DARK SUNSET by Mort

 Book Two: Part Three

Skinner had been cold for so long that feeling warm was as alien as it was welcome. The feel of cotton under his ass, rather than the itchy harshness of the hessian sacking, was so wonderful that he kept shifting his buttocks on the kitchen chair, luxuriating in the slide of soft denim over his skin.

Mulder looked equally dazed. Although he was clutching his mug of warm goats milk in his left hand as though terrified it might suddenly be snatched away from him, the fingers of his right hand kept creeping to the fabric of his sweatshirt and stroking the material with an air of obvious wonderment. It was as though he’d been kept naked for so long that he barely understood the purpose of the clothing Zack had discovered in one of the closets.

None of their clothes fit, of course. Whoever had been the previous occupant of the farmhouse had been short, squat and thick-waisted. So all three of them were wearing jeans that barely reached to their mid-calves. Skinner had used a knife to add a couple of holes to an old belt so that Mulder’s jeans didn’t fall off his hips, while neither he nor Zack could fasten their pants at all. It turned out that a short fat man still had a smaller waist than two buff former-marines. Mulder’s sweater was too short in the arms but was so wide in the neck that it kept slipping over one of his shoulders. Skinner and Zack were stretching *their* sweaters so wide that the seams were straining. All in all, they looked like three hobos who’d just raided a garage sale.

But they were wearing clothes, no matter how ill-fitting, and that in itself was enough to make them feel almost human again.

And they had food.

Well, he and Zack had food… Mulder had refused to even try tasting the baby food Zack had proudly presented him with. He was hungry, but he clearly wasn’t hungry enough yet to face *that* indignity. Skinner had let it slide, seeing no reason to force Mulder to face the reality of his lack of choices until they’d attempted all their, limited, less humiliating alternatives. So he’d demonstrated a boyhood skill and had captured and milked one of the goats. By silent consent, he and Zack had agreed to make their own meal out of tinned goods and leave all the milk for Mulder.

If Mulder tolerated it, and showed no problems digesting it, Skinner planned to try him on scrambled eggs in the morning. Again, both he and Zack had looked longingly at the eggs they’d found in the barn then put them aside untouched in the hope that Mulder would be able to eat them.

“Damn, I love AGA’s,” Zack grinned, as he refilled Mulder’s mug from a pan on the stove. “Who’d’ve thought I’d ever be grateful to end up in a house with a kitchen that was old before I was born?”

Walter smiled back. They’d truly lucked-out with the farmhouse. It hadn’t been modernized since the fifties, as far as he could tell. Even the hot water system, such as it was, was heated from the wood-burning oven. There was a gasoline-driven generator for electricity and, though the supply of gas was lower than they would have liked, there was enough to last the winter if they were strict about rationing the power to just a couple of hours each evening of lights and trying the radio for signals.

“I think we should stay here,” he said. “At least until we’ve gathered our strength and things have begun to settle down. We’ve got everything here that we need to survive. Heat, food, water, clothes…well, we’ve almost got clothes,” he laughed ruefully, staring at his bare calves. 

“Filling the water tank by hand is going to get real old, real quick,” Mulder pointed out blandly. 

Skinner looked at him blankly for a moment, then realized that the hand pump on the faucet over the sink wasn’t drawing water from the mains supply. 

“That’s a bonus,” Zack said. “There’s a well out back. I agree it’s going to be a bitch drawing the water up and topping up the tank every day but, until someone gets the main supplies working again, most people are going to have to drink rainwater and given the shit floating around the atmosphere god only knows what crap is gonna come down in the rain. It would be crazy to leave a fresh supply of water.”

“Yeah?” Mulder demanded balefully. “So why did the former residents split?”

“Maybe they didn’t leave by choice,” Zack suggested carefully. “Maybe they got rounded up in one of the culls. I certainly can’t see why they’d choose to leave here. With winter coming on, it seems a great place for us to settle down for a while.”

“Don’t you think so, Fox?” Skinner prompted, determined to get Mulder’s verbal agreement rather than simply take advantage of his inability to leave without them.

“I guess,” Mulder agreed, dropping his eyes to stare moodily into his mug again. “But I’m warning you. If Mrs. Peacock is hiding under one of the beds, I’m outta here.”

“Who?” Zack queried.

