into the driver’s seat. She wrapped her fingers around the bottom of the steering wheel and let her head fall back to the headrest. She had a good cry in her somewhere, and she knew it would come out sooner or later. She preferred sooner. Her tear ducts had never gotten the gist of appropriate timing, and she didn’t want to blubber like a newborn in a briefing. But she knew also that she couldn’t conjure the tears. They would come when they would come, and she knew herself well enough to know that this cry would be a good long one. She raised her head from the headrest and put her keys in the ignition. Scully. The whole time she was at the hospital she’d wondered where Scully was, and now she saw her backing into a spot across the street and about three cars down from her. About damned time. Monica could only see the back of Dana’s head as she parallel-parked. She parked perfectly, of course, and Monica put her hand on the door handle so that she could open it and trot over and say hello, so that she could say that she’d been keeping watch in Scully’s old friend’s room in ICU for the past three hours, and that he’d looked - she thought - measurably better when she’d left, and that she’d read to him and touched him - and where were you, by the way? Where have you been? Do you care so little for his welfare? But then Monica saw her face. Dana Scully looked dreadful. She had always thought that Dana was beautiful. She had told her that before she’d helped to deliver William. Monica had always wanted to look like Dana, all the way back in grade school: fiery red hair, porcelain complexion lit from behind, eyes like the dawn, plump lips. Dana’s face was a face meant to be painted by a Renaissance master. Monica considered her own face and eyes to be dark and shadowy and she envied the lightness and brightness in Scully’s. If her face was the moon, Scully’s was the sun. She had thought Skinner and Doggett looked bad. In retrospect, looking at Scully, Monica realized that Skinner and Doggett were merely in pain and tired, merely suffering the aftereffects of a bullet in the chest and too much sitting in an uncomfortable hospital chair. But Scully looked like she’d been to the gates of hell and back. Her normally beautiful skin was flat and blotchy, and even from yards away Monica could see lines in her face that she’d never seen before, lines that ran down from the corners of her eyes, lines that bisected her brow. Her perfect parking job had been completed, but she still sat in her car staring intently and blankly at the dashboard, her hands at ten and two, her lips held in a strange pucker. And then she began to weep. Her normally incandescent face screwed up into a tight grimace and her shoulders began pumping up and down. If she made sound, Monica couldn’t hear it through her closed window. Monica scrunched down further in her seat and looked briefly away. She recognized a cry like this, one so deep that it needed to be primed, had to work up out of you requiring a good minute-long dry cry, no breath taken, all exhale before there was noise or moisture. By the time she looked back, the tears had been unleashed and Dana had taken her hands from the steering wheel and placed them over her eyes. Monica considered driving away then and leaving her to her misery and her quarter- mile head-clearing walk to the hospital, but feared that she’d pull out and Dana would look up and spot her. Dana seemed to catch herself then, shook her- self and squared her shoulders, and then wiped her cheeks with her hands and grabbed tissue from the seat next to her and dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose. She pulled her hair back from her face and moved the rearview mir- ror so that she could see herself. And then she started to apply fresh makeup. This looked to be a ritual that she had at- tempted with some frequency of late. A stroke or two more of blush, here and here, a little more, a little more, and soon Dana Scully began to look like a cadaver carefully prepared for a wake. And it seemed that Dana realized that as well, because brush in hand, eyes on the rearview mirror, it started again: the shaking, the dry sobbing, her hands flying to her face, and Monica felt her throat grow tight and thought of her Grandmother Reyes at her Grandfather’s funeral. She was a proud woman, and no one saw her weep that day or ever. She had made her choice, had known that she would most probably spend many years alone, but she wore that truth like a badge. She had had the very best partner in Grandfather Reyes and wanted no one’s pity. And then, staring straight ahead through the windshield, Monica realized why they had been so persistently in her thoughts. Grandfather Reyes had been eighteen years older than her Grandmother. She thought that there were probably less years than that between she and Walter Skin- ner. Her eyes slid across the street. Dana’s head had dropped back on the headrest. She looked used up, spent, older than her years. Monica heard a mother calling her children to come in for dinner and saw a light go on in an upstairs room in the house behind Dana’s car. A father ran down the street holding onto the back of his son’s wobbly bicycle, and he and the rest of his family standing on their porch urged the boy on. An elderly couple strolled arm and arm down the sidewalk. The bells in the church tower at the corner began to mark the time. And two women sat across the street from each other in their FBI-issued vehicles, one going to the hospital, one coming from the hospital, and one of them began to weep. The third time was the charm. Definitely. The third time did it. Monica wept too.