SUBMISSION: Lazarus Reborn (1/6)
Date: 97-11-08 17:26:27 EST
From: vmoseley@fgi.net (Vickie Moseley)

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Summary: The episode Lazarus from the first season, as it was
originally intended.
Authors Notes: I've been working my way slowly through the first
season, doing fill in the blank stories. To be honest, I dreaded
doing 'Lazarus'. In my honest opinion, this episode was awful. It
just didn't grab me, I didn't feel drawn into any sympathy for Jack
Willis and quite frankly, the whole thing was a big disappointment,
especially that whole 'shrug' for an ending. So, I couldn't find it in
my heart to fill in any blanks. It was ALL blanks. But then, I heard
that Morgan and Wong had intended it to be Mulder who was
possessed and not some pseudo-boyfriend of Scully's. After that
discovery, the story takes on a whole new meaning. So, without
their permission but with undying gratitude to their foresight, I am
telling this tale the way I think it should have been told.
Disclaimer: 10-13 owns 'em and I didn't ask to play with their
toys, but I've very clean and I always use a tissue, not my sleeve.
I'll put them all back when I'm done.
Category: S A UST/MSR
Rating: PG-13
Spoiler: Lazarus (though you might not recognize it)
Archives: Please archive this on all X Files archives and
newsgroups that want it, just keep my name attached.
Finished November 8, 1997
Comments to me vmoseley@fgi.net

Lazarus Reborn (1/6)
by Vickie Moseley
vmoseley@fgi.net

First National Bank of Arlington
4:55 pm

Dana Scully pulled a deposit slip out of the holder on the desk and
moved over to the counter to stand next to her partner. Fox
Mulder didn't even acknowledge her presence, he was busy
appearing to add a series of numbers on the back of a loan payment
ticket.

"You want to tell me again how we got stuck with this sucky
detail?" Scully asked in a whisper meant only for her partner.

Mulder looked up and around, checking for observers and trying to
appear nonchalant. "Simple, Scully. Blevins has always hated me.
Now, he hates you. He didn't want to waste any 'real' agents on
this one because it's a long shot. Ta Da, we're here. Besides, he
knows the last time I screwed up in VCS, it was a robbery," Mulder
said cryptically.

"But this is bank robbery," Scully muttered.

"_Armed_ robbery, Agent Scully. And the Dupres have managed
to turn it into an art form. Last bank they hit, one security guard
was killed and another is still in a coma. Violent Crimes--that is the
name of our section, remember?"

Scully would have stuck out her tongue if they hadn't been in the
middle of a busy bank lobby. "I vaguely remember hearing those
words strung together somewhere," she shot back. Just then, she
looked over to the doors and saw him.

The man walked in with his head down and the hood of his coat
pulled up. He carried his arms in a strange manner, as if he were
holding something under his parka. He walked over to the line of
tellers and in the wink of an eye, he pulled off the hood, revealing a
hockey goalie mask covering his face and produced a sawed off
..410 shotgun from under his coat.

Mulder pulled his gun at almost the same instant. "Freeze! Federal
Agents!" he ordered and time stood still.

Scully pulled her own Bureau issued Smith and Wesson 1056 and
was bringing it up to range when Warren Dupre and Fox Mulder
fired their weapons at the same time. She watched in horrid
fascination as the bullets, Mulder's 9 mm and Dupre's shotgun slug,
almost collided in mid air on their way to their targets. A split
second later, both rounds found their marks. Both men crumpled
to the marble floor of the bank and lay there.

The bank came alive again. Screams echoed in her ears as Scully
ran over to her partner. He was on his back, eyes clenched tightly
against the pain in his chest. A wet, red stain was leaking out of the
half inch hole in his button downed oxford dress shirt. The wound,
from what Scully could see at that point, was dangerously close to
his heart. She clamped her hands over the wound and pressed
down with all her might.

"Call for an ambulance! Tell them 'officer down'," she shouted at
the hapless guard who stood staring at the men on the floor. Bile
rose in her throat when she realized that it had been less than a year
since she'd shouted those same words on a dock in North Carolina.

One of the bank customers had pushed his way over from the
corner. "I'm a doctor. Can I help?" he asked and tried to move her
aside.

"So am I. Go see about the perpetrator," Scully said and flashed
him a grateful smile, however faint it might have been. The doctor
hurried over and knelt down next to Dupre.

"Is he alive?" Scully called over the sounds of sobbing and
chattering going on around them.

"Barely. The bullet hit him in the chest. From the looks of all this
blood, it might have nicked the aorta," came the quick reply. The
unnamed doctor was likewise pressing his hands firmly on the prone
man's chest, an exact twin of Scully's actions.

" . . . shit, Mulder, why couldn't you manage to aim at a guy who's
a lousy shot," Scully murmured under her breath.

Arlington Medical Center
6:15 pm

Scully stood next to the gurney on which her partner lay. Two
teams of doctors and nurses were hurried working on both men. A
voice behind her, one of the doctors working on Dupre looked up
at the scream of the alarm coming from the patient's heart monitor.
"He's crashing!" he shouted and with assistance, applied the
paddles of the defibrillator. Although the body on the gurney
naturally reacted to the volts of electricity coursing through it, the
heart would not respond. The doctor tried a second time before
pulling off his mask. "Call it," he told the nurse standing at his left.

"6:15 pm," she replied, noting it on a chart that would later serve to
remind the doctor when he filled out the certificate of death.

The voices sent chills through Scully's body. Mulder was not
faring much better than his assailant. She turned her attention to his
face. He was so still, it didn't even look like he was breathing
under the oxygen mask. She didn't feel like she was breathing
much, either. She didn't want to take up any air that Mulder might
need. Didn't want to waste a thought on something other than
willing him to live.

The alarm screamed a second time--this time from the machine
attached to Mulder. Her stomach lurched as she watched the
doctor apply the paddles, watched the current of electricity jolt his
body off the table and down again with a thud.

Nothing. Just the high pitched screech of the machine heralding the
end of a life.

The doctor was not that easily deterred. He applied the paddles
again. The siren continued. No rhythm. No heartbeat.

By this time, Scully's own heart had stopped beating--her body was
in total suspension. She watched, silent, helpless, screaming within
herself for Mulder's heart to cut out the shit and start beating,
goddammit! But, as so often in their year and a half partnership, he
didn't seem to be listening.

"Call it," said the doctor sadly.

"NO!" Scully cried. "No--give him one more chance."

The doctor looked at her hesitantly, but agreed. The paddles were
applied one more time. Again, Mulder jerked, and a fleeting
thought passed through Scully's mind that they were probably
breaking a few ribs with their efforts. She refused to look at the
monitor, prayed that it was lying in it's shrill bleating. She watched
his face, hoping against everything that Mulder would cough,
wince, blink--anything to show life.

"Call it," the doctor said again.

"NO!" Scully cried again, but this time, the doctor shook his head.

"He's dead, miss. Let him go."

"No, goddamn you! Try again! I'm a medical doctor, I know what
I'm doing. Either try again or step aside--I'll do it myself!"

The doctor glared at her a full second, then angrily picked up the
paddles again, and repeat what he obviously felt was a futile
gesture.

This time, when the body of Fox Mulder rose off the table,
suspended by a current of pure energy, the lifeless body of Warren
Dupre, now growing cold, rose unnoticed off the gurney in the
corner of the ER.

"Again," Scully ordered and glared at everyone in case they might
object. The doctor shrugged tiredly, and the paddles were applied.
Again, Mulder's body jerked. Again, Warren Dupre's body
mimicked the body of the man they were trying so hard to bring
back to life.

The beep started slow and erratic, but in a moment, steadied. The
doctor looked over at Scully in amazement, then at the clock.
"We'll have to watch his neuros closely. He was without a
heartbeat for almost 8 minutes."

"He'll be fine," Scully assured him absently. She was too busy
touching her partner's hair to discuss the possible consequences of
their actions. "God, Mulder--next time you do that, make sure they
have a machine set up for me, will ya," she whispered in his ear as
the nurses prepared him for surgery.

6:45 am

Scully yawned and stretched and looked over at her partner. His
natural color was slowly returning to his face and now that the
nurse had removed the respirator tube, he looked almost
comfortable. The surgery had been touchy--made even more
difficult because he'd already 'flat-lined' in the ER. When his blood
pressure had taken a nose dive in recovery, it looked like the 7th
Cavalry had been called out--a full team of doctors and nurses were
next to his bed in a second. Everyone was on pins and
needles--after all that work, no one wanted to have it all be in vain.

But Mulder was alive, and he was going to stay that way, if Dana
Katherine Scully had any say in the matter. She had been sitting at
his bedside for almost 8 hours now. The nurses had attempted to
get her to lay down in the lounge, get some sleep, but she'd have
none of it. She knew they were bending the rules past the breaking
point--she was only supposed to visit 10 minutes out of each hour.
The doctor from the ER, still stinging from her orders earlier in the
evening, had assured the rest of the hospital staff that they might
have to use explosives to get her to leave. It was easier on
everyone just to leave her alone, and she liked that idea.

