The following story contains characters copyrighted by Ten Thirteen
Productions and Fox TV. No copyright infringement is intended.

I appreciate criticism and comment, on whatever level you are comfortable
with. Don't worry about hurting my feelings. Since I cannot access this newsgroup directly, please direct all comments to:

Sarah Stegall
sfsfs@fail.com

Thank you. I hope you like it.

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

ANGEL
by Sarah Stegall

Dana Scully sighed and took off her glasses, rubbing her eyes.
"Forget it, Mulder. He's a drunk." It was late, most of the other agents
in the Washington office of the FBI had gone home. Their office was lit
only by the twin desk lamps, one on her neatly organized desk and one on
his messily organized desk.
Fox Mulder scowled and picked up the tape cassette again. "But he
says here he remembers a light--"
"I'm sure he does," she answered acidly. "He was looking down the
barrel of a Freuhauf eighteen-wheeler's headlights. And besides, if I rode Night Train the way Armand Hewitt does I'd see lights too."
"What do you mean?" Mulder leanded forward, his dark hair flopping
into his hazel eyes.
"It's one of the first symptoms of alcohol poisoning, Mulder. After decades of alcoholism, the liver gives out and the body can no longer
fully convert alcohol. It breaks down into chloroform, enters the
bloodstream and crosses into the brain, where it attacks the optic nerve. Armand Hewitt will be blind by the end of the year if he doesn't get off
the sauce."
"Scully, how can you just dismiss this?" Mulder tapped the tape
recorder with the cassette tape.
"I'm not dismissing it, I'm solving it. Armand Hewitt is an old man
who has been an admitted alcoholic for most of his life. Am I supposed to
take seriously the demented ravings of every senile drunk who wanders in
with a wild tale?"
"Scully, he remembers Abraham Lincoln. The papers in his clothes,
the artifacts he was carrying when we found him--they confirm his story," Mulder said quietly.
"Mulder, there's no proof," she said. She tossed her red hair over
her shoulder impatiently.
"There will be. " He sighed, leaning back in his chair. The light
from his desk lamp threw his jaw, the strong column of his neck into
relief. "I want to believe," he murmured. "There will be records
somewhere. He fought in the Civil War--"
"We've had this discussion before, Mulder. And it always seems to
start at the same time--midnight." She stood, stretching her back. "I'm
going home. And when I get back in the morning, I'm going to move on with
our case. Our real case. I've chased enough of this particular wild
goose." She reached for her coat.
Mulder slumped down in his chair. It creaked dangerously under him,
but he ignored it. He toyed with the tape recording of the interview with Armand Hewitt, aged 70---or maybe 150. Finally he tossed it onto the
table. "Okay. I'll go home and sleep on it, too."
He looked up to find her eyes on him. She cocked an eyebrow at him coolly.
"Don't look at me like that, Scully. I have the same doubts you do."
"You've said that before. Why don't I believe you?"
Standing, he shrugged into his suit jacket, his lanky form stooped as though the ceiling was too close. "Maybe because I face my doubts. I
don't let them rule me."
"And what's that supposed to mean?" She turned off her desk light, leaving only the single lamp on Mulder's desk. It highlighted the tape recorder, the letters, Mulder's slides of the tractor trailer, the dead
body of the driver, and the mysterious old man found unconscious at the
scene.
He held the door for her. "When I have doubts about the evidence, I
ask more questions," he answered her. He locked the door and pocketed the keys. "When you have doubts, you stop asking questions...Now, where did I
put my keys?"

Fox Mulder jerked awake from an uneasy dream. The TV was still on,
but the sound was turned down. The monster movie he had fallen asleep
watching was over; now some bimbo in leotards was working out on an adult Tinkertoy home gym. Normally, he'd have watched the girl go through her
workout routine, but some sense of alarm still lingered. He swung his
legs off the couch onto the floor, wincing at the cold floorboards under
his bare feet. The only light in the room was the blue flicker of the TV screen; dawn was still a long way off, apparently.
What had wakened him? Normally he would have slept through the night
with only the TV for company. But now there was a definite sense of
having just missed something, of having been awakened by a noise or
movement that had just now stopped. He padded softly from the living room
into the dining room, through the kitchen. He stepped back into the
hallway and saw it.
A manila folder had been pushed under his door.
He didn't remember picking up his gun, but it was solidly in his hand
as he jerked open the door and swung, low and silent, into the corridor.
It was empty. He moved quickly to the head of the stair: it was also
empty. He darted back into the apartment and into the living room, whose windows overlooked the street. He eased aside one curtain, conscious of
his silhouette against the window. Red taillights disappeared around the
far end of the street, too far away for him to even tell their shape.
He let his breath out, conscious for the first time that he had been holding it. He lowered the weapon and went back to his entryway.
Gingerly, he picked up the manila envelope. He held it up to the light,
looking for signs of tripwires. It was thin and light. On the front
cover, an unfamiliar scrawl said "Mulder Read This".
After double checking the flap and placing the entire envelope in his freezer for half an hour, Mulder finally slit one edge of the envelope and opened it. A single piece of paper fell out. It was a photocopy of a
page apparently torn from a family Bible. At the bottom of the page was a local phone number in the same scrawl, and a terse order: "Call me."
Mulder made a cup of coffee. There was no hope of going back to
sleep after this. He sat down to read the page.
It was a record of the birth, on July 18, 1844, of Armand Hewitt of Grandview, Illinois.
He reached for the phone and dialed the number. It rang twice and
then he heard someone pick it up. But there was no sound.
"Hello?" he said tentatively. "Hello? Is anyone there?"
"Hello, Fox Mulder," said a Voice. Mulder had never heard a voice
like it. It was a woman's voice, deep and rich and warm. It purred in
his ear like a satisfied cat, hummed through him. His mouth went dry.
"Who is this?"
"Call me...your guardian angel. I am in a position to do you a
favor."
There was a trace, a hint of accent in the too-carefully accented
words. Mulder racked his brain wildly: German? Austrian?
"What kind of favor? Where did you get this photocopy? Do you have
the original?"
A soft chuckle sent tingles down Mulder's spine. Suddenly he wanted
very much to see the mouth that made that sound. "So many questions,
Agent Mulder. I can only answer a few. You must find the rest out for yourself."
Mulder closed his eyes. "Deep Throat is dead," he said flatly. "Are
you his replacement?"
There was a silence. "Do you want my information?"
"Yes."
"Washington Square Park, the third bench from the end near the
Virginia Street entrance. Be there in one hour. Don't look for me, I will
find you. Do not be late."
There was a soft click, and then the dial tone.

