This story is PG 13 for some adult situations. There is a somewhat
steamy, (though NOT explicit,) dream encounter between Mulder
and Scully, so if that sort of thing gives you fits - even as a dream -
you can skip that part. This is not a "romance" in the accepted sense, however, so please feel otherwise safe in proceeding.

Thank you to Tish Sears for all the editing help!

Comments welcome, critique encouraged, flames humbly accepted.

"Those Who Love" is posted in seven parts, all parts posted on
September 5, 1995.

Fox Mulder, and Dana Scully are the property of Ten Thirteen
Productions, lovingly borrowed without permission, and without
any intent to infringe, annoy or otherwise upset. The rest of the
characters are mine.

*****************************************************
THOSE WHO LOVE - Part 7

Finally calling it quits, the agents grabbed a quick supper,
then headed back to the motel. Scully knew that Mulder was wired
and wanted to talk, but she was frankly beat, and suddenly a little
unnerved over the events of the last few days. Finding Hendricksen's
body, and the attendant confusion that followed, had sufficiently
subdued the memory of her dream the night before, and her vision in
the upper story of the Colter house, but now that night had fallen,
she found herself remembering, and she wanted to be alone to think.
Besides that, what little sleep she had gotten the night before had not
been very restful. She bid him goodnight at her door, and got ready
for bed. Despite her weariness though, sleep was a long time in
coming, and it was troubled when she finally did manage to drift off.
She dreamed, again, of the Colter homestead. Even as the
dream rose up before her, some rational sense in her conscious mind acknowledged that she should not be too surprised at that; the place
had been heavy on her mind, and her activities all day. Like a visitor,
her awareness approached the house from the road, moving up the
now mowed lawn, toward the front door, around to the back,
opened, and went inside. That piece of her conscious mind that was
still aware smiled wryly; she could not have had this dream the night
before, of course, because she had not yet been inside.
Like a ghost, she drifted through the passageway, and saw the
herbs hanging from the wooden pegs that Mulder had pointed out.
Somehow she knew they had been drying there all winter, and that
the supply was now almost depleted. She passed into the kitchen,
and was aware, even though she could not really smell them, of the
aromas of hot, savory food cooking. And the sweet, decaying smell
of terminal illness. Scully's dream sense lead her to the room behind
the fireplace. The horror hit her almost as soon as she passed
through the door.
The airless, windowless room was lit only by a single oil
lamp. Jeremiah Colter lay on a narrow bed, pushed up against the
wall of the room. His face was white, and covered with livid pox.
His breathing was shallow, stuttering, and Scully knew he was not
long for the world. He was delirious, now, barely conscious, and
beyond suffering. That had not been the case earlier, and Scully was
aware of the ravages of fever, of the horrible irritation of the pox, of
the headache, muscle cramps and thirst that had tormented Jeremiah
up until the day before.
Beside him sat Catherine Hewlett. No longer the fresh-faced
buxom girl she had seen in her dream the night before, Scully saw
that Catherine had lost weight, that her rosy complexion was wan,
now, and sagging with weariness and despair. Her once shiny black
hair was dull, and simply bound at the back of her neck by a cord.
And Scully could also see what Catherine did not yet know, that the
girl herself had contracted small pox from her fiance, and would be
dead, herself, within weeks.
Catherine was alone in the house, except for Jeremiah. It was
spring, and spring planting could not wait on the dying. As could not
the meal cooking in the next room; the men would be back from the
fields in a matter of hours, and would need that fuel. Scully
recognized sulfur burning in a bucket, which she knew had been
believed to purify "putrid air," and a few salves and ointments, but
there was nothing in the room that she would have identified as
particularly effective in treating disease. She also recognized the
