Summary: Deslea's rec: "An excellent post-Existence casefile/MSR. I wasn't fond of some of the plot twists in this one (three guesses which ones!) but it's a good read with strong narrative. I liked the incorporation of Season 7 and Season 8 plot and character elements - it's a story with a good sense of context within the wider X Files world, something often lacking in later-season casefiles. Worth a look."

A LOVE SONG by ADHOKK7 PART 2 OF 2
SEE PART 1 FOR HEADERS

Baltimore, Maryland
10:00 p.m.

Twin rays of white light exposed a million cracks and
imperfections in the yellow curb they lingered on as the
driver of the black two-door parked. He leaned forward
slightly and twisted the knob on the steering column,
killing the headlights and allowing the curb and the night
around it to saunter back into the privacy of darkness. The
seatbelt rubbed against his trenchcoat as he leaned back
against the seat of the car and then there was silence.

The house he watched was dark and it was quiet and from
inside the car parked outside it, Walter Skinner kept watch
over Margaret Scully and William Mulder as they slept.
****

Panama City Beach, Florida
Midnight

"There they are," Scully said, pointing and handing the
binoculars back to Reyes and Reyes continued the commentary.

"The one getting out of the boat is CIA. The other one is
Dr. Hildebrandt. After the spook sees that the beach is
clean, they're supposed to go north on foot for a mile to a
safehouse."

Reyes started the car.

"Where are we going?" Scully asked as the car lurched onto
the beach.

"We're going to give the doctor a ride," Reyes answered and
laid on the accelerator. In an incredibly bumpy second,
they had split the distance between them and their prey in
half and Reyes turned on her headlights.

Beside the boat, the two men froze, shocked by the presence
of the speeding car. Then the spell broke and the man Reyes
had pinned as a spook began trying to wrestle Dr.
Hildebrandt back into the water.

Her body's memory of being with Mulder in similar situations
had braced her unaware, so as Reyes slammed on the brakes
and the car began to spin in the sand, Scully already had
her right hand on the door handle and her left was gearing
up to disconnect the seatbelt.

"Shit!" Reyes screamed as she tried frantically to get the
car under control and then they stopped.

Scully was out first, her gun drawn, and she raced toward
the wrestlers in the ocean.

"Federal agent!" She knew she screamed it as loudly as she
was capable of, but the sound of an explosion was all she
heard and in front of her, one of the men stopped wrestling.
He fell backward into the water as Dr. Hildebrandt ran onto
the beach, Reyes' bullet having found its target.

Scully turned to confront Reyes, mostly on animal instinct,
but no words came.

"What?" Reyes screamed, eyes wide. When Scully didn't
answer, Reyes ran to help Hildebrandt. She met him as he
ran toward the car and she ran back alongside him, her hand
at his elbow.

"I want to know what the hell is going on here and I want to
know now!" Scully stood in front of the car, her gun
pointed at Hildebrandt.

Reyes started to say something but a very sudden and very
subtle shift of Hildebrandt's posture silenced her. It was
so subtle, Scully was barely able to read it herself, but
she did.

"Do you want to explain this to the police?" Dr. Hildebrandt
whispered. "They'll be here shortly after the CIA arrives
to fix this mess."

Scully heard him, but his words seemed light and slightly
garbled. She lowered her gun and tried to lower her eyes or
look away but she was unable to break her eye contact with
the man.

"Good. Shall we?" Hildebrandt motioned to the car. It was
then that Scully noticed the book in his other hand.

Reyes whistled and threw Scully the car keys.

"You drive. Let's go."

Scully watched the rearview carefully as she drove. She
needed to be aware of anyone who may have picked up their
trail anywhere along the way, but she also wanted to keep an
eye on her passengers in the back seat. As per Reyes'
instructions, they were taking the scenic route to a house
Reyes was renting a couple of miles inland and once they had
gotten away from the mobs of cars of teens, Hildebrandt
seemed to go into a trance. He simply stared downward, eyes
unblinking and hard.

And, Scully thought, cold.

