TITLE: "The Trade"
INFO: Written for The X-Files Virtual Season 11 
(Episode number 16)
AUTHOR: Ten
EMAIL: kristena@ocean.com.au 
RATING: PG-13 
CLASSIFICATION: X-File, Angst, ST, MT, 
MSR
SUMMARY: When Scully becomes seriously 
ill, Mulder manages to find a potential cure. But 
it is one that he will have to pay dearly for, and 
not in a monetary sense.

SPOILERS: "Redux I & IIÓ.
Also there are spoilers for past Virtual Season 
cases: Suzanne Bickerstaffe & dtg's "Legacy", 
the VS 11 Producers' "Camarilla", Vickie 
Moseley's "Great Balls of Fire", Caroline 
McKenna's "Demonic Perfection", Suzanne 
Bickerstaffe's "Hollow Earth" and my "Layers". 

ARCHIVING: The X-Files Virtual Season has a 
two week exclusivity to all Virtual Season 11 
stories from the day each first appears on the 
website. After that, please drop me a note if 
you'd like to archive "The Trade".

Virtual Season 11 can be found at:
http://www.virtualseasonx.com/

My website for all my X-Files fanfiction, thanks 
to the
wonderful Skyfox, is at:
http://ten.bitter-moon.com/ten/xf/  

DISCLAIMER: The X-Files, the episodes 
referred to, Mulder and Scully and all other 
characters from the show belong to Chris Carter 
and his team of writers, Ten Thirteen 
Productions and Fox Broadcasting, and are used 
without permission. No copyright infringement 
is intended, no profit will be gained. Characters 
not recognized from the show are either mine, or 
from previous VS stories.

MEDICAL NOTES: At end of story.
THANKS TO: Suzanne, Debbie, Mac, Gerry, 
Vickie, Sally and Sheila for help above and 
beyond the call of duty or friendship. Also 
especially to Suzi for all the help and effort at 
such short notice (despite being a fellow 
procrastinator <G>) and in giving Corin more 
depth. And a huge thanks to the VS11 
production team!
FEEDBACK: Yes, please! 

"The Trade"
by Ten, January and February 2004

xXx

TEASER:

Scully's apartment:

Mulder sat at the desk in the living room, using 
his new desktop computer. He had bought it 
recently to replace the one lost when his 
apartment building burned down. Having this 
new computer not only gave him a more 
powerful machine, but it also thankfully ended 
the awkward sharing of Scully's laptop.

She was the one who suggested he set the 
desktop computer up on her living room desk. 
"It's the logical thing to do. It's easier for me to 
put my laptop on the dining room table or at the 
desk in my bedroom. Plus, if you want to get on 
your computer at some unearthly hour, you can 
do it out here and not disturb me."

"Is that just a nice way of saying that you didn't 
want your dining room table to be taken up with 
the new computer and case files and my clutter?"

"You've got it."

He didn't think she minded relegating herself to 
the desk in her bedroom Ð it gave them some 
time apart in a way. Their own space. They were 
trying not to live in each other's pockets twenty-
four hours a day, since they were so used to 
being solitary at home. So Mulder was regularly 
going out to visit the Gunmen, for example, or 
Dana to one of her friends or her mother's or to 
shop. But they were also enjoying their time 
together and doing their best to get around any 
hurdles with affection and humor, some times 
more successfully than others.

Now Mulder had gotten up even earlier than 
usual, and was online, checking out apartments. 
He had to, since every one he had inspected 
during the last few weeks had failed the Dana 
Scully Test. None got her official seal of 
approval. Not even close.

"Mulder, you are NOT going to lease that 
dump."  

"Scully, it's not like you'll actually be living 
there!" he pointed out.

"On and off, I will be. I'll definitely be sleeping 
there regularly." 

"If I don't take this apartment, that means you'll 
be stuck with me indefinitely."

"We're managing. We haven't killed each other 
yet. And it is handy not having one of us race to 
their own apartment each morning to get ready 
and go to work. It gives us time to sleep a little 
more, or do other things . . . ."

And at least she wasn't overeager to bundle him 
out the door. So he must be doing something 
right.

Surfing the net was also a way of keeping his 
mind occupied. To try to stop it straying onto 
other things, two in particular.

One was the fire that had destroyed his apartment 
building. It was still hard for him to comprehend 
that he had lost virtually everything, apart from a 
few items he had at Scully's, the drycleaners and 
the Gunmen's.

Fortunately one priceless item had been saved 
through sheer luck and timing. Just before the 
case that had led to the fire, Scully had wanted to 
look through Mulder's photo album. She ended 
up wanting to scan and reprint some of the 
photos to put in her own collection, and 
borrowed the album. So a number of Mulder's 
childhood, family and college photos had 
survived. Otherwise he would have only been left 
with the photos of Samantha that he kept in the 
basement office.