############

Mulder spat out a sunflower seed and tried to hide his nervousness.
It was ridiculous. He'd been a trained agent for nearly ten years. Why
was he as nervous as a raw recruit on his first assignment? He wasn't all
that excited about the Hewitt case. It must be the fact that, for the
first time in months, he had hope again.
They'd shut him down. The X-files were officially off limits to him
and Scully. Oh, he'd fought the orders, pulled every string he could, embarrassed himself and his patrons on the Hill, to no avail. The files
had been secreted away and he had been reassigned. He had just enough
clout to keep them from separating him and Scully. Dana Scully was too valuable an asset, too good a partner to lose. And their stunningly
successful record as a team had counted in his favor. Any other motives
he had for fighting the attempt to separate them, he did not closely
examine.
But the Hewitt case had been a gift that took him into the realm of
the X-files with every excuse in the book.
Armand Hewitt, aged seventy years by a county doctor's guess, had
been found bleeding and unconscious at the scene of an interstate truck
robbery that was part of a pattern Mulder and Scully had been
investigating for months. Mulder had hoped the old man could act as a
witness.
Mulder had been searching the bushes beside the road for tire tracks
when he heard the old man groaning. Scully had quickly determined that he
was alive though suffering from head trauma, then had gone to assist the emergency personnel with the other driver, who was clinging to life from a gunshot wound. Mulder knelt by the old man, holding his head and waiting
for the ambulance.
"Leave me alone! The light! Coming for me again! The light!" The
old man's voice was thin but audible above the sirens.
Mulder bent his head. "Did you see who did this?" he said.
"The light! Coming for me again! Just like before! Don't let them
get me! They done somethin' to my head! It hurts, worse'n Gettysburg!
They're comin'!"
"Who? Who did this to you?"
The old man's eyes opened, watery blue. But under the wrinkles and
the ravages of time were the remains of a strong man, Mulder could see.
"They come for me before, they'll come again. From under the earth.
Don't let 'em take me again, please. Get me away from the light! Lemme
hide!"
Astonished, Mulder's hand shot to his inside breast pocket, took out
the tiny recorder there. He flicked it on with one hand. The old man
stared at it like he'd never seen one before.
"Say that again? Who's coming for you?"
The old man was weakening. He coughed, sending fumes into Mulder's
face. "The light. It was comin' for me. I seen it. Lemme go!" Then he slumped and his breathing became loud and irregular. The emergency
personnel arrived with their stretchers and kits, and Mulder stood back to
let them do their work.
Hewitt was a riddle. The papers on his person had been confusing, strange. No driver's license, no ID of any kind. Letters written in a an old-fashioned hand, with unbelievable dates. An antique watch in mint condition. Coins and currency that had not been circulated in living
memory. The emergency room doctor had quickly diagnosed his concussion
and his alcoholism--along with several peculiar anomalies. Like the
severe case of parasitic worms, the atrocious lack of dental care, and
most amazingly, the presence of a round metal object in Hewitt's upper
thigh.
The doctor had called in Mulder and Scully to the X-ray diagnostic
lab. "I'd have called you in earlier, but we had a hell of a time taking X-rays tonight. The technician is new, she kept fogging the film. But I wanted you to see this. It's weird. Only thing I've seen like this--ah,
never mind."
"You can tell me, I'm a doctor," Dana Scully had smiled. The older
man smiled down at her and Mulder faded quietly into the shadows, letting
Dana do her stuff. "Just between us, what do you think it is?"
The doctor hesitated, then tapped the glowing radiograph with a
pencil. "What does it look like to you, Agent Scully?"
She looked carefully at the round black dot in the middle of the
X-ray. She smiled her best smile at the doctor. "I'd say it was a
bullet, but it's round. Bullets usually flatten on impact."
"Yeah, modern shells do. Shells manufactured after the First World
War."
"I don't understand."
He looked hesitant, then took a deep breath. Mulder felt a tingle;
he knew when a witness was finally ready to spill the truth. "Look, I got
a reputation to protect. So this is all off the record. In fact, I won't even...I'll just say this. It's a Minie ball. I wouldn't have recognized
it except I'm a...I do Civil War re-enactments on weekends. I've seen
one."
She looked at the doctor, then at Mulder. Mulder looked back at her, dead-pan. He knew what he thought it was, but he wasn't going to
influence her conclusions.
"Okay, I give up," she said slowly. "You're saying this man was shot
with an old bullet?"
The doctor shrugged, looked at Mulder, at Scully. "I'm not saying anything. Except that this is an old wound." He pointed to the faint
outline around the black mass.
"Encapsulation," nodded Scully. With a glance at her partner, she translated. "Scar tissue forms a protective capsule around a foreign
object. It's the body's standard reaction to the intrusion. Dr. Grewill,
how old would you say it is?"
The man shrugged. "Hard to say, but I would guess this guy's been carrying it around more than half his life. It's a wonder he isn't dead
from lead poisoning. Well, you know where to find me." He left, the
green door sighing shut behind him.
Mulder came forward, jerked the radiograph off the viewer and slipped
it into the case, not looking at her.
"Mulder? What are you thinking?"
He swung to face those brilliant eyes. "I think he was shot by a
Civil War lead ball," he said evenly. "Just like the doctor said."
"No, there's more than that, I can tell."
"How?"
"You have that look," she said firmly.
He met her look levelly for a moment, and then smiled his sudden, brilliant smile. "God help me if they ever promote you over me. I'll
never be able to get away with anything."
"Don't change the subject."
He sighed. "Okay. I think Armand Hewitt was shot with a Minie
ball--"
"You said that already."
"--during the Civil War."
There was a stony silence. "Mulder, the Civil War ended in 1865.
How could a veteran of that war have survived this long?"
"Vitamins?"
She gave him a dirty look.
Specialists at the Bureau had reluctantly concluded that yes, the
papers found on Hewitt seemed to be the genuine article, paper and ink
from before the turn of the century. Which was available for sale from
museums, Scully pointed out. Handwriting experts had stared in glee at the perfect, old- fashioned copperplate hand and pronounced it to be either
the genuine article or a masterful forgery. Three reputable antique
experts had passed the watches and coins as authentic and then immediately
bid on them.
The trail had ended there.
"So what, Mulder?" Dana Scully argued. "He's an old man. Maybe they belonged to his grandparents. Maybe he rolled an antique dealer. Why?"
Mulder was silent.
"Oh, for God's sake, Mulder," she said angrily. "You don't really
believe he's a survivor from the Civil War?" Her voice rose on the last
words, incredulous. "This is not an X- file!"
He smiled a secret smile and looked away.

