Title - Pillar of Salt
Author - Nascent
E-Mail address - nascent70@usa.net
Rating - NC-17 (sexual situations, disturbing themes, language)
Category - XA
Spoilers - through Fight the Future
Keywords - None provided at author's request
Summary - A casefile which tests the depth and strength of Mulder and
Scully's partnership.

Disclaimers in part 1

Chapter 3

Minenfield Voran

---------------------------------------------------
9:45 p.m.

It was too late to object, but in our haste to execute the plan we'd had
no time to talk alone until now.  Had he intended that? I liked to think
the negotiations had been mine, but sometimes I suspected Mulder of
trying to make me think that when it wasn't completely true.

I let the irritation in my voice underline the concern. "Mulder, I don't
like this at all.  Why does this have to be _you?_"

My back was turned to him as he undressed for the second time that day.
"Well, Dr. Scully," he answered in his most reasonable tone, "I figure
you're a lot more qualified to look after me than I am to look after
you."

"You realize that using an officer as bait to trap a killer goes against
at least a dozen bureau regulations."

He ignored me.  "We'll call up some boys from the Buffalo office
tomorrow to keep an eye on me so you don't have to stick around the
whole time if you don't want to.  You can turn around now."

I did.  Mulder was sitting on the edge of the hospital bed dressed in a
silly-looking blue gown, his clothes folded neatly beside him.  "No," I
said.  "I don't trust that.  I want to keep an eye on you myself."

"Scully, I'm touched."  He laid his palm dramatically over his heart.
"You've never offered to share a hospital room with me before."

"Quarantine," I pointed out.  "But I didn't want to do it then and I
didn't say I _wanted_ to do it now."

He had turned to pick up the pile of multicolored check-in literature on
the bed beside him, but the acid in my tone made him glance back at me.
He knew I hadn't forgotten the morning.

In a syrup-coated voice he pretended to grumble: "Well, at least in Q we
got HBO." He tapped the TV channel listings on top of the paper pile.
"How do you feel about ESPN?  ESP-en, Scully.  You ever really think
about that?"

What I was thinking about was my almost insurmountable desire to be back
in my own home with the past twelve hours erased.

Though we hadn't told him the whole story, only saying we needed it for
an undercover investigation, one of the hospital vice presidents had
been sufficiently impressed with our credentials to provide us with the
tiniest, shabbiest room the hospital offered.  If I learned nothing else
on this trip it was that health care really has become as much a
bean-counting industry as the federal government.

The view from the window was of a white cement-block wall about six feet
away.  Two thinly-blanketed beds were separated by a curtain.  Not
exactly where I'd expected to spend my weekend.

I was very glad that Mulder hadn't asked _me_ to write the prayer.  It
would have been dishonest somehow, to have to make up words for how much
I cared about him just to further a ruse.  Thankfully, he seemed to know
that, though I couldn't help but wince when I saw he'd signed the note
"Samantha."

"Heavenly Father, You are the Greatest Healer in the world," he'd
written, imitating the style of the other prayers.  "Please hear my
prayers for my brother, George.  He has so much to live for and you have
the power to help heal him.  Please be with the doctors and nurses and
our family in this time of need. Your servant, Samantha Hammond."

Okay, my reaction was not just a wince, more like a recoil.  Mulder saw
it, of course, and looked down at the floor.

"I think it's important that there be at least a little honesty," he
muttered, and I didn't ask him why,because he'd only tell me he didn't
know.  Nonetheless, it seemed perverse somehow, like attending a loved
one's funeral dressed as a clown.

He was listed in the hospital database as George Hammond, diagnosed with
pneumonia and a secondary nosocomial staphylococcus infection.  I was
listed as Carl Castle, and I was also supposed to be suffering from
staph.  Hopefully, if we had a night visitor, he wouldn't realize my
name was by no stretch of the imagination 'Carl' until he was looking
down the barrel of my gun.

At least, that was the plan.  My idea of the plan.  Mulder's vague
suspicions suggested he might have had other ideas, but nothing concrete
enough to share, and I couldn't grasp even his intuition this time.
Mulder is like a book, but not in the usual way that phrase is intended:
sometimes I can open him up and read every page, but other times it's as
if some magician has cast a spell to lock him closed and I can't see a
single sentence.