She looked up when she heard a gentle tapping on the glass of the
ICU cubicle where Mulder was sleeping. With a start, she
recognized Greg Levitts, one of the agents from VCS. He called
her over with a wave of his hand and she went out in the hallway to
talk to him.

"How's Spook--uh, Mulder doing?" Greg asked without salutation.

"He was pretty bad last night, but he's doing better this morning,"
Scully replied and decided to take up the matter of her partner's
nickname at some other less emotional time.

"Good, that's good to hear," Greg said and Scully realized he was
being honest. Greg wasn't as bad as some of the men Mulder had
worked with. For one thing, Greg had been fresh out of the
Academy when Mulder left the unit, so he'd only heard the legends,
he'd never had to walk behind the man. "Look, uh, Dana, I just
came by because I heard about last night, and well, I thought you
should know that we didn't capture Lula."

"Lula?" Scully asked, a bit confused. Then it dawned on her where
she'd heard the name. "Dupre's wife. His accomplice," she
muttered to herself. "How did she escape? She should have been
in a car waiting outside the bank. She always drove 'getaway'
while he was doing the jobs."

"Yeah, I know. And that's why we had the place staked out. But
she got away. I don't know how. I think she might have left the
scene before he even got inside all the way. Maybe something
spooked her--" Greg stopped and bit his lip in embarrassment. "I
didn't mean to imply . . . that's not what I meant," he stammered.

Scully took pity on the younger man. "Greg, it's all right. Names
can't hurt him half as much as bullets. But do you have any idea
where Lula would have gone?"

"If we knew that, we would have picked her up," Greg said
pointedly. "We know she was in on that hold-up."

Scully sighed. "Yes, of course. I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking." She
rubbed her eyes tiredly, only making them ache all the more.

"Dana, look, Mulder's not going anywhere. Why don't you go
catch some shut eye? Besides, Blevins wants to talk to you, find
out what happened last night. And I think I heard him say Skinner
was looking into this, too."

"Skinner? AD Skinner? What the hell does he want?" Scully
demanded. "We did nothing wrong--it was a clean shoot. Why
does the Assistant Director--"

Greg cut her off with a wave of his hand. "Hey, don't kill the
messenger," he shrugged with an embarrassed grin. "I don't know
why he wants to talk to you. You realize that a federal officer was
seriously injured, not to mention a suspect killed at the scene of a
botched bank heist. You figure it out. Stuff like this makes bad
PR. We're supposed to catch the bad guys in such a way that no
one knows we were there," he added, a gleam of mischief in his
eyes.

Her sour mood lightened a bit at Levitts words. "I suppose you're
right," she admitted. "Look, I want to sit with him a few more
minutes. In all likelihood, he'll come around for a bit soon and then
the drugs will knock him out for the rest of the day. I just want him
to know I'm here, OK?"

"Hey, Blevins is a nine to fiver--you know that. You've got a
couple of hours to sit with Mulder and then make yourself
presentable," Greg grinned. "Not to say that you aren't
'presentable' now, but dried blood just isn't your color, Dana," he
added and pointed to her blood soaked jacket and blouse.

She hadn't even bothered to clean up, she realized. "Oh, gosh, I
look like a ghoul," she hissed.

"You said that, I didn't," Greg pointed out and smiled again.
"Don't worry about it. Oh, and when he wakes up, tell Mulder that
we're all thinking about him, OK?"

Scully walked back into Mulder's room and was greeted by two
sleep heavy hazel eyes regarding her with confusion.

"Hey, there," she smiled tenderly. "You're awake."

He looked at her as if he was trying to place the face, remember her
name.

"It's OK, Mulder. It's me, Scully. You're on some heavy duty
drugs right now. You need to rest. You gave us all quite a scare
last night. When you're up and able I firmly intend to kick your
butt for it, too, but for right now, just rest, OK? Are you in any
pain? Need anything? Some ice chips?"

He nodded gratefully. After swallowing several spoonfuls of ice he
cleared his throat, wincing at the tenderness left by the ET tube.

"Lula . . ." he rasped.

This time it was Scully's turn to look confused. "Dupre's wife?"
she asked. He continued to stare at her. "She got away," she said
with slight shrug. "Greg Levitts was just by, they don't have any
leads on her whereabouts. But don't worry, Mulder. She'll turn up
eventually and we'll get her. Besides, Dupre was the mastermind
behind the robberies. His wife just provided the transportation."

At that, her partner surprised her further by grunting in disbelief.
The movement of his body caused a flash of pain to cross his face.
" . . . hurts," he complained.

She was sympathetic immediately and pushed the call button,
alerting the nurse. "You're due for a pain shot, anyway," she
assured him. "And then I'll leave you to the nice nurses tender
mercies--I have to get out of these clothes before someone arrests
me for murder," she joked, pulling out her blouse to show him the
blood stains. "Gotta thank you, Mulder. I wanted a good excuse
to go shopping this weekend, and you sure provided me with one,"
she teased.

He merely nodded and closed his eyes. Scully stroked his forehead
for a moment, and with the nurse's arrival, took her leave.

As the presence inside Fox Mulder's body listened to Scully's heels
clicking on the tile floor of the hospital, he wondered who the hell
that woman was and how she knew his wife.

end of part one

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

Lazarus Reborn (2/6)
By Vickie Moseley
vmoseley@fgi.net
disclaimed in part one

Fox Mulder had never felt so . . . detached. That was the only
word that fit. At first, he assumed it was the pain killers. He
remembered all to clearly the pain he'd experienced lying on the
bank lobby floor. It was a mirror image of the pain he'd felt on a
North Carolina dock just 8 months before. Gunshot wound.
Goddammit, why did they hurt so much? He'd welcomed each and
every shot of morphine and later Demerol that the nurses had
injected into his IV.

But this didn't feel like drugs were the cause. This time, he felt like
his mind was not with his body. Like he was separate. He tried to
open his eyes. No response. He tried again. Nothing.

Even that failure wasn't unknown to him. He'd been forced to
make several attempts at opening his eyes during his last serious
injury. The body was slow to respond, it was busy with other more
mundane tasks, like pumping blood through the heart and getting
oxygen into the lungs.

Without warning, or even trying, his eyes opened and he saw
Scully. His first impulse was to speak, to tell her he was glad to see
her, to ask what had happened.

Violently, other thoughts invaded his mind. He felt himself being
shoved aside by a presence that he could only recognize as pure
evil.

<<What the hell is going on?>> the other thought demanded.

>>I . . . I don't . . .<< Mulder stammered, trying to gather his own
thoughts, which were scattering before him like dandilion seeds on
the wind.

<<Shaddup!>> shouted the other. <<Shaddup your goddamned
trap! Where the hell is Lula?>>

Mulder didn't have time to answer, he was engulfed in the cold
hard fury of the other's anger and all consciousness left him. He
was trapped in a place that was darker than sleep, more frightening
that death. It was the blackness of nonexistence.

FBI Headquarters
9:05 am

"Glad you could make it in, Agent Scully," Section Chief Blevins
nodded gratuitously toward a chair in front of his desk. "Have a
seat."

Scully obliged him, taking a moment to survey the room. Blevins
office was far from spacious, but it had suddenly erupted with
chairs--all of them occupied. She couldn't identify all the
occupants, but was fairly certain most of them were members of the
Office of Professional Conduct. One man she did remember, at
least from seeing him at a distance. Walter Skinner, Assistant
Director in charge of Violent Crimes, was seated next to Blevins
behind the desk.

Skinner met Scully's gaze and regarded her coolly. She
immediately dropped her eyes, breaking contact. A shiver ran
down her spine.

"How is Agent Mulder?" Blevins asked, and broke the tension that
had settled on the room.

"He's still in ICU, sir. He woke up for a few moments this
morning. He's in considerable pain, but the doctors feel that there
is every chance of a full recovery."

"This is the second gunshot wound he's received in a year, isn't it,
Agent Scully?" The AD's voice was low, almost contemptuous.

"Yes," Scully admitted, wondering where in the hell this question
was leading. "If you are asking if Agent Mulder was reckless in his
actions, sir--"

"I don't remember asking any such thing, Agent Scully. But it is
highly unusual for an Special Agent to be wounded in the first
place. Twice in one year seems even more suspect."

"Sir, the nature of our work--" Scully tired to explain.

"I am more than aware of the 'nature' of your work, Agent Scully,"
Skinner sneered. "I'm still trying to figure out if it's worth the
expense in medical bills alone."

"Sir, let me explain--Agent Mulder and I have been highly
successful in our efforts--"

"I am aware of that fact, as well, Scully," Skinner said dourly.
"And believe me, that will only get you so far. But that isn't why
you were called here."

