Title: Victim Soul Author: prufrock's love Keywords: MSR, Case file, Cancer Arc, Angst Rating: R Spoilers: through Memento Mori Summary: Immediately after Memento Mori, the case of a purported 'victim soul' – a comatose girl who suffers for and heals others, sends Mulder and Scully, still coming to terms with her cancer, to New Orleans. Archive: link to: www.geocities.com/prufrocks_love/victimsoul.html Disclaimer: Not mine; don't sue Silver spoons: Skinner head check: Safe in DC making deals with Cancerman. Jen – safe. No CD & ends in MSR. Angst-o-meter: well, it's the cancer arc, so it's not like you don't know how it turns out. 6.4 out of 10; a good balance of shippy-angst, leaning toward angst. Author's Note: This story draws from the events surrounding Audrey Santos, a teenager in Massachusetts, brain-damaged after nearly drowning over a decade ago and a purported 'victim soul' - one who suffers for and heals others. Although thousands of people believe Audrey, who neither speaks nor moves independently, has healed them, others are critical of her family's motives and skeptical after an investigation by the local diocese did not confirm a 'miracle.' For more information: http://skepdic.com/victimsoul.html/ For the French Quarter ghost stories: http://www.parascope.com/articles/1097/neworleans.htm **** Victim Soul by prufrock's love "...there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. And then I remember to relax and stop trying to hold onto it. And then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment." - American Beauty **** "A year and a day, Mulder." It's the first time she's spoken in hours and her voice is rusty, old-hinge creaky, and almost too tired to make the effort. I look up, watching Scully watch the cemeteries from the interstate. In the back seat of the cramped shuttle from the airport, her hand takes mine, small and strong and clammy with nervous perspiration. I run my thumb in circles over hers and she glances down at the caress, then quickly shifts her gaze back to the window. "Scully?" "A year and a day – that's how long the bodies are interred in those tombs. They build crypts aboveground because the water table is so high that caskets would float to the surface. The corpse is interred and the tomb is sealed for a year and a day. After the year, there's nothing left but dust, and the vault is reused." There is row after row of white crypts stretching out to our right – the cities of the dead, they're called. Tourists scurry like ants between the tombs, searching for Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise and the best angle for a souvenir photo, never giving thought to the generations of memories enclosed in the ornate walls. "The summers are sweltering and the heat acts like a slow crematorium. In a year, there's nothing left," she continues, still staring out the scratched window, still not looking at me, and very alone in the middle of the dozen or so people packed into the noisy van. "It seems like it should take so much longer to become nothing. More than a year, anyway, but scientifically, it's very efficient. Society disposes, memorializes, and moves on." My throat tightens. "Will it be that fast?" My Aunt Ruth lived for several years with breast cancer – my only previous brush with slow, creeping death, and I'd hoped Scully could do the same with this newest monster invading our lives. I didn't realize I should be counting months, weeks, and nights – instead of seasons. I didn't realize last night - Yes, yes I did. The entire time I was doing it I knew it probably would never happen again. I had tried to memorize the intimacy of laying in bed with her, feeling her head heavy on my shoulder as she slept. Running my hands down her back and pulling her close, her mouth meeting mine for the first time as she woke – how it felt for her to let me love her, because I knew it wouldn't last. She actually thanked me for staying, for keeping watch over her for one night after she saw Penny Northern die of the same cancer she has. That's Scully – my Apostle Peter – apologize for getting cancer and then thank me for holding her while she cried. "If the tumor continues to grow, yes. Less than a year," she answers, now fixating on the faceless urban sprawl of New Orleans. "I'll never let you become nothing, Scully." Licking my lips, I lean to kiss her and she shrugs away, pulling inside herself and shutting me out. **** October arrived quietly, bringing the first true breath of autumn and another birthday that passed almost unnoticed. I zipped the lining back into my trench coat and rediscovered the sensuality of hot coffee on cool, crisp mornings. The dry cleaners sent back my blue suit with the wrong slacks – somewhere there's a fat-assed midget in my Hugo Boss, but Domino's Pizza continued the $9.99 dinner special, so life went on. There was some comfort in the mundane: placing the same order for two bagels each morning; wishing Scully goodnight with the same words as she left each evening. 