Skinner racked his brains for the reference, then burst out laughing. “I agree it looks like the kind of place the Peacocks would have ended up in. But that’s why it’s a good place to stay, Fox. Hell, there’s even an old fashioned washboard and hand-wringer for washing clothes. We can be totally self-sufficient here.”

“And it’ll all look a hell of a lot better when we’ve cleaned it up,” Zack pointed out. “Just washing the damned windows is going to brighten things up. I know you guys are probably up for moving on, but personally I’d kinda like to take a little time adjusting to being back on Earth before dealing with other people. I need to get my head around what happened to me up there, you know?”

Skinner met Zack’s eyes gratefully. Exhausted by their love-making, Mulder had slept for a couple of hours when they’d reached the safety of the farmhouse and the unfamiliar comfort of a real bed. It had given Skinner and Zack an opportunity to scout around the perimeter of the property and judge the possibility of defending it from attack. It wasn’t ideal, but it was a hell of a lot more defensible than they’d initially expected. Skinner was glad that Zack not only understood the paramount importance of protecting Mulder, but that he was wise enough not to *tell* Mulder that his safety was the primary reason they were planning on staying at the farmhouse for the foreseeable future.

Mulder needed time to adjust to the changes in his body. Not only physically, but mentally. He wasn’t ready to meet people who didn’t understand the way his body had been adapted by the aliens. More than that, neither Skinner nor Zack were confident of their ability to protect him from either the lust of other studs or the ignorant hatred of people who would ‘remember’ Mulder as a collaborator.

So they’d make themselves a temporary home, keep their heads down, and wait for some semblance of normality to return to the world before risking contact with other people.

Skinner had told Zack of his experience in Baltimore, of the survival of the President – albeit the President of the GSRA rather than the ‘United States’- and they had both decided that their wisest course of action was to wait until the government had kicked off their post-invasion plan before venturing to find ‘civilization’. 

They’d found the dilapidated carcass of an old Triumph in the backyard, one that Zack was reasonably certain could be coaxed back to life with a little effort and imagination. As soon as Zack had breathed life into the old motorcycle, he would use some of their precious supply of gasoline, look for the nearest town and see if it was possible to ‘liberate’ more supplies. 

“I’ve been looking for you, Comrade Krycek.”

“Really?” Alex sneered, glaring at Farrand with undisguised dislike.

“Well, actually, I’ve been looking for Frohikhuin. He seems to have ‘disappeared’.”

“Oh?” Alex said, changing his expression to one of exaggerated innocence. 

“The President’s been asking after him… can’t understand why he hasn’t come forward to claim all the glory for the success of Operation X.”

“Maybe he’s suffering from an unexpected attack of humility,” Alex suggested.

“That little weasel?” Farrand laughed. “I think it’s far more likely he’s suffered a ‘different’ kind of unexpected attack, don’t you?”

“I can’t imagine what you mean, Commander,” Alex replied, with a shrug.

“Okay,” Farrand sighed. “How about you just tell me whether anyone’s likely to find the body.”

“You wound me,” Alex said, clasping his hand against his heart dramatically. “How the hell could you accuse me of something like that?” 

Farrand chuckled grimly. “My apologies, Krycek. I should have known you’d be too much of a professional to leave any evidence.”

“Evidence of what?” Alex replied, but offered Farrand a smug, satisfied smile that put paid to any lingering doubts the older man might have harbored over Frohike’s fate.

“Well, in view of Major Frohikhuin’s unexpected…um…vacation… it looks like you’re going to have to take charge of Operation X then,” Farrand said.

Alex frowned suspiciously. “Operation X is over,” he snapped. “We’ve moved on to Operation New Eden.”

“Nope,” Farrand replied, shaking his head sadly. “It turns out that Operation X is still ongoing. There’s possibly a loose end to tie up.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Walter Skinner.”

“Huh?”

“Close your mouth, Krycek, before you swallow a fly. Intelligence says they’ve picking up a residual signal in Arizona from Skinner’s communicator. Nothing but occasional bursts of static, so they reckon it was damaged by one of the radiation waves from the explosions, but even if it’s transmitting garbage the fact remains that…”

“Skinner somehow made it back to the surface before the Albrecx left,” Alex interrupted, a dark shadow flickering through his eyes as understanding dawned.

“You understand the unfortunate necessity of …um… tying up that loose end?” Farrand asked carefully.