"Sir, if I may. Why was I called here?" Scully asked, trying hard to
keep her anger in check.

"There is a fugitive at large. Lula Phillips. There is a manhunt
underway. But we felt you should be aware that we will probably
be posting a guard at Agent Mulder's door. There is the possibility
that Lula will go after Mulder. He did kill her husband, as you
know," Blevins explained.

"And her husband almost killed Agent Mulder," Scully let slip
angrily, then reigned herself in. She swallowed. "I think a guard is
a good idea, sir."

"One is on the way over. And I would like to offer you the
opportunity to work with the Violent Crimes Section a little longer
and assist in the manhunt for Lula Phillips. The file--"

"Agent Mulder has a copy of the file in his office," Scully
interrupted. "Thank you, sir. I think I would like to see this one
through to the conclusion."

"I expected you would, Scully," Blevins smiled. "You can report to
Agent Levitts later this morning. I believe a briefing has been
scheduled for 10:00. Until then, that will be all."

Scully was reeling as she made her way to the stairwell and ran
down to the steps to the basement. Only once she was seated
behind Mulder's desk did she allow herself the luxury of a deep
breath.

What the hell was that all about? she demanded silently. She'd
never been in such a strange meeting since--

No, wait, she admitted silently. She had been in just such a
meeting, almost 18 months before. The meeting where she'd been
assigned to Mulder in the first place. The memory gave her a sad
smile.

She picked up the magazine from Mulder's desk. _Lone Gunman_
it's bold type heralded. She barely glanced at the cover, it was one
of the more tamer subscriptions her partner received and it had no
bearing on this case. This was simple case of robbery and escape
and it was only a matter of time and good police work that would
lead to it's resolution. Under the magazine, she found the file on
Warren Dupre.

Arlington Medical Center
9:47 pm

Mulder awoke, still trying to focus on his surroundings. He'd
dreamt--something about another presence, an evil presence,
invading his thoughts, taking over his mind.

Not all that unusual, he reminded himself. After all, he had just
undergone surgery. That fact was painfully obvious, even if no one
was there to tell him about it. He looked over at the IV pump and
the heart monitor, felt the pull of the stitches in his chest. The dull
ache of a pain calmed only with large quantities of narcotics echoed
against his ribs.

The nurse appeared, and graced him with a brilliant smile. "Agent
Mulder! You're awake. How are you feeling?"

He forced a smile--he didn't really feel as chipper as this woman
was acting and didn't want to encourage her too much in that area,
either. " . . . my partner?" he croaked and swallowed painfully.

"She was by earlier, but you were still asleep. She said she'd call in
the morning and come by about lunchtime--probably somewhere
around 12:30. Poor thing, she looked pretty bedraggled when I
came on at 7. She'd been here all last night, you know, and was
working all day today from the looks of it" the woman prattled on.
"Dr. Davis thinks you could start with some liquids. Do you have a
preference in juices? I have apple, cranberry and grape at the
desk."

" . . . apple," he rasped. She smiled brightly again and left to fetch
the juice.

He closed his eyes for just a second when the whole world went
black. It was darker than just his closed lids--the blackness brought
a coldness that poured into his very being.

<<My turn, dumb fuck,>> a growl emerged from the blackness.
<<You're going nighty night for a while--till I can figure out how
to lose you forever,>> the words echoed in his mind until he was
nowhere, feeling the depths of nothing.

When the nurse came back to the room with his juice, Agent Fox
Mulder was nowhere to be found.

11:30 pm

"He was right here, Agent Scully! I swear, he was right in that
bed!" The nurse, Jackie Bensen was close to tears. "I came back
with his juice and thought he might have gotten up to go to the
bathroom. I checked in there and his clothes were gone! I was
only gone for about 5 minutes. Mr. Martin, in 368 was calling for
the bedpan and you just can't let that man wait, if you know what I
mean."

Scully was quickly losing her patience, but realized it wasn't this
woman's fault. The agent who had been on guard duty was
standing next to her, toeing the tile floor. She fixed him with a
steely glare. "And where were YOU?" she demanded.

"Look, it's not my problem if Spooky Mulder decided to go chase a
ghost or two," Dan Hines bristled. "His clothes are gone, his shoes
are gone--he probably took off for his apartment. I hear he's
known to do that a lot."

Scully knew he was referring to the time in North Carolina when
Mulder checked himself out of the hospital and was all the way to
the Raleigh airport before someone caught up to him. He'd pulled
six stitches, getting into and out of the taxi cab, but in the end, he'd
won the fight and she'd escorted him home on the next available
plane.

"Look, that was different. There is a woman on the loose, one
who's been directly linked to a number of murders during robberies.
Mulder killed her husband. Now, my guess is that Lula Phillips
Dupre is not feeling too fond of Agent Fox Mulder right now,"
Scully hissed. "If she was here and she took him--"

"Agent Scully, I looked at the security camera tape. It clearly
shows Mulder sneaking out of the room and heading down the fire
escape. Save your righteous indignation for the nursing
staff--they're the ones who let him get out without telling anyone,"
Hines fired back.

Scully glared at Hines and did a slow burn. Her gun was
dangerously close to jumping out of her holster and into her hand,
firing of it's own volition. She damped down the feeling viciously.
"Look. I don't care if Santa came and got him in his sleigh," she
seethed. "He is missing. And that woman is on the loose. We
have to find him. NOW!" she shouted.

Her cell phone started chirping before Hines could make a
comment.

"Scully," she answered.

"Agent Scully? This is Jeri Franklin. I'm a resident down in the
morgue. I was told that I should contact you. Something weird is
going on down here."

Scully forced herself to take a deep breath. "Yes, Dr. Franklin,
what can I do for you?"

"Well, somebody has come in and messed with one of the bodies. I
mean, it's not exactly a federal offense, but it's pretty creepy."

"Which body, Dr. Franklin?" Scully asked, trying very hard to
regain her now missing patience.

"It's the body of Warren James Dupre. Someone's chopped off his
fingers."

end of part two

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

Lazarus Reborn (3/6)
by Vickie Moseley
vmoseley@fgi.net
disclaimed in part one

"Creeped me out!" exclaimed Jeri Franklin as she lifted the sheet off
the body. "I mean, the drawer was wide open, the body was just
laying there--and the fingers . . ." She grimaced and shook her
head. "Weird stuff!"

Scully was bending over the body, then lifted the left hand. The
little, ring and middle digits were severed. The bone and muscle,
long since devoid of blood, glistened in the florescent lights. A pair
of surgical shears, identical to the ones that she used in autopsies to
remove the ribcage, lay at the side of the corpse. "Hines," Scully
said evenly, "bag these shears. I want them dusted for prints."

"Scully, this is hardly a capital crime here," Hines objected.

"On the contrary, Agent Hines," Scully said, barely refraining from
poking the taller agent in the chest. "I am fairly certain that we'll
find the fingerprints of Lula Phillips on those shears. I think the
grieving widow came to pay her last respects, and figured out that
the wedding ring was going to get buried with the rest of her
husband."

"That's gross," said Franklin and shivered.

"More than that, it means Mrs. Dupre was in the hospital this
afternoon, not long after Mulder turned up missing. I think we
have enough to go on--unless Mulder really is at his apartment, I
think it's safe to say he's been kidnapped by the widow Dupre."

1424 Walnut Ave.
Alexandria, VA
2:15 am

Tommy Phillips was having a very nice time. So nice that he was
pretty certain he wasn't going to have to pay for it. The young
woman doing her best to keep his mind directed on various parts of
his anatomy was extremely skilled, but also a bit on the dumb side.
He'd flashed the cash when they'd come up to his apartment, but
that didn't mean he couldn't throw the bitch out on the fire escape
the minute she demanded her compensation.

They were pretty close to the edge of the universe when the door to
the apartment blew open, sending in a howling tornado of dirt and
dead leaves. Right behind that came a man who Tommy had never
seen before in his life.

"Get rid of the bitch!" the man shouted and the blond managed to
find the fire escape on her own, tugging on her leggings and overly
tight tee shirt as she ran.

Tommy grabbed under his bed, but the hand of the other man
stopped him.

"Uh uh, Tommy-tom. Not this time."

"Who are you?" Tommy demanded. "What do you want? Look, I
paid the rent. I told that old bastard, the super, I put the rent check
under the door. It ain't my fault the son of a bitch lost--"

"Tommy, shut your yap!" the man ordered. Tommy looked hard at
him. His eyes were a dark brown, but there were gold
flecks--flecks of what? Insanity? And on the dirty cotton sweater
that man wore there was a dark red stain spreading on the left side
of his chest. Tommy didn't like this one bit.

"I don't know you," Tommy said, inching his way up the bed so
that he was in a sitting position.

"Tommy, Tommy, Tommy. How soon they forget, eh? It's me,
Warren. I'm looking for Lula, Tommy. Where the hell is that sister
of yours? I looked at our old place but she's cleared out. Where is
she, Tommy?"