############

So here he was, sitting on a park bench in the dark, getting cold and nervous. The Hewitt case was at a dead end, or so he'd thought that
evening, despite his brave words to Scully. He had just hated to admit
defeat to her--the old rage and frustration and despair connected with the X-files boiled in him still, just under the surface.
"Agent Mulder," said a soft voice behind him.
Cursing himself for an oblivious idiot, he whirled, but there was no
one there. Or was there? A shadow moved behind the elm tree. He started
to stand, but the voice arrested him.
"Do not move. Do not turn around. Do not try to identify me. You
do not know me, in any case." The voice was as soft and seductive as it
had sounded on the phone.
"Who are you?" Mulder said evenly. He sat staring straight ahead.
The back of his neck prickled. He wondered if she had a gun.
"A friend. Do not waste time with this. I am here to help you with
the case of Armand Hewitt."
"Why?"
"Because I have certain...obligations to fulfill," she replied
calmly.
He heard a movement, and an envelope dropped to the bench beside him.
He flinched, then held his breath. He could sense that she was standing immediately behind him, within touching distance. Yet he did not feel
alarmed, only intensely curious. The hairs on the back of his neck rose.
"This is more evidence concerning Armand Hewitt. It is from the
National Archives. You will not be able to prove its source, but you may
take my word that it is authentic."
"Why should I take your word about anything?" he asked testily. "I
don't even know who you are."
"You trusted Deep Throat." Her voice was almost a whisper.
Bitterness rose in him. "He lied to me."
"He died for you." The voice held emotion for the first time, but
Mulder could not tell what kind.
The old bafflement and despair he had known when his mysterious
informant "on the inside" had died was rising in him again. Deep Throat
had puzzled him, lied to him, manipulated him, but had been invaluable
more than once. Never, not once, had he revealed his true name or rank or motives. But he had arranged the hostage swap that had saved Mulder's
life during the last X-files investigation...and had been shot to death at close range.
"Who are you working for? Why are you doing this?" demanded Mulder,
his anger rising.
"I have told you all I can for now. You must trust me."
Mulder still didn't know why they had let him live. He knew all
about survivor guilt, had made a special study of it not only as a
psychologist but as an agent who worked with victims. He knew it from the inside now, as his anger and resentment surfaced.
"Dammit," he said fiercely, turning around. "I am not going to play
this game again!"
But he was alone.

#####

"You have got to be kidding me," Dana said skeptically the next
morning. "Deep Throat?"
"No, just his replacement."
Her look was icy.
Mulder shrugged. "Dana, I'm telling you the truth. My informant
said the stuff in the envelope was authentic. "
"Why would he help you? Am I supposed to believe that these
mysterious informants of yours are lined up to tell you the deepest,
darkest secrets of the US government? Of this...this drunken old man?"
Mulder straightened and looked at her. "Scully, I wouldn't lie to
you."
She flushed. "Of course not. I'm just saying--" she waved a hand helplessly. "This is all so...improbable."
He flashed her a grin. "So is Elvis' death, yet you seem to buy that one."
She closed her eyes in exasperation, but as he watched, a tiny corner
of her mouth tugged upward. "Mulder, I swear..."
"Never," he said. "You're far too much of a lady to swear. Now will
you help me, or not?" His gesture took in the documents spread across his desk.
She opened her eyes and stared levelly at him. "Mulder, you do
realize that this has nothing to do with our assignment? That Armand
Hewitt, by his own testimony and the doctor's, was unconscious before the
truck robbery occurred? And that therefore he could not have been a
witness?"
He nodded abstractedly, picking up the crumbling sheets of paper carefullly by one corner. "Yes, yes, I know that we're supposed to let
him go and press on to other matters. But this may be the hottest lead
we've had in months."
"Lead to what?" she snapped. "Mulder, this is not an X- file. We
are not assigned to the X-files any longer! They may not even exist any
more! We are working on an interstate hijacking ring!"
"Wow! Look at this!"
Dana Scully closed her eyes and bit her lip. "There's just no
arguing with you, is there?"
Mulder did not reply. He was looking through a large magnifying
glass mounted on a stand on his desk. He switched his desk lamp to a more powerful setting. "Scully, please! Just look at this."
Reluctantly, she bent over the glass, her auburn hair sweeping down
over his hand.
"The birth record of Armand Hewitt, a page from the family Bible," he said. "It shows his birthdate as 1844, Scully. The paper's legit, the
ink is nineteenth century. I haven't had it carbon dated yet, but
Henderson in the lab confirms the handwriting. And you know as well as I
do that prior to 1930, family Bibles were the most reliable sources of information on births and deaths."
"This proves only that someone named Armand Hewitt was born in 1844,"
she said stubbornly. "It doesn't prove it's the same man. It could be an ancestor ."
He fanned the photographs out on the table. Then he reached behind
her to the stack of library books he'd spent the morning poring over. He flipped to a marker and laid it flat beside the middle photograph.
Scully was looking at the photographs. They were black and white
prints, obviously old and time-worn. The men in the pictures were stiff, formally posed, uncomfortable looking. And every one of them was dressed
in a Civil War uniform.
"More antiques?"
"Look at the guys in the pictures. Do any of them look familiar?"
She was silent a moment, peering from one to another. The first one
showed a young private, she guessed from his uniform. It was obviously a portrait of the new soldier in his finery. Another one was blurred, but
showed several soldiers standing stiffly in front of a railroad car. Two
more were formal company photographs, with at least twenty men in each
one. And another one..."This one," she said slowly, pointing to the
middle one. "That's Abraham Lincoln in the stovepipe hat, of course.
It's a famous photograph."
"Matthew Brady took it," he nodded at the library book. "There's a
copy of it in that biography of Brady. That's Lincoln and Grant, outside
of Washington just before the battle of Fredericksburg. Anyone else look familiar?"
She shrugged. "The faces are so small. And they all have beards."
A photograph, a color one this time, landed in front of her. "Hewitt?"
He nodded. "I took this at the hospital."
He tossed another one on the table. "I made this one today."
It was a computer generated photograph. She had seen them before. A photograph was scanned into a computer and then altered. This one was of Hewitt, only this time he had a spade shaped beard and longer hair. She glanced up at Mulder.
"Okay, I can take a hint. I know you think Hewitt was actually in
the Civil War. Do you think you've found him in one of these
photographs?"
"No," he replied quietly. "In all of them."
She looked at them again, more closely.
"Look, Scully, it's a chronological record of Corporal Hewitt's
career. Here he is in his uniform right after he signed up. Then there's
a company photograph--I've circled his face in the back row. Here's a
picture of men on the road to Antietam--in the background, turning his
face away, is Hewitt, but this time he's wearing a corporal's stripe. And
then there's this picture of Lincoln. See the guard at attention in the background, behind Grant's ADC? That's him. I still don't know what this picture of him in front of the railroad car with the others is all about.
His uniform is different." Mulder mused for a moment while Scully put
each of the photographs through a rigorous examination.
"It's impossible to tell," she said finally. "You'd have to have
expert help on the company photographs, of course. And besides, the faces
are all so young."
"Sure. He was only twenty-one years old. We've seen him at age
seventy." He picked up the first picture. "See the brow? Look at the way
his jaw sets along the collar, the shape of his ears and nose. It's a
younger version of Armand Hewitt. That's him in the pictures."
She looked at him. "Or his great-grandfather. There is such a thing
as family resemblance."
"Well, we'll get an identification expert, and one of the artists to
do an age enhancement on the photograph. If we--"
"No."
He looked up at her. "No?"
"No. We are not dragging the rest of the Bureau into this, Mulder.
We're way, way out of our jurisdiction here."
"Exactly who has jurisdiction on time travel, Scully? That used to be
our beat, remember? They took it away from us. I don't think they gave
it to anybody else."
"And that's the way it's going to stay," she snapped. She swept the pictures into an envelope. "Give these back to your new Deep Throat."
He heard the catch in her voice as she said it. He looked up at her,
his eyes deep and dark with pain. "Deep Throat is dead, Dana. And it was never a really good name for him."
"So what does this one call himself?"
"She says she's my...guardian angel," he said. He tried to smile,
but it wavered and didn't even convince him.
Scully's sudden glance was intense. "She? You didn't tell me it was
a woman."
Mulder felt distinctly uncomfortable, and couldn't say why. "Does it matter?"
Her eyes narrowed. "Maybe. Maybe not. What are you holding out on
me?"
"What do you mean?"
She spun away and stalked across the room. From the set of her
shoulders, Mulder could tell she was angry. For a moment, there was an
unhappy silence.
"Mulder...I don't mean to pry. But if your private life is beginning
to affect our work, our sources--"
"Dana, what are you talking about?"
She didn't turn around. Her voice sounded tight. "Who is she?
Another Phoebe Green? One of your many conquests?"
She whirled to face him, her eyes large and angry in her pale face.
"Is that how you get your information on the X- files these days? I know you're dedicated, Mulder, but I thought you had more integrity than that."
Her voice dripped with scorn.
Realization and embarrasment shocked through him at the same time.
He was speechless. Struggling to marshal a reply, something that would
correct her misunderstanding without giving way to his confusion and fury,
the silence dragged on and on. As he was opening his mouth to speak, she
spun and marched out of the office, slamming the door.

