He found her in the bar by the motel. She'd wanted to meet in a public place, but although this fit the technical definition of "public," she sat at a table by herself, the crowd a wash of noise and color around her, like a still island in an ocean of bobbing humanity, utterly alone. She wore blue jeans and a plaid shirt, her sockless feet tucked into a pair of deerskin moccasins. Her hands were clenched on the table, eyes staring vacantly at the beer bottle in front of her.

Clouds of smoke drifted by like fog as he moved towards her, feeling strangely disconnected from his own body. There she sat, feet together and flat on the floor, wearing no socks in this freezing weather. She was unaware of him at this instant, just a woman sitting alone, all full of thoughts and feelings, hopes and desires and needs, a bystander who had been pounded and warped into a mold by God knew what forces until she had come to this moment, and whatever happened next in her future, whatever turn of events was to follow, was entirely up to him.

As Skinner moved forward, the air seemed to thicken and slow him down. The click of poolballs and the whine of country music faded, though he could still feel the pounding bass with every beat of his heart, and he imagined strange overlays of Scully there at the table, a little redheaded girl of five or six running with a kite banging the ground behind her, the Scully that was, and the Scully that should have been: a mother with a fuzzy headed infant tugging at her nipple, a laughing wife teasing her husband about being late for dinner. So much of her life had been stolen from her; she had been so unjustly drafted into this war, so much lost she could never have back now. It was a conscription to be cursed, but she had never once cursed it, and if she mourned those losses, she had done so in private.

His throat burned with sorrow, and he had to roughen up his resolve to keep that forward motion, to keep coming, one foot in front of the other, towards her.

Then he was standing in front of her, backlit by the barlights, and his shadow fell across her like the shadow of a raptor on a sparrow.

She looked up, startled.

Skinner hovered over her for a moment but he couldn't force himself to even begin to intimidate her; she looked so whipped, dragged behind something for miles and just left to die.

Nothing had prepared him for this, for every small corner of his heart to suddenly be filled with confused and conflicted emotion.

"Scully," he said.

She stretched her leg out and nudged the opposite chair with a toe in silent invitation, and he sat down across from her. The waitress started forward and he pointed at the beer on the table and held up two fingers, aborting her interference, and she nodded and turned back around. Skinner saw that the longneck on the table had lost its condensation, and had barely been touched.

"Are you alone?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yes, sir."

Sad little voice. Another song came on the jukebox, and Skinner said, "I don't think this is a good place to talk. Where are you staying?"

"There's only one place in town, right across the street."

He had seen it when he parked, a seedy little motel with the requisite flashing neon sign. The waitress thunked the bottles down in front of him with a hollow sound and he gave her a ten dollar bill without looking up.

"You two doin' all right, sweetie?" she asked. She was looking at Scully, who must have attracted her sympathy earlier. Scully nodded, her lips trying to smile. The waitress glanced at Skinner, a quick measuring look, and then went away.

He said, "Scully, are you all right?"

Clearly she was not, but she only looked down and sighed so deeply he saw her shoulders expand and collapse like a bellows. "How's Mulder?" she asked.

It was a relief to deliver the good news first. "He's going to be all right. He hit his head when he fell, and he lost a lot of blood, but the bullet didn't do a lot of damage. He was in a coma but he came out of it. He's still not able to talk much. I don't think he remembers what happened. You're damn lucky you didn't kill him, Scully."

Her head came up then, her eyes flashing fire. "Skinner, I didn't shoot Mulder. You've got to believe me. I didn't do it."

Tears, recriminations, pleas...he had expected almost anything but a bald faced lie. Not from Scully.

He said gently, "Scully, we got it on tape. I saw you do it."

She leaned forward across the table, her eyes fixed on his, and said, "I don't care what you saw. It wasn't me. I did not shoot Mulder."

"There's no point in..." He shook his head; he had to raise his voice over the sound of music and voices and boots clattering on the wooden floor. She was sick; he didn't want to shout at her or make things any harder for her than they already were. He just needed to get her out of there.

He rose and said, "Get your coat."

Scully got up, her eyes clouding briefly as she looked at her chair. "I don't have a coat," she said, as if only just realizing it herself.

"Jesus, it's freezing outside." The radio had said one of the worst storms of the season was blowing in, and Scully hadn't bothered to put on a coat?

She was sick, dammit. Her face was so exhausted, it looked like she barely had the strength to hold up her head. He stripped off his parka and spread it across her thin shoulders. She held the fur pieces of the collar together at her throat, the bottom of the jacket brushing the backs of her knees, and together they threaded their way through the crowd and out the door.

Skinner made a gesture for her to lead, and they made their way through the wet streets towards the buildings bathed in neon on the other side of the parking lot.