It was the last question Tommy Phillips would ever answer.

Phillips Apartment
9:15 am

"Death is attributed to a gunshot wound to the head," Officer Willis
droned from his notebook. "We didn't realize the need to call this
into the FBI until somebody figured out this was Lula Phillips baby
brother," he smirked derisively.

"Wow, what a leap of investigative skill," Scully muttered as she
surveyed the scene. The coroner had already retrieved the body,
but the bright red stain and tiny pink flecks still decorated one wall
and the pillows and sheets on the bed.

She closed her eyes for a moment, willing herself to get in the
groove. She was still terrified for Mulder, she wanted nothing
more than to be out looking for him. She'd been up almost all
night, searching all the places she could remember finding him in
the past. He hadn't gone back to his apartment, there was now a
team of agents staking it out in case he were to show up. He was
missing and here she was, reliving the last seconds of Lula's
brother's life.

What would Mulder do? she finally asked herself. He'd solve the
fucking crime and find the fucking bitch, she berated herself angrily.
But he's not here, so I guess that just leaves me, doesn't it, she
sighed. Her eyes were drawn to the television.

"Has this been dusted for prints?" she asked suddenly.

All eyes turned toward her. "No, ma'am. Any prints would
probably belong to the dead guy," said a uniformed Alexandria cop
dusting the window to the fire escape.

Scully worked her mouth in concentration. "Look where the body
was found. He'd have been staring straight at the television set.
Was it on or off when you came in?"

"Off," came the quick reply.

"Then dust it. The murderer might have turned it off." The young
officer shrugged and stepped over to dust the knob of the
television.

Scully watched silently until she heard a disturbance in the hallway.

"I'm a federal officer--I just don't have my ID on me," an all too
familiar voice intoned breathlessly.

"Mulder?" she asked, incredulous. She hurried out into the hallway
to see if her suspicions were true. Sure enough, her errant partner
was standing in the hallway giving grief to the uniformed cop on
guard.

"Scully, tell this creep who I am," Mulder begged plaintively.

"Officer, I can vouch for this man. He's my partner, an FBI agent,"
Scully said evenly as she walked up to Mulder and took his arm.
She noticed that his trench coat--complete with bullet hole and
blood stain on the inside lining--hid his shirt and she was tempted to
rip it open and examine his wound. When she had led him a short
distance away, she started on him. "Mulder! Where in the hell
have you been? My god, you're supposed to be in the hospital! Do
you know how frightened I've been?"

He held up his hand weakly. "Scully, enough, OK. I'm sorry, I just
couldn't stand the hovering there, so I left."

"Where did you go, Mulder? You didn't go back to your
apartment," she accused.

Mulder looked a little confused, a little lost. "You're right, I didn't
go back home. I was tired, I wanted to go home but I guess I
couldn't get all the way there. I woke up at a motel a few blocks
from the hospital--my VISA card was in the inside pocket of my
rain coat. Really, Scully, I'm fine. I just needed some rest."

"Mulder, you need to be in the hospital! And that is exactly where
you are going," she growled.

"Let me see the crime scene," he pleaded.

"Mulder, you are lucky I don't cuff you and sit on you till the
ambulance arrives," she growled in return.

"Ooh, Scully. You do that, and I'll NEED an ambulance," Mulder
leered with a grin. Then he sighed and tried for the reasonable
approach again. "Scully, I am less than ten feet from a crime scene.
It's not going to kill me to walk into that apartment and give you
my thoughts on what happened there, is it?"

She glared at him, ready to tear him apart. In the end, she knew he
was right. So she didn't say a word, she just stepped aside and let
him walk into the apartment.

Greg Levitts looked up and dropped his jaw open in amazement at
Mulder's sudden appearance. He moved over to the older agent
immediately. "Good to see you back among the living," he joked
lamely.

Mulder nodded, pale and with a slight tremor going through his
body. "Good to be here," he smiled weakly. "What have we got?"

"Tommy Phillips, Lula's brother. Dead by gunshot wound.
Neighbors say they heard the shots about 2:30 this morning."

"Did they see anyone leaving the building?" Mulder asked, circling
the bed, taking in the scene.

"No. Of course, this isn't exactly a Neighborhood Watch
community, either. I think the majority of people in the building are
crackheads and the rest are dealers. I didn't expect to get much out
of them. Although Scully helped us get a print off the TV. She
thinks it might be the killer's." Levitts smiled in Scully's direction.

Mulder smiled as well, a look of pride falling on his partner. Scully
blushed at the praise. "It was nothing, just checking all the bases,"
she protested.

"No, it's far from nothing, Scully. Good work. Hey, you keep this
up and you'll make Director yet," Mulder teased gently. He
reached out to squeeze her shoulder, but pain streaked up his arm
and he doubled over, clutching his chest.

"OK, Mulder! That's it! We are going back to the hospital, now!"
Scully ordered and took his arm. Greg took up the other side and
between the two of them, they practically carried Mulder down to
Scully's car.

"Are you sure we shouldn't call an ambulance?" Levitts asked,
worry lining his face.

"This is faster. Besides, I'm a doctor. But please call the hospital
and tell them we're on our way--I don't want to have to use my cell
phone while I'm driving and keeping an eye on him unless I have
to," Scully requested. Levitts nodded in agreement and rapped on
the hood of the car, signaling and end to the conversation. Scully
sped off.

"Scully, I'm OK," Mulder protested. He was still pale, the pain
lines near his eyes were like valleys on his face, but his eyes were
clear for the moment as he stared at her. "You don't have to kill us
getting us there," he added, tossing a glance at the speedometer.

"I can't believe you were so monumentally stupid, Mulder! How
could you just get up and walk out of that hospital? And why
didn't you call me? I was worried sick, I thought Lula Phillips had
you--"

"Scully, I'm sorry," he said apologetically. "Really, I didn't mean
to scare you. I just got tired of being stuck in the butt all the time."

"But you were on medication, Mulder. Pain killers, antibiotics. It's
not like you scraped you knee, goddammit. You were SHOT in the
chest--they were filling out your death certificate in that ER," she
yelled and Mulder cringed beside her.

"I'm sorry. I really am. I really never meant to scare you. But
when I woke up, I knew I had to find you. I knew where you
would be," he pointed out.

"How?" she demanded, glaring at him.

"Late breaking news, Scully. Lula's picture is all over the TV and
there was a report that her brother had been shot. I knew you'd be
there. I was right," he added. He turned his gaze out the window.
Suddenly, he put his hand on her arm. "Scully, stop the car!" he
ordered.

"What? Are you going to be sick?" she asked anxiously.

"No. I just saw Lula Phillips. She just went into that apartment
building," he answered excitedly.

She didn't even bother to ask if he was sure, Scully pulled the car
over without thinking. "Which building?"

Mulder pointed to a six flat in the middle of the block. All the
buildings in the neighborhood were old and many of them looked
abandoned. "That one! 1508," he said evenly. "Scully, call for
backup--I'm going in after her," he directed and started to reach for
the door handle.

Scully grabbed his arm. "No way, cowboy!" she growled. "If
anybody's going in, it's me. You stay here, and call Levitts for me
and an ambulance for _you_. Immediately!" she ordered.

"Yes ma'am," he said, giving her a mock salute and a indulgent
grin.

The glare she tossed him was the only way she could hide her smile.

Scully's looked up and down the hallway. It was empty. She
quickly found the manager's apartment on the first floor and
knocked. The manager, a middle-aged man with very little hair on
his head, identified the woman in the picture Scully showed him as
the new renter in apartment 302. Scully ran up the two flights of
stairs to reach the third floor. At the other end of the floor, going
down a separate flight of stairs was Lula Phillips, a laundry basket
on her hip.

"Freeze. Federal Agent," Scully called out and wasn't too
surprised when Lula decided to take off down the steps. Scully was
quickly hot on her heels.

Lula ran into the basement, a low ceilinged space filled with clothes
lines and long forgotten boxes. Scully dodged packing crates and
wet clothes as she continued to pursue Phillips. Finally, as they
reached the back of the basement, Lula slipped and Scully caught
her, bringing the woman down on top of a heavily soiled and
discarded mattress. Scully pulled out her handcuffs and was about
to cuff Lula when she heard a voice behind her.

"I'll get that," Mulder said.

"Mulder," Scully growled. "I told you to stay in the car. Is the
back up here, yet?"

Mulder had taken the handcuffs from Scully and looked like he was
going to restrain Lula when he shifted and encircled the cuff around
Scully's right wrist. "No," he answered her question. Then pulling
her gun out of her holster, he held it to her head and said "and I
don't think it's going to be coming."

end of part three

========================================

Lazarus Reborn (4/6)
by Vickie Moseley
vmoseley@fgi.net
disclaimed in part one

Lula Phillips glared at Fox Mulder, slowly wiping the dirt from her
cheek. Mulder reached over and touched the same cheek tenderly,
wiping away the dirt.