##################

To hell with her, Mulder thought furiously. He flicked the turn
signal and eased into the turn lane. The rain was still sheeting down, as
it had all day. The wipers were working, futilely, at full tilt, but visibility was down to a few yards.
Scully had stayed away all afternoon and had not answered her
cellular phone. Mulder had no idea where she had gone, or why. Nor did
he care, he told himself. After all these years of working together, he
had thought he knew her better than that. Never would he have thought her susceptible to jealousy. It burned in him that she thought him capable
of...of seducing a woman for information. He would have laughed if it
hadn't been so pitiful.
A sudden gust of rain blew across his windshield, blinding him. A
car honked behind him and he scowled. He couldn't even see the traffic
light in this downpour.
Suddenly a shadow fell across the windshield, an arm stretched out
over the glass. Mulder ducked and rolled without thinking, instinctively hurling himself across the car and covering his head. But the expected explosion of glass and fire never came. Instead, another car honked
behind him, and then another. Gradually he sat up again.
Something was stuck under the windshield wiper, flopping back and
forth with its movement. Mulder flicked the switch to stop it and lunged
out of the car door.
Rain spewed in his face like a personal insult from heaven. He
looked wildly around, looking for a fleeing figure, but saw only a few pedestrians, head down, doggedly crossing into the teeth of the squall. A cacophony of horns, and a few choice insults, sounded behind him now. He grabbed the paper from under his wiper and got back into the car. He
turned into the next street and pulled over to the first empty slot he
could find. A car zoomed by, honking, its driver making an ancient and unfriendly gesture.
Mulder tore open the sodden envelope. The ink was running so freely
on the page it was erasing the note even as he read its three words:
"Lincoln Memorial Midnight."

