From: palmerdolph@yahoo.com   
      
   Title: Alpha Remix   
      
     Author: probe   
      
     catagory: angst   
   What happenned when you weren't looking?   
      
     Thank YOu:  Maybe Amanda -- I am always so   
   honored when you agree to look over my   
   stuff.Thank you for   
   being such a great beta.   
      
     I love feedback.   
     palmerdolph@yahoo.com   
      
      
   FEBRUARY 1999   
   BELLFLOWER, CALIFORNIA   
     I'm tracking him.   
     His is face on the computer screen before me, big nose, full   
   bottom lip, dark hooded eyes.  I almost see a little of the   
   animal in those eyes.   
     This isn't the way I track in the woods.  In the woods I would   
   follow his steps, and it would be easy because he would leave   
   the undisguised and shuffling tracks of a city man.  In the   
   woods I would follow his scent.  By now I would be nearly   
   upon him.  I paid a lot of money and now it is my computer   
   that has his scent.   
     Washington D.C. - his city.   
   FBI - he hunts like I do.   
   Small apartment in Alexandria.   
   Basketball (this I don't care for) and running (this I understand).   
     There are pictures of him.  The way he looks: muscles   
   hard, skin damp, eyes dark with his ambition, this I also   
   understand.   
     There are two photos of him at work.  In the first one he stands   
   over a corpse with the dark purposeful stare again.  He is   
   slender, graceful, gray-clad in his expensive suit.  I am   
   reminded of the gray wolves released in Wyoming.  The magnificent   
   gray wolf, once extinct, now nearly so.  In this man is that wolf,   
   a wolf both hated and revered, and I cannot deny my need to pursue   
   him.   
     The second picture is the more recent.  In this photo is   
   the partner, Dana Scully.  I didn't notice her in the first work   
   picture but I see she is there when I flip back.  She stood to the   
   side and looked up at his dark stare and I know she sees the wolf in   
   him as well.   
     In the recent photo he holds her up in the flash of police lights   
   and the wide rectangular door of an ambulance frames them.  In   
   this photo, Fox Mulder's eyes are not dark and focused with   
   purpose; his eyes are wide, the unfocused madness of the wolf   
   who is trapped, who is rabid, who will attack.   
     Dana Scully's shirt is stained with blood and her hair is messed.   
   She looks unsteady, as if she might faint.   
     The man I paid for this photo had a story.  My gray wolf had   
   caught his prey, but not until the man had nearly taken down his   
   partner, ripped her body, her blood streaming down her shirt,   
   red, warm, the heart beating in his hand.   
     This I understand.   
      
   MARCH 1999   
   FBI HEADQUARTERS   
   7:10 PM   
     I shouldn't be back at work this soon, she thought.   
     The elevator ride to the basement gave Dana Scully the chance to   
   close her eyes, let her head drop forward.  She knew she really   
   shouldn't have come back to work so soon after what Padgett's   
   accomplice had done to her.   
     Padgett's accomplice.   
     It was the title she had assigned him -- she didn't like to think   
   of her attacker as a projection, as some shadowy creation of her   
   would-be suitor's mind.  She didn't want to count up the times a   
   man who was attracted to her had also wanted her dead.   
     Now she had a bruised spine and bruised ribs from being knocked   
   to the floor.  She'd also bled out enough to leave her light-headed   
   and weak.  Still, Agent Scully was needed back at work.   
   There was no time for reflection   
   or healing with the X-files back under their   
   control.   
     As she emerged from the elevator to the basement, she saw the   
   light from their office and straightened her shoulders, smoothed   
   her hair.   
     Mulder had his back to her.   
     "Aren't you going home?" she asked him.   
     He didn't bother to turn around, "I am home.  I'm just   
   feathering the nest."   
     He'd done his best to avoid her all day.  Probably because of   
   Padgett.  Still, she couldn't begin to guess his take on what   
   had happened: Was he angry? Upset?  She was just too damn tired to   
   care.  "What have you got?" she asked.   
     "Two merchant marines found dead this morning in San Pedro, in   
   the hold of their cargo ship."   
     She sighed.  "You mind if I ask the cause of death?"   
     "On the crime report it says multiple bite wounds." For the first   
   time that day, he seemed to be genuinely trying to return things   
   to normal, to what was comfortable between them.  All right, even   
   exhausted, she could bite. "From what?"   
     "The Hong Kong manifest has the cargo listed as a dog."   
     He walked her through the details of the case: a vicious dog that   
   kills and locks the cage behind itself.  Two victims dead of   
   blood loss.  Towards the end of Mulder's case outline, Scully   
   realized she needed get to her car before another dizzy spell   
   got her and put their truce on shaky ground.  He didn't like   
   her to be fragile.   
     "Sounds like an X-File," she said, and left.   
     When she was safely a block away, she pulled to the curb to vomit.   
   It really was too soon to be back at work.   
      
   BELLFLOWER, CALIFORNIA   
   9:32 AM   
      
   Dr. Detweiler had been impressed that Mulder knew about the   
   Wanshang Dhole, a mythical animal from ancient China.   
     And Mulder was impressed by Detweiler's claims that he had actually   
   caught the animal.   
     The woman he'd met on line, Karin Berquist, had told him that   
   the animal, extinct now for 150 years,   
    could never have been caught.   
     Mulder had taken refuge in the budding friendship with Karin.   
   Someone he could relate all the incredible facts   
   of the latest X-Files   
   without feeling, without history or emotion.   
     He used to be able to do that with Scully, but things had shifted,   
   and kept shifting between them.  Or maybe they were only shifting   
   inside himself.  He didn't want those shifts, though. They reminded   
   him of the disastrous combination of   
   love and work that had comprised   
   his relationship with Diana.  And this was so much more intense.   
   Sometimes he felt powerless against the storm Scully brewed inside   
   of him.   
     When he looked up from the crime scene,   
   Scully was coming towards him   
   with her huge black umbrella.  Was it raining?   
     He pointed at a patch of dog shit. "Watch your step."   
     "Jake Conroy, age 30.  He was employed as a customs agent by   
   the Federal Government," she said.   
     Mulder often relied on her to talk to the authority at the crime   
   scene -- get the facts and leave him to do the part he liked   
   best.   
   It was one of countless ways that he had left off functioning as   
   an independent investigator and melded with her.   
   Which meant, he mused   
   bitterly, he'd become dependent.   
     That afternoon in his hallway, before the bee had stung her, he'd   
   told her he couldn't do this job without her.  It wasn't said   
   just to flatter her into staying;   
   he really didn't remember how to work   
   without her at his side.  He didn't know how to throw the switch in   
   his head away from work - when to eat, when to rest, when to give   
   up, when to move on - without following the pulse of her schedule   
   and needs.   
     What if something happened?  Without her, he would be sucked   
   down into the vortex of his work.   
     "The bite marks match those of the victims on the Chinese   
   freighter.  In this case, it bit off the man's hand.  There's   
   some talk in the house that he may be involved in the theft of   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)