cutting fleam and brass bleeding bowl for the inevitable bloodletting
that she had read about, and seen examples of, in her medical
training, but had never really wanted to acknowledge were actually
used. Scully shook her head, and considered the miracle of anyone
surviving the medical practices of that day. She considered further
and it occurred to her that the real miracle lay in the fact that
*anyone* survived a small pox epidemic, what with the dead and
dying left so close to the living, to their quarters and their food.
For all of that, however, Scully was most struck by the
sudden realization that Catherine had done well, in nursing Jeremiah,
that she had done all that was humanly possible under the
circumstances, and that, had she lived in another time, the girl would
have made one hell of a doctor. She had good instincts and a
genuine talent for healing the sick. Scully knew that the girl had
fought strenuously against the barbaric, naive practices of the day,
had refused to have Jeremiah bled, had thrown away the heavy
blankets that made him sweat and caused the pox to itch and ooze
unbearably. She had concocted drying poultices from the herbs
hanging in the passageway, and had watched over him day and night.
Scully felt a strange affection for the girl, an affinity for who Catherine Hewlett might have been. With a heartbreaking sense of
shock, Scully realized that, had he been less weak from his overland
journey from the prisoner-of-war encampment on Long Island,
Jeremiah Colter would probably have survived his illness, given his
fiance's watchful, and knowledgeable care. But as it was, he was too
ill, and too weak, and he would not survive. And lacking the will to
survive without him, neither would Catherine.
A terrible, gloaming despair descended upon Scully, in her
sleep, pressing on her chest, and making it difficult to draw a breath.
She pitched restlessly, and almost awoke. The dream faded, and
nearly disappeared as she half sat up in semi- consciousness, and
tossed her head. Murmuring, she lay back down, and drew a deep
shuddering breath. Sleep closed over her again, and with it, the
persistent dream returned.
Scully saw herself standing in the yard, beside the house. A
terrible howl of agony, of grief, tore at her from inside, and she knew
that Jeremiah was dead. She could hear Catherine's screams of
denial, saw the girl tear from the house and throw herself down into
the yard. Catherine wept for several minutes. Then she stood up
slowly and walked toward the middle of the yard, where an iron bar
hung suspended from a tree limb. She picked up a clapper and
struck the bar several times, calling the others from the field. Then turning, she looked around, as if unable to decide what to do next.
She walked to the well. Pulling the cover off, she gazed into the dark interior, and for a moment, Scully was afraid the girl would cast
herself down. Catherine pulled a ring from her finger, the ring that
Jeremiah had given her to symbolize their engagement, and threw it
down into the bottom of the well. She sank down onto the ground,
and sobbed softly. Even as she sat there weak with grief, Scully
could also feel the fever burning in her, and knew that fever would be
a full blown illness in a matter of days. In less than two weeks,
Catherine Hewlett would be dead. The knowledge staggered her.
Scully became aware of a shift, a change in point of view. It
was not as if she was suddenly transported, as she had been the other
night, into the awareness of the dream. Rather she suddenly realized
that it was not a dream after all, not in the sense of it being a figment
of her imagination. She had not been not imagining Jeremiah Colter
and Catherine Hewlett, she was being *shown*. The girl on the
ground by the well head was not a dream image, but a manifestation,
and Scully knew that she was being told the true story of events, as
they happened, by one who had been there. Catherine Hewlett
looked up, her eyes swollen from crying, and Scully felt a jolt as the
girl's look went right through her. She heard Catherine's words echo
in her head:
- Look at me, know me, know who I am. This is what comes
of fearful denial. This is what comes of complacent acceptance of
society's rules. See me. Think of your own self, and consider *my*
fate...