While he'd gone back to the condo to get our things, I'd spoken with a
handful of nurses who'd been acquainted with some of the patients on our
list, careful not to tell them that we were investigating more than the
one death I asked about.  No need to induce hysteria.

Tim Gallagher in CICU claimed that Carol Farquar's death had been
completely unexpected--though she'd suffered a heart attack two days
earlier the doctors had thought she was safe and planned to move her out
in the morning.  Gracie Bovak had thought nothing of Dale Jenner's
death--the man had been slipping in and out of oncology for months.  No
one had seen anything suspicious.

There was a sharp tap on the door and our nurse JoAnn entered before we
could invite her in.  She was a "floater," a floor nurse who moved from
wing to wing almost daily, filling in wherever she was needed.  From the
dossier of personnel files which the vice president had provided me, I'd
selected one floater from each of the three shifts to be at least partly
in on the plan, and in true HMO tradition we'd chosen our doctor from a
similar list.  Dr. Bannerjee knew only that we were FBI agents and that
she didn't have to do anything about us but let us forge her name on our
charts.  She'd agreed eagerly, excited to help in an undercover
investigation.  That made me a little nervous, but there was nothing to
be done about it now.

A rotund African-American woman of about fifty-five with a with an
enormous pair of tortoise-shell spectacles, JoAnn had the disarming
ability to pose as anyone's cookie-baking mother (what, I imagine, most
people would incorrectly label optimal training for an R.N.).  But her
appearance was a clever disguise; within thirty seconds one began to
suspect she'd gotten her qualifications acting as an army drill
sergeant, which in fact she had.  It was one of the reasons I'd picked
her.

"Mr. Hammond," she barked, though she knew Mulder's real name.  "Get
your skinny white butt underneath those blankets right now.  You are not
getting out of that bed unless it's to piss, and even then, you call me
first."

Mulder gave me a panicked look but I didn't bat an eye, making it clear
he'd get no help from me.  Unfortunately, he knew my glare, and it only
made him grin.

"Yes, _ma'am,_" he said to JoAnn, punctuating the words with an
invisible salute and swung his legs up under the covers.

Her expression softened into a hint of a smile and I blinked in
disappointment.  Apparently no one is immune to Muldercharm, which I
suppose should have made me feel better about my own weakness.  But it
didn't.

I was grateful, though, when she turned to me and asked: "So how real
are we getting here? Are we gonna hook him up to everything?"

I shook my head.  "We just want to make it look good.  Heart monitor and
IV are all we need, I think.  The heart monitor should be treated as
real.  But just tape the IV to his hand and leave the needle capped so
he can move fast if he needs to."

"You're not expecting violence, I hope.  I won't tolerate any risk to
anyone here," she warned.

"Neither will we," I assured her.  "And no, we're not expecting
violence, but--"

"But you can't tell me anything more than that this is undercover,"
JoAnn finished, and I nodded.  "Well, that's fine, but I will tell you I
tried to find out who George Hammond is and couldn't."

I realized she was assuming that 'George Hammond' was the bait in the
sting, which he was, but not in the singular way she supposed.  Good.
We didn't need the a serial killer rumor spreading.

"I imagine there are lots of George Hammonds," Mulder said mildly, and I
knew he was advancing her suspicion deliberately.

She moved over to the IV stand, tapped the blue plastic housing on top
of the pole.  "This ain't gonna look right if it's not plugged into
him," she said.  "It's programmed to watch the drip rate, and if there's
no dripping...."

"You can put it in," Mulder said.  "It's just saline and a needle."

"So someone can come along with a syringe full of potassium chloride and
an easy route of administration?" I asked, aware but unable to prevent
the sharpness in my tone.  "No.  We'll have to jury-rig it somehow."

The three of us spent the next thirty minutes fiddling with the IV until
JoAnn found the satisfactory solution: she added a Y-clip to the tubing
and spliced a third plastic coil into a closed circuit which excluded
the needle entirely, cleverly making the IV bag drip back into itself.
After twisting the tubes up, the ruse was apparent only upon close
examination. Only our trusted nurses would notice that it never needed
changing.