It was still raining, but it had slackened from a downpour to a
drizzle. Mulder hunched inside his coat, leaning against one of the tall marble columns on the porch of the Lincoln Memorial. He felt like a
damned fool. Why had he come? Why was he letting them--whoever "they" were--yank his chain again? Wasn't it enough that these little cloak-and- dagger games had gotten one man killed and nearly killed Mulder himself?
Hell, they'd gotten the X-files shut down. It was time to change the rules
of this game. He shifted, feeling a chill wash over him.
"Agent Mulder."
There it was again, that rich deep voice. He'd forgotten how it
sounded. Against his will, he turned to it.
She stood in the deep shadows beside the great statue of Lincoln enthroned, like an acolyte in the shadow of a god. He could see an
outline, a shape of blackness against deeper blackness, but that was all.
He stepped forward, but then heard the faint metallic click of a cocking
gun and stopped dead.
"No. You may not approach."
Betrayal seethed in him. "Go to hell."
"In time, Fox Mulder," she said, amusement in her voice. There was
that accent again. Polish? She had said his name as one word, Foxmulder. Russian?
"What do you want?"
"You have the pieces of Armand Hewitt's life in your hands," she said smoothly. "I thought by now you would be able to put it all together."
"He's a time traveller, isn't he?" demanded Mulder. "He really was
born in 1844."
"Of course. But this is more than just Armand Hewitt's story."
"I don't understand," he said with frustration. "Dammit, who are
you? What do I call you?"
"Call me Angel," the voice fairly purred. "I am here to help you."
"Then why these stupid games? Why can't you tell me--"
"You are wasting time, Fox Mulder. The final piece of information is before you. I have given you all the information I am supposed to. You
should have figured it out by now."
"What do you mean, 'all the information I am supposed to'? "
"Goodbye, Fox Mulder."
The woman stepped back into the shadows. Panicked, Mulder surged
forward. "Wait!"
She stopped, and Mulder stopped. "How do I reach you?" he said
finally, surrendering.
"You wish to?" The voice held surprise. Somehow, he had caught her
off guard.
"Of course. Or is this the only case you are going to help me with?"
"I am not Deep Throat. I am not his replacement." Was that regret
he heard in her voice?
"But you have access to the X-files, obviously. You know who's
blocking the investigations. You know who set Deep Throat up. You can
help me."
"Do you want my help?" The voice was so soft as to be inaudible. It
was almost uncertain. The accent (Italian?) was stronger.
"As long as the truth is out there," he said firmly.
"The truth." There was a long silence. "I cannot help you. It is
too dangerous." He could feel her moving away.
"Wait!" Without thinking, he lunged into the shadows and grabbed for
her.
He caught a hand, a small, warm hand that snatched itself quickly out
of his and left a sensation as though he had just been burned and caressed
at the same time.
"Do not touch me!" Her voice was sharp--with fear?
Mulder stepped back. For a moment he was amused. This woman on the
verge of bolting was the one Scully thought he was seducing for
information, he thought.
And then suddenly the thought was father to the wish. She was
standing in night-deep shadow, almost within reach, right in front of him.
He could hear her breathing. He was suddenly overcome with a tide of
longing so profound he was shaken. He wanted to hold her, to hear that
voice in his ear, her breath on his cheek. He didn't even care what she
looked like. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt this way.
"I will help you," she was saying in a subdued voice. It sounded
more human, more real than that earlier, richer voice she had used, but it still held the same timbre and cadence. "But there will be a price."
So intent was he on identifying that trace of accent in her voice he almost missed her last words.
"Price? How much?" He was surprised--and disappointed. A paid
informant. Well, it was a time-honored arrangement, but not what he had expected. Deep Throat had never asked him for a cent.
"Not money," she said, withdrawing further into the shadows. There
was a rustling noise and another note floated to his feet. "Leave a
message on this machine if you...need me. I will contact you within the
hour."
"How much will this cost me?" Mulder cocked an eyebrow. "Isn't this
the part where I sign away my soul to the devil? I thought I was supposed
to sign in blood."
She backed away. He sensed bafflement in her.
"Close your eyes," she whispered.
For no reason he could name, he did. And in a moment, he felt a
small palm against his cheek. He stood stock still, wondering, amazed.
His awareness of her touch was out of all proportion to the sensation.
Her fingers slid along the angle of his jaw, lingered at his chin, traced
the outline of his mouth, as though learning the shape of his face. The fingers came to rest on his mouth, and lingered for a long moment before gliding to his cheek. He wished he had shaved. It occurred to him for
the first time that she might be blind.
He placed his palm over her hand and stilled its movement. They
stood like that, for what seemed like hours but was probably only a few seconds, then her hand withdrew. Mulder was beset with confusion. This
was not at all what he had expected. He was beginning to suspect that
nothing about this woman was what he had expected.
He drew breath and opened his eyes. "Angel?"
But she was gone.
He darted to the left, peering into the shadows: nothing moved. He repeated the action on the right side of the building, to no avail. She
was gone as suddenly as thought.
The rain had picked up and now was pounding in sheets on the
pavements. Mulder stood, his hands in his overcoat pockets, and stared at
the Emancipator on his great chair.
"This is more than just Armand Hewitt's story," she had said. And
"The final piece of information is before you." Did she mean that
literally? The statue in front of him?
On the plaque before Mulder were carved the dates of Lincoln's birth
and death. Images filtered through his mind-- Lincoln at Gettysburg,
Lincoln at the Union camps outside Washington, Lincoln at Ford's theatre,
the assassination, the dramatic and traumatic funeral cortege. Mulder remembered the funeral cortege that had taken Kennedy to Arlington for
burial.
But something he had read today came back to him. Lincoln wasn't
buried at Arlington National Cemetery. They had taken him home to
Springfield, Illinois for burial. One of the photographs she had given
him flashed into his mind's eye.
"The railroad car!"
Heedless of the rain, he dashed down the steps to his car. Behind
him, a shadow moved from behind a post and watched him go.

###

It was late afternoon by the time Mulder staggered into the office
under a load of library books. Dana Scully stood when he came in, her
eyes wide with surprise.
"Mulder? Where have you been?"
"Library of Congress. Smithsonian. National Archives. Get that,
will you?" he said as a book slid off the stack.