'Goodnight - be careful. See you tomorrow.' There was no need to say so many things – because the next morning, I could say 'Morning. Got bagels,' and Scully could ask if I got her real cream cheese or diet and I'd say 'both.' She'd consider, mentally tallying fat grams and reps at the gym, and compromise, putting regular cream cheese on the top half and diet on the bottom, then eating only the top, since it's the best part anyway. Perhaps she'd abstain from cream in her coffee that morning or pawn off the majority of her lunch on me or drink three diet sodas to create a negative void of calories – she's very unscientific about the capabilities of NutraSweet. It was a pattern; one of those predictable behaviors I love so much, although I'm smart enough to know not to tell Dana Scully she's predictable. There was beauty and safety in the certainty of her, as though Titian had sculpted Venus from the Rock of Gibraltar. The day could pass as our days did. I might find some excuse to touch her, brushing a hand to the small of her back to see if the serpent was somehow warmer than the rest of her skin. There could be a new enigma to chase or a new memo from Skinner for me to piss and moan about. If I were fortunate, I could earn a smile, but more likely, I'd be labeled 'crazy' and subjected to a lecture on why I couldn't possibly be right – not this time, Mulder. No way, Mulder. I could flirt; she could ignore, allowing both of us our insecurities. Eventually, evening could come and I'd look up from my file and casually say 'Goodnight – be careful. See you tomorrow.' I always said it unthinkingly, assuming she'd walk in the next morning at exactly eight, coifed and pressed, and I could say, "Morning. Got bagels." It's never the extraordinary that stirs nostalgia, it's losing the comfort of the mundane. Nostalgia is only a soft, backdoor word for fear, anyway. Then All Hallow's Eve came, and the demons started to gather, creeping into my carefully balanced tranquility, laughing and vanishing into nothingness when I tried to cast them out. They scratch me, stealing away little chunks of who I am and sneering when I cannot exorcise them from my soul or Scully's body. 'A growth,' she calls it. Something beyond the reach of her scalpels and science. 'People live with cancer,' she says. Scully is right, of course – we live with cancer. We've lived with it for a week now, but there is no more ordinary, no more taking for granted. There is no more time for mundane as the world fades into the scarlet and sleet of November. Autumn is dying splendidly, but winter is death. **** Her hand reaches up for mine, offering like it did when I brought her home from the hospital yesterday afternoon. I step out of my shoes and curl up behind her on the hotel bed without comment, relishing the smell of cleanness and the false sensation of safety. As she relaxes, my fingertips trace down her forehead and massage the bridge of her nose as though I can will the tumor away. "It will get better, Mulder. I know this is scaring you, but the vomiting and tiredness are just the normal aftereffects of the treatment. I'll feel better in a few days." I want to scream at her, to shake her – ask her why she didn't stay home, why she refuses to act like a normal human being. At the same time, I understand. She's said it before: she needs something to put her back against, something to give her stability as the winds howl and the storm rages. When Scully needs an anchor, she bypasses me and lashes herself to the J. Edgar Hoover – and I can't say that I blame her. "Your hair?" I ask, stroking the burnished luxury and thinking of the turbans I've seen chemo patients wearing. "No – it's not going anywhere. I only had a few treatments." I exhale, relaxing with her, less conscious of the stubborn beating of my own heart. Somehow, her giving me permission to be afraid makes it better. "I am scared, Scully. You'll beat this – and I'll find Scanlon or a cure, but - Christ, I'm scared, Scully." I bury my face in her neck, smelling faint perfume. "Christ, I'm so scared." Fear and love; they're inseparable in my mind. I find an impossibly soft spot under her jawbone and kiss it, brushing my lips over it, barely touching. After covering her neck and pausing my mouth briefly at the left earlobe, I pull the neck of her blouse to the side and address her shoulder. "Let me do this for you," I murmur when she starts to move away. "I'll find him; I'll find Scanlon, I swear I will, but right now, let me do this for you." There's no time – no time to wait. Careful, careful, careful, Mulder. She's so slight, so fragile. And she's weak – even after I willed some soup and toast into her at dinner, Scully's still too pale and she moves tiredly, like she's in slow motion. She needs to be home in bed instead of in Louisiana offering opinions on a go-nowhere case. I should do a hundred things at this moment: stop and ask if she's sure, leave her and let her rest, not use sex to assuage my own fear and anger and guilt. I do none of