“Hasn’t there been enough death already?” Alex spat.

“I don’t know,” Farrand countered dryly. “Why don’t you ask Frohike?”

Alex flushed with anger. “Don’t fucking compare the two of them. Skinner wasn’t a player. He’s a good man, Jack. He’s the kind of man Operation New Eden is crying out for. If he *is* alive, we should utilize his skills. The whole Op’s a bureaucratic nightmare. We need every ‘Skinner’ we can lay our hands on.”

“I suggested as much to the President,” Farrand admitted. “But unfortunately my arguments fell on deaf ears. The bottom line is Skinner’s the only civilian who knows the truth about Operation Foxhole. We’re entering a delicate time, Krycek. We’re faced not only with the challenge of trying to round up the survivors of the Albrecx ‘harvest’ and rebuild something approximating ‘civilization’ again, we’re entering a political minefield. The American people don’t only have to adjust to the loss of so many lives and the existence of Aliens, they’re about to find out that they’ve been citizens of the GSRA for the last forty years. 

“There’s no way to explain the existence of the Soviet/American alliance without admitting that we’ve known about the Albrecx since Roswell. We can sugar-coat *that* truth. But what we can’t *ever* admit is the existence of Operation X, let alone Operation Foxhole.”

“Yeah,” Alex snarled. “Kind of hard to explain the mass small-pox vaccinations without someone bringing up the question of why they got cancelled in ’72.”

“It was a mistake,” Farrand admitted, with a rueful shrug. “We could have carried on until ’79 or ’80 if we’d known the invasion date for certain.”

“Yeah,” Alex agreed, with a bitter laugh. “That way it would only be the kids who died, rather than the teens. I’m sure the parents would have taken *that* a hell of a lot better.”

“Fuck off, Krycek,” Farrand growled. “This ‘bleeding heart’ routine doesn’t suit you. You’re a soldier. You know full well why we made the decision.”

Alex nodded grimly. It had made sense on paper, as a ‘theory’. With a decimated terrified, now almost entirely male population, a complete breakdown of infrastructure, food shortages and an inevitable delay in restoring any cohesive military order, it had been decided that the survival of the human race would only be possible if the majority of survivors were adults who could start the process of repopulating the planet *after* some semblance of normality had been restored. In that scenario, children were just mouths to feed who would prevent the adults from working ‘efficiently’ during the Operation New Eden. Just as the aliens had culled the older population, the GSRA had taken the decision to ‘cull’ the younger population by refusing them the vaccine. As soon as some normality was restored, the ova stolen and stored from female ‘abductees’ like Scully would be used to repopulate the planet. But, in the meantime, children were a liability that the GSRA didn’t want to deal with.

It had made sense as a ‘theory’.

But Alex could fully understand why no-one wanted the survivors to learn the truth.

A pang of pain hit him, suddenly and unexpectedly, as he imagined how Mulder would have ferreted for that ‘truth’, refusing to accept the lies and platitudes the GSRA undoubtedly had prepared to soothe and lull the survivors. *Mulder* would have put two and two together. Mulder would have smelt a rat. Hell, speaking of rats, Mulder would probably have tracked *him* down and shaken the truth out of him.

But Mulder was half way across the galaxy, suffering a lingering living death in one of the alien milking dormitories. His brilliant mind had undoubtedly shattered at the moment his beautiful body had been dismembered. Mulder was gone.

But not forgotten. *Never* forgotten. Whatever it took, no matter how long he had to continue playing the game to achieve it, eventually each and every one of the people who’d chosen to sacrifice Mulder would suffer a similar fate. In their last moments, Alex would ensure that they *knew* the hell they’d consigned Mulder to.

One day *everyone* was going to know that the survival of the human race had been achieved by the sacrifice of Fox William Mulder. With the right spin, that knowledge would be enough to topple the new Government. And, when that day finally came, a live Skinner would be a damned useful witness to the events that had taken place on the Albrecx Mothership. All Alex had to do was convince him to keep quiet until the time was right for that revelation.

“What if Skinner agrees to keep his mouth shut?” he demanded.

Farrand looked surprised, but not particularly displeased. “If you can get him back here gagged and in once piece, maybe we’ll re-consider the situation. It’s a hell of a lot harder to sentence a man to death if you’re staring him in the eye.”