Scully opened her eyes and sat up. Her hands were shaking,
and she was soaked with sweat. She felt as if Catherine's own fever
burned in her. She got up and went into the bathroom, splashed cold
water on her face. She returned to bed, but sat up for a while, afraid
to fall asleep again. Nature prevailed, however, she was simply too
tired, and she eventually fell asleep.
And dreamed. This time, however, the dream was benign.
Merely a snap-shot of the Colter farm as she had visited it that day.
Of the well. The well upon which she had dreamed of Mulder, the
well down which Catherine had thrown her ring. The well,
something about the well. She felt as if Catherine was still there, in
the background, trying to tell her something, trying to give her some
gift. To make her understand. The well. Something about the well.
The dream faded, slowly, and Scully sank into oblivion.



J. (Jamal) Gallagher never thought the day would come when
he would be forced to live in his car, but that was exactly were he
had spent the last twenty-four hours since he had shot and killed
Leslie Hendricksen on the grounds of the Colter farm.
Disposing of Hendricksen's car had not proved too difficult.
The Cumberland marsh was a huge body of water. It was also a
watershed area, and so almost completely deserted. It had been a
simple enough processes to take the keys Hendricksen had left in the
ignition, drive the sedan down one of the dirt public access roads to
the water, release the hand brake, and let the car slide into the marsh.

He had debated, as he watched the vehicle sink into the water, that
perhaps he should have thrown Hendricksen's body into it after all,
but it was too late for that, and anyway, there was no way he had
been about to carry that mutilated and bleeding corpse all the way
down to the road. The body would just have to stay were it was,
nobody was going to walking around up there, anyway.
That had been his first miscalculation. His second came with
the realization, as he watched Hendricksen's car disappear into the
murk, that he was six or seven miles away from his own vehicle,
without any other means of transportation. He was going to have to
walk back.
It took him hours, alternately walking, and hiding in ditches
as the odd car came by, so when he arrived, dirty, foot sore and tired,
back at his corvette, it was almost sunrise. He needed to find
somewhere he could get some sleep. That's when his next problem
occurred to him. He had no place to go.
He could not go back to his apartment in the city. By now,
his "bosses" would be looking for him, he should have checked in
hours earlier. There was bound to be someone sitting on his sofa at
that moment, waiting for him to return. Neither could he check into
some motel, not in the state he was in. He could have gotten into his
car and just driven away, but he did not want to put too much
distance between himself and the cocaine. He thought about
climbing back up the hill and simply retrieving it, but the truth was,
he was exhausted. He was a city boy, he was not used to the kind of
physical effort he had exerted that night, and he had to rest, or he
was going to collapse. So he drove around until he found something
that looked like a deserted side road going up into the woods, and
drove up it until he was sure he was out of sight. Then he dropped
the seat back, and fell asleep.
He slept for close to eighteen hours. When he finally awoke,
it was pitch black outside, and he was starving. He spent nearly an
hour deliberating what to do.
He would go back to that farm and retrieve the cocaine, that
much was clear. He had been a fool to leave it. Then he would drive
west, and south, and try to contact some old friends of his near the
New York boarder. He knew people down there who would help
him. He was sure of that. For a price, they would sell their own
sisters. And then it was drive straight through until he drove right
into the Pacific Ocean, all the way to California. That was the most
distance he could put between himself and the Springfield mob.
But first he needed to eat. He put the Corvette in gear, and
headed for the interstate, and an all night McDonald's he knew there.
And that was where he learned of his forth, and perhaps most serious miscalculation. Somebody had already found, and identified,
Hendricksen's body. He heard the two kids manning the drive-
through talking about it.
"What's that?" he asked the boy who handed him his burger
and fries. "What are you talking about in there?"
The kid just looked at him.
"Nothin'. Just another body found out at the Colter place,
that's all," the boy replied. "Fourth one. Only this one had it's face
blown off. Couple of cops found it this morning. Guy was some
drug dealer."
The kid shrugged. Gallagher struggled to keep his
composure, glad that it was night, and that his face was shadowed.
He was sure his expression would give him away.
"They have any idea who did it?" he asked, as he handed the
kid a twenty. The boy shook his head.
"If they do, they ain't sayin'. Just that it appears to be drug
related, and may be a mob hit. Beats me. I would never have figured Cumberland to be anyplace the mob would bother with..."
Gallagher had heard enough. He threw the Corvette into gear
and drove away quickly, leaving the baffled young man holding his
change.
He drove around in circles for hours. The truth of the matter
was, Gallagher was an amateur, little more than a school boy when it
came to the real world of the drug trade. He had never considered
the fact that he might someday need to get away fast, and therefore
had no plans. Nor did he have the intestinal fortitude to deal
rationally with his predicament. He was terrified, and terror made
him stupid. He could not think what to do. He knew only that he
needed to retrieve that cocaine, as soon as he could, and get out of
there. Not only would he need it, now, to fund his get away, it was
evidence against him with the cops, as well. His fingerprints were
bound to be all over that backpack. He struggled to remember if he
had touched Hendricksen's body. He did not think he had, but he
had certainly touched his car. It would only be a matter of time,
now, before the cops thought to drag the marsh for it. He wondered
if the swamp water would wash fingerprints away.
He knew he needed to get the cocaine, but it was well into
morning before he could work up the nerve to go back to the farm.
He hated the idea of going back there during the light, but he also
knew he could not wait another day. He had to get it, and then he
had to get out of there. That was all there was to it.
As a precaution, he parked the Corvette in the woods some
distance away. Cursing his shortsightedness in throwing away his
gun, he took the switchblade out of the glovebox of his car and
shoved it in his pocket. Of course, he would not need it, there would
be no one there, but it made him feel better, having it. He walked
back, staying off the road as much as he could. Blessedly, there was
little traffic.