those. I pull off my dress shirt and slacks and let them join her clothes in the space between the wall and the bed. Socks and t-shirt and underwear follow until we're skin to skin in the new darkness, no more room for secrets. I tell her things – things I keep hidden behind photos in frames and locked in desk drawers. Scully responds without speaking; knowing what I want – I want to do this for her. I have no idea why she allows me, but I don't really care, either. She lets me bare her, consume her, without comment, intoxicated and breathless. "Mulder – I'm not…" On anything. I almost forgot about that. She doesn't know. "In Philadelphia, Scully – did -" "No," she breathes into my shoulder and I start to penetrate. "Wait – don't." I stop, pulling back, reality intruding into Scully's hotel room and tapping me lightly on the head with a ballpeen hammer. This is a bad idea. Very, very bad, in fact. She's sick and tense and obviously uncomfortable – her breathing is labored and, when I look down at her, she's biting her lip so she doesn't cry out. "I can't be pregnant," she manages, "If they have to do radiation again, I can't be pregnant." Of all things to occur to me – completely nude, on top of and partially inside of my partner, a combination of three things that probably signal the apocalypse is coming – it's that she has no hesitations about being pregnant with our child, just about being pregnant right now. "No baby; I promise." I tell her, wrapping a hand under her hips and another under her head, trying to blink back tears and not succeeding. Scully looks up at me, trying to decide what I mean, knowing I'm not that reckless – not with her. "We have to be careful." "No – no baby. Not now, not ever. Can't." I meet her eyes, and then look away. In the light from the street, pale arms glow as they wrap around me, pulling my mouth down on hers, responding assertively for the first time. As her tongue penetrates my mouth, her body relaxes and I sink into her with a low moan. She thinks I mean that I'm sterile. Scully's hands run down my back to my hips, wanting me to move, to give us both some relief. So I do. **** A victim soul – one who heals by taking others' suffering upon themselves. They may exhibit stigmata, cause icons to bleed or weep, and manifest the symptoms of those they heal. The person enters a covenant with God, becoming a lamb to be sacrificed for the good of mankind. Or, a brain damaged child being exploited and possibly abused by her family as a way of gaining attention or wealth, and thousands of gullible people desperate for something to believe in. Christina Gonzales, age fifteen, semi-comatose for almost a decade after being struck by a drunk driver while riding her bike, lies peacefully in a hospital bed in front of the picture window, the blinds open so the faithful can see her from the yard. Her brown eyes don't blink and her head doesn't turn toward sounds. Ten years worth of long hair is carefully brushed and arranged, falling over her shoulders and chest like black silk. In medical terms, she has Akinetic Mutism – she can neither speak nor move. According to the masses of people making pilgrimages to New Orleans to see her, she is a living saint. It's much easier to recommend the State take a child away from a family when the family is reduced to photographs, medical jargon, and progress notes from social workers. You never see the mother gently caressing her daughter's hand – a touch Scully assures me Christina cannot feel, and you don't notice the way a father's gaze shifts from you to his daughter to assure himself that her chest is still rising and falling with the ventilator; that his last link to his daughter – a shell - still lives. My first reaction is that the huge home is surreal, as most of the last week has been. Church music plays on the radio instead of the top forty, echoing off the high ceilings, and the bedroom is decorated with religious statues instead of pennants and pinups like a teenage girl's room should be. Scully is discussing the girl's medical condition with Mrs. Gonzales through a bilingual police detective, so I'm left to mill about and stare from the bedroom doorway at the young woman in the bed. Most of the information I need to make a judgment will come from the police file and the family history and I could have written an opinion in DC, but Scully had wanted to see Christina, to examine the wounds herself. Scully is like that – she is Peter the rock, but also Thomas the doubter – the apostle who wanted to thrust his hand into Christ's wounds. Words and fuzzy images are never enough for her; only the physical, the provable is real. Well, Scully, I hope I was real enough for you. Last night I sliced open my soul and let my body bleed into yours. I awoke alone, hearing Scully scrubbing in the shower, and already knowing the wound was going to fester; I was already infected with her. I'm perusing the shelves of medication and diapers and nurse-stuff outside the bedroom door as Scully approaches