At the rental house, after Hildebrandt had been led inside,
Scully confronted Reyes, demanding to know exactly what was
happening and threatening to make the call to Skinner in the
absence of "some damn good answers" and with a seriousness
Scully had never seen her show, Reyes called in her Democrat
Hot Springs marker and Scully went back to her room with no
answers and she didn't call anyone. She slept and when she
didn't sleep, she stared into the empty darkness and filled
it with the face of (...Jordan Black...) William.


Reescher, North Dakota

Lying in a room furnished only with the table beneath him
and the harsh bare light above him, Terry Nosh turned his
head toward the sound of the opening door to his right.
Despite the blindfold over his eyes, he knew the faces of
these men. He had seen them, walking toward him, walking
into this very room, in his dreams. He knew the tools they
carried and the symbols they would draw on the floor and on
the walls. He knew the words to the prayers they would
offer and when he finally felt the cold steel of the knife
against his eleven year old throat, he knew what was coming
next.

But he would be back because he had seen it in his dreams
and his dreams always came true.


Baltimore

Skinner's heartbeat was smooth and calm. Regular. Normal.

The adjectives he kept rolling over in his head seemed not
quite right, he thought as he shifted in his seat. None of
them were adequate to describe just how at ease his body
was...

No, "at ease" wasn't right.

He closed his eyes and shook his head for just a second,
considering the irony that at one time, not so long ago
really, he had wanted to write screenplays.

He put his hands on the steering wheel and began tapping a
soft erratic beat with his thumbs.

"I coulda been the Skinman," he said and chuckled, hoping
the humor and the steady heartbeat were enough to convince
the fear storming through his brain to settle its ass down.

Through his driver's side window, he watched the house.

Inside the house, Margaret Scully had just finished crawling
into bed after kissing her sleeping grandson's cheek and
holding her hand over his heart. And now, as she closed her
eyes and began put her worries away for the night, William
opened his eyes and rolled over in his babybed. He bobbed
his head once, twice, and then held it steady, moving only
horizontally until his eyes were locked downward on the dark
northeast corner of the room. In the direction of Walter
Skinner.


*****
The screams grow louder as she walks from the table and
where she stood becomes a hollow place in her past filled
with mists she knows she could not have kept at bay forever.
She feels movement inside her and for a crashing planet's
second she believes it is William and he is home again and
she can...

She hasn't seen his face in so long.

She needs her baby. She wants him back home, back
in her womb but he is not inside her and still there is
movement where he should be.

The mists begin to gather around her, roaming over her like
soft hands, caressing her hair, her neck, between her legs
and her body responds, her cunt yawning for fulfillment and
her soul screaming in acceptance and then defiance.

She runs forward, away from the mist which she knows is here
as a herald of a sky whose intention is only to fall. The
screams are louder now, racing from the cave's mouth and
into the grey daylight. She knows she is here for a reason.

She remembers the table.

She clutches her gun and begins to listen to the voices she
has resisted hearing. The voices telling her why she is
here. The voices telling her to keep her own fire hot and
to avoid the mists.

Telling her she is responsible for William and telling her-
****


Panama City

Scully shook herself out of her trip back into her dream
from last night, what little she could remember of it
anyway. After waking, she had taken a much needed shower
and now she sat in front of her laptop computer reading
about the short life of Jordan Black.

The web had little to offer, mostly sites dealing with
murder statistics and tangentially related stories of child
abuse. After exhausting standard search engines and
those few Bureau resources she still had access to, she
turned to usenet and although that in itself was, she
believed, as good as admitting defeat and a lack of
creativity, in alt.conspiracy, in a post from "adhokk7", she
found specific mention of Jordan Black's death, labeling it
"ritual sacrifice". The ranting and deplorable typing of
adhokk7 were mind-numbing, she thought as she deciphered the
accusations of a Nazi conspiracy which had been responsible
for the death of the girl as part of an occult ritual of
resurrection. adhokk7 claimed that Jordan was killed
because she psychic and that she was to have been brought
back from the dead to serve as a messenger or a messiah for
these Nazi conspirators.