"I want to go back there," Scully said over breakfast the next
morning. Mulder just looked at her in surprise.
"Why?"
"I'm not sure," Scully admitted, looking distressed. "I just
have a funny feeling about it." She sighed. "I had a dream last night,
about that old well. I can't figure it out. But maybe I saw something, yesterday, that I didn't realize I was seeing, something that registered
as important and is coming back to haunt my unconscious thought. I
just feel that I need to go back there, and look."
Mulder smiled a little at her use of terminology, but he took
the suggestion very seriously. They both knew that such things
happened; cases *were* occasionally solved because some bit of
data, otherwise disregarded, was sorted into sense in the unconscious
mind. Some of his best inspirations came that way.
"Okay," he agreed. "Finish up, and we'll go."
Scully tossed back her coffee and stood up.
Laughing at her single-minded eagerness, Mulder signaled the
waitress, and settled their bill.



J. (Jamal) Gallagher struggled up the weed filled little hill. It
amazed that he had been able to negotiate the nasty undergrowth at
night, in the dark; there in the morning light he was barely able to get
his feet in front of him for the tangle of brush and creepers. He came
up on the wrong side of the house, and could not see the well.
Momentary panic took him, until he realized his error, and started
around.
He heard the voices, long before he saw the two people
heading up the hill toward him, a man and a woman walking at a
determined pace. He struggled to control his panic, and tried to
figure out what to do. Creeping slowly around the house, he moved
his body until he could just see the two of them coming up the hill.
Cops, he knew they were cops, some street instinct told him, deep in
his gut. He truely cursed, now, whatever panic had caused him to
throw his gun down that well. He was virtually unarmed, and unable
to defend himself. Well, he still had his knife. He patted it, in his pocket, then froze in place, and watched the agents as they headed
toward the well.



Mulder watched Scully as she eyed the well, hanging back to
give her room and mental space, trusting her instincts to bring her to whatever it was she remembered seeing. He did not have long to
wait.
"Mulder, look at this."
Coming to her side, Mulder looked where she was pointing.
"That well cover's been moved. Recently. See how the weeds
are torn around it, but they're still green?"
Mulder nodded, smiling at her in admiration. He pulled a
glove out of his pocket.
"Let's have a look..."
Drawing carefully, he pulled the stone lid to one side. Scully
leaned over the well opening, ignoring a weird sense of deja vu that
suddenly assailed her, and looked inside. The air was cool, but dry;
there was no water in the well. Her eyes grew gradually accustomed
to the darkness, and she saw the iron hook, and the straps hanging
over it.
"There." She pointed, and Mulder reached in, grasping the
straps and pulling the attached leather backpack out of the well. He
raised an eyebrow at her, then dropped the heavy pack onto the
ground and unzipped it. Reaching inside, he slowly removed a clear
plastic bag filled with glittering white powder. He looked at Scully
and smiled.
"Very good, Agent Scully," he praised, meaning it. Scully
smiled.
"What do you want to bet there's a murder weapon sitting at
the bottom of that well, too?" she suggested. Mulder nodded in
agreement as he stuffed the bag of cocaine back into the backpack
and zipped it closed.
"What do you guess this stuff is worth?" he asked.
Scully was about to offer speculation on the answer when a
crash behind them made them jump and turn.