the bed, pulling on her latex gloves. That's the hard evidence the DA needs to remove Christina from her mother's custody - the bleeding wound in each palm. The neighbors have been ranting about the masses of believers invading the quiet Garden District, but, except for giving out parking tickets, there was nothing the P.D. could legally do until Christina began exhibiting stigmata two months ago. When the Gonzales family approved a web site posting live pictures of their daughter, the case came under sketchy federal jurisdiction and the DA called in the FBI to be the bad guys. The police believe there are only two options: Christina is a bona fide stigmatic or a victim of child abuse, and the community is equally divided between the two poles. "Scully," I call to her, brushing my thumb under my nose and trying not to attract attention. Whatever Scanlon's treatment did, she's had several nosebleeds in the last few days, but they're getting milder and further apart. Dropping Christina's hand, she pulls several Kleenex from the box beside the bed and heads to the bathroom across the hall to clean up. "You okay?" I ask, following her into the bathroom like I belong there. Like having access to her body for one night gives me the right to invade her privacy. Sex is one thing; intimacy is another. I had thought I was the master of separating the two until I was with Scully. I felt closer to her holding her in the hospital corridor than after I made love to her last night, if that makes any sense. Scully is checking her face in the mirror, standing on tiptoe so she can see herself. "Yeah – that wasn't bad." She tosses the tissues in the wastebasket and begins washing her hands, very businesslike. I lean on the vanity beside her, not wanting to leave but not sure what to say. "Thanks for telling me." "You're welcome," I say, glad to have the words scripted for me. "Are you feeling okay? Do you want to leave? We can get some lunch and talk about this." 'This' case, 'this' cancer, 'this' feeling, 'this' sudden need for only one hotel room – it will be a long lunch. Scully opens her mouth to reply, but we're interrupted by cries from the bedroom. Closer to the door, I move faster, arriving in the bedroom just in time to see Mrs. Gonzales beginning to press a pile of tissues to her daughter's bleeding nose as Scully sinks into a little pile of DKNY in the hallway. **** "It's. Chicken. Fat," Scully says, pronouncing each word as a separate sentence so as to convey how ludicrous this discussion is and punctuating the air dangerously with her fork. "Those statues are bleeding olive oil and chicken fat. There's nothing mystical about chicken fat." "Would that be virgin olive oil?" "A true stigmatic would exhibit Christ's wounds on her wrists, not palms," she continues, ignoring me and slaughtering her trout. "Mrs. Gonzales is creating those wounds and rigging the icons to weep olive oil and AB positive blood – the same blood type as Christina. Her mother must have struck her to get her nose to bleed, and that's child abuse. Period. I don't want to hear any of your bizarre theories." Fine. I start my mental clock. "Okay, so what's your theory? Why did we leave that child with her parents?" Twenty-six seconds. "Don't say you think Christina Gonzales is the real thing, Mulder. That child is being kept alive only so she can be exploited – because of someone's selfish need, and that's despicable. Any reasonable person would have withdrawn life support and let her die peacefully years ago. There's no hope of recovery. Her mother swears Christina moves her hands and reacts, which obviously isn't true, and makes me further question her sanity." She glares at me for a moment. "I know what you're going to say: AB blood was found on the shroud of Turin. And Christina is manifesting symptoms of my cancer. Four percent of the population has AB blood and I've had dozens of nosebleeds in the last week and fainted several times, I just didn't tell you. Try to be a little rational." The trout is stabbed several times but escapes, managing the sanctuary of the rice pilaf, and glaring up at her angrily with its single dead eye. "Is that why you wanted this case? You really think a comatose child is going to heal me?" She slams down her fork, causing her knife to bounce off the table and clatter to the floor. "Damn it, Mulder! I have an incurable, inoperable cancer. At some point, I will be in the same situation – hooked up to tubes and machines – and I don't want to live like that. You need to be prepared to let me go." I blink, trying to figure out how we made the leap from discussing a case file to Scully's new motto: fuck me, but don't love me. "Don't look at me like that. You know exactly what you're doing! God damn you, Mulder!" she hisses at me, shoving her chair back and marching out, leaving the majority of her half of our 'big splurge' lunch dissected, but uneaten. I lean a few inches to the left, watching her through the window as she leaves the restaurant and stalks across