Alex shrugged, unconvinced by the argument. He sure as hell hadn’t had a problem looking *Frohike* in the eye. Actually, he’d thoroughly enjoyed the experience. But he could sense Farrand’s wavering loyalties and decided that maybe it was time to reveal his own fangs.

“Have you ever eaten sweetbreads?” he asked. 

The older man frowned with confusion at the non sequitur, and then smiled awkwardly. “Can’t say I ever liked the idea of eating balls,” he said, with a slight shudder.

“They’re an acquired taste. Frohike didn’t seem to appreciate the flavor,” Alex said. 

“Oh?” Farrand asked, though his gut began to knot at the suddenly feral gleam in Krycek’s eyes.

“Maybe I should have cooked ‘em, or at least sliced them up,” Alex said, his tone friendly. “But he was making so much noise I lost patience and stuffed ‘em in his mouth whole just to shut him up.”

Farrand gulped convulsively.

“Course, I tied the tourniquet so tight to stop him bleeding to death that I don’t think he even *felt* it when I cut off his dick. And he wasn’t making so much noise by then, so I cut *that* into nice, small pieces to make it easier for him to swallow.” He gave Farrand a blazing ‘aren’t I a nice guy?’ smile. “Since he threw up, I figured he was probably still hungry, and let’s face it, he was my *guest* and I was always brought up to be hospitable, so I offered him a nice snack of his fingers and toes. Then, well, he’d always complained about his looks, so I did a little creative editing of his face. It’s amazing how different a face looks without a nose or eyelids or lips or… well, I’m sure you get the picture. Frankly, it’s quite amazing how many body parts can be removed before someone bleeds to death. The human body’s a remarkable thing, isn’t it?”

He blinked innocently, as Farrand began to make retching noises. “So, I think it’s fair to say you won’t find him, Jack. Or, at least, you won’t find anything ‘identifiable’.”

“You’re a sick fuck, Krycek,” Farrand gasped. He wasn’t sure whether Krycek was telling the truth or pulling his leg, but either way his breakfast was threatening to make a dramatic exit.

“Remember that, if I bring Skinner back alive,” Alex said coldly. “If he isn’t smart enough to keep his mouth shut, I’ll slit his throat for you. But if I haul his ass half-way across the country, I’m gonna be *real* pissed if someone second-guesses my judgment. It’s a new world, Jack. The winds of change are blowing. When the time comes for you to pick sides, bear in mind I might not be your best ally but I’ll sure as hell be the worst goddamned enemy you’ve ever had the misfortune to meet.”

Mulder slumped lower and lower over the table, his eyelids drooping, then gave a sudden start and straightened in his seat with a look of wild panic in his eyes.

“Why don’t you get some more sleep?” Skinner suggested quietly. “You’re practically falling out of your chair.”

Mulder shook his head mulishly. “I’m not tired,” he lied.

“You’re so damned exhausted you look like someone’s punched you in the face,” Skinner retorted, glaring at the almost black smudges under Mulder’s eyes. “We’re safe here, Fox. Why the hell don’t you go lie down again?”

Mulder took a deep, sighing breath. “I don’t want to sleep,” he confessed. “I…I don’t want to…to…”

“What is it?” Skinner asked, his tone gentling. He reached for one of Mulder’s hands and stroked the trembling fingers. “What’s wrong?”

“What could possibly be *wrong*?” Mulder snapped bitterly. 

Skinner bit back his automatic irritation at Mulder’s tone. “If you won’t talk to me, I can’t help,” he pointed out reasonably. 

Mulder’s eyes dipped away from his, and a flush of color spread over his thin cheeks. “I…I close my eyes and… and I’m *there*,” he whispered.

Skinner sucked in a breath as his stomach twisted in response to Mulder’s words. He didn’t have to ask Mulder to clarify what he meant by ‘there’. He wasn’t sure he’d ever close his *own* eyes again without seeing that damned milking dorm.

“How can I help?” he asked. “Would it help if I lay down with you? If you could feel my arms around you? If you didn’t feel alone? Would that help you sleep?” 

Mulder nodded miserably. “Maybe,” he whispered. 

“Then we’ll *both* try and get some sleep, okay?”

“I don’t want you to…” Mulder started, then trailed off awkwardly.