Gallagher did not wait until the agents had the well cover off
before he sought more secure refuge. Creeping slowly back, he
moved along the back side of the house, until he found a hatchway
leading to the basement. He pulled slowly, and the rotten wood
easily gave way. He slipped through the opening, somehow feeling
secure that, once inside, he would be safer than while out of doors.
Naive, perhaps, and foolish, but to a man raised in the city, indoors
was safer than out in the woods. Gallagher dropped to the basement
floor, and was immediately engulfed in darkness. He had dropped
through a coal shoot. Cursing under his breath, he stumbled across
the floor, and tried to adjust his eyes to the dim light that filtered
through one or two small basement windows. His eyes did not
adjust in time, however, for him to miss colliding with the small
tower of old milking cans and buckets. The whole thing down with a
loud crash.



"What the hell was that?" Mulder demanded.
Scully put her hand up to stem further questions, and they
both strained to listen. There was another sound of crashing.
"It came from inside the house. Someone's in there."
Mulder nodded, and drew his weapon. He still had
Bowman's key, and, with Scully beside him with her weapon drawn,
he unlocked the side door and the two of them went inside. Mulder
gestured Scully back toward the rear of the house. He moved toward
the front.
Scully stepped carefully into the large kitchen. The bare
room had few places to hide, and it took her only moments to check
those places, including the fireplace flu, and she thought, almost
smiling, the small bread ovens. Well, one never knew. She raised
her weapon, and counted three, then ducked around the corner into
the borning room. Empty, and she was too pre-occupied to even
remember how she had dreamed of Jeremiah's last moments in it, the
night before. Coming out again, she passed through the hallway into
the modern kitchen at the far rear of the house. She was so intent on
her destination that she did not see the man pressed back in the
shadows of the alcove leading to the basement stairs. She never
knew what hit her, when Gallagher brought the board down on her
head from behind. Her gun went skidding out of sight, into a split
between the floor boards, as she sank to the floor. Gallagher tried to
reach it, could not, and cursed his luck again. He took a deep breath,
and moved slowly toward the sounds coming from the front room.



Mulder moved through the front parlor slowly, carefully,
weapon at ready, but there was little need. The small front rooms of
the house were completely bare, no cabinetry, no closets, no place to
hide. He glanced up the chimney in the room where the fireplace
was still open, but there was nothing to see. He was looking up the
stairs toward the second floor when a movement caught him out of
the corner of his eye and he turned his head just in time to see
Gallagher careening toward him.
He did not have time to react before the other man caught
him in the chest, sending his gun flying, and bringing him to the
floor. Mulder grunted, and rolled, getting himself free of Gallagher,
and sitting up quickly. He just spotted his gun as Gallagher's fist
connected with his jaw. Rolling away, he braced himself for
Gallagher's pounce, and when it came, caught the other man in the
belly with his knee, and sent him flying over his head, and down.
Struggling to orient himself, Mulder stood up shakily. He
heard the soft "shick" sound of the switchblade opening before he
saw the knife gleaming in Gallagher's hand. He saw that his gun was
too far away to reach, and looked around for another weapon as
Gallagher struggled to his feet again. His eyes fell on the small pile
of
loose bricks, just two or three, that lay on the floor by the hearth, and
he dove for one, but two late. Gallagher launched himself at Mulder
once more, the momentum carrying them both across the room.
They crashed into the wall and fell to the floor, Gallagher sitting on Mulder's chest. He hit him in the jaw hard, once, twice, Mulder was
nearly unconscious, and totally unable to help himself as the third
blow fell and knocked him senseless. Gallagher raised his knife.
In the back kitchen, Scully struggled to her feet. Rubbing the
bruised spot on the back of her head, she looked around quickly for
her missing gun, then raced forward into the front of the house
without it, drawn by the urgency of the sounds coming from the
rooms there. She came through the doorway just in time to see
Gallagher's knife plunging toward Mulder's heart.
It happened as if in slow motion, like some bad movie
technique meant to create suspense. The knife descended, and
Scully screamed. And then she saw her, saw Catherine Hewlett
standing by the fireplace, saw her stoop and pick up the brick. Saw
the brick fly through the air and hit Gallagher in the side of the head.

