Summary: The disk, how the LGM got home, and what started Jimmy on a quest that led him to places like Malta and Yemen...XF/JTS, LGM/All About Yves, PG.

TITLE: Zwischen und Nach
AUTHOR: Maidenjedi
EMAIL: texgoddess@yahoo.com
RATING: PG-13
ARCHIVE: List archives, otherwise please ask.
SPOILERS: LGM/All About Yves, XF/Jump the Shark
KEYWORDS: Gunfic, Jimmy/Yves, post-ep, missing scene
DISCLAIMER: When you do what John Gillnitz did,
they're freakin' up for grabs.
SUMMARY: The disk, how the Gunmen came home, and
how Jimmy got started on a quest that took him to
places like Malta and Yemen.

***

Author's Notes:

After the story.

*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*



Dark room.

Pounding headache.

Yves....

"Yves!"

Jimmy jumped up. "Yves!" He clutched his head,
the pounding intensified with his yelling.

Where the hell was he?

A cot. Dark room. Smell of...ink and newspaper?

He was home. Sort of. The lair.

How did he get there?

He fingered a sore spot on his shoulder. Sore like
from a shot.

Yves.

"Yves?" This time it was tentative, quiet.

"They took her." A familiar voice, not as proud
or arrogant as Jimmy was used to hearing it.

"Kimmy?"

"Yeah. She knocked you out, I brought you here.
And I'm outta here. They took her." Kimmy was
frantically scrubbing the keyboard and computer
monitor with his shirt.

"Who took her?"

Kimmy moved over to the VCRs, taking tapes from them
of the last twenty-four hours. Erasing his presence
from this room. Jimmy was no dummy, he figured
Kimmy was scared. "Who was it, Kimmy?"

"Not the girls, if that's what you mean. It was
*them*." Kimmy didn't even turn around. He simply
ran to the door and slammed it behind him as he fled.

Jimmy resisted the urge to chase him. What good would
it do, anyway? Kimmy was a paranoid little geek
anyway.

Jimmy took off his jacket and started to stand up. He
was immediately dizzy and so sat back on the bed. On
his jacket. On something uncomfortable in his jacket.

"What the..."

He pulled out a very small disk, encased in plastic.

"Yves..." he whispered.

*be sure this gets to agent mulder*

Jimmy intended to do just that.

*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*


"Jimmy Bond?" a distinctly feminine and slightly bossy
voice called out.

Jimmy looked up from his bench to see a very pregnant
redhead waddling his way. She was accompanied by a
man Jimmy had met only once before and had heard
plenty
about: Fox Mulder.

"Agent Mulder!" Jimmy stood up and stuck out his
hand.

Mulder shook it, nodding at Jimmy and putting a finger
to his lips. "Not really 'agent' these days, but you
never know who's listening. This is Agent Dana
Scully,
my...my partner."

Scully looked up at Mulder, a slightly bemused smirk
crossing her lips before she turned and offered a hand
to Jimmy. "Jimmy."

"Agent Scully," Jimmy said. He shook her hand
tentatively, a little afraid that he'd shake her
apart. She was so small, even for a pregnant woman.

"You have something for me, Jimmy?"

"Yes! Yes I do. Yves, she told me to make sure
you got this." He took a folded issue of
"The Lone Gunman" out of his jacket pocket.

Mulder looked at Jimmy a little skeptically,
and Scully looked at Mulder quizically.
Jimmy just stage-whispered, "Unfold it."

The disk was lying in the folds. Mulder
folded the paper back up and gave it to Scully,
who stuck it in her own jacket pocket. She was
still looking confused, and a little agitated.

"What's on this disk, Jimmy?" Scully asked,
obviously beating Mulder to the punch, indicated by
the slightly disappointed, sideways glance he gave
her. Jimmy pretended not to notice.

"Yves told me it has information concerning," and
here his voice got much quieter, so that Mulder and
Scully had to lean toward Jimmy a little, "alien
abductees. A list of names, she said. People who
that Fletcher guy was fooling with."

This last made Mulder jump. "Fletcher?"

"Yeah. This guy Frohike, Byers, and Langly hooked
up with, the same guy who got them busted. Morris
Fletcher. Gave the guys a bunch of hooey about how
he was a man in black. Not like the movie, but you
know..."

"The actual guy," Mulder deadpanned.

Jimmy nodded once. "Yeah."

Scully and Mulder looked at each other again. "Why
does that name sound familiar, Mulder? Do we know
him?"

Mulder shrugged. "Maybe. It sounds vaguely familiar,
but I don't know offhand."

Jimmy stood awkwardly for a moment before speaking
again. "You haven't heard from Frohike, have you
Agent
Mulder?"

Mulder shook his head.

Jimmy sighed. "Well, I hope you can do something with

that disk, Agent Mulder. Agent Scully, it was a
pleasure to meet you." He stuck out his hand again,
and both Mulder and Scully shook it.

He walked away, feeling like he'd done the right
thing,
and suddenly wanting to see Yves again very, very
much.