She caught it deftly and stood looking at it. "Gore Vidal's
biography of Lincoln?"
"And Bruce Caton's history of the Civil War. And here's Montgomery's history of the assassination investigation--"
"Mulder!"
He looked up from rearranging the books on his desk to meet her eyes.
"Can we talk a minute?"
He knew that look. He sighed and sat down. "Yeah. Go ahead, read
me the riot act."
She smiled suddenly. "Lighten up, Mulder. I'm not going to bite. I
feel like I should be the one apologizing."
"For what?"
Her smile was rueful. "For yesterday. For acting like I did. It was...unprofessional of me. I hope you'll overlook it."
His eye twinkled but his look was deadpan. "Why, Scully, I was
flattered by your jealousy. Nice to know you take such an interest in my
love life."
She flushed but maintained her good humor. "No, it's not that. I
was mad at you because you have sources I don't. I mean, mysterious
strangers never approach me with offers of free, secret information. What
is it about you that convinces complete strangers to confide national
security information to you?" She smiled.
"My magnetic personality. I have a hell of a time with door to door salesmen. Will you look at this?"
"More Armand Hewitt?" she said tolerantly.
"No, Lincoln."
She stared. "Abraham Lincoln?"
"Yeah, the guy on the penny and the one dollar bill, you know? I
need you to look something up for me."
Scully rubbed her forehead. "Mulder, are you investigating the
Lincoln assassination?" she asked in a pained voice.
"No, this is still Armand Hewitt, but it's all tied together
somehow."
She drew a deep breath. "I guess the only way to stop you is to let
you get this out of your system," she said. "But when we get hauled up
before a review board, you're on your own."
He ignored her, turning pages. "I need you to see if you can find
out who was in the honor guard that escorted Lincoln's body to
Springfield, Illinois in April, 1865 for burial. Here's a record of the
towns the funeral cortege passed through, but I can't seem to find a roll
of the guard."
She sat down and put her glasses on. "Give me that."
Several hours later, Dana took her glasses off. "Okay, I think I
have it," she said.
She was answered with a soft snore. Mulder's head was resting on his
arms on the desk, on top of a scatter of papers, photographs, and a
hamburger wrapper. His cheek was turned up to the light; she could see
the slight mole on his right cheek. She stood, bent over to switch off
the light so it wouldn't shine in his eyes. His face looked very
different in relaxation: with the tension lines around his mouth and eyes smoothed out he looked younger, almost boyish. She laid a hand on his
hair, very gently, an almost motherly touch.
"Have you found anything?"
Dana jumped as if he had bit her. In confusion, she turned to her
notes. "I found the muster roll you were looking for."
At the tension in her voice, he lookedup at her, his face
half-shadowed in the light. "And?"
"Armand Hewitt's name is on it."
"Show me."
The name was buried in a long list of payroll vouchers, appended to a scholarly tome of Lincoln memoribilia. Among other things, it listed the
cost of Lincoln's funeral, the clothes purchased for burial, the fees of
the doctors, even the cost of his coffin--American cypress, with gilt
handles and a full lead lining.
"Lead because embalming was not well advanced in those days," Scully muttered. "Even in April, they would not have left him to lie in state
very long; it would be too warm."
"And Mrs. Lincoln insisted on burial in Illinois anyway, so they knew
it would take a long train ride."
"Mulder, I am still not convinced that the Armand Hewitt on the color guard that escorted Lincoln's body is the same man lying in that hospital.
I am willing to concede that the man in these photographs and records is
an individual born in 1844 who joined up in 1860 to fight the war, was
wounded at Gettysburg, was assigned to honor guard at Grant's headquarters
on the Potomac, and probably even served on the honor guard that escorted Lincoln home," said Dana. She fixed him with her best glare. "But that
man has been dead since before the turn of the century, I'm sure. His descendant is alive and probably begging the nurse for a drink right now,
but it's not the same man."
"He has a Minie ball in his upper right thigh, just like the Armand
Hewitt in this Army pension voucher," Mulder said, holding up a photocopy
of an old document.
"He is a delusional alcoholic, Mulder!"
"He suffered from scurvy at one time, Dana. He has never had modern dental work done on his teeth."
"So he was born during the Depression and never had a health plan.
That doesn't make him a hundred and fifty years old!"
"What about the coins, the papers, the--"
"Mulder, I'll make it easy for you," she said determinedly. "Find me
a link between Hewitt and this guy in the pictures, one tiny little piece
of physical evidence that definitely ties him to the nineteenth century,
and I will believe. But if you can't--" She lifted a hand as if to
plead, then let it drop.
"If you can't, Mulder, please stop this. Put it away. Lincoln is
dead, Armand Hewitt is dead. We can't do anything about it. But what we
can do is find out who is behind these hijackings in Maryland and
Kentucky. We can do our jobs. Please."
Mulder hunched forward, his head in his hands. "It's here, Scully,"
he whispered. "I know there's a link. There has to be. Angel said it
was."
"And you believe her?"
His hand toyed over the collection on his desk: modern tape
recorders and photographs mixed in with Army records written in an antique hand, old coins. Mulder picked up a fifty cent piece minted in 1870 and
turned it over in his hand. His fingers, stained with ink from old files
and newspapers, left dim smudges on its shiny surface.
Mulder sat straight.
"Scully, did we keep the fingerprint files on Hewitt?"
"Sure," she said, standing. "I have it. What are you thinking?"
He was searching frantically through the books, the lists, scattering papers everywhere. "I saw it. It was here-- ah! Look at this again.
Lists of supplies for the funeral of Abraham Lincoln. One coffin,
cypress, lead lined, with gilded brass fittings. Gilded, Scully!"
"So?"
"Gold is a noble metal. It doesn't tarnish like brass. The handles
would still be shiny and bright after all these years, right?"
"Sure, but what--"
"So you could still lift a print from it, couldn't you?"
"A fingerprint? A hundred and fifty year old fingerprint?"
Mulder snatched up the file she was holding and turned to Hewitt's fingerprint file. "Here's our solid evidence in the twentieth century,"
he said intently. "And if Hewitt was on that honor guard, if he carried
that coffin into the tomb and set it down, his fingerprints would be on
the handle."
"What if they wore gloves?"
"I don't think they wore gloves as part of the dress uniform then.
I'll have to ask Hewitt." Mulder stood, reaching for his coat.
"You're going to see Hewitt?"
"Yes. You coming?" His look at her was a challenge.
She sighed. "On one condition. I drive. I don't think you've slept
in days."
"So? I'll sleep when I'm old."
"You're aging rapidly, Mulder. Give me the keys."