**************************

Although it had stopped raining for the moment, the night sky looked like a blackboard rubbed with chalk, and high up and far away, tree limbs groaned as the wind moved them in unaccustomed angles. Scully could feel the bite of cold through her jeans; her ankles ached with it. Where the hell were her socks? She couldn't remember dressing at all, much less searching for warm socks, which at this exact moment, she wished for above all other things.

Skinner walked a little behind her, his body position that of a guard, not a guardian, and she could feel the size of him inside the parka he had been wearing; it still smelled like him, and held his body warmth.

When they came to the door of her motel room, he took her key from her and opened the door, a small but meaningful gesture just to let her know who was in charge.

The room was small, shabby, making no pretense of being anything else but what it was: a temporary hole for illicit trysts, whores and johns, a tawdry excuse for a town brothel. Wallpaper peeled down above the headboard of the bed and on the bare drywall beneath someone had etched a message: "I fucked Donna K." Skinner waited until Scully sat down on the stained bedspread, and then he took the only chair in the room, which swayed a little when he sat down, and positioned his knees a little higher than his waist.

Scully said, "The room adjoining this is empty." She pointed at the bathroom door. "Apparently I rented them both." She gave a humorless little laugh. "The honeymoon suite."

Skinner got up, went through the bathroom door. She heard him open the door on the other side, pause for a beat of four, and then come back into the room and sit down again.

He said, "Why did you run away?"

"I didn't run away."

Skinner leaned back in the chair as much as he could, and folded his arms across his chest. "You didn't shoot Mulder, you didn't run away, we aren't having this conversation."

She looked up at him and saw something, maybe sympathy, cross his face. "I don't know what to tell you," she said. "I woke up in my apartment on Friday morning, sick. Throwing up, flu-like sick. I tried to call into work but my phone wouldn't work, and neither would my cell phone. Then Byers called me--"

"Byers?"

Scully made a vague gesture in the air. "One of the three friends Mulder has who help us sometimes. I think you met them in the hospital when Mulder..."

She stopped, almost saying, "When Mulder was shot," but she couldn't bring out the words. Skinner nodded. "I remember. The hippies."

"That's them." She went on. "Byers called me and told me that they were looking for me because they were saying I shot Mulder."

"You're saying you were in bed, alone, when Mulder was shot."

"I must have been."

"Scully, you're not being very clear about this."

"That's because I'm NOT very clear about what happened, sir. The guys knew...I don't know how..." She allowed a faint smile to curve her lips at all they'd done for her in the past twenty four hours, enough for her to forgive them ten times over all the trouble they'd caused her in the past. "They never believed for a minute I would do such a thing."

She looked up into his eyes with a sudden accusing glare. "I thought you would believe me, too."

"Scully," he said, "I saw the tape." He cleared his throat and said in a gruffer tone, "And I've seen the x-rays."

She looked at him blankly. "X-rays of Mulder?"

"Your x-rays. The results of the Cat Scan you had last month."

Scully stared past his shoulder for a moment, into space. When she looked back at him, she saw the pain in his eyes. "Skinner," she said, "I never had any Cat Scan last month. I have no idea what you're talking about."

He said in a flat voice, "The tumor, Scully. The thing in your head."

For the first time in a long time, Scully felt the threat of mortality loom over her. She touched her forehead, between her eyes, without being aware of what she was doing. Her head ached miserably, but...not like before. Not like with the nosebleeds, and the waking up choking at night with the taste of her own blood in her throat.

"Skinner, my tumor is in remission. I haven't had a scan since last February, and it was so reduced in size then I–"

"Stop it!" he shouted suddenly, getting to his feet so quickly he knocked the chair over. "Just stop it, Scully. I know everything. I've seen the x-rays and I know what it's doing to you, and I've seen the bank deposits and the letters in your handwriting and heard the tapes with your voice on them. There's no point trying to lie to me, dammit. I want to help you, but I can't work my way through all these goddamn lies!"

To the amazement of both of them, Scully suddenly yawned. She clapped her hand over her mouth, her eyes round with apology above her fingers. "I'm sorry. I can't seem to snap out of it. I've felt like I've had a hangover since..." She let the sentence trail off into an ellipsis, obviously fighting another yawn.

Skinner was silent for a few minutes, his eyes dark with thought. Then he said, "So you woke up alone in bed on the morning Mulder was shot. What happened after that?"

"I..." She blinked. "It's all...sort of...I don't exactly remember. Why do you keep saying alone?"

"Because if someone...blackmailed you into this, or forced you to do something entirely against your better judgment, Scully, I'd understand. I really would understand."

"I...But no one did, Skinner. I swear to God I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. I knew Mulder was shot, and I...after that...I'm not sure what happened between then and the time I woke up yesterday morning and called Byers."

Skinner righted his chair wearily, and sat down again, putting his hands on his knees. "Then if you don't remember, how do you know you didn't shoot Mulder?"

"I just know I wouldn't do anything like that."

"You're telling me you've been experiencing episodes of missing time?"