Skinner flinched slightly, but forced himself to say, “Would you prefer Zack to sleep with you? It’s okay to say yes, Fox. The most important thing is what makes *you* happy.”

Mulder met his act of self-sacrifice with a bark of bitter laughter, and Skinner felt momentarily pissed until he realized that Mulder wasn’t laughing at *him* but at the whole bizarre situation they’d ended up in.

“It’s not that. I don’t want to need you,” Mulder said. “*Either* of you. But I do. And I don’t know how to deal with that, Walter. I don’t think I can live like this. Not without becoming someone else. And that means, well, doesn’t that mean I’m not going to be me any more? So what’s the point?”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Skinner admitted awkwardly.

“I’ve always lived alone, Walter. I *like* living alone. I never wanted to be in a relationship. Hell, I never even cared about sex. Do you know when I last got laid, I mean before the Albrecx came? Seven fucking years, Walter. I had Scully, and I had my work, and if….well, if I ever needed anything more there were videos and 900 numbers. And maybe that makes me a sad bastard, but I was *happy*. Do you understand me? I was fucking *happy*.

“And now… now everything’s changed. I’ve lost Scully and my job, and my life, and I’ve even lost the ability to spend more than 12 hours on my own and there isn’t a minute of the day that my balls aren’t itching and all I can *think* about is when I’m going to get laid again. I’m going crazy, Walter. Just thinking about spending the rest of my life having to make this relationship-thing work between us is scaring the fuck out of me. What if you decide you can’t handle living with me? What if the way I squeeze the toothpaste or something drives you nuts? How the hell am I going to live the rest of my life treading on eggshells trying to keep you happy with me, so you don’t walk out on me?”

Skinner’s face stilled into a careful mask as he pushed away his own feelings of hurt and forced himself to deal calmly with Mulder’s understandable, if wounding, doubts.

“I love you, Fox. I’m not going anywhere.”

Mulder sniffed miserably. “Yeah?” he challenged. “You’re not even gay, Walter. Hasn’t it occurred to you that this ‘love’ of yours was just the way you managed to cope with having to fuck me on that ship? You just couldn’t face the idea you were being forced to ‘rape’ me, so you convinced yourself it was something more. And it’s not just you. Zack’s the same. He isn’t gay either. So I’m stuck here, with two guys who already resent their attraction to me, and I know that even *Scully* would have strangled me with her bare hands if she’d ever been forced to spend too much time with me. You’re *both* going to get pissed off with me at some point and high-tail it out of here, and I don’t even blame you. I just…well, I just don’t think I want to try and deal with this shit knowing that there’s no way I’m going to get out of this situation alive anyway. What’s the fucking point?”

“This ‘situation’ is life, Fox. And that means *no one* gets out of it alive,” Skinner growled. “But you *ever* suggest you’re planning on speeding the process again I’ll kick your skinny ass so hard you won’t sit down for a week, do you hear me? Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m not *gay*. Maybe, before the Albrecx, I thought I’d rather have cut my dick off before putting it in another man’s ass. But don’t you ever believe I regret falling in love with you, Fox. No one forced me to do *that*. Maybe it took what happened on that ship to open my eyes up to who you really are, and I *do* regret I was too blind to see you clearly before all this happened but the feelings I have for you aren’t about *sex*. I love your bravery, your honesty, your integrity. I love *you*. I don’t care that you’re a man. I don’t care how you squeeze your goddamned toothpaste, and …and I understand you’re frightened by the idea of losing your independence, Fox. Believe me, I *do* understand that.”

“I have an idea,” Zack suggested hesitantly. He’d kept out of the discussion until that point since he’d thought the real issue was the relationship between Skinner and Mulder, but now he suspected it was more about Mulder’s image of himself.

“What?” Skinner snapped.

“The house has four bedrooms. I think Mulder should choose one as his own private space. If he wants company or…well anything… he has to come to one of us. That way it’s always *his* choice and he’s in control. But his room is off-limits to both of us. That way he can have whatever privacy he needs. What do you think, Mulder? Would that help you feel more independent?”