##################

Hewitt was sitting up in bed, staring at the TV mounted on the wall
of his room. He looked at Mulder and Scully in blank surprise.
"Hello, Mr. Hewitt," said Mulder softly. "Do you remember us?"
"Sure. You're that Government fella. You come before. Say, when
they gonna let me outta this place? They got some damn nigger woman
lookin' in, says she a doctor. A doctor! What next!"
Scully's eyebrows flew up in surprise. "Dr. Thompson trained with me
in medical school. She was at the head of her class."
Hewitt stared at Scully. "You a doctor, too?"
"Yes, she is," replied Mulder smoothly. "Agent Dana Scully is my
partner in this investigation."
"Partner? I thought she was your wife."
Both agents smiled at this. "Mr. Hewitt, I came to ask you some
questions about your story. Do you feel like talking?" Mulder stepped
closer to the bed while Dana eased around to the foot of the bed and
picked up the old man's medical chart.
The old man glowered at him. "I don't know nothin' about no...truck accident." He pronounced the last two words carefully, as if they were
newly learnt.
Mulder eased closer and sat down. "No, sir. What I wanted to ask
you was, did you wear gloves when you carried the President's coffin into
the tomb, or were you and the other pall bearers bare handed?"
There was a long silence while the old man searched his face. Then
he sighed and seemed to sink into the bed. "You know about that?"
Mulder's heart raced. He'd been right! The old man was a survivor!
"Tell me about the funeral," he said quietly, switching on his little recorder. The old man eyed it suspiciously but then closed his eyes.
"We rode with the train from Ohio. I was being mustered back to my regiment in Illinois anyway, so Captain Freeling detailed me to the honor
guard on account of this here leg of mine. Took a Reb Minie ball at Gettysburg. I'd served my time and then some, and my older brother Jack
had died and Pa needed me back on the farm.
"They stood by the track for hours, waitin' for the train. We was
held up by rain in Canton, and damn if the folks didn't stand there nearly twelve hours in the downpour waiting for it. When we come by they didn't
say a word, just took off hats and watched us go by, never said a word.
"Mrs. Lincoln and Robert, the boy, they come in once to where we was standin' round the coffin and we left them alone. Then we pulled into Springfield and you should have seen it. Near the whole town was there.
Even the niggers was there, out on the edge of the crowd. I guess they
figured they owed him.
"They had the funeral, and everyone was there. It was gettin' pretty
hot, what with all the people in the hall. And we was still wearing
winter uniforms, even though in Illinois it was a lot warmer than it had
been back on the Potomac. Ned Bately, my second, was sweating so bad I
thought he'd fall down. Anyway, comes the time we have to carry the President's coffin from the catafalque to the tomb, it took ten of us. He
was a big man, you know, taller'n you. And he was heavy. I hauled me a
lot of dead men in the war, carried my best friend out from under the guns
at Chancellorsville, but Mr. Lincoln was the heaviest I carried."
Mulder looked at Scully, and mouthed the words "lead coffin". She
nodded. The old man still had his eyes closed; the blue veins in his neck
were very visible.
"Did you wear gloves?" Mulder asked quietly.
"I...I don't remember," Hewitt said. "It's so long ago...Bately was
ahead of me, bein' he was taller than me and had to catch the edge of the coffin first. I remember we'd rehearsed it, gettin' off the train--wait! You're right. When we took the coffin off the train, we near dropped it
because of the gloves. We talked about it, 'cause with the weather being
hot and we all sweatin' like we was, Lt. Davis was afraid we'd drop the
coffin. He almost had us wear muleskin gloves, but we couldn't get them
in time and anyways, Mrs. Lincoln woulda had a fit. And you didn't never
wanna cross that lady."
"So you carried the coffin in bare handed?" Mulder was tense.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm pretty sure we did. Mainly I remember it was so
heavy, and when we set it down something inside thumped, and Bately jumped
like I'd kicked him. That happened sometimes, the body would shift in the coffin no matter how well they'd padded it. I seen it happen before, but Bately was new. We joshed him some about it later."
"After you set the coffin down, did anyone else touch the handles?"
The old man opened his eyes and stared at Mulder, puzzled. "The
handles? No, I don't think so. We just turned around quick like and
marched out. Then some preacher stood at the door and done his piece, and there were some more speeches, and a lady fainted. Then we closed up the bronze doors and took up watch. We were on guard duty for twenty four
hours after that, the usual rotation. Lt. Davis called me in two days
later and give me my papers, and that was it. I went home."
Mulder looked at Scully, triumph in his eyes. She looked uncertain,
a little frown creasing her forehead. She looked at the medical chart
again, shrugged, and put it down.
"Mr. Hewitt, I'm going to change the subject a little," Mulder said.
"Can you remember what you were doing before the accident, before you woke
up at the side of the road with the police?"
The old man's jaw clenched. "Don't wanna talk about that."
Mulder sighed patiently. "Mr. Hewitt, do you know what year this
is?"
"Yes."
"And when were you born?"
"Two weeks after the Fourth of July, 1844."
"Mr. Hewitt," Mulder hunched forward intensely. "Mr. Hewitt, how did
you come to be here, in 1994? How have you lived so long?"
The old man's face took on a stubborn cast. "I said I don' wanna
talk about it."
"Why?"
The old man stared at him fiercely, then the blue eyes watered up and
the mouth shook a little. "I'm scared, son. I'm scared like I never was
at Gettysburg and Chancellorsville. Like I never was even in hostile
Indian territory. I learned to make my peace with dyin', or I'd never
have got through the war. But with them, it was more than dyin' I was
scared of. It was Hell itself."
"Them?"
"Them what took me. I...I don't want to say no more. Best I not be talking about it."
"Because it gives you nightmares, doesn't it?" said Mulder softly. "Because when you talk about it, it brings it all back."
The old man's eyes flew open. "You know?"
"Yes. I know." Mulder's voice was soft, intense. There was a long moment, while Scully looked from one man to the other, their faces
mirroring one complex of emotions.
The old man covered his face with his hands. "I was out in Nevada, prospectin'. Me and Agnes had gone out to settle in the Nevada territory,
but she died birthin' our young 'un and God took him the week after that.
I didn't want no ranch without them, so I give it up and took to just wandering. I must have walked all the territory between the Arizone and Montana territories. Knew the Sierras like the back of my hand. I panned
a little gold here and there, dug some silver, enough to get by. I wasn't never lookin' for a big strike, just enough to go on with.
"One day I was diggin' in an old mine. Sometimes you can find a
little vein what the former guy overlooked or passed by 'cause it weren't
rich enough for him. This weren't a gold mine, though, I seen that right
soon. I figured it for a mine somebody abandoned a long time, but it was
as neat and clean inside as if whoever had left it the week before. And
the beams, that held up the diggin', they was some kind of dark metal I
ain't never seen. That's what kept me diggin', was the idea that anybody
who'd spend that kind of money, putting metal supports in a mine, musta
had quite a stake here. I thought maybe there'd be diamonds...'course I
know now there ain't no diamonds in the Sierra country.
"I found a seam, all right, but I don't know what it was. Some kind
of silver shot with black, and damned if it didn't glow in the dark!"
Mulder's head shot up, but the old man's eyes were closed again, remembering the scenes playing against his eyelids. Mulder looked at
Scully, his eyes wide. She nodded, stepped softly away, headed for the doorway. She opened it and eased out as the old man continued.
"They was some little boxes on the floor, but I couldn't open them.
I thought maybe somebody left a cache, food or somethin', in case they
come back lookin' for more. Well, I was trespassin', anyway, and didn't
want any more trouble than that, so I left 'em alone. But they did have
the strangest marks on them."
Mulder took a piece of paper from his wallet and unfolded it. "Like this?"
The old man peered closely at it. "Why, yes! Where'd you get this?"
Mulder folded it carefully and put it away. "What happened then?"
The old man's lips trembled, then firmed as he fought for his
composure. "There was a light. Like it grew out of the ground. A great whitish-green light. I couldn't see. I closed my eyes 'cause it hurt,
but it didn't do no good, it was so bright it hurt my eyes even with my
eyelids closed. And I couldn't move! Honest to God, I tried, but I
couldn't move!"
Mulder took the old man's hand in his, a gentle reassurance. "Go
on."
"I don't remember after that. It's confused, and strange. And it
hurts my head, up here--" He touched his forehead, between his eyes. "I
don't want to remember. Please don't ask me to no more."
Mulder was silent. "How long have you been drinking?"
"The next--sane--thing that I remember was waking up in a field
outside of Carson, Nevada. I seen right away that things was different.
I seen cars for the first time, and, and trucks. I seen telephones and airplanes, and stuff I don't even know the name of. Didn't take me long
to find out what year it was, and I knowed they'd done this to me. But
nobody believed what I said, and I didn't have no money. After awhile I
give up talkin' about it since nobody believed me anyway. A guy give me a place to sleep and some clothes, and a couple of bucks of this new money,
and I just took to drinkin' and ridin' the rails. I probably been to
ever' state in the Union now. Weren't nothin' else I could do. I don't
read good, and there ain't no jobs for prospectors. I...I didn't know
what to do. I just wanted to forget, is all."
The old man put his arm across his eyes as if to block out the world. Mulder felt a welling of sympathy for this old man cast out of his own
time into this one, alone and afraid. He patted the old man's hand.
"Mr. Hewitt, one of the things I'm trained to do is help people deal
with unexplainable stuff like this," he said. He heard the door behind
him sigh open, and felt Scully come up behind him. He moved aside; she
held a small instrument in her hand, with a headphone jack leading to a
speaker button in her ear. She switched it on and they both looked at the dial. Mulder's eyes widened and he dropped the old man's hand.
"We'll be back tomorrow," he promised. "We can help you, Mr. Hewitt.
If you want us to."
"Jes' leave me alone. Or get me a drink." The arm remained across
his face.
Mulder and Scully left and walked quickly down the hall. When they
were out of earshot, Mulder turned to his partner. "No wonder they had
trouble X-raying him. How hot is he?"
Scully took the earphone out of her ear and switched off the Geiger counter. "Not too bad. But he should be seen by a specialist. God knows
what those gamma rays are doing to his bone marrow."
"Are we in danger?"
"No. We'd have to have been exposed to him over a long period of
time to be in danger. With proper precautions, he can be treated. But
how did he become radioactive? Mulder, do you know what it takes--"
"I have an idea what it takes to make a living body radioactive. Is
he in danger?"
Scully shrugged. "I don't know. But I do know we'd better alert the hospital staff, for their safety and his."
Mulder looked troubled. "And what if they report him to the DOE?"
"We have to take that chance. We can't let the staff here expose themselves to a radiation source unknowingly. And Hewitt will need
treatment."
Reluctantly he agreed, but with a sense of foreboding. Scully started
down the hallway, but Mulder caught her arm. "Scully? Does this mean you believe him? That he was abducted and brought to the twentieth century?"
She gave him a long look. "I believe he was a prospector, yes. And
I know the Sierras are rich in uranium and radium ores. Further than
that, I won't say. Find me a link, Mulder."
She walked down the corridor. Mulder turned and headed for the
parking lot. He needed sleep.