Saw Gallagher fall to one side, his knife dropping away, useless.
Scully stared at the ghost of Catherine Hewlett. The dark
haired beauty merely nodded. She gestured at Mulder. Scully
looked back at her partner, stirring helplessly on the floor. She
rushed to his side, taking only a moment only to slam cuffs on
Gallagher, and haul his body out of the way. She dropped to her
knees beside Mulder, and took his face in both her hands.
" 'M all right," he mumbled blearily. She shushed him, and
examined the bruises on his head and face. Nothing seemed too
serious.
Scully was breathing hard, and although she did not realize it,
tears streamed down her face. So close, bare fractions of a second
and Mulder would have been dead. She looked back to the place
where she had seen Catherine Hewlett, and was astonished to see the
ghost still standing there, nodding serenely. She pulled Mulder
closer, resting his upper body in her lap. The ghost nodded gently.
- Remember me, a voice said in Scully's head, a voice she
"recognized" as Catherine's. - Think about who you are and what
you want, and remember me. Know thyself, Dana Scully. Don't be
afraid to reach into your heart, no matter what the consequences.
Remember *my* fate, and don't let my fate become yours.
And Catherine Hewlett disappeared.
Scully let out a short, stunned breath. She pulled Mulder
closer still, and cradled his head against her chest. He stirred weakly
as she stroked his hair. Then she wrapped both arms around him,
and pressed her face against the top of his head.


EPILOGUE

When Chief Rydell finally arrived on the scene to pick up the
assailant, he seemed wholly pleased by what he found. He told
Mulder that the man's name was Jamal Gallagher, and that he was
known to be a front man for the Springfield, Massachusetts, mob. If
they could break the man into confessing, which was something
about which Rydell seemed assured, he would provide a significant
link to his bosses. Mulder left Rydell and his men to take Gallagher
away, and went to look for Scully, who had wandered off after she
had bandaged his forehead. He found her in the yard on the other
side of the house, squatting down in the tall weeds.
"Scully. What are you looking at?"
He leaned down and looked over her shoulder. She had
parted the grass, and was gazing down at an upright fieldstone
marker. He could barely make out the words carved there, worn as
they were by time: Catherine Hewlett.
"You found her grave?"
Scully nodded and stood up.
"Yeah." she exhaled softly. "It was right where Bowman
said it would be." She hugged her arms, and looked down at the
stone. Mulder nodded.
"I just talked to Bowman, he came up with the cops. The
man must live by his scanner. I don't suppose this town has seen this
much excitement in years," Mulder said. "Anyway, he told me that
the Cumberland County Historical Society has made him an offer on
the house, and he's going to take it. They are going to restore the old place, and open it up as a public landmark. So I don't think there will
be any more deaths on the Colter farm. At least not ghostly related
ones."
He had meant the words to be lighthearted and reassuring,
but Scully only nodded. Mulder frowned, watching her. He wanted
to ask her what had happened inside the house. Somehow her
explanation to him about hitting Gallagher with that brick just did not
ring true. Something made him hesitate, though.
"You okay?" he finally asked.
Scully took a deep breath and nodded.
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"No, you're not," Mulder countered, knowing better.
"What's wrong?"
Scully shrugged.
"I don't know," she replied. She sighed down at Catherine's
grave. "To love, yet to never have touched. To spend eternity
searching, and regretting..." Her voice was soft, almost mournful
with yearning. She shook her head.
"I wonder if they'll ever find peace," she said.
If Mulder was surprised at Scully's seeming acceptance of the
reality of the Colter farm ghosts, he did say. He frowned at her in puzzlement, then his expression softed, and he smiled thoughtfully.
"Maybe peace isn't what they're looking for," he simply
replied.
Scully looked up into his eyes. For a long moment, their
gazes joined and held. Scully's lips parted slightly, as if in question,
and Mulder inclined his head toward her, as if willing her to ask.
One of the policeman called out to them. Scully smiled, and
then she let the question go. She nodded out in the direction of the
road.
"You all set?" she asked. Mulder nodded in agreement.
"Yeah, whenever you're ready," he exhaled, collecting
himself. Scully sighed.
"I'm ready. Let's go."










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