"Did she hurt you, baby? Are you all right?" he murmured lovingly.

"Who the hell are you?" Lula hissed. "I don't know you."

"Yes you do, baby. It's me. Warren. I can't tell you how much
I've missed you, baby. I've missed you so much I had to come
back."

Scully stared in horror at her partner as he spewed forth those
words. "Mulder," she whispered, "Mulder, what are you talking--"

His hand whipped out in a flash and caught Scully across the face.
"Shaddup, bitch!" he growled angrily. He turned back to Lula, his
eyes now filled with love and devotion. "Sweetheart, I know this is
hard to understand. Hell, I don't even understand it yet, but it's
true. I'm back. I was dead, but I'm back. And I'm never gonna
leave you again," he said, taking her hand and kissing the back of it.

Lula Phillips first instinct was to rip the gun out of the guy's hand
and blow a hole in his obviously deranged head. Then, after a
second thought, she began to see the opportunity that was
presenting itself. This guy was nuts, that was for sure. But for
some crazy reason, he was nuts _for_ her, and she could use that to
her advantage. As soon as the time was right, she could lose this
nutcase, but in the meantime, tagging along with him was a far sight
better than sitting it out in a federal jail. Her grimace at his
advances quickly changed to a slimey smile.

"Baby, is that you?" she cooed.

"In the flesh, baby. In the flesh. And I'm sorry about the
looks--but hey, won't make no difference in the dark," he said with
a knowing leer. "Come on, the cops will be here, soon. We need
to get someplace safe," he added. "Safe and secluded."

Next to him, the cuffed Dana Scully felt like she was in the middle
of a terrible nightmare, and couldn't figure out how to wake up.

"What do we do with the extra baggage?" Dupre/Mulder asked
Lula. "I say we don't need the weight. I can kill her right here,
right now."

Internally, Scully screamed. This could not be happening, this
wasn't happening to her.

Lula thought about it for a moment. "No, baby. She's insurance.
And besides, we can make some money off her. I'm sure
somebody would pay to get her back. We need money, baby. You
didn't get much out of that last job," she grinned.

"Just a bullet," Dupre/Mulder agreed. "Yeah, you're right. But we
need to get someplace. How about your old man's place. It's
fairly deserted?"

"Perfect," Lula nodded, hiding her confusion that this loser knew so
much about her life.

"Great. Let's take the red head's car and get over there," he said
and pulled down a dish towel from one of the lines of clothes.
"Here you go, lady fed. Can't have you seein' where we're goin',
can we?"

Scully cringed at his touch, but didn't say anything. The words of
the doctor in the ER kept echoing in her mind. "We'll have to
check his neuros"--Mulder had been without oxygen to the brain
for almost eight minutes. He very possibly had suffered brain
damage. That would explain his bizarre behavior. But he was still
Mulder. Regardless of how he was acting at the moment, he was
still her partner, her friend, the only person she could trust. He was
sick, and he needed her help. For that matter, she needed to help
both him and herself.

Arlington Medical Center
11:30 am

Greg Levitts was beside himself. He'd watched them drive away.
Two agents, one instrumental to his search for Lula Phillips and the
other seriously injured and in need of medical attention--and now
they were missing. It didn't take an hour and a half to get to
Arlington Medical Center, no matter how slow you took it or how
heavy the traffic was on the Key Bridge.

He didn't like the idea, but he knew he was facing the very real
possibility that Scully and Mulder both were now in the clutches of
Lula Phillips. If they were still alive.

With a heavy sigh of resignation, Levitts pulled his cell phone out
of his pocket, and sticking one finger in his exposed hear to block
out the sounds of the busy hospital, he called his superior.

"Mr. Blevins office," came the clipped reply of his bosses secretary.

"This is Greg Levitts, Terry. I need to speak with--"

"Oh, gosh, Greg. He had left at lunch--he's gone for the day. I
could leave a message," Terry said happily.

"Shit! No. I need--ah, hell, transfer me up to Skinner's office. I
need some action, quick."

"Will do, Greg," Terry replied and made the necessary connections.

"Assistant Director Skinner's office," came a voice that Levitts
couldn't readily identify. If the matter had not been so grave, there
is no way he would have called this high up the organizational
chart.

"This is Special Agent Greg Levitts, and I need to speak with the
Assistant Director," Levitts said, cringing at the high pitched
squeak that had suddenly entered his voice.

"And may I tell the Assistant Director the reason for this call?"

Greg should have known Skinner would screen his calls. Good
grief, he didn't have time for this shit.

"Look, tell Skinner he has two agents missing, possibly in the hands
of a known felon and he better talk to me quick or we'll only get
corpses back," Greg growled into the phone.

The next voice he heard was a very attentive Walter Skinner.

Lula Phillips was getting just a little freaked out by the nutcase
beside her. The guy kept prattling on, and that wasn't so bad, but
the part that caused her skin to crawl was the way he knew so
much about her.

"Just think, baby, we can have it all. We get out of town and away
from here--maybe go to Rio like we've always dreamed,"
Dupre/Mulder said wistfully. "We demand enough money and we
can both get face jobs--no one would ever recognize us. I'd love to
get rid of this honker," he added, grimacing in the vanity mirror of
sunvisor. "Dumb fuck, and ugly, too."

Lula's spine straightened at the talk of Rio. It had been her secret
fantasy and no one but Dupre knew of it. So how come this joker
did? Was he crazy AND psychic? She decided to give him a little
test, just for the fun of it.

She was winding through the back streets now, not far from her
father's old dilapidated shack. She purposely made a turn back the
wrong direction. A hand shot out and grabbed the wheel.

"Baby, you missed the turn back there," came Mulder's calm voice,
but the eyes didn't belong to the Special Agent. They were dark
and foreboding. "Want me to drive? You're probably dead on
your feet."

Lula bit her lip. "No, baby. Thanks, but I got it. You just rest.
Oh, shit, baby, look! You're bleedin'," she said, distracting him
enough to regain control of the wheel.

Dupre/Mulder looked down at the sweater under the trench coat.
"Damn," he hissed in pain, and leaned back against the seat, closing
his eyes.

"He needs to be in a hospital," Scully heard herself saying. She
strapped into the back seat, blindfolded, with her hands cuffed
behind her. "If he's bleeding, there could be internal bleeding, as
well. And he look flushed before. He's probably getting an
infection. He needs antibiotics."

Lula glared into the rearview mirror. "You know a lot about it for
a cop, bitch," she sneered.

"I'm a medical doctor," Scully answered quickly, then regretted the
slip.

"Good. Then you can fix him up just dandy when we get you to
Dad's old place," Lula smiled and turned the car down another
residential street.

Lula had to decide how much she could trust Scully not to leave
this loser behind. It was obvious from the conversation in the
basement that the woman fed knew the nutcase, and from the looks
she kept shooting over at him, knew him pretty well. Even so, Lula
was ready to risk her insurance policy by uncuffing the agent and
letting her help move the now unconscious man up the rotting front
steps and into the house. Lula cursed the dead weight the entire
time, but was grateful that he wasn't really Dupre, who was a good
20 pounds heavier.

Once in the house, Lula took the blindfold off Scully. "I'm gonna
have my gun on you," Lula hissed in Scully's ear. "And your
imbalanced little friend here. So don't do anything funny, got it?"

Scully nodded mutely.

"Now, I'm gonna let you loose and you can fix him up. I don't
want him bleedin' all over. Meanwhile, I'm gonna make a few
discrete phone calls," she grinned evilly and pulled Scully's cell
phone and ID wallet out of the agent's pocket. She punched in a
few numbers and put the phone to her ear. "I'd like a number in
DC, please. Get me the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

Scully moved over to Mulder, laying a hand on his forehead. He
was warmer than she liked, running a fever. She pulled up the
sweater and winced as it stuck to the dried blood near the wound.
The careful stitches of the surgeon who had patched him back
together had been mercilessly pulled, and were weeping bright red
blood. She swallowed hard to keep from screaming at Lula but she
knew it would be useless.

" . . .Scully? . . ." Mulder moaned and shifted away from her gentle
probing. He blinked his eyes slowly and finally focused on her face.

"Yes, Mulder, I'm right here. Shhh, you're hurt. And Lula has my
gun."

"Lula?" Mulder looked at her, glassy eyed and confused. "Dupre's
wife?"

"Yes, Mulder. Remember, you--" Scully stopped herself. If it was
brain damage that had caused his earlier strange behavior, calling
his attention to it would do no good. "She's kidnapped us," she
said sadly. "She won't take you to the hospital," she added.

"No much of a humanitarian, I guess," Mulder hissed and coughed.
"My chest hurts," he moaned.

"You've got a fever," Scully admitted.

"I had this weird dream," Mulder continued, not really hearing her
anymore. "I felt like someone had taken over my body--"

"It's OK, Mulder. You're sick, but don't worry. I'll figure a way
out of this. I promise. You just rest."