When Mulder hesitated about answering, Skinner said, “I think it’s a great idea. Just because we’re all sharing a house doesn’t mean we have to live in each other’s pockets. There’s two reception rooms with fireplaces. How about we turn the dining room into a den, Fox and say that’s *your* room. If you want company on an evening you can join Zack and me in the living room, but if you want to be alone you can sit in your den instead. It’ll be like you have your own apartment inside the house, and you can have as much or as little company as you like. We both understand you need time to yourself, and we’re willing to respect that. We’re not agreeing that too much of your company would drive us ‘nuts’ like you suggested. We’re just saying we’re willing to let you call the shots here.”

Mulder looked hesitantly between the two of them. While he still didn’t believe that Walter’s ‘love’ and Zack’s ‘lust’ would last forever, at least the arrangement would prevent the mundane bickering between them that would hasten the dissolution of their relationship. He *needed* time alone. After Samantha… well, he’d learned that he preferred the escape of fiction than the reality of family life and he’d grown into the habit of being alone with his nose buried in a book. Despite the horror and humiliation of the way his body had been adapted by the Albrecx, his true dread was the idea of spending the rest of his life being forced to be a social animal just to ensure someone would be willing to give him the physical relief his body now demanded.

He turned his attention to Skinner. “So which bedroom do you want, Walter?”

Skinner and Zack exhaled audible sighs of relief.

“It…um… well it would make sense if Zack and I take the two larger rooms,” Skinner suggested carefully, since they were the rooms with the full-size beds. 

“Yeah,” Mulder agreed easily, though he blushed at the implication. “Makes sense.”

“You can have the King, Skinner” Zack offered. “I guess I’ll be the one spending more time on my own, so I’ll cope with the double.”

Skinner gave him a look of gratitude, not only for the fact his feet weren’t going to be hanging off the end of the bed but for Zack’s easy acceptance of his position in the ‘relationship’. Although Skinner accepted the inevitability of Mulder going to Zack for sex, he wanted Mulder to choose *his* bed if he wanted company when he was sleeping.

“Then if that’s settled, let’s go get some sleep, huh?” Mulder suggested, rising to his feet and offering Skinner a hesitant smile.

Skinner shot to his feet, reached for Mulder’s left hand and tugged him towards the stairs before he changed his mind again. 

“The bedding’s a bit musty,” Skinner apologized, as they entered the bedroom and wrinkled their noses.

“Yeah, I noticed that earlier. But I figured at least that meant that anything alive in the mattress had probably drowned,” Mulder muttered. “Hope you know how to use that damned washboard, Walter.”

“Haven’t the faintest,” Skinner admitted, with a grin. “But I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”

“Count me out. I’m the intellectual type. I’m going to leave all the survivalist stuff to you and Zack,” Mulder retorted.

Although he knew Mulder was joking, Skinner turned to him in all seriousness and said, “If you want to spend the rest of your life sitting on your ass and being waited on hand and foot by the two of us, that’s okay, Fox. You’ve earned it. You saved the whole goddamned human race, Fox Mulder, and I’m never going to forget that. Even if I didn’t love you, I’d still be honor-bound to spend the rest of my life thanking you for what you did.”

“I don’t want your fucking gratitude,” Mulder protested angrily.

“Then it’s just as well I *do* love you then, isn’t it?” Skinner interrupted, with a broad grin. “Do you want me to see if I can find some different sheets?”

Mulder shook his head wearily. “It’s a bed, Walter. That’s good enough. Fuck the smell, it’s a real damned bed.”

“Yeah,” Walter agreed whole-heartedly. He drew back the comforter, waited for Mulder to choose the side he preferred, then slipped into the bed and spooned up against Mulder’s back, wrapping his arms around his waist and nuzzling his head into his shoulder.

“You comfortable?” he asked, as Mulder shifted in his arms.

“Yeah,” Mulder sighed, relaxing against him and bringing his own hands to clasp Skinner’s where they joined over his stomach. “It feels nice…safe.”

“Then sleep,” Skinner suggested gently. “I’m going to hold you so tight, Fox, that even in your dreams you’re going to know I’m here, protecting you.”

“S’nice,” Mulder mumbled, as he let himself fall into sleep.

And though he was exhausted himself, Skinner lay awake a long time just listening to Mulder’s breathing and squeezing him tight in the hope that his embrace would keep him safe from nightmares.

“I do love you, Fox,” he whispered, over and over, as though he was trying to hypnotically re-enforce the suggestion into Mulder’s subconscious. “I’ll never leave you, and god help anyone who ever tries to take you from me.”



TBC