However, so many times he found himself 
thinking: "I need that book." Or he wanted 
something in particular, and made a mental note 
to get it the next time he was at home, before he 
realized it was gone forever. He was slowly 
getting replacements for a number of things, but 
it wasn't quite the same.

His sofa was a major loss. The fish. The goofy 
shoe bookend. The lithograph of the typewriter 
and his Navajo blanket.

They'd previously gone through the trauma of 
having the basement destroyed by fire, but at 
least he was able to painstakingly reconstruct 
most of the reports, though he had lost a lot of 
his paranormal collection that time. When his 
apartment burned, though, there had been no 
hope of any salvage at all. 

Look on the bright side, he told himself. You 
didn't suffer any permanent injuries Ð the burns 
have healed fine. And there are definite 
advantages to living with Scully. 

At that he allowed himself quite a grin.

Yes, it could have been a lot worse. He could 
have died, and Scully could have been there too 
when the place went up. 

And that brought him to the other worry he was 
trying not to dwell on.

Lately his partner was becoming progressively 
more tired and drawn, despite getting lots of 
sleep. In fact, she was falling asleep well before 
her usual bedtime and getting in excess of eight 
hours a night. It started with little things, like 
running out of breath only halfway through a 
joint jog or not feeling like going for a run at all. 
Other activities were also suffering. A few nights 
ago she initiated some bedroom fun, only to fall 
asleep before things really started cooking.

"I just don't seem to have as much energy," she 
confessed to him the next day. 

And that really set a cold fear burning in Mulder 
that did not let up. Hopefully it was just 
something minor, some bug, or overwork, he 
told himself. After all, she had a rough time 
recently, nearly being crucified by a madman and 
his mother. Perhaps that was catching up with 
her.

Fortunately she had made an appointment to see 
her doctor, which was this morning, and she was 
letting Mulder accompany her. Not just to the 
medical center, but in to see the doctor himself.

How far we have come, Mulder could not help 
musing. Then he started worrying that Scully 
actually letting him come in to her appointment 
meant that she thought there was something very 
serious wrong with her.

They had been able to arrange the time off with 
Skinner and Ð 

A noise startled Mulder out of his reverie. He 
looked away from the computer screen, which he 
had not really been perusing for a while. The 
noise was Scully's alarm going off. It was time 
for her to get up and get ready for her 
appointment.

Mulder stood and went to the doorway of her 
bedroom, in time to hear his partner groan and 
see her reach out and turn the alarm off. She 
buried her head under the covers. 

He opened the blinds, then walked up to the side 
of the bed. "Good morning, Sunshine." He 
couldn't quite catch her muttered response, but 
had a fair idea it wouldn't get a PG rating.

Then she pulled the covers down with a reluctant 
sigh, blinking in the light. She certainly wasn't 
looking perky. He could feel her own worry and 
frustration, despite how hard she was trying to 
hide them. He was also sure that she was 
mentally running through her symptoms, trying 
to work out what was wrong.

When her gaze met his, Mulder mustered a smile 
from somewhere. He would have offered to make 
her breakfast while she was in the shower, but 
she had started fasting the night before for her 
tests, since the doctor was going to do her post-
cancer check up as part of the day's appointment.

"Morning already?" she asked. 

"Yep. And I haven't found any apartments you 
would approve of yet."

"I think I can put up with you for a little longer," 
she said with a smile.

Something made him stay by the bed, chattering 
on about banalities as she got up. Which was 
just as well, because when she stood, she went 
even paler and her knees buckled. Mulder 
managed to grab her in time to stop her falling.

They stared at each other, Scully a little dazed 
but still conscious, locked in Mulder's arms. 
And the fear that they had lived with during 
Scully's cancer leapt back into both of them like 
it had never been gone.

xXx

ACT ONE:

After sitting down on the bed for a few minutes, 
Scully had recovered from her near-faint, though 
Mulder insisted that she have a bath instead of a 
shower and that he be present, just in case.

She let him. And unlike during that other dark 
horrible time, they held hands and gazes where 
they could.

Though just like during their cancer time, they 
did not say much on the way to the medical 
center. Mulder was just grateful they had the first 
appointment of the day. 

Fainting doesn't have to mean something doom 
and gloomish, Mulder told himself. And she 
hasn't had a nosebleed, or at least not that she's 
mentioned. He didn't dare ask. The doctor did 
ask, and received a negative reply, then checked 
her nails and commented on the pallor of her 
skin. Doctor Ben Gavins had been Scully's 
personal physician for a long time. He was well 
acquainted with her unique medical history.

Scully had some tests there and then, including a 
blood sample. 

"Most of the results of these particular tests will 
be back within a few hours. Why don't you come 
back in two and a half hours? There are some 
stores and a cafe nearby," the doctor said.

Scully managed a smile. "I noticed there was a 
great sale going on just down the block."