Bourbon Street. She could have had this fight completely without me. I think the last thing I said was something about olive oil. Very Freudian, actually – it's free association from chicken fat to death, passing 'new lovers,' 'crushing guilt,' and 'gnawing fear' and collecting ova and thirty pieces of silver instead of the standard two hundred dollars. A Kevin Bacon game that begins with 'No one down here but the FBI's most unwanted,' and ends with me watching her become nothing, feeling like a child frantically trying to keep sand from straining through a sieve. What do you want from me, Scully? A note that says 'we had a few laughs – thanks for the great lay and doing all the paperwork'? And you're wrong: I have absolutely no fucking idea what I'm doing. Take a bird – a robin red breast or a cardinal – that would be appropriate. One morning, pull out all the feathers. Note: the robin will resist this, and the robin's partner, for some reason, will bring flowers. Toss the beautiful red feathers into the wind and watch them madly swirl around you. Call this 'cancer.' Now, gather up as many feathers as you can find and try to stick them back into the poor bird. Pretend it's the same bird: whole, untouched. No one is allowed to notice any changes, or God forbid, mention them. Call this 'living with cancer.' I don't know what you call it when you assuage your guilt and pain by going to bed with the bird. Selfish, maybe. The analogy doesn't extend that far, and, if it does, it becomes really obscene. As I watch, Scully stops, bracing herself against the corner of a red brick building and trying not to faint again. Doing some quick mental math, I toss two twenties on the table and go to get her. She stops speaking to me after I hail a cab, telling her she can either get in or be carried back to the hotel over my shoulder and meaning it. Seeing our blinking 'out-of-towner' suits, the cabbie proceeds to give us the complete and unsolicited history of the New Orleans French Quarter, including the unabridged commentary on how he acquired 'Lucifer,' the baby alligator head on the dashboard that holds his business cards. I'm half-listening, trying to figure out why a cabbie would need business cards while I huddle in my corner of the cab, out of the reach of little fists, but not bullets. Ten minutes later, we're obviously taking the scenic route back to the hotel, but passing the site of the only documented case of vampirism – at least, according to the cabbie – when his narrative is interrupted by my partner covering her face with her hands and beginning to sob silently. The poor driver felt so bad, he not only refused to let me pay the fare, he gave Scully the baby alligator head. She put it on the hotel night stand so I'm staring up its prehistoric snout as I pull her against me, saying that she should just rest for a few minutes and then we'll work. Close your eyes, Scully, just for a few minutes. Christina Gonzales may not be the real thing, but I am. This is real. If I could bleed for you, I would. Maybe too real right now, as though someone had adjusted the tint on a television so all the colors are too bright. We try to see the picture through the glare, but sometimes Scully and I have to close our eyes and look away. We can turn away from each other or to each other – I thought we'd decided our path last night, but obviously, I was wrong. Three hours later, I'm still looking at the alligator's empty eye sockets as she sleeps, reaching out to pull me back anytime I move a muscle. Unconscious, Scully likes me, lets herself need me, much more. Lucifer's head grins at me, looking like something that never belonged on this planet in the first place, and I smirk back, adjusting Scully against the shoulder of my suit coat that I forgot to take off. Just what we need: a grinning prehistoric green alien mascot – or at least, its severed head. **** I know this feeling – it goes with the smell of a Chilmark High School locker room and the taste of Hawaiian Punch. No one sells Hawaiian Punch anymore, which is a pity: I love any food that turns my tongue colors. Anyway, yes, this is it. Jock straps, brat pack hair – or at least, my version of it, and red soda pop from the vending machine after basketball practice: the Walter lump. No, not -that- Walter, nor –that- lump; Wally Osborn from senior calculus and fourth year French. Wally: my best friend whose twin sister used to follow us all over the Vineyard being a brat when we were in junior high. Long story short, one day when I was seventeen I realized Wally's sister wasn't such a brat anymore – didn't share this information with Wally in advance – got caught with her (by Wally), and got to spend most of my senior year trying to avoid eye contact with my ex-best buddy. And his sister, who took access to her third base very personally. Almost two decades later, I still suck at French and don't know beans about Calculus because I was busy not looking at Wally and feeling like used chewing gum when I was supposed to be learning those subjects. I had all the arguments at the time: she was willing, I cared about her as much as any seventeen-year old boy cared about a seventeen-year old girl, we were careful – in the days when the only thing people thought to be 'careful' about was pregnancy. Wally never quite saw it my way, so I avoided eye contact, kept my head down, and mumbled a lot when he was around. Then I left for Oxford. In a way, it could be said that I ended up at the FBI because of Wally's sister's third base. Today, it feels pretty much the same, but now I say 'sir' when I call in to report to Skinner. 