Then JoAnn gave a brief, practiced spiel about the use of the call
button and left.  The small room was suddenly very, very quiet.

I wasn't ready to be alone with Mulder, not now.  The vision that had
leapt into my brain that morning, the one of his lifeless eyes staring
into mine while a lifeless mouth spoke lifeless words--"Scully, I'm so
glad you're here!"--still lurked in the back of my brain where it seemed
to have taken up permanent residence.    And I was still hurt, still
angry.  If we were alone together for too long, there was a dangerous
possibility that I'd actually tell him how upset I was.  I'd learned
long ago how pointless _that_ was.

Instead of looking at him, I went to the window, tugged the Venetian
blinds shut.  Unwilling to cross back to his side of the room, I parted
the blinds with two fingers and peered through the slats.

Scant moonlight glinted blue off the snow outside, but there was nothing
more to see.

He said my name, quiet and serious, and I snapped the blinds back
together a little too violently.

I turned to look at him; he was sitting up in bed, knees drawn up and
back pillowed on the headboard, watching me with a darkened eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said, when he decided he had my attention.

Angry that he'd seen my pain though I hadn't chosen to reveal it, and
even more angry that he thought my expected forgiveness would make
everything better, I took a long deep breath, then unzipped the shoulder
bag on my bed, the one he'd brought from the condo.  Fished out my bag
of toiletries and a pair of pajamas while he watched without comment.

"I'm going to take a shower," I announced, and headed for the bathroom.
I could feel his eyes burning holes in my back.

---------------------------------------------------

11:45 p.m.

I stood naked in the tiny, sterile bathroom, my arms folded over my
breasts and my wet hair tickling my shoulders as I waited for the mud on
my face to turn dry and uncomfortable.   On the other side of the thin
bathroom door, I could hear soft voices on the television and the
creaking of the mattress every time Mulder so much as breathed.  The
masque was already starting to feel like pins and needles, inaccurate
acupuncture.  Usually I find these rituals relaxing in their forced
meditation, but tonight I resented the quiet time: I didn't want to
think.  Sometimes flawless skin exacts a high price.

"I didn't do it, Scully," his voice repeated in my head for the
thousandth time, and God, I wished he would shut the hell up.  Why does
he invade every second?

Maybe because I let him, and today, letting him was dangerous.  I tried
to school my thoughts back to the 'case,' to the loosely calculated
statistics which undeniably indicated a pattern.  But the only thing I
could think was that this could not be the best way to corner the
killer, and that was Mulder's fault too.

Some subconscious neurological process resolved these trains of thought
into the sudden image of Mulder howling a girlie scream from his
hospital bed as a comically proportioned serial killer raised a knife
over his chest.  I would then burst from the bathroom, naked but for the
green-brown mud plastered on my face and the gun in my hand, like some
avenging angel out of a surrealist painting.  I suppressed a chuckle and
the masque cracked.

Good enough.  I leaned over the sink to scrub it away.

Mulder was risking his life again, but this time I was going along with
it.  Why was this any different from this morning?

Not because it was a case, no.  It was, I reasoned, because I suspected
we were dealing with a real, concrete person--the kind that could slip
into a room, inject something or drop something in a glass of water and
slip back out again.  This kind of enemy I could not only see on
approach, but defeat with a gun.

Let it _never_ be said that I don't support my partner.

But Mulder thought it was something else.  I didn't know what, and I
didn't think he did either.  Something more ephemeral than a renegade
and disenchanted hospital employee.  An X-File.  Was I only playing
along because I didn't believe him?

I ran a comb through my damp hair, then shrugged into my blue cotton
pajamas.  Opened the door and was frozen by the blast of arctic air from
the main room.

The head of the bed was elevated, and Mulder lay propped there, his eyes
closed and jaw slack.  A moment of irrational panic gripped me, and I
moved quickly to his side, but he heard my approach and his eyes
fluttered open.

"About time," he grumbled.  "What, were you washing each strand of hair
individually?"

I exhaled, ignoring him, and anxious to hide my momentary concern I
turned my face toward the TV.  Jay Leno was yapping about breath mints
and chewing gum with some overly-ebullient actress I didn't recognize,
and, rolling my eyes, I reached across Mulder for the remote and
banished Jay with a click of my finger.