Her lips twitched in annoyance. "Now you sound like Mulder. It's not like that. I just...can't...I mean, it's patchy. I think I've been drugged. I saw a doctor in town this morning, and had a blood test, and I should get the results tomorrow. "

Skinner made a soft sound, no more than an exhalation, that told Scully everything she needed to know: he thought every word out of her mouth was bullshit. He felt sorry for her, but he didn't believe a single thing she'd told him.

"Here's what's going to happen, Agent Scully," he said. "I'm going to take you back to Washington, and we're going to put you in a hospital until we can get all this sorted out."

She said disconsolately, "You actually think I did it, don't you?"

"At this point, I don't know what to think."

"I would have thought that after all we'd been through, you'd believe me."

Skinner got up to his feet. "You say you rented the room adjoining this one? Why two rooms?"

Scully made a little throwaway gesture with her hand without looking up. "I have no idea. I don't remember even renting this one."

"Well, there's no way we're staying in this place. I passed a hotel a couple of towns back, maybe thirty miles south of here. We can get rooms on the company tab. There was an airport, too. I'll call and book a flight first thing in the morning from there. Get your things and I'll get the car."

Scully opened her mouth to say something, but he would not look at her again. She said, "Skinner, won't you even consider that I might be telling the truth?"

He glanced at her only briefly. "I'll bring the car around," he said.

And left the room.

When he was gone, Scully let her head fall forward into her hands as she rocked herself back and forth on the bed, past the point of tears. Her last best hope had been Skinner, even though her phone call this morning to Washington had been met with only coolness and hostility, and now she knew there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell of getting out of this thing in one piece.

Somewhere, in her heart of hearts, she thought Skinner cared about her as a person, respected her. The way his eyes always softened when he turned to her after one of Mulder's wild diatribes, and said, "Agent Scully? What do you think?" The way he'd risked his own security to help them. But now in his opinion she'd become the enemy, the unstable element, the risk factor. Now his eyes had closed over like a cop's giving a ticket, establishing an unbridgable distance between them. Now he no longer trusted her.

And she was on her own.

*****************************

In his car, Skinner sat for a few minutes staring through the windshield at the veined patterns of ice on the glass. Scully had looked like a little girl in the principal's office. If he had to bet his life on it, he would guess that there was not one guilty bone in her body.

That pale face looking up at him, the tired eyes, the way she'd suddenly yawned, like a child up past her bedtime. Questioning her had been about as much fun as beating a puppy with a stick.

No, dammit. Don't let your emotions get involved in this. She was there, she shot him, you saw it. Now she looked right into your eyes and lied to you. That's not the tumor talking. She's lying, dammit. What about that other bedroom? She "forgot" that someone else was with her? A man?

His fists tightened on the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.

Krycek?

His gut tightened with fear and self loathing at the thought. But he remembered how powerful a hold they could get on even someone who thought himself invincible. Someone like...himself.

Why would she shoot Mulder? It was so not- Scully. He remembered the gentle touch of her hands when he was sick, the way she'd felt inside his shirt, her hand on his skin soothing him in a way he didn't like to admit.

Scully was not a violent woman. In her most furious moment, what would she do? Well, once she'd told him to go to hell. And once she'd kissed him on an elevator. He felt himself smiling in the darkness. Apparently she WAS capable of doing anything.

But seriously. Why would she shoot Mulder and then deny it? Someone else had to be pulling her strings, someone with a hold over her he couldn't even imagine. Someone who wanted to take her and Mulder down. And he didn't have to think very hard to imagine who THAT might be.

Skinner groaned out loud and wrenched the key in the ignition. The car started up at the same moment it began to rain again, an icy drizzle that promised sleet and snow in the near future. He would have to call and tell them he was coming in, but he wouldn't tell them where they were. No. He'd get Scully to a safe place first. Feed her, let her get some rest. Make her feel protected enough to tell him the truth. And no matter what that truth was, he'd take care of her, see she was treated right.

I won't let them hurt you, Scully.

But the haunting memory of those blue eyes told him they'd already hurt her, that he was only the bloodhound sent to tree the quarry. He'd done a damn fine job of it, too. She'd never have been found if she hadn't called him, willingly, openly, trustingly. And she'd asked for his trust, come to him for help...

...Or else was just banking on how much he cared about her and using him to get away with attempted murder...

Again, though he hated himself for thinking it, the vision of that other bed in that other room flashed in his mind. Someone had recently slept in that bed, while Scully's had been made up.

"Fuck this," he growled out loud. He revved the car up ferociously and drove around to the back entrance of the motel.

He got out of the car and went to the door, which Scully had left slightly ajar. He went inside and saw his parka on the bed, and picked it up absently. She needed it more than he did. Where the hell was she, anyway? He walked through the bathroom door into the other room, saying, "Scully? Are you okay?"

But Scully was gone.

**************************

next, Chapter Three: The Chase (yes, there are handcuffs)
Chapter Three: The Chase