'No, sir, we didn't directly witness Mrs. Gonzales striking her daughter.' 'Yes, sir, Scully thinks the wounds on the hands look non-accidental, but she said they were cleaned and well-cared for – no signs of intentional infection or reopening.' 'Yes, sir, I understand this case needs to be handled very delicately.' 'No, sir, we're ready to fly home in the morning. I don't think we'll be able to add anything new to the investigation.' About my fifth 'sir', Skinner wises up and asks me what I've crashed, lost, testified to under oath, trespassed on, or otherwise violated so he could get a head start on chewing my ass. He's been overseeing the X-files for years now, so he catches on pretty quick with his "Damn it, Mulder – what the hell have you done?" Then he does one of those Skinner-sighs, probably swallows a few Tums, and adds: "Now. What the hell have you done now? You wanted this consult; don't screw it up." He pauses to consider the possibilities. I can see him back in DC: he was leaning back in his chair, feet propped up on his desk, but now he's sitting up straight, teeth clenched, and eyes narrowed a bit, trying to figure out what I feel guilty about. "You better not be on the evening news, Agent Mulder. This is supposed to be a low key investigation." I reply, honestly, that I'm not. I am, however, sitting in the armchair in Scully's hotel room, watching her asleep in the rumpled bed we've been sharing all afternoon. "This is a touchy case – racially, politically – tread lightly." I assure him I'm walking on eggshells. I'm making love to an angel and treading where the brave dare not go and any other clichι anyone can think of. Maybe it's that New Orleans is much more alive than the rest of the world, and last night, we got lost in the pulsating collective unconscious. They laugh at Death here and I just wanted to laugh with them. I could act like I'm a teenage idiot and claim 'it just happened' – that's fairly plausible. How to explain 'it' happening again an hour ago is beyond me. Maybe I'm just willing to take whatever Scully will give because I'm terrified that one day soon she won't be beside me. It's still about taking, though. I'm taking and Scully's giving when it should be exactly the other way around. Skinner finally gives up, figuring that if I do anything really newsworthy, it will be on CNN. Again. As I hang up the receiver, Scully opens her eyes, blinking at me as she rolls under the sheet and rubs the pillow crease marks on her cheek. Like she can't do it herself, I pull the blanket over her, and then sit on the side of the bed, brushing her tousled hair back from her face. "I'm getting up," she informs me, yawning and scooting up to sitting. "What's the verdict on the web site?" I love you too, Scully. Sure, let's avoid any and all evidence of what's been happening between us and focus on this case. That would be what two emotionally healthy adults would do. "No luck - the agents who've been monitoring the site say Christina's nose just started bleeding right after you touched her. No one has seen Mrs. Gonzales being anything but a martyr – in person or on the web camera. I just talked to Skinner and they're not going to give us wiretap or video surveillance. The lab results on the cultures you asked for didn't find any evidence of foreign substances being put into the wounds to keep them infected. Except for the coincidental nosebleed today, we have nothing. I think that's exactly what we were supposed to get." "Crap." She stretches, then wraps the sheet around her and starts to get up. Gee, Scully – weren't you fully dressed an hour ago? Are you waking up nude in the same room as your partner? Maybe you could comment on how that happened for the viewers at home, because I didn't instigate it this time. "For the record, I don't think this girl is 'the real thing' – not the way you mean it - and I didn't really expect to find anything new, Scully. Everyone from local social workers to the archdiocese has investigated this family in the last decade – you saw the file the P.D. gave us. It's three inches thick with reports, all of them inconclusive. The Catholic Church couldn't confirm any of Christina's 'miracles' and social services couldn't confirm abuse. They want a single answer that makes for a catchy headline and I'm not going to give them one." Obviously, aliens beamed her clothing off, got her all sweaty, gave her that telltale