"We need to think about suspects, Mulder," I announced, moving around to
the other side of the room.  My side.

He leered at me.  "Oh, serious conversation? I don't know, it's a little
hard to take you seriously in those cute flannel pajamas."

He should have seen the masqued naked woman.  "Do you think it's really
coincidence that we're here, Mulder?" I asked, as if I hadn't heard.

"Ah, paranoid Scully reveals her true colors."

I rolled my eyes.  "I'm serious.  What are the chances that we'd bump
into something like this on a weekend off?" I paused to let that sink
in, then answered my own question.  "Pretty low.  I think we
artificially selected for it by coming here in the first place.  Because
what else is unusual about this hospital? Arthur von Deer."

"He's not involved," Mulder said, immediately serious.

"Why do you say that?" I asked.  "He's interested in both death and
spirituality.  And with a conservative estimate of one hundred victims
in a few months, we're talking about something very systematic here.
Something which might be data collection."

"It's not him," Mulder repeated stubbornly.

"How do you know?"

"It just doesn't fit," he said.

"You've said that about every suggestion I've made.  What exactly is the
mold you're trying to fit people into? What's the profile?"

"I don't have one," he confessed.  "Not yet."

I wasn't in the mood for Mulder's touchy-feely Spidey-sense.  "Then I
think we should interview von Deer tomorrow."

"You're only looking for an excuse to shut him down."

"I don't need an excuse.  If I wanted to shut him down I could have
flashed my badge this morning.  The reasons for my suspicions are sound,
Mulder, and--"

"I think you're letting your feelings and prejudices color your
judgment, Scully," he interrupted, and his matter-of-fact tone angered
me.  He _knew_ that was one of the most serious accusations he could
make, yet he tossed it off as casually as he'd remarked on my pajamas.
At least before, when he'd said things like that, he'd done it gently,
cautiously, and on this case _he_ was the one with the bias.

"Just what are you implying?" I demanded, sitting back on my bed and
folding my arms over my chest.

"I wasn't implying anything," he said calmly.  "I thought I was being
quite clear.  You're angry at me and by extension at von Deer, but
you're sidestepping that, using your perfected mask of professional
detachment as a shield for your motives in this investigation."

_Mulder_ was lecturing _me_ about using a case as an excuse to pursue an
agenda? "My motives?" I echoed.  "How can you sit there so blandly
accusing me of something like that? It's your agenda that brought us
here."

"Yes, it is," he said with a nod.  "And I said I was deeply sorry, but
you won't acknowledge that.  You're avoiding what happened this morning,
and I don't want this to bite us in the back when we're facing down a
potentially dangerous case."

"We have work to do," I snapped.  "I've put it behind me."

He grinned, but not nicely.  "You're such a terrible liar, Scully."

"Don't get all mushy on me, Mulder," I said icily.  "I wouldn't want to
lose my 'professional detachment.'"

"No danger of that," he snorted with a smirk, and I almost exploded but
then a flash in his eyes betrayed him and I suddenly realized I'd been
seeing the whole conversation through a smudged pane of glass.

Clarity descended.

"You're goading me," I said, disbelief coloring my voice.  He lowered
his eyes and I knew I was right.    "I'm not a suspect, someone to...to
be _manipulated,_ Mulder.  What are you trying to prove?"

"I'm not goading you," he said, but his denial was two beats too late.

I nodded to myself, surprised I hadn't seen it earlier.  He was trying
again to make me surrender to my anger, because it was easier to deal
with than my disappointment, or, worse, my pain.  Because he thought I
could yell at him and he could take it, and then everything would be
okay.  He was wrong.

He saw my certainty and his shoulders sagged with defeat.  A long
silence settled over the room, the air between us no longer crackling.
"I just want to know what I'm supposed to do, Scully," he said finally.
"You're angry when I ditch you, and you're angry when I don't.  It seems
to me that the problem isn't what I do with respect to _you_ but what I
do in general."

I sighed.  "Mulder, you know that's not true.  I'm angry because you
brought me here under false pretenses.  You knew how I would react, so
you deliberately maneuvered me into a situation where you thought you
could count on my instinct to support you to override my judgment. You
were so focused on your own agenda that you didn't stop to consider the
position it would put me in."