" . . . just rest . . ." he repeated and drifted off into darkness again.

FBI Building

"Sir, there's a call coming in. Woman claims to be Lula Phillips,"
an agent manning the phones said to Skinner. The Assistant
Director picked up a headset and nodded, then pointed toward
another agent who was working the trace.

"This is Assistant Director Walter Skinner," he said in the phone.

"Hi there, Walt. Good to talk to you. I have a couple of friends of
yours here and there just 'dying' to help me out." Lula was
obviously enjoying her little prank.

"Phillips, if you harm either of those agents," Skinner growled.

"Hey, one of them was messed up when I got him. And he ain't
doing so good right now, so you better listen and listen good if you
want him back still breathing," Lula ordered.

"I'm listening," Skinner hissed.

"Good. I want one million dollars, unmarked bills, non sequential
and none of that funny paint shit in the packages," Lula rattled off,
examining her nails.

"You should know, Phillips, that the FBI does not negotiate with
kidnappers," Skinner said evenly.

"That's too bad, because there will be two less of you in 12 hours
unless I get the money," Lula laughed.

"How do I know they're still alive?" Skinner asked angrily.

"I'll put little red on," Lula said and held the phone up for Scully.

"Sir?" Scully said breathlessly. "Sir, Mulder's hurt--"

"Scully, can you give us your location?" Skinner asked, but knew it
was probably a long shot.

Lula pulled the phone away and put it up to her own ear. "There
you go, you talked to her. Hope you had a nice chat, because
unless you get me that money, it's the last talk you'll have. I'll call
you in four hours and tell you where to bring the money." She
punched the button and ended the call.

Skinner huffed out an angry breath and glared at the assembled men
and women. "OK, people, tell me what we have," he ordered.

"I have a trace," the young black agent said excitedly. He punched
a number in a receiver and rattled off the phone number that he had
discovered. His face was a mask of impatience while he waited,
then, it promptly fell into bitter disappointment. He hung up the
phone. "The call was placed on Agent Scully's cell phone. They
could be anywhere," he said dismally.

Skinner stood there a moment, concentrating. There was a sound
during the phone call, something he should have been able to
identify. "Take the tape and and filter out the voices. There's a
sound in the background that might give us a clue."

Anxious to do anything to help, three agents grabbed the tape, and
headed out the door.

Unknown location
6:30 pm

Dupre/Mulder moaned and a restless Lula moved over to him.
"What's wrong with him?" she demanded of Scully.

Scully was now handcuffed to the radiator, wishing it was in
working condition. The house was freezing cold and a bitter wind
blew in through the cracks in the window sills. She looked over at
her partner, and tried to damp down the worry in her voice. "He's
sick. He probably has pneumonia. The bullet punctured a lung--"

"So he ain't gonna make it, huh?" Lula asked, eyes narrowing.

"Not without antibiotics," Scully answered honestly.

Lula leaned over and Dupre/Mulder caught her shoulder. "Baby,
you gotta help me," he begged. "Remember our promise," he
hissed, his voice cracking as the pain in his chest increased and
coughed, bloody spittle spraying on Lula's shirt. She recoiled in
disgust.

"What promise?" she growled. "I don't know nothing about no
promise."

Dupre/Mulder glared at her. "You know the one I mean, baby. On
our wedding night. The promise we swore."

Lula was intrigued. "When? When did we make this promise?
What happened?"

"You mean after you gave me the best head of my life," the
presence controlling Mulder leered.

Lula actually blushed. "After that," she shrugged.

Dupre/Mulder shifted, coughed again, then gained control of his
voice. "We walked out on the beach. It was nighttime and a billion
stars were above us. I took out my pocket knife and we both cut
our hands, then we joined hands and let the blood drip into the
oceans, so that we'd be married in all the oceans of the world.
Then we promised that we'd never leave each other. That we'd
always be together, even if we died. That's why I came back, baby.
I had to keep my promise."

Lula stared in amazed horror at the man laying before her. He
couldn't know such things--there was no way he could know those
things. She had to get out, she had to buy some time.

"What kind of antibiotics would help him?" she asked Scully.

"Keflex. He needs it IM, uh, in a shot. I'd need a bottle of Keflex
and some syringes." She'd do anything at this point to keep
Mulder alive and with Lula away, she'd have a chance to free
herself and Mulder and get away.

Lula must have read her thoughts, because she roughly grabbed her,
unlocking the cuffs from the radiator. "Come on, Red. We're
going on a road trip."

end of part four

===========================================

<
Lazarus Reborn (5/6)
by Vickie Moseley
vmoseley@fgi.net
disclaimed in part one

Fox Mulder was cold. Cold and hurt. His chest hurt and his head
hurt and his chest and his arms and his chest and his--

But all the pain was preferable to the terrifying blackness and
soul-chilling void that he'd been experiencing until he'd broken
through to consciousness. As long as he hurt, he knew he was
alive. As long as he was cold, he knew he still existed. As long as
he was miserable, there was hope.

He blinked his eyes and tried to focus. His vision wavered and he
thought he'd be sick. The cold was replaced by wave upon wave of
Mojave desert heat. He feebly tore at his sweater in an effort to get
the offending garment off him and allow his skin to cool. But
before he had his arms half way out of the sleeves, his body started
to shake with the chills that alerted him to the heights of his fever.
He shoved his arms back through the sleeves and shivered all the
more.

Where was Scully, his mind finally processed. And that
woman--Lula. He remembered all too well the file on his desk and
the data on Lula Dupre. She was a guard at a women's prison and
Dupre met her during a parole hearing. They'd had a torrid affair
that ending in an elopement, somehow made twisted and ironic in
that the honeymoon was funded by their first joint robbery. If
Dupre had pulled the trigger on those guards in their bank jobs,
Lula was equally guilty of their deaths and injuries. She was a very
dangerous woman.

His head hurt and it was difficult to process thoughts, but he
vaguely remembered the presence that was still within him. The
cause for the void that he found himself locked in--a malevolence
that he could hardly register, much less identify. All he knew was
that when the evil presence was in control of his body, Fox Mulder
was pushed aside like so much garbage. But as his body weakened
with the fever and the blood loss he was experiencing, he knew also
that the presence was weakening. It was a matter of time. The
only question was if he would survive once the presence left, or
even if he could outlast the presence.

He thought of Scully. If he let the presence win, he wasn't sure
what would happen to her. Lula Phillips wasn't stupid, at least not
from what he'd seen of her file. He suspected she was the
mastermind behind the robberies. Warren Dupre had been a petty
thief before he'd hooked up with Lula. So if Mulder wasn't
around, there was a better than even chance that Lula would kill
Scully just to make her getaway easier.

He had to keep Scully safe. It was his job, to provide back up. But
more than that. He thought back to the dock in North Carolina, the
last time he'd been shot. She hadn't left him, even when the
ambulance came. She'd been right beside him, holding his hand
when they'd let her, moving next to him when they wouldn't, but
always near, always within his line of sight. That kind of loyalty
was almost unknown to Fox Mulder. Only Reggie Purdue had ever
come close. With Scully he felt something deeper than his
friendships of the past. He wasn't ready to define it or try to
analyze it, but he knew he had to protect it, and her, even if it cost
him his life.

It hurt so bad! The constant pain in his chest was mild compared to
the pain that assaulted him every time he coughed. He tasted blood
now, after coughing and knew that was a bad sign. He was cold
and he had to admit, more than a little scared at how bad he felt.
But this battle, at least as he saw it, would be fought in his mind.
As long as his mind remained clear, he would win. He simply
didn't have a choice.

Savon Drug Store
Reston, VA
8:05 pm

It was an older drug store in a run down neighborhood. The bars
on the glass windows gave it the look of a castle under siege. Lula
pulled the car into an alley just a few yards from the door, leaving
the keys in the ignition. She reached over and removed the cuff
that was tethering Scully to the door handle and snapped it on her
own wrist. Then she removed the blindfold from the agent's eyes.

"Remember, Red. You cause any trouble and your little friend back
there dies choking on his own blood, 'cause they'll never find
him--got that?" Lula threatened. "Now we're going in there and
we're gonna get this 'flex' stuff you keep yappin' about. And then
when we get back, you can fix him, up--got it?"

Scully pressed her lips tightly and nodded. She didn't want to say
or do anything that might endanger either she or Mulder until she
could figure out a way to escape.

Lula pulled her out the driver's side door of the car and together
they walked into the drug store.

The pharmacy in the back of the store was closed, but Lula
'unlocked' the door with a slug from Scully's PPK. The narcotics
and other controlled substances were locked away in a safe, but
Scully ignored them and instead searched the shelves until she
found the antibiotic. Grabbing some syringes from a box under the
counter, they hurried back to the car. As they stepped over the
unconscious male clerk, Scully glanced up at the ceiling--hoping the
security camera was catching her 'good' side.