Mostly disgusted by what she read, she leaned back against
her pillow and started weighing the wisdom of calling her
mother and checking on William but the laptop beeped,
signaling the arrival of e-mail, and she leaned back to
work.

She clicked on the e-mail window and saw that it was from
adhokk7. Her eyes widened and she looked around the room
before she opened it.

H3ll0,

U ha had d@ unmitigated pl3zzyure off read1ng 1 of *MY* ng
psots. i envy U!1 2 get e-mail from a LUV M@Ch1nE like me
must m@k ur DAY, but i d rath3er drink than FUK u so 2bad
4u!1

"Freak," she muttered as she stopped reading and closed the
internet connection, packed up the laptop, and drove to
Reyes' house.


"Good morning," Reyes said and smiled, stepping aside to let
Scully in.

"Good morning, Agent Reyes. How are you?" She said it in a
tone she recognized as snippy and knew immediately that
she'd be called on it, but she wasn't.

"You honesty want to know?" Reyes asked, closing the door
and locking it. "I had a long night. How are you?"

She followed Scully on into the house and motioned for her
to have a seat on the couch before going to the kitchen for
coffee for the both of them.

Scully looked around, hoping some sign would be on the wall
explaining everything so she could report back to Skinner
and get the hell home to William. It bothered her that she
wasn't any more bothered than she was by the death of the
CIA agent, but she wasn't and she wasn't going to give that
particular thought any more attention, she determined,
looking now at the coffee table right in front of her and,
on it, the book Dr. Hildebrandt had been carrying the night
before.

Beside it were two candles and a book of matches.

"Here we go," Reyes said, walking quickly back into the
room. She handed Scully her cup and then picked the book up
with her free hand.

"I was up late reading." She shrugged and said she would be
right back. She walked into one of the bedrooms, which
Scully could see from her seat was empty, and tossed
the book on the bed.

"Ok, so what's up?" Reyes asked, walking back to the couch
and sitting opposite Scully.

"Before I left Washington," Scully answered, "someone left a
newspaper for me. They wanted me to see a story about the
death of a girl. Jordan Black." She said the name and she
could hear her voice going limp as she saw the girl running
to her father again.

Jordan.

Frank Black.

Reyes' expression didn't change. Vacant interest.

"I met Frank Black," Scully continued. "He assisted us in
the case connected to the Millennium Group. I think whoever
left that newspaper did so because they knew I was coming
here."

Reyes nodded. "And you think that is somehow connected to
Dr. Hildebrandt. You think you've been sent to find that
connection. Or you're being used to find that connection."

"I think that I am being kept in the dark. Maybe you are
too. I think I made it clear that I'm only here as a favor
to Assistant Director Skinner. He has concerns about your
interest and, after last night, I'm this damn close to
validating his concerns," she held her fingers a
quarter-inch apart as she spoke. "So I think it's time we
cut the crap and you make me understand exactly what you
killed a man for.

"And another thing, I also think we should ask Dr.
Hildebrandt if he knows Frank Black."

"Yes," the man answered her question, entering from
one of the bedrooms. "I know Frank Black. What concern is
he of yours?"

He looked like he hadn't slept and his stride seemed
slightly unsure.

"I know him too," Scully said. "He was a help to me and my
partner when I was with the Bureau. May I ask what the
nature of your relationship was?"

Hildebrandt had come fully into the room and stood at the
far end of the couch, away from Scully and beside Reyes.

"I did some work with the Millennium Group. We met when he
was invited to join them. I was assigned the job of watching
over his candidacy and aiding him in his assignments.

"What is your interest, Agent Scully? Now that you know I
was an associate of Frank Black's, is your mission here
complete? Because if so, Agent Reyes and I have business to
attend to. In short, I'd like to know why the hell you're
here." His voice had climbed slightly in pitch yet had
grown forceful in the process. His anger was evident to
both of the women in his presence.

"I met Frank Black while I was investigating the Millennium
Group and I believe you know something about the death of
his daughter, Jordan. Do you, Dr. Hildebrandt?"