The partners didn't end up going to it, of course. 
They sat in the cafe. Mulder only felt like toying 
with the food and drink ordered, but because 
Scully hadn't eaten anything since the night 
before, he made himself eat and saw that his 
partner was doing the same: chewing and 
swallowing automatically, not really tasting. It 
was an effort for Mulder to stop checking the 
time and also to work out what to say. They 
ended up talking about mundane things to fill in 
the space and beat down the fear.

But at least they were together in this, whatever 
this proved to be. That was something to take 
even a little comfort in.

After what seemed like eons, they returned for 
the results. 

Doctor Gavins told Scully, "From these tests, 
I'm strongly suspecting aplastic anemia, 
especially from the low levels of your red and 
white cells and platelets. But a sample of your 
bone marrow will need to be taken and examined 
by a hematologist for confirmation."

"What is aplastic anemia?" Mulder asked, 
directing his question at both of them. The look 
in Scully's eyes was telling him that it was not 
something minor.

It was his partner who told him, "It's a rare but 
extremely serious disorder that results from the 
unexplained failure of the bone marrow to 
produce blood cells."

That could not be good. Mulder knew that the 
bone marrow was a factory producing the cells of 
the blood: red cells, white cells and platelets. 
Continuous production of blood cells was 
necessary to sustain a body, because each cell had 
a finite life span once leaving the bone marrow 
and entering the blood.

But modern medicine had made so many 
advances, even in the seven years since Scully's 
cancer. So surely . . . .

"And it's curable?" Somehow Mulder was able to 
get the question out. But he was only able to 
look at Gavins when asking it.

"There are treatment options which could well 
work -" Gavins began, before Mulder impatiently 
interrupted him.

"But if they don't, then is it fatal?"

"Yes, eventually." 

Mulder felt like he'd been kicked. Scully was 
remaining very quiet, nodding slightly at what 
the doctor said. Her outward composure was 
legendary. 

The doctor looked back and forth between them. 
"But let's focus on the options for now, before 
we go expecting the worst. All right?"

"Could this be due to the chip?" Mulder asked. 
Somehow his voice remained steady.

The doctor immediately knew what Mulder 
meant, but hesitated before saying, "As far as I 
can tell, it seems to be, um, working the same as 
it was when Dana's cancer was cured. But I have 
no idea whether this disease has anything to do 
with that chip. And honestly I don't think there 
is any way for us to know for sure."

Mulder couldn't stop asking questions and 
Scully was staying silent. She probably knew the 
answers already anyway. "What's the cause of 
aplastic anemia?"

Doctor Gavins said, "There are a number of 
known causes. It has been clearly linked to 
radiation Ð"

Mulder went very still. Scully had been exposed 
to radiation during her abduction and in 
treatment for her cancer. 

"Environmental toxins Ð" the doctor continued.

They'd had plenty of those . . . .

"Insecticides and drugs, in much the same 
fashion as cancer has been linked to these agents. 
Benzene-based compounds, airplane glue and 
drugs such as chloramphenicol have been linked 
to aplastic anemia too. Also, Hepatitis, Epstein 
Barr, drugs like Dilantin and even some 
antibiotics. In some people it is believed to be 
caused by a virus. But in over half the cases the 
cause is unknown or idiopathic."

Then Gavins turned to Scully and asked if she 
had any questions. He also arranged to book her 
in for the bone marrow test as soon as possible, 
where a needle was going to be inserted into the 
large pelvic bone and a biopsy taken.  

"Restrict your activities and see how much 
taking it easy relieves your symptoms."

Her voice remained calm when talking to the 
doctor, but as soon as they were heading out, she 
slipped her hand into Mulder's and did not let go 
until they reached the car.

He swore inwardly, raging at everything and 
everyone. Why did it have to be her again?

The agents didn't say much on the way home. 
They didn't have to. Once inside Scully's 
apartment, they held each other tightly, before 
Scully gently pulled away and announced that 
she was going to call her mother and Skinner. 

xXx

Scully had the bone marrow test and, while they 
waited a few days for the results, she 
determinedly did paperwork at home and 
consulted on autopsy results from other cases 
that were sent to her via the internet or courier. 
She also researched as much as possible about 
aplastic anemia and the available treatments.

Cabin fever was inevitable, though. Mulder was 
trying his hardest not to rock the boat, to find a 
balance between being over-coddling and 
standing too far back. Maggie was helping out 
where she could while Mulder was at work.

"I hate being 'fragile'!" his partner declared at one 
point with an anger that he knew was not being 
directed specifically at him. She needed to vent.

"Scully, that is one thing that no one would ever 
accuse you of. Even now. You're still the 
equivalent of at least twenty of me."

At that some of the anger went out of her sails. 
"Don't sell yourself short."

"Ten of me then?" he asked.