rat's nest in the back of her hair, and made her smell like that just to fool me. Obviously, I hallucinated her kissing me an hour ago, wrapping her legs around my hips, and whispering to me to make love to her. Whispering that she loved me. Reality can be tricky these days. "So the DA can say he called in the FBI and we found nothing conclusive. Christina stays with her mother - on display for the public and 'suffeering' for the masses. That stinks, Mulder." "Christina stays in her home with people who love her, even if she can't respond to it," I respond, wishing immediately that I had kept my mouth shut. "That's as close to a miracle as I can pull off today." "You're making this personal." "It feels personal." We stare at each other for a few seconds, wondering if it's worth the fight. "I'm hungry, Mulder." I can't eat right now, Scully – my Walter-lump is acting up. "It's okay, Mulder." Standing beside me as I sit on the bed, she pulls my head against her stomach, brushing her fingertips across my forehead. "It's gonna be okay." "How do you figure that?" 'Cause if you've got a secret plan, Scully, it's time to share. In typical Scully fashion, she replies, "Get rid of Lucifer's head while I shower, and then we'll go find some dinner. I'll have trouble focusing tonight with Satan watching us." Scully's probably on the last step of her lather, rinse, repeat cycle – and I bet she always does repeat – before I wipe the dopey grin off my face and get in motion. I find my shoes and key, escort Lucifer down to the lobby of the Travel Lodge, and toss him unceremoniously into the blazing hearth in their lounge. Curious tourists' eyes cut back and forth between the alligator's head glowing in the fire, his little pointed teeth grinning at me through the flames, and me grinning back at him as I stand and watch him burn. I'd swear Lucifer's sneer looks like someone I know as he dissolves into nothing, but reality is a little tricky these days. Noting an empty pack of Morley's on an end table, I toss it in after him – just to keep him company – before I go back to Scully. **** "Still okay?" I ask, marking that an entire minute has passed since the last time I checked, and staying, as ordered, at the back of the group. "Still fine. I promise I'll tell you if I need to rest, Mulder. Stop asking and help me climb up." A very thin, very tall, very artsy androgynous couple is standing in front of Scully now, and she can't see our guide's theatrics. I give Scully a boost and then steady her hand on my shoulder as she perches on the side of someone's doorstep, finally able to see over the other tourists. Me, I'm keeping a low profile. A walking ghost tour of the New Orleans French Quarter at night – what could be more appropriate for our first 'date?' Answer: a walking ghost tour - yadda, yadda, yadda - where I don't get us sent to the back of the line for talking out of turn. I really didn't mean to alienate us from the other ghostbusters – at least, not right off the bat. I just wanted to know how Anne Rice could be appearing as a vampire ghost on the balcony when Anne Rice is still alive. Did the tour guide mean there were reports of a doppelganger? Were these full-body corporeal apparitions or just spectral images of an astral projection? Had this been photographed? Could I examine the photographs? The tour guide SAID it was a vampire ghost and I wanted to hear about the vampire ghost, not some girl jumping off the balcony of the LaLaurie Mansion across the street. I've seen a ghost; I've seen a vampire – up close and personal, thank you; I've never seen a vampire ghost. Hell, I've never seen Anne Rice. You'd think a college kid wearing fake fangs and a cape would be more interested in these things, but there seems to be a maximum number of questions each sheep is allowed to ask the shepherd for his fifteen bucks, and I used mine up right off the bat. Our fearless leader just ignores me now, which is fine, because I'm not speaking to her either. Vampire ghost, my ass – that's a doppelganger. She should get her facts straight. "Pay attention, Mulder – you'll like this one," says the love of my life, freshly liberated from the armpit level of the crowd. "Look for a naked woman on the roof. She's supposed to be an octoroon mistress who froze to death." You know, just out of habitual maleness, I have to look. "Her name's Julie," Scully tells me helpfully as I scan the steep slate gables. "What was she doing naked on the roof?" "I don't know; the guide didn't say." I open my mouth to ask and Scully clamps her hand over it. "Sorry," I say from under her palm, getting it all slobbery. "I was just trying to see the naked lady like you told me." I see an amused look flit over her face and that expression more than evens out for not seeing a naked dead woman. That didn't sound right. Satisfied either that I'll restrain myself or the tour guide is now too far away to hear, she reinstates my first amendment rights, wiping her wet hand off on her butt after I help her jump