"Scully, I left!" he protested.  "I didn't go through with it."

"And that's supposed to make me feel better?" I asked, cocking my head
at him.  "It makes me feel _responsible,_ Mulder.  You've all but said I
was responsible for your decision to walk out of there; the obvious
conclusion is that if I'd stayed I would have been responsible for that
too.  That is not a burden I'm prepared to accept."

"What--are you saying you _wanted_ me to go through with it?"

I took a deep breath and considered for a long moment, refusing to let
him push me but already trapped.  "I'm saying," I said finally,
hesitated, began again.  "I'm saying that I...that going off half-cocked
and doing crazy things like this is what you do, Mulder.  Maybe that's
inextricable from who you are.  Maybe I don't want to see you lose
something of yourself, your belief.  I don't want to see...that."

My words unbalanced him, and I could see the heat draining away from his
eyes.  He'd been prepared to accuse me of not accepting who he was; he
wasn't sure what to do with what I'd given him instead.  He studied his
knees, worrying at his lower lip as he considered how he should
respond.  But I charged ahead before he could speak, and my voice was
threateningly uneven, like the sea before a storm.

"On the other hand, I don't want to see you dead.  How am I supposed to
reconcile these two things?"

Mulder heaved a long, slow sigh and turned his head to meet my gaze.  "I
don't know," he confessed, his voice low and a little husky.  "But,
Scully--as long as you...as long as you feel.... I don't want to hurt
you, Scully.  I can't."

Oh, this was going too far.  His honesty summoned tears to my eyes, and
I couldn't bring myself to say what I probably should have--that he
hurts me more often than he knows.

It's a widely-spread myth that the way to keep from crying is to blink
rapidly, but I've known better since I was a girl: it's best to keep
one's eyes open wide.

"But," Mulder continued, "I can't win here, Scully.  If I do these sorts
of things, you're hurt, and if I don't...well, here we are.  It's a
lose-lose situation."

"It shouldn't matter," I said softly, trying to ignore the tiny part of
me that wanted it to matter.  "You should do what you believe regardless
of how it makes me feel.  You have to be true to yourself first."

I meant that.  I did.  Sometimes I feel like I exist only to hold up a
mirror for Mulder, to show him through my faith in him that he is
beautiful.  This wouldn't bother me if Mulder occasionally peered around
the glass to remember who is holding it.  I may be Mulder's "one in five
billion," I may make him "a whole person," but where does that truly
leave _me?_

But should I be surprised that this is the nature or our relationship,
when these are the things I say, that it 'shouldn't matter?' Apparently
I am a character-actress: there's only one role I can play.

"Not wanting to hurt you--that's true too," he said, and his voice was
barely above a whisper.

"Mulder, I don't want to hurt you either, but...."  My voice trailed
off.

This was far more than either of us had bargained for.  I felt a tear
slide down my cheek and when he saw it he winced, turned his head away.
"But you manage it," he said to the bathroom door.  "You walked out of
that room.  You wouldn't compromise."

What was I supposed to say now? Assure him that it wasn't because I felt
less for him than he for me? Or tell him the alternative: that I was
simply stronger than he? Tell him that it hadn't been easy, and thus
multiply his guilt for having put me in that position in the first
place?

The correct response, I reasoned, would be the true response, regardless
of how it made him feel, but I didn't even know which was true.

The paradox was as unfamiliar to him as it was to me, though it had been
creeping up on us for years.  We hadn't seen it coming but I knew we'd
always sensed it, like red eyes following your back in a childhood
nightmare that disappear whenever you whirl around to confront them.

Though those who know us believe that Mulder and I are polar opposites,
we are in reality more similar than we are different: stubborn and
ruthlessly upholding our beliefs above all else.  We had both known
defeat, but until now, we had never known surrender.

He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand and I wanted to go to
him, comfort him, but perhaps that was exactly the problem.  I wanted to
tell him that I would never think less of him, but such words would be
tantamount to saying he _should_ compromise his beliefs for me, and,
actually, neither was true.