FBI Headquarters
9:35

"Sir, we just got a call from the Reston PD. Appears there's been a
robbery of a drug store," a young agent explained excitedly.

"So?" asked Greg Levitts, who had gotten to the end of his rope
about four hours previous and was not in the mood to play games.

The younger agent smiled. "So--the robbers didn't take cash or
heavy drugs. They stole Keflex," he said. "That's an anitbiotic.
And you can get it at any public health clinic for free if you don't
have any money. Not exactly hot on the black market."

"Security camera pictures?" Skinner asked, mentally crossing his
fingers.

"They faxed it while they were still on the phone. It's definitely
Agent Scully with Lula Phillips, sir. Too bad it's black and white,"
the young agent grinned and handed the picture to Skinner.

"That means they're in the Reston area. That's not that far."
Skinner stared at the picture. He could see the cuff around Scully's
wrist and where it was attached to Lula's. At least that would clear
Scully of any charges once he was able to get the two agents back.
But if they were purchasing antibiotics, Skinner knew it probably
wasn't for some STD Lula might have picked up from Dupre.
Mulder was in bad shape for Lula to take a risk of capture.

"Where the hell is that tape I asked for?" he bellowed across the
room.

"Sir, if you could come down to the lab, I think I might have found
something," said an agent from the doorway, holding a reel of
magnetic tape.

Skinner hurriedly followed him to the sound lab down the hall.

The desk plate said 'Steven Victors' and Skinner remembered
seeing the name. He was an expert in sound technology and if
anyone could get the weird sound Skinner heard off the tape, he
could.

"I filtered out as much of the voice as I could, so it's going to
sound pretty tinny. But in the background, when I enhance the
sound--you get this." Victors flipped a switch and the sound booth
the two men were in was filled with the very distinct sound of a
motor.

"That's an airplane," Skinner said, frowning with concentration.

"That's a Briggs Stratton engine on a bi-plane," Victors corrected.
"And from the sounds of it, he needs to check the carburetor. It's
got a hitch," he add with a smile.

"Planes that small don't land at either of the big fields," Skinner
was talking more to himself than to the man sitting next to him.

"No, they don't sir. And from the sounds of this, what little we
have, I would say he was getting ready to make his decent. There's
a small airfield outside of Reston--north of town on the Fairfax
County Road 10."

Skinner looked over at the young agent, who was pleased that he'd
found the missing link. "What did the pilot have for lunch?"
Skinner deadpanned. That wiped the grin right off Victor's face.
The younger agent started to stammer and then noticed the almost
imperceptible grin that flashed on the Assistant Directors mouth.
"Good work, Agent Victor's. This has been a real help."

Skinner left to focus the search in the two mile area around the
Reston Airfield.

Unknown Location
Reston, VA
10:03

Dupre/Mulder startled awake when the front door opened. It was
getting harder and harder to gain the upper hand. At first, when
he'd awakened in this body, it was easy to cast the little wimp who
inhabited it aside, throwing him into the same frightening void that
Dupre had entered into at the moment of his death. But now it
seemed the little shit was actually fighting back, holding onto
consciousness with a steel grasp.

This stupid body is wearing out, too, Dupre groused silently. He
had hoped that with it, he and Lula could get away, make a new life
together. As it appeared, he really was going to die. In order for
them to remain a couple, Dupre was going to have to make other
plans.

"Hi, uh, baby," Lula crooned as she shoved Scully into the room
and secured her to the radiator again. "Miss me?"

"Always, baby. You know that. I always miss you when we're not
together," Dupre/Mulder cooed in return. "We just have to make
sure we're never apart."

Lula missed the darkening of the eyes that came to the weakened
man, but Scully didn't. She saw it as an opportunity.

"Lula, I need to change the bandage over the wound. Those
stitches are bleeding and I'm certain that's the source of infection.
I'll need clean sheets or towels, something I can use as bandages,"
Scully said, trying to sound reasonable.

"I'm not your slave, bitch," Lula growled. Then she looked over at
Mulder and visibly shivered. "Oh hell, it's not like it's gonna make
any difference," she muttered and left the room to search for
something suitable.

As soon as Lula was out of hearing, Scully looked over at Mulder.
"Mulder? Mulder, answer me."

"He's not here, bitch. It's just me--get used to it," Dupre/Mulder
hissed, jaws clenched against the pain. "I'm in the driver's seat and
I intend to stay there." With trembling hand, he shoved up the
sleeve on his sweater, revealing an ugly red burn that he scratched
absently. As Scully stared at the almost foot long mark on his arm,
she could faintly detect the form of a Chinese dragon. The bottom
dropped out of her stomach when she remembered seeing that same
dragon, in red, black, and blue ink, tattooed on Warren Dupre's
right arm as he was covered with a sheet in the hospital ER.

"Mulder, you have to listen to me. You are Fox Mulder, you are an
FBI agent. I'm your partner, remember? Scully--you remember
me, don't you, Mulder? Remember, our first case, we went to
Oregon? We were investigating the deaths of four teenagers, all
members of the same graduating class. Mulder, you have to
remember," Scully pleaded in a hoarse whisper, hoping desperately
to get through to her partner and still not alert the woman holding
them at gunpoint.

The man sitting across from her narrowed his gaze. A confused
look replaced the animosity of a moment before. He licked his lips,
coughing a little. "Scully?" he whispered.

For the first time in days, Dana Scully breathed a sigh of relief.
"Yes, Mulder. It's Scully. Dana Scully. I'm your partner. Your
friend."

The confused look turned wistful. "It was raining in Oregon--"

It took Scully a moment to place the reference. Then it came to
her. "Yes, in the cemetery. We were standing in the rain.
Arguing."

"Your hair was in a pony-tail," Mulder said, eyes drifting shut then
quickly blinking open.

"Yeah, yeah I think it was. The rain was coming down so hard, I
couldn't see five feet in front of me. And the motel had burned
down--we didn't have a change of clothes. I thought we'd both be
sick by morning--"

"You were afraid. There were mosquito bites on your back--"

Scully blushed. "I knew you'd remember that part, Mulder," she
chided gently. "But yes, you're right. I was afraid. I was scared
out of my wits. But you held me. You made me feel better.
Please, Mulder stay with me," she begged as his eyes slid shut
again. "Fox! Wake up, please!"

Mulder jerked, and his face twisted, but this time not in pain. It
was the undeniable look of anger--the look she'd seen on his face
before when they'd faced a threat or enemy. His eyes were still
closed, but now they were clutched shut and he seemed to be
struggling for his very life. Just watching him undergo such a
transformation kindled in her the overwhelming sense of danger at
hand and her need to fight it or get the hell out of it's way.

"Mulder, I'm right here, partner. I'll help any way I can. Just tell
me what do to," she urged him, instinctively knowing he needed to
hear her voice.

"Don't talk, bitch!" a voice that was Mulder's but in a tone Scully
seldom heard her partner use shouted at her.

"Leave him alone!" Scully retorted, anger now fueling her efforts.
She'd be damned if she was going to let anyone--living or
dead--take her partner from her without a fight.

At that moment, Lula walked in, an old thin cotton towel and a
butcher knife in her hands. "What the hell is going on here?" she
demanded, looking menacingly at Scully.

"Nothin', baby," the voice from Mulder replied, easing back,
erasing the look of anger with a look of triumphant. "Nothin' to
worry that pretty little head about." He lay back again, rubbing the
area on his chest and coughing softly. "I need that medicine, baby.
I need it now."

Lula nodded and laid the knife down on the table near the chair
where Mulder was sprawled. "I got the bandages, baby. Right
here." She looked at the man before her coolly. "But I don't think
I'll be needing the medicine right now. I think we'll just wait on
that."

Confusion spread across Mulder's face. "What are you talking
about, baby? Lula--I gotta have that medicine. I'm dying here,
baby. I'm dying," he rasped and coughed long and hard to prove
his point.

"I know, baby. I know. See, I was sort of hoping that would
happen this time. I'm tired of you hangin' all over me, baby.
You're a liability. You think too small. I got bigger fish to fry and
I can't do that with a loser like you. As far as I'm concerned, that
fed just did my job for me. Almost wish the dumb bastard would
live long enough for them to give him a medal," she chuckled.

From her viewpoint on the floor, Scully couldn't see what
happened next, but she was close enough to hear it. Mulder lunged
forward and pulled Scully's gun out of Lula's belt. He then
grabbed the woman's head, entangling his fingers in her hair and
pulling her down toward him.

"Baby--you don't mean that. Tell me that you don't mean that?"
the voice of Warren Dupre growled at his wife.

Scully couldn't see Lula's face turn white, but she could see the
woman's hands tremble uncontrollably as she slowly reached over
to the table and grasped the butcher knife.

"Mulder--the knife!" Scully called to her partner, but he wasn't
listening.

"Don't worry, baby. It won't hurt. I promise. And then we'll be
together--forever," he crooned into her ear.

