Someone had to say something first.

Mulder was bent over the papers, looking through them, the overhead light reflecting off his glasses so she couldn't determine his expression.

After a few moments he looked up from the coffee table directly into her eyes, and Scully looked down, embarrassed, then made herself look up again.

Mulder said, "You could have had these Fed-Ex'ed over."

"I know," she said softly. "But I wanted to talk to you."

He nodded, as if encouraging her to go on.

"We were partners," she said, with more confidence. "You owe me that much."

He nodded again. "I owe you everything," he said. "But I wasn't in much of a position to do any repaying, was I?"

"Still…"

"Look, Scully," he tossed down the folder he'd been studying and focused his attention on her. "I know you're going to ask me to come back. But it's not going to happen."

It was an effort, but she kept her face blank. "You're not interested in the X-Files anymore?"

"There are no X-Files."

"Didn't Skinner tell you that Jeff and Diana have taken the division over?"

Mulder grunted his contempt. "Like I said, there are no X-Files."

Scully leaned back in her chair, curling her fingers over her palm and examining her nails. "Then did Skinner also tell you my position in the Bureau?"

"Not really. He said you were doing research."

"Field research," she said. She leaned forward again, unable to contain her eagerness. "Mulder, you wouldn't believe the things I've uncovered. I mean, it's really been amazing. There's a whole underground movement out there, investigating independently of any government agency, and for the most part they've been completely willing to help us."

"To help you," he corrected. Then, " Investigating what?"

"Paranormal activity, of course, but more than that. What they call 'The Invaders.' I get anonymous leads all the time. I was just in Memphis, looking into what was reported as several flesh eating bacterial deaths. But they didn't spread, Mulder. Something stripped those people to the bone, but it was no bacteria. Something simply dissolved three human beings, maybe four. And we've seen that happen before, haven't we? Only this time there were bones left. *Bones,* Mulder."

Mulder's gaze fixed on something on the wall beyond her, and she could see signs of his interior struggle in his eyes. He sighed and took off his glasses and put them on the coffee table, and she could see that he'd won whatever war he was waging with himself. "I'm sure it was just an anomoly," he said.

"Mulder, you and I both know that it wasn't."

"Look, Scully, when we got back from the end of the world, while we were still in the hospital recovering from frostbite, I made up my mind that I was never going to subject you to that kind of danger again."

She gave a short, surprised laugh. "Oh, I get it. You decided my future for me while I was unconscious. Did I forget to thank you?"

His lips compressed. "You're wasting your time arguing with me. Even if they hadn't slapped those charges on me the minute I got out of the hospital, I had decided. My mind is made up."

Looking at him, she thought, So is mine, Mulder. So is mine.

She said, "Well, can we at least discuss it?"

"There's really nothing to discuss."

And yet she could sense that he was holding himself back; he wasn't making all the small, impatient movements of someone signaling the end of a conversation. When she crossed her legs, he glanced at them; she saw his eyes sweep her more than once, as if looking at something against his will.

There was a moment of silence, during which both were very still, avoiding body language of any type. Then Scully said, "Oh! I almost forgot. I got you something."

"Scully, you didn't have to…"

She opened her purse and dug through it, pulled out the small black leather holster. Although her head was bent over it, she was looking at Mulder from under her lashes. He seemed interested, a little hesitant, as if anticipating embarrassment, and then…before he could hide it, a flash of something as pure and happy as a boy getting a baseball glove for his birthday.

He half rose and reached out to take it, then settled back down on the sofa, pulling the small cellular phone out of its holster and clicking it on.

His voice was rich with pleasure; "Scully!"

"It's activated, paid up for a year. Private line. The…um, the speed dial one connects to mine."

He held it to his ear for a dial tone, smiling at her, the old Muldersmile, full of delight. "Pretty sure of yourself, weren't you?"

"Well, I thought even if you didn't come back, you could maybe call me sometime."

He rose and came around the coffee table to her, towering over her again, and again she felt a stab of panic. He leaned down and kissed her cheek, his nose brushing her hair back, lips soft as a child's.

"Thank you," he whispered.

Scully's heart pounded in her ears. His mouth was too close to her ear; his breath tickled her hair and made the gooseflesh stand up on her arms; it was all she could do not to shrink back in her chair.