*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*


Back at headquarters, there was a surprise waiting for
him.

"Frohike?"

Standing in the middle of the main room, Frohike
looked like he'd been through hell and back. He was
scrubbing at his face with a white towel that was
splotched blue. His hair was sticking up at all
angles, and his clothes were torn and dirty.

"Frohike!" Jimmy ran toward the older man, ready to
embrace him but stopping short when Frohike took a
step back.

"Heya Jimmy."

"You're alive! Not dead! Where...?"

"Langly's in the head, I think. Byers is in the back,
ordering a pizza. We're starving."

"It's no wonder, you've been gone for about two
days....what the heck happened, anyway?"

"Stop badgering me for a second! I've got to get this
blue paint off my face." Frohike resumed his
scrubbing.

Jimmy ran into the kitchen (or what passed for it) to
find Byers just hanging up the phone. His face was a
lighter shade of blue than Frohike's towel, and he
wasn't nearly as disheveled. Jimmy couldn't remember
ever seeing Byers truly messed up.

"Heya Jimmy!" Byers seemed much happier to see Jimmy
than Frohike had.

"Byers! Where have you guys been?"

"Long story, Jimmy. I'm not sure I'm up to telling
it."

"Well, I will. We were caught in the freakin' lion's
den! Fletcher set us up, all to get to Yves. He was
lying the whole time. There was no Romeo-61, it was
all a huge scam!" Langly came into the room,
popped the top on a can of cheap beer and sat on one
of the barstools that passed for dining furniture.

"That son-of-a-bitch!" Frohike was no calmer as he
joined them. "He took Yves, that's what happened. He
had us roughed up, threw us in a van and driven out to
some godforsaken..."

"It was Pennsylvania, Frohike."

"Whatever, Byers, it was desolate. He had us driven
out there and dumped. We hitched back."

"You hitchhiked?"

"Yeah. That lying, no-good, two-faced son-of-a-"

"Ok, Frohike, we all know what he is!"

Jimmy stood there, a little dumbfounded. "He. He
did. He did what?"

"Took Yves."

"Where? Why? I don't..."

"Neither do we. All he said to us was that we were
damn lucky he found us so amusing in the first place."
Langly popped the top on another beer, intent on
getting drunk as fast as he possibly could.

"Well, that's not quite all, Langly. I heard him
telling Yves that she was going to get what was coming
to her. He said he was taking
her back, but back where he didn't say. After that,
nothing." Byers
folded his arms across his chest.

Silence prevailed while this information soaked in,
broken only by Frohike's frustrated yelps as he
scrubbed harder at his blue face (turning it an
alarming shade of purple in the process) and
Byers getting up to meet the pizza delivery man
outside when he appeared on the monitors.

"Eat up, gentlemen. Pepperoni for Langly, canadian
bacon and pineapple for Frohike, and cheese for Jimmy
and me."

They dug in, the Gunmen famished after their ordeal
and Jimmy simply starving normally. When the last
slice was demolished, Jimmy looked at Byers intently.

"We have to find her. We can't let her go like that."

"I agree, Jimmy, but the question is how. We have
very little to go on, not so much as a license plate
number or a make of vehicle, let alone a name or a
source...." Byers shook his head.

"There has to be a way. I...we can't just let them
get away with this!"

Frohike, who had given up the scrubbing to eat
heartily, nodded. "Jimmy's right. Where do we
start?"

Langly, from his barstool and on his fifth beer,
slurred the idea that would change everything.
"Romeo-61."

"Langly, you're drunk." Byers wrinkled his nose ever
so slightly.

"Yeah. So what? Romeo-61, man. It's all happening
there."

Frohike crossed his arms. "I think Langly's on to
something. The facility was located in a pretty
industrial part of town. There has to be video of the
surrounding parking lots, the streets, something."

"Right on." Langly hiccuped.

"I didn't think of that," Byers said through a yawn.
"Jimmy, did you notice anything that might be useful?
Jimmy?"

"Huh?" Jimmy jumped out of his reverie.

"Did you notice anything around the Romeo-61 building
that might help us track down Fletcher and Yves?
Video cameras on streetlamps, other official
buildings, that sort of thing?"

Frohike ran into the main room. "Streetlamps! We can
check the state listing, and the city. There has to
be a way."

Three hours later, while Langly lay curled in a corner
snoring and Jimmy sat on the couch nodding off, Byers
and Frohike exclaimed at the same time. "Found it!"

"What!" Jimmy was startled awake.

"Here it is. Video taken from across the street.
That's the bunch of commandos that roughed us up, and
there's no mistaking Yves with Fletcher. They've got
a couple of government-issue black vans."

Byers frowned and leaned in as Frohike zoomed in on
the
license plates. "I don't think so, Frohike. Those
aren't government plates."

The vans, it appeared, were from Maryland.


*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*


Three hundred thousand dollars in hocked computer
equipment later, the Gunmen tracked down a lead on
the whereabouts of Yves Adele Harlow.