"Is that right? Let me tell you something, Agent Scully.
Frank was my friend. I tried to protect him."

"From what?" Scully looked from Hildebrandt to Reyes and
back to Hildebrandt.

He was quiet for a while, looking away from Scully and down
at the floor, and when he spoke again it was slower and more
controlled.

"After the turn of the millennium, not by your calendar, but
by a spiritual calendar very few even know of, it is
believed that forces once ruling this planet will return. A
door will be opened and evil will come forth like mankind
has never seen.

"Within the Millennium Group were a group who adhered to
this belief and followed their own calendar and when the end
came, that door did not open. It destroyed their faith, for
the most part, but there are some who accept their
misjudgment but that failure does not indicate to them that
all of their beliefs are wrong. Quite the contrary. They
merely believe that they miscalculated. They've been given
extra time to prepare for the new dawn. They have their
doctrines, their scared texts. The have their believers and
they have their preachers.

"Now they seek prophets, but God is a God of the living.
Not a God of the dead. The dead are liars.

"As the new dawn approaches, they believe, the walls between
this world and the next will begin to weaken and there will
be people who can communicate across the breach. It is
through these people that this group we speak of believe
they can discover the very secrets of life and death, that
they can harness these forces and control them. They seek
to extract prophecy from unwilling sources and to follow
that prophecy and to bring about the end."

"I'm sorry, Dr. Hildebrandt. I don't understand what your
point is," Scully interrupted.

"Then I pity you because you are not aware that when you're
in the darkest places, even the smallest glimmer of light
can be blinding to anything which may actually be of
significance." His eyes were narrow now. They gave her
chills.

"I'm sorry. I don't unders-"

"Why are you here, Agent Scully?" he demanded again.

"That's what I'm asking!" She stood up and grabbed her
purse.

"Go home, Agent Scully. Your job has nothing to do with us
and you're getting in our way."


There were four more messages from adhokk7. She deleted
them and opened her web browser. The FBI database approved
her login and she opened the X-F/CI database. There were,
of course, other areas within the Bureau's electronic
storehouse that would contain information about the
Millennium Group, but right now there was only one source
she trusted. She typed adhokk7's name into the search
engine and began scanning for anything relating to the
occult.

She believed adhokk7 would know the truth and she was right.
In alt.anarchism, she found a link he had posted to a
website about sightings of dead children. As she pored
through story after story, she began again to long for
William. Finally, after hours of reading and looking, a
picture did catch her eye. It was a picture of Jordan Black
standing with her mother in what Scully assumed was their
yard. Across the street, behind them, a man was standing
beside a car as though he had just gotten out of it and was
waiting for the picture to be taken so as not to disturb
mother, daughter, and photographer. Scully recognized him
as Dr. Hildebrandt.

She picked up the copy of the girl's autopsy report she had
printed out and looked again for anything indicating that
Jordan Black had suffered any sign of ritual abuse. And
again, after twelve pages of information, she found nothing.

In frustration, she threw the papers across the room, ready
to hop the next plane back to D.C. to tell Skinner to stick
it up his ass. She could even hear the way she would start
tearing into him. She would sling his door open and shout
at the top of her lungs that she would never answer a call
from him again as long as she...

(...C'mere...)

The phone.

That's how it had started. With the phone call.

Time began stretch into infinity as she saw her bedroom at
home form around her. She saw and felt the bed beneath her
and she could hear the whir of the ceiling fan above her
and it sounded like the ocean.

And there on the bed in front her was William and he
squirmed and he shook his fists and she felt such joy.

Extraordinary joy.

He was there and he was beautiful and she was there and she
would keep him safe and then he stopped and he twisted his
head and he looked at the telephone.

Somewhere deep inside her, Scully went cold.

William was waiting for the telephone to ring. He was
waiting because he knew it would.

She had her purse in her hands and upended in a flash and
then the cell phone was in her hand.

As she dialed the number, she could see her baby. Her baby.

Waiting for the (...door to open...) phone to ring.

(...prophets...)

Maybe he knew now...

The phone rang twice before Margaret's voice was there in
Scully's ear.