I wanted to tell him that I was not fragile, point out that he'd bruised
me a hundred times but I'd never broken, but to say that would suggest I
wouldn't care enough should he wind up hurt or dead, and again, neither
was true.

Once when I was sixteen years old my father was stationed in West
Germany for two months, and he took Mom, Charlie and I with him.  We
mostly stayed at the base, but vacationed one week at a small country
club just south of Neustadt, near the East German border.  The facility
had once been a Nazi resort, but all signs of that were now erased, and
the beautiful, verdant countryside could hardly be imagined to have
hosted such powerful, terrible men.

A placid mountain lake reflected the surrounding evergreens and played
mirror to the incredible purple-and-gold sunsets.  Brochures in the main
building advertised "Wollen Sie am morgen zu ausuben? Laufen Sie 5K
ringsherum der See!"  _Want some morning exercise? Run 5k around the
lake!_  I couldn't read the rest of the text, but it sounded like a good
idea and Charlie and I set out to try it one morning.

We found a poorly cleared trailhead and began to jog.  He was faster
than I, but I could run longer,  and he knew that if he ran on past I'd
overtake him eventually, so he stayed by my side.  We ran and ran, over
dirt-paved hillocks among black walnut trees and loudly chirping birds,
and I truly felt it was the most beautiful place I'd ever been.

But as the morning wore on, we still found ourselves overlooking,
essentially, the same part of the lake we'd started at.

"This has to be more than 5k," Charlie finally huffed, stopping to pant
with his hands on his knees.

I stopped as well, bent to stretch my aching muscles.  "Yeah," I
agreed.  "Much more.  I think we've already done seven or eight."

"Maybe we're on the wrong path," my brother suggested.

"Do you want to go back?" I asked.

"Nah.  Just a little further.  Let's see where it goes."

So we kept jogging and, fifteen minutes later, we came upon a sign
hidden under overgrown branches.  It was a large metal sign, like a
highway road marker, but it had been planted facing away from us,
obviously intended for people approaching from the other direction.

I raised my eyebrows at Charlie, who shrugged and walked around to the
front of it.  I followed.

"Vorsicht!" It read.  "Minenfield voran.  Eintragen Sie nicht!"  And,
just in case this was unclear, both English and French translations
followed.  "Caution!  Land mines ahead.  Do not enter!"

Charlie and I had just jogged across a minefield.

We panicked, we deliberated, but finally we decided to go back the way
we'd come, because we frankly had no idea where we were.  My throat was
dry, my steps cautiously measured, and it took us two hours to walk
back, but nothing happened, and we never told our parents.

I remembered now how that had felt, to have stumbled across that warning
sign after we'd already long since crossed the invisible line and
journeyed far into unknown, dangerous (if beautiful) country.  I felt
that Mulder and I had made the same mistake, except that here and now I
had no idea how we could find our way back to safety.

"Scully?" he said, stirring me from my reverie.  I was relieved that
neither of us were crying now, but my partner, perched on the side of
his bed, still looked grey with misery.

Why hadn't our trail been better marked? Why hadn't we stopped to ask
ourselves where it was leading?

"I'm tired, Mulder," I told him, and he nodded.

"Go to sleep then," he suggested.  "We'll talk about suspects in the
morning."

A long, reluctant pause filled the room.

"We should close the curtain at least partway," I said absently, with
the small part of my brain still concerned with the case at hand.  "In
case someone tries something."

He nodded again and I got up to pull the curtain, dividing the room, but
leaving a gap near the heads of our beds, large enough that I could
still see him and small enough that it would not be noticed.  Just
before I retreated to my side of the room, Mulder stretched out his hand
to me, opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.

I started to reach back with the intention of clasping his hand, but
before I could get very far he drew back anyway.  "Good night, Scully,"
he said.

I crossed to my side of the room and flipped off my light.  "Good
night," I answered, and burrowed under the covers, after checking to be
sure my gun was safely ensconced beneath my pillow.

Through the window, the winter moon cast a cold rectangle of light
across my blankets.  I lay still for a few minutes before I heard the
high-pitched whine of Mulder's television clicking on; he must have been
using earphones.

Or just staring, like I was, at pictures without sound.  So much for not
looking back.

---------------------------------------------------
end part 3