They gave up everything in just one short month,
dedicating their resources to the cause. "The Lone
Gunman" went unpublished, the van went unmaintained,
and eventually there was nothing more that could be
done. They had a solid lead on a woman fitting Yves'
description somewhere in eastern Europe, but only
enough money to fly one of them across the world to
find her.

"I want to do," Langly said.

"Negatory, ace. It's the blond hair, you can't do it.
Too conspicuous." Frohike munched on his latest batch
of juevos rancheros, which had proven too spicy for
the
likes of the others.

"Oh, and I suppose you're going to do, Stumpy?"

Frohike glared at Langly, and Byers cut the tension in
the
air with a decisive statement.

"We draw straws. It's the only fair way."

Jimmy stood up from his place on the couch. "No,
Byers."

"Jimmy, it only makes sense, there's only enough for
one one-way ticket..."

"No. I'm going. Alone."

The three of them stared at Jimmy, and immediately
launched into various spiels about why he couldn't do
it.

"No, I have to do it. I...she's gone because of me.
I should have stopped her."

"Jimmy, it wasn't your fault, she walked into it
knowingly..."

"Byers, I'm going. I'm bigger than you anyway." A
waning grin crossed his face. Byers stepped closer.
Frohike and Langly looked on, both ready to protest
again.

"Jimmy," he said softly, "I know what I'm talking
about. Don't waste your life blaming yourself. There
was nothing you could have done. She has a mind of
her own. Don't do this because you think you owe it
to her. You might never even find her."

Jimmy nodded. "I know that. But you know what this
means. I have to do it, or die trying."

They stood there, each man haunted by a quiet specter
of duty, staring each other down. Byers didn't
flinch, but closed his eyes and clapped Jimmy on the
shoulder.

"Ok, then."

Frohike and Langly backed down, too, and started in
earnest to give advice and admonish Jimmy on how to go
undercover.

Two days later, on a midday flight out of Dulles,
Jimmy Bond went searching for Yves Adele Harlow.


*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*


EPILOGUE
ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETARY
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA


Three caskets, gleaming silver, lined in a patriotic
blue. Jimmy had picked them out.

He stood holding three American flags. Red, white,
blue. Three flags, each in three colors, for three
dead heroes.

He hadn't been able not to cry. Yves stood next to
him, holding his hand while the minister read the
standard "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust" epithet for
funerals.

One by one, the other attendees left. Finally, those
who remained stood paired off. Doggett and Reyes said
their goodbyes and offered condolences. Scully and
Skinner stood apart from the others, making ready to
leave and talking quietly about how she should break
this news to Mulder. Jimmy had wondered about that;
where was Agent Mulder, anyhow?

Fletcher, thank God, had left. Jimmy didn't want to
see that man's face again, and the only thing keeping
him from beating the crap out of Fletcher now was the
funeral. Funerals are no place for beating the crap
out of someone.

Yves and Jimmy were finally the only two left standing
as the groundskeepers and gravediggers tidied the area

and lowered the caskets. Three six-foot deep trenches
in which to bury three dead heroes.

"My mother used to say, bad things always happen in
threes." Jimmy's voice was muted, colored by an
uncharacteristically somber note.

Yves nodded. "I heard that one, too. But what about
good things?" She sighed harshly.

"I guess good things happen in threes, too, just to
balance things out." Yves nodded, leaning into him.

"How did you find me, Jimmy? How did that happen?"

Jimmy sniffed, thinking about the last day he'd spent
preparing for his quest, about how Byers had hocked
his last IBM ThinkPad to buy Jimmy plenty of black
wool clothing, and how Frohike and Langly had spent
hours teaching him how to use the amateur bugging
equipment they had left. He remembered how he'd
found out Yves' real name, Lois, when he was
on the Yemenese coast. A short woman swathed in
black had recognized the picture he carried of Yves,
and said "Lois! Lois Runtz!" over and over, running
away from Jimmy and looking frantically over her
shoulder for an attacker.

"They did it, Yves. They spent every last dime
tracking
you down, and once they had a lead, the only money
left
paid for just one of us to go after you."

"You."

"Yeah."

She took his hand again, and as the sunset on
Arlington
National Cemetary and "Taps" rang out somewhere in the
distance, they walked away. Behind them, three
gleaming silver caskets, glinting shades of gold in
the last bit of sunlight, were lowered into the
ground.




*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*


The end.

Feedback/criticism always welcome at
texgoddess@yahoo.com

Author's Notes:

"Zwischen und Nach" is German for between and after.

In "Jump the Shark", Jimmy said he'd spent the past
year chasing Yves around the world. This is a
post-ep for "All About Yves" written to explain how
that happened. I am not touching the events of
"Jump the Shark" in this story.

For Michael and Ben, who watched every episode of
"The Lone Gunmen" with me in my tiny bedroom, complete
with Wendy's chicken nuggets, Sonic shakes, and after
hours of bowling, despite bad reception and
intolerable
heat. Those two deserve medals for those 13 hours!


=====
"If a Spender's shot in the basement, and
no ones there to see it, does he really die?"
- "Spookystar42" on the XF OS boards
----------------------
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