down. "Okay?" I ask, holding her steady. She looks a little woozy. Her dinner has stayed down so far, but I can tell she's getting tired. I didn't realize there would be so much walking on our ghost hunt. "Just a second." She sits down on the high, painted steps with me on one side and an empty beer bottle on the other, waiting for the dizziness to pass. I think there's a conspiracy: the last of the tour group is already hurrying around the corner out of sight and no one told us where the next haunting is. "You think we're not welcome?" "No, Mulder; what would makes you think that? Only you could get us blackballed from that crowd." I guess I must look disheartened, because Scully adds, "Go on – I'll catch up." Not a chance. "You don't need to miss anything because of me, Mulder. Go on." Once she realizes I'm not budging, Scully leans her head back against someone's front door, closing her eyes. "Christ, I hate this. I hate feeling like Death is hiding in my shadow and I hate that you insist on watching it." "I'm not watching you die, Scully – I'm watching you live. That's all I want." I have no idea how something that eloquent came out of my mouth, but it has the desired effect. She opens her eyes, standing up and accepting the offer of my jacket since the evening is getting cool, and takes my hand. We stand facing each other under the gentle glow of the streetlight for a few seconds, alone on the deserted sidewalk, neither sure what to say. A few blocks over, there are neon signs flashing and New Orleans jazz spilling out of the bars – life going on around us. Finally, Scully rests her forehead against my chest, exhaling heavily as I kiss the top of her head. "Okay, Mulder. Let's go." "I like it here," I tell her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as we start walking, stepping out of the safety of the lights and dodging puddles through the damp, dark streets. "No winter – not really. There's autumn, but never winter. No scraping the ice off the windshield in the dark before you go to work, no slush soaking into your shoes and through your socks, no cold seeping into your bones. Maybe we could stay. I'll give ghost tours where people can ask all the questions they want and you can - What do you want to do, Scully?" "I'll sell that virginity restoration soap in the Voodoo shop during the day and follow you around on your tours heckling you at night." She leans her head against my shoulder, her hair falling over her cheek, curling in the misty air. "So no real change then. You think that soap really works?" "I certainly hope not. Nostalgia is a very seductive liar. Any idea where we are, Mulder?" Looking up at the green signs on the corner, I make a brilliant, FBI-trained deduction. "Royal Street." I start to reach in the jacket pocket for my cell phone to call a cab, but Scully says she'd like to walk. So we do, slowly, side by side, our footsteps echoing off the historic Spanish architecture and rising up to the empty wrought iron balconies. I glance at Scully swaddled in my oversized leather jacket beside me and decide she's right: for us, nostalgia is a seductive liar. Scully and I chose not to live in a place where winter never comes; that doesn't mean autumn can't be magnificent. Neither of us are ready to surrender to winter, anyway. It will come for us, but not yet. Not without a fight. She follows my gaze as we pass another store proudly displaying more Voodoo virginity soap in the window. It must be a cottage industry. "Not a chance, Mulder," Scully says, trying to keep a straight face and hurrying us along. "Nah – we're good." I was just thinking of Wally's sister's third base, but there's no way in Hell I'm going back to seventeen again. I'm not even risking touching the stuff – Scully has all these expectations I have to live up to now. I do wish I could wash that vampire and a few others away, though, but I doubt it's that selective. Scully raises an eyebrow, but decides not to ask. That's probably a good choice; most of my sexual nostalgia stories come off sounding really dumb. When we get to the Decatur Street, which is a long, long way from our hotel, Scully comments, "You have no idea where we're going, do you?" "None at all – I'm just trying to enjoy the moment and go where it takes us. I guarantee we'll end up somewhere. You want me to call a cab?" "No," Scully replies, turning us, still abreast, in another direction. "We'll find it." "I could carry you over my shoulder like an idiot caveman," I say, my way of apologizing for treating her like a child this afternoon. "I don't need you to carry me, Mulder – just walk with me." "So do you know where we're going, Scully?" "Absolutely no idea." My nose finds the most heavenly scent: the wonderful deep-fat fried dough smell of Cafι du Monde and I feel my mouth starting to water. Glancing around, I memorize the landmarks so I can find this place again on my morning run. Instead of bagels, tomorrow, before our plane leaves, I think we'll have beignets. **** End: Victim Soul (1/1)