"Hi Mom, it's me."

"Dana? Are you ok, baby?"

"I need to know about William. Tell me he's ok, mom. Tell
me..."

"I just looked in on him. William's fine. Where... Are
you ok? Can you tell me that?"

"I'm fine. Really I am, now that I know."

"Bill came. He's here waiting for you because he
wants to see you. I can't stop him either, Dana. He is
your brother."

"Tell Bill he was right. The asshole was always right."

She closed the cell phone and went back to the computer,
back to the FBI search engine and began a search on Reyes,
ashamed of not ever having done this before and ashamed of
having trusted another liar. She cross-referenced Dr.
Hildebrandt, Peter Watts, and the Millennium Group, hoping
for any mention at all of anything connecting her to Jordan
or Frank Black.

While waiting for the results, she filled that second with
almost imperceptible thoughts of her mother, Mulder, and
Skinner.

Dr. Hildebrandt. There was a Congressional subcommittee
report on ritual abuse in America in which Reyes had
submitted analyses of two cases in New Orleans and Dr.
Hildebrandt had been cited as an expert on types of
technology used in an international ritual abuse ring.
Despite this catch though, there was nothing connecting back
to the death of Jordan Black.

But as time began to slow around her again, she knew she
didn't need the connections pointed out to her. She knew.

She watched, removed, detached, distant, as her fingers took
her computer back to adhokk7's page and she opened a file
alleged to be a transcript of a resurrection ceremony used
to bring children back from the dead. Her eyes moved with
purpose, seeking out only what would be found at the end.

And with all the power of an ice sheet falling from the sky,
Scully was struck cold as she realized that Jordan Black did
die at her father's hands, but that she hadn't been killed
in a cemetery as adhokk7 insisted she had to be in order for
her fire to be completely extinguished. In order to prevent
her fire from lighting the wrong paths.

Once more Scully opened the FBI's search engine.

And when the first of Peter Watts' personnel files was on
the screen and she saw the face of the man she had come to
know as Dr. Hildebrandt, she ran to her car and she drove,
unaware of the day's rapid passage into night.

She kicked in the front door, gun in hand, only to find
Reyes' rental house empty except for the two dead bodies,
each with an ouroborous tattoed on its forehead and a hole
in each gut made by, she knew, Reyes' bullets.

"Shit." She flipped through the phone book until she found
pizza delivery places. The first one sounded like maybe she
had gotten lucky.

"Hi," she said to the boy, whose voice couldn't belong to
anyone over seventeen, she thought. "My girlfriend and I
are looking for a really cool place to go get naked and
party and she wanted to do it in a cemetery. We're on
Ashland Court. Is there one close by? We're really horny."

"Yeah," the boy answered, obviously bored by the question.
"There's one on Glenda Hodges Boulevard about three miles
east of you. If you see the car lot, you've gone too far."


Baltimore

Skinner ran. His feet rolling the planet beneath him,
drawing the house closer and closer until he was taking the
stairs to the door. He held his gun ready and stepped
inside, into the darker shadows of the house.

They had nearly completely made it inside before he had
seen them.

He moved slowly, alert, toward the stairs. As his foot
pressed against the first one, two shots were fired from
above him.

He raced upward, bursting into the closed bedroom at the top
of the stairs, pointing his weapon and ready to destroy the
sonsofbitches come here to this house under his protection,
only to find the two men dead, their bleeding foreheads
marked with what appeared to be brands of an ouroborous and
at the other end of his gun, Dana's brother, Bill Scully,
standing wild-eyed and pointing his own gun back at Skinner.
****

Panama City

She had found them. Watts on his knees, head hanging low,
shoulders slumped, Reyes holding a cross in one hand and
her gun in the other, chanting. Scully had found them and
she, for only a moment in the history of her life, here
before the new dawn to be visited upon man, before the rise
of evil to be foretold and hastened by the words and visions
of the risen dead, Scully saw through the eyes of the woman
she had been at the beginning, so many years before, and she
was terrified. But the moment passed and she watched as
Reyes finished the ceremony and ended the life of the thing
that had been Peter Watts and instead of being terrified by
what she was seeing, she was terrified because she knew she
may, at that very moment, be looking into the future.