"You're welcome," she murmured, but her voice sounded so odd in her own ears she wondered how it must sound to him.

He didn't move as far back as she wanted. She could smell him, a feverish, heady scent like a night in the tropics, feel him like the shift and slide of the ocean.

"Scully," he said, in a soft voice that seemed to exclude every other sound in the world but her name. In the word was a silent command to look up at him.

She raised her eyes to his.

When the doorbell rang they both sprang away from each other like magnets set to opposite ends. Scully caught her breath; Mulder's eyes narrowed and he shot a look of such suspicion and hostility at the door that her heart cried out for him. Three years in that place. Three years. What had they done to him?

They both went to answer it; old habits made them move in practiced ways. Mulder in front, Scully just behind and to the left. Mulder put his hand on the knob, hesitated, and then jerked the heavy front door open and peered out onto the porch, where the motion-sensitive light had come on.

A woman dressed in some kind of crepe orange outfit, with orange dyed hair and orange based makeup, beamed at him, her teeth startlingly large and white. She was surrounded by three small children, all dressed as jack o'lanterns in identical costumes, who cried out in chorus, "Trick or treat!"

Mulder looked so stunned Scully had to laugh. "It's Halloween," she told him. "Didn't you get anything?"

Mulder looked blankly at the telephone in his hand, then looked at the woman and reflexively dug his hand in his pants pockets. For an anxious instant Scully thought he was going to give them his spare change. Then he caught himself and said, "I'm sorry. We…I didn't…"

The woman, whose whiskey scented breath Scully could smell from four feet away, shouted happily, "Oh, that's all right! We'll take a rain check."

"Rain check! Rain check!" the children squealed, and raced out across the lawn and into the street. They chased each other around the street lamp, and then trotted on down the street, followed by the orange woman, whose unsteady wobble was probably only partially due to the fact that she was wearing neon orange high heels.

There was no telling what was going through Mulder's mind as he stared after them. Scully was wondering where the hell that woman had bought those shoes.

When Mulder drew back, closing the door, Scully backed into the hallway. He turned to her, and said with a shaky little laugh, "Jesus."

Despite herself, Scully began to laugh. After a moment, Mulder joined in. "You see?" she asked him. "If I hadn't been here to verify that, you'd be asking yourself right now if that was a hallucination."

"I'm still not sure," he said.

Scully made no move to go back into the living room. Instead she backed a little further into the dark hallway, to give him room to open the closet door where he'd hung her coat.

"Mulder, I'd better go."

It was obvious that he wanted to stop her; there was a look of protest on his face, but it was equally obvious that he wasn't going to do anything about it.

"Okay," he said. "Are you going to drive back tonight?"

Scully felt her energy level at the highest it had been in years; the electicity ran through her as if she'd been scuffing the carpet on a dry day. She felt capable of jogging back.

"I guess so," she said.

Now he seemed to not want to let her go. He didn't move out of her way when she made a slight motion towards the door. He loomed big as a monster in the hallway, the light behind him like an aura around his head.

It was too much, too soon.It was too dark in the hallway. Too much Mulder, too close to her. They'd barely spoken. You couldn't wipe away the resentment of three years in an hour.

Mulder said in a soft, clear voice, "You could stay here tonight, go back in the morning. We haven't really talked."

"I don't…" Too much emotion, too many unshed tears choking her, too fierce a voice if she spoke what she was feeling. "Not a good idea," she managed.

"I don't want to say goodbye like this," he said.

Then don't! she thought angrily. But she only reached out and tapped the phone still hanging loosely in his hand. "Call me."

He laughed. She stood her ground as he advanced, but there was something in his eyes, a tender fire, but also a challenge, a kind of determination that was not tenderness at all.

"It's like losing you all over again," he said.

"It doesn't have to be, Mulder. It doesn't have to be goodbye."

He kept moving closer. Scully's brain seized in gear; she could not think of another thing to think, another thing to say. She only knew that she couldn't say goodbye to him like this, not so abruptly, not so soon.

She said inanely, "We'll always be friends, Mulder."

Finally, he touched her, his hands on her waist.

"Like hell," he growled.

*********

Tomorrow: Flashback!