#################

"I thought you were going home to sleep," commented Dana Scully the
next morning.
"I...I couldn't sleep," Mulder muttered, not looking at her. It had
been a long night, lying awake remembering Angel's voice and thinking of
her hand on his face. "Did you speak to the hospital staff about Hewitt?"
"They're putting him in intensive care. Mulder, you really look
awful. Are you sure you're not overdoing it?"
He brushed off her concern, stacking papers and shoving them into a
file. "We have to get over to Interior. I have an appointment with
somebody there."
"The Department of the Interior? What for?"
Mulder nodded. Scully noted the heavy bags under his eyes. "I'm
going to petition for permission to open Lincoln's tomb. It's a national monument, under their jurisdiction. I may have to go to the State
Department as well."
"You're going to what?"
He looked at her. "How else am I going to dust the handles of
Lincoln's coffin for fingerprints?"
She sat down suddenly and covered her eyes. "I quit. I resign.
Mulder, this is the wildest--you cannot simply go and open the tomb of
Abraham Lincoln on a whim!"
"This is not a whim! This is the solidest evidence for time travel
we've ever had! Scully, do you realize what it would mean if Armand
Hewitt's fingerprints are on that coffin? It would be incontrovertible
proof--"
"That somebody was trying to hoax us! That he broke in there twenty, thirty years ago--or last year--and planted them!"
"Why? Why would he do that? And besides, Lincoln's tomb has been
opened only once since it was sealed in 1865. That was years ago. No one
has been inside since. It's the perfect environment to preserve evidence, Scully."
She stood suddenly and snapped her briefcase shut. "Okay. If you're
bound to do this, I'll go with you to pick up the pieces. But if they ask
for my opinion, I'll have to tell them I think it's unjustified."
Mulder smiled at her. He knew it wasn't a very good smile, because
he was really hurting too much to smile, but he was grateful for her
loyalty and wanted her to know it.
"I can always count on you," he said.

#####

"Absolutely not," said the Deputy Assistant Undersecretary for
National Historic Sites, Illinois Region. It had taken Mulder and Scully
most of the day to work their way through the Byzantine maze of the
Federal bureaucracy to the man in charge of Lincoln's tomb. "Under no circumstances."
"We have evidence to support our investigation," Mulder repeated patiently. "There's a strong possibility--"
"Agent Mulder, there is no possibility I am going to let you into
that vault," the Undersecretary interrupted harshly. "Do you remember the
furor two years ago when we reopened Zachary Taylor's grave? Do you
remember the field day the press, the Congress, the voters had? Our hard earned tax dollars chasing some historical footnote, one editorial called
it. And that's over a President most people barely heard of. Can you
imagine what the media would make of someone tampering with the grave of
an American saint?"
He paused to gulp water from his glass. "I'm sorry, Agent Mulder.
Unless you get the head of the FBI in here with a personal request to
Bruce Babbitt himself, the answer is final. No. Good day."

They stepped out into the darkening day. Mulder was glum, his fists straining the pockets of his overcoat.
"Well, that's that," said Scully. "Unless you want me to book two
seats to Springfield and bring burglar tools, we can't get in."
Mulder sighed. A great weight seemed to settle on him. "I'll think
of something." He ran his hand through his hair. He was so tired.
"Can I drop you home?" Scully asked. Her brow was furrowed with
concern. "You really need some rest, Mulder."
"I'll walk. I need to clear my head."
"These streets aren't safe," she warned.
He looked at her.
"Okay, okay. I'll see you tomorrow. Good night." She trotted down
the steps.
The night was coming down cool and sweet after the rain before.
Mulder heard his own footsteps on the pavement, echoing slightly as he
crossed into the Mall. He hadn't really realized where he was going until
he found himself in front of the great statue, reading the Gettysburg
Address scrolling behind Lincoln's head.
"Hewitt died this morning," said a soft voice in the shadows.
Mulder nodded wearily. "I thought he would, soon." He'd half
expected to find her here. He didn't look at the shadows, but continued staring at Lincoln's lined and weary face. He felt a deep kinship with
that face.
"Who did it?"
"No one," the voice answered. Swiss? Czech? He could not place the accent. It was driving him crazy, as crazy as the memory of her hands
touching him. "His liver was diseased. It was only a matter of time. He
died in his sleep."
"In the dark," Mulder murmured. "Safe from the light."
"The body was taken away by some men. They said they were from the Defense Department."
Again Mulder nodded. This was an all too familiar pattern. "Of
course. Will you answer a question?"
"Ask."
"Would I ever have been able to prove it? Are his fingerprints on
that coffin?"
There was a long silence, until Mulder began to wonder if she was
still there.
"I don't know."
"Why this--this whole charade?" Mulder waved a hand, taking in the shadows, Armand Hewitt, the statue before him. "Why make it so hard? Why didn't you just say Armand Hewitt was abducted by aliens and travelled
through time?"
"You know why."
Mulder answered his own question. "Because you don't know. Because
you can't prove it, either. Because you have the pieces but you can't put
them together."
"Sometimes. And sometimes because it would risk a life to tell you."
"You've already risked a life."
There was a long, poignant silence.
"Goodbye, Fox Mulder."
Suddenly Mulder felt very lonely. He stepped away from Lincoln's
statue, into the shadows. "Do you have to go?"
"I have no more information for you."
Mulder sighed. "I know. I don't want any, Angel. I just want to
sit here, and look at the night, and talk to you. Can we do that? I
promise not to peek."
From the shadows, a small hand stole into his. "Promise?"
Mulder smiled. "Scout's honor," he said. And closed his eyes.
THE END ------------------------------------------------------- *******************************************************************
Sarah Stegall |"Do you think I'm spooky?"
sfsfs@fail.com |--Agent Fox Mulder, "Squeeze"
DDEB, X-phile |--The X-Files *******************************************************************
Kurt,
telnet://ricksbbs.synchro.net:23
http://ricksbbs.synchro.net:8080
---
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