On the way to the airport, she called her mother again.
Skinner answered. He told her what had happened and
that William was ok.

"You have to come get him and you have to go-"

"I know. I'm on the way. Thank you, Walter. Now you have
to listen to me. You stay right there with William until I
get there. Do not go anywhere. As soon as I arrive, you
leave, Walter. Is that clear, sir? You leave and there's
no looking back."

"I understand, Dana. I'm sorry." Skinner closed his cell
phone and threw it down on the sidewalk, ashamed and angry
in ways he had never dreamed possible.


*****
I hear the ocean behind me and the darkness I've come to
know in this place is here, but held at bay by your
beautiful eyes. I miss you so much, my love. I live every
day without you, without your smell and without your voice
and I can't move sometimes because it hurts so bad being
without you.

Come to me, my friend, my lover, my heart. Come to me here
in this place of dark dreams I am born into every time I
seek refuge from the world that never stops turning against
us. Come to me here, Fox, and hold me. Whisper to me that
I can live without the phone ringing and knowing it will be
you and that these things I feel without you won't kill me
the way I pray they will when I'm weak and afraid.

Sometimes I lie under my own stars with our baby and I read
your words in the sky, and I see the eyes of a million
angels weeping with jealousy because they can only dream of
having what we have had.

Together.

And here, together again, we, you and I.

Please take me and hold me close and never let me go, Fox.
Tell me that you can fix the things that haven't been the
same without you and that you can protect us, me and you and
our baby, and we can be together somewhere more than this
dream place, beneath this zodiac waiting to crash down upon
us.

And when you look at me, let me see in your eyes that you
know I love you. And that when I hear the phone ring and I
know it won't be you, I die and I die without you every day.

There are times when I think I can almost feel you. I never
thought things would be like this, but our love is now only
the fire that burns inside our baby, our special special
baby, and that fire must be protected.

Please know I love you now and I always will.
****

Georgetown
Two days later

His time of waiting had come to an end. The knob of the
door in front of him, across the dark room he now stood
silently in a distant corner of, had begun to turn.

He swallowed hard, not for the first time since his arrival,
and he counted off the quarter seconds on an internal
watch finely tuned for such measurements in a time long ago
and a land far away.

And as he knew she would, Marita Covarrubias stepped through
the doorway and closed the door behind her.

He moved forward only after she had completed the twist of
the deadbolt and when her eyes met his, they did so with
what he thought could only be shock, but they were the only
parts of her face to betray any emotion.

"You bitch," he said, aiming his gun at her chest. Then
he squeezed the trigger.


Tomorrow

We are afforded but a moment in the history of a universe we
can not comprehend. It is a moment which is here and gone,
never to return and we can not, in any true sense, ever
return to it. Not as the people we were.

For some of us, the moment is a treacherous one, filled
with all the Hells we create for ourselves as well as the
Hells others would create for us. From these Hells, some of
us, the fortunate or perhaps the ruthless, are able to climb
to a place of safety.

We have come here to this place, my son and I, under what
meager cover darkness may hold and in secret from the rest
of the world, from the beloved who see only yesterday and
from those who would destroy what we have in the name of
tomorrow, those who would extinguish our flames.

It is mine now, I know, to fill the rest of this moment not
only sheltering, but guiding, and praying for a fire which
seems fated to blaze brightly enough to light the way for
not only one, but perhaps for many. That flame holds its
own mysteries and I must be here when they make themselves
clear. I must make sure it endures, no matter the cost.

I am the only one who can. Even the once familiar,
once...angelic can hold no audience with nor offer a guiding
hand to my son now because divided we may stand, but
together we will surely fall and should you, my beloved,
fail to keep your promise, I still will keep mine and your
hand, though so very dear to me, will be stayed.

My son and I are alone in life and we must do whatever it
takes to remain alone...in life, and I am afraid because I
know with certainty and with finality that this is who we
are.

---The end---



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