Scully heard his gasp of surprise when Lula plunged the knife into
his stomach. A half second later, the gun went off, the bullet
blowing clean through Lula's body and embedding somewhere in
the ceiling. As she died, Lula collapsed in a heap on top of him.

In the corner, still cuffed to the radiator, Scully prayed someone
would hear her screams for help.

end of part five

=============================================

Lazarus Reborn (6/6)
By Vickie Moseley
vmoseley@fgi.net

Scully thought her voice was going to give out when she heard the
boom and the crack of wood that indicated the door being broken
open with force. The voices of several men came next--one clear
voice yelling "This is the FBI."

"I'm in here," Scully rasped hoarsely. "Bring a medic--now!"

She almost didn't recognize Greg Levitts, he looked exhausted.
Behind him were several men dressed in FBI flack jackets, all with
standard assault weapons. Levitts was beside her in a second,
pulling out his own handcuff key to unlock her wrist. He started to
help her up, but she was already on her feet, crossing over to
Mulder in two steps. "Get her off him," she demanded and two
agents moved Lula Phillips dead body off Fox Mulder.

She dropped beside him, putting her fingers to his throat and
searching for a pulse. "Don't go there, Mulder," she ordered.
"Not twice in one week, goddamn you." She closed her eyes and
frowned in concentration. "Son of a bitch, you never listen, do
you?" she growled, and dragged him off the chair and on to the
floor where she started cardiac massage.

"Paramedics are here, Agent Scully," Greg said kindly, and pulled
her away from her partner. She stood, licking dry lips, as the
EMTs took up her efforts. It was taking too long--again.

"Pulse is faint, but we got one." She almost collapsed with relief.
They had respiration, as well, and were able to start oxygen and
prepare for transport.

Arlington Medical Center
2 days later

Mulder was being wheeled back into the ICU cubicle after yet
another trip to the x ray department. It was the second MRI since
their rescue. The doctors could not explain his unconsciousness.

The knife had missed major organs, but had nicked an artery and
caused extensive blood loss. That, coupled with the infection and a
case of pneumonia, were enough to land him a stay in the Intensive
Care Unit, again. But he should have regained consciousness
sometime after the first 24 hours, when the antibiotics kicked in and
his blood volume was back to normal. Instead, he remained
unresponsive.

She'd taken to talking to him. First she read him the paper, even
purposefully mispronouncing the names of his favorite players in
the sports section, hoping that would tick him off enough to wake
up. Then, she brought a medical journal and read to him the newest
techniques in liposuction. Finally, she brought in a couple of files
from his in box and read him the case notes. But through it all, she
refused to believe that her partner was not still there, just waiting to
wake up.

Dr. Chambers had been assigned to Mulder upon admittance. She
was a neurologist and very respected in her field, but beyond that,
Scully liked her. She was a tall, leggy blond and Scully secretly
wished that Mulder would open his eyes, if just to ogle his doctor.

"Dana, we got the results back," Chambers said gently.

"And?"

"They still come up negative for a cause. Dana, I'm afraid it looks
irreversible. It's a coma. There is almost no brain activity--"

"He's just tired. He's been through hell the last week. He'll be
fine," Scully shook her head emphatically and reached over to take
her partner's hand. "He won't leave me."

Dr. Chambers stood there a moment more, trying to find words to
break through the denial. None were forthcoming and sadly, she
left the two of them alone.

"Mulder, I know what you're doing. You're hiding, because you
think I'm mad at you. Well, I'm not. I know you didn't mean to
stop breathing--you were hurt and tired. I'm sorry I said those
things, sorry I called you a son of a bitch. I didn't mean it, Mulder.
Really. If you wake up, I'll buy you dinner--your favorite spot. My
treat." Seeing that she was having no effect, Scully laid her head
down on the mattress and let her tears float her off to sleep.

Fox Mulder was coming out of the darkness. He could remember
all too well the moment when Dupre's existence had left his body.
It was the moment Lula had died, and just after the knife had cut
him. When Lula Phillips' spirit left the earthly plane, Warren Dupre
had followed it, to where ever it went. Then Mulder felt himself
floating away, leaving his body. The last thing he remembered
clearly was Scully's frightened scream for help.

Right now, he was tired. His whole body ached with a bone deep
exhaustion. His chest hurt, his head hurt, even his arms and legs
were in pain. Just one small spot on his person didn't cry out for
relief. His arm--where a tiny hand was wrapped around it, keeping
it warm. Scully's hand. She was there, holding his arm. The relief
he felt in his arm spread to the rest of his body and although he
knew he'd have several days of painkillers and bedpans ahead of
him, Fox Mulder decided it was time to wake up and smell the
coffee.

Coffee. Something else they would deny him. He groaned at the
thought of the bland 'soft diet' he was sure to be facing when he
opened his eyes.

"Mulder?" Scully's voice whispered. Now he'd gone and done
it--there was no turning back. Slowly, he blinked his eyes open,
surprised to find not blinding sunlight, but the soft nightlight that
signaled the presence of night in the hospital.

The only brightness in the room was Scully's smile. But that was
more than enough.

"Hey, you're awake," she stated happily.

He cleared his throat. " . . . coffee?" he asked.

She grinned and held up a Styrofoam cup. "Ice chips," she offered
instead. He grimaced, but opened his mouth to accept a few chips,
letting them melt on his tongue.

"I hate to do this to you, but I need to know. What is your name?"
Scully asked, and he was slightly amused at the breathless
anticipation written on her face while he fought to find his voice.

"Fox William Mulder," he rasped. "Born October 13, 1961 to
Elizabeth and William Mulder of Chillmark, Massachusetts."

Scully closed her eyes in relief.

"But I don't know you from Adam," he added, motioning for
another spoonful of ice.

She froze, and for a moment he thought _she_ would need a
defibrillator. Then, she saw the gleam in his eyes.

"I'm the woman who is gonna kick your ass from here to next
week," she said tersely.

"Oh, then you must be my partner--Dana Katherine Scully, born
February 23, 1964, third of four children to William and Margaret
Scully of--where did they live when you were born?"

"Portsmouth," she replied with a grin.

"Ohmigod, Scully. I had no idea you were a Jersey chick!"

"Remember it, Mulder, if you ever decide to test your luck and
mess with me again like this," she instructed. It was wonderful to
have him back. But there was so much of that last several days that
was nagging at her. "Mulder, when Lula had us--"

"I don't remember much of it, Scully," he assured her.

"You said some things, Mulder," she said, confusion and hurt
warring for a place in her eyes. "You said--"

"He was there, Scully. In my head. Taking up residence in my
body. I tried to fight him. I think I did fight him, in the end, or I
would have followed them across--"

She held up her hand. "Mulder, I can't believe that you were
possessed by a . . . an evil spirit. I'm sorry, I just can't."

At this point, she couldn't tell him that there was evidence that just
didn't add up. The fingerprints on the shears found next to Dupre's
body had been Mulder's. Dupre's wedding ring had been on
Mulder's ring finger when Lula's body was lifted off him at the
shack. The fingerprints on the television set in Tommy Phillips
apartment, likewise had been Mulder's. He had been there before
the police had shown up. The angry welt in the form of a dragon
which Scully had seen on his forearm had slowly disappeared while
Scully was working to get him to breathe. By the time he was out
of surgery later that night, all trace of it was completely gone from
his arm.

But did any of that prove that Mulder's body had been possessed
by Warren Dupre? To answer in the positive frightened Scully
more than she was willing to admit. No, she'd stick to her skeptic
convictions on this one, for the while at least. As for Mulder's
duplicity in the events of the last three days--she was more than
willing to chalk it up to emotional and physical stress resulting from
his injuries, and make sure he was fully recovered before he was
allowed back to work.

He frowned at her, but internally, he hadn't expected her to believe
him. "Then what are you suggesting happened to me, Agent
Scully?" he asked, and his voice betrayed his disappointment.

Scully thought about it. The doctors had assured her, and she had
seen the test results herself. There was no brain damage. Aside
from the prolonged unconsciousness, they would check his neuro
responses every three hours for the next 24 to make sure he wasn't
masking something, but he was responding well to her now. She
looked in his eyes and couldn't find a trace of the darkness, the evil,
that she had sensed there before. Whatever it had been, it was
over.

"I don't know, Mulder. I really don't know," she answered,
honestly.

"Then what am I supposed to believe?" he asked, a little surprised.

She reached over and took his hand, giving it a gentle squeeze and
gave him a tender smile. "Believe what ever you want to believe,"
she replied.

the end.

All Comments and Cyber-Roses to: Vickie Moseley

"Poems, prays and promises,
Things that we believe in.
How sweet it is to love someone.
How right it is to care.
How long it's been since yesterday,
And what about tomorrow,
And what about our dreams and
All the memories we share."

Goodbye John.

John Denver, 1944-1997
Singer, songwriter, poet