"One of you does me just fine. And I only wish I 
felt well enough for you to do me now!"

Her symptoms were not being relieved much by 
staying at home either.

The results of Scully's test confirmed aplastic 
anemia.

Mulder sat quietly while Gavins and Scully 
talked about the next steps to take. But then he 
realized something and couldn't help saying, 
"You're not going to hospitalize her?"

The doctor replied, "Agent Mulder, with all of 
the superbugs and diseases around in hospitals 
these days, it is best that she stay home for now 
while her condition allows it. Home help is 
available, and it sounds like Mrs Scully is doing 
a lot, which is great. Masks can be made 
available for both Dana and visitors to wear, to 
ensure that she doesn't catch anything from 
anyone Ð even healthy people can potentially be a 
threat to her condition. Strict hygiene is to be 
followed, for example: thorough washing of 
hands." He said to Scully, "We'll start you off 
on a cycle of drug therapy and see how that 
goes." She nodded.

"Modern medicine keeps most people happy 
most of the time, although I'm sure the patients 
themselves might not see it quite that way," 
Gavins continued. "Theoretically, Dana should 
be able to stay out of the hospital for a long time 
yet, just going in for the drug therapy and 
treatments like transfusions when necessary."

During the last week, Mulder had read up on 
aplastic anemia. He knew why the doctor was not 
starting to test Scully's family for bone marrow 
compatibility in case of a transplant Ð that was 
only as a last resort. The transplant also had far 
higher risks than just letting the patient be or 
trying other options, at least at this stage.

Scully had to keep her activity restricted to 
reduce symptoms of anemia, avoid falls or 
accidents that could provoke bleeding, and she 
was to reduce contact with other people. She was 
to go into the hospital as an outpatient regularly 
for her treatments, for a few hours at a time.

xXx

Outside, Scully tried to put a brave face on it. 
"Mulder, it's going to be fine. There are courses 
of treatment. We just have to find out which one 
is the best."

But that didn't mean that they couldn't be on the 
lookout for other, not so well-marked courses or 
paths. Or create a few of their own, Mulder 
thought, but instead he said, "Of course it's 
going to be fine, Scully. Look what we've 
already managed to beat."

"And this will be a great opportunity to catch up 
on my med and science reading," she said, half 
lightly, half seriously. "There's always so much 
published."

He managed to smile at her spirit and 
determination, but wondered how much longer 
he'd be able to if things got worse.

xXx

That night:

Mulder couldn't sleep. That was fine by him, 
because he had research to do on this illness and 
those other potential paths for a cure, just in 
case.

He was out on the sofa bed. He and Scully had 
discussed it and reluctantly agreed that it was 
best if he did so Ð it would make things easier 
than wearing masks to bed, which could easily 
slip, and neither wanted to disturb the other if 
they were restless or when Mulder had to get up 
and get ready for work.

But in reality, Scully was out like a light.  That 
was the one 'good' thing about this illness. She 
shouldn't even notice that the living room lights 
were on in the wee hours or hear if he 
accidentally made too much noise, which was 
another, unspoken, reason why Mulder had 
suggested that he sleep on the sofa bed. He half-
expected that his all-encompassing panic and 
worry would be loud enough to wake his partner 
up. God knew it was certainly gnawing away at 
him loud enough.

Okay, focus. To work with you. The phrase 
'Fight the future' certainly applies here.

He headed to his desk and prepared for a long 
session.

xXx

The next day, late afternoon:

The agents had been in phone contact a few times 
during the day, and it wasn't just Mulder 
phoning Scully to check up on her. She called 
him a few times just, he was sure, to check up 
on him and be connected to him, to the office, in 
some small way. Now he was back home and 
had taken over the 'night shift' from Maggie.

After Scully's mother left, his partner actually 
admitted to him despondently, "I think I'm 
going crazy being here at home all day. I'm 
having trouble concentrating on the med 
journals."

He was surprised by her admission, despite how 
much better they had become over the years at 
being more open with each other. He guessed she 
had kept up a cheery facade all day for her mother 
and couldn't any more.

"Scully, perhaps look at it from a different 
angle," he suggested.

She gave him the eyebrow. "Show me the 
angle."

"I know you're frustrated, but try viewing this as 
vacation leave. You don't often get to have a 
break. So instead of focusing on paperwork or 
going at the journals for so long, step back, at 
least for some of each day. Give yourself more 
time. Some pampering. Skinner would have no 
problem giving you the leave. Read books, the 
fun books, the romances, the novels that you've 
bought and stacked up and not gotten around to. 
Watch all those movies you've missed. I 
recommend comedies Ð it's always good to 
laugh. There are plenty of things you can do that 
aren't as taxing or stressful."

From the look on her face, she was carefully 
contemplating his idea. "A vacation?"

"I'll hunt out whatever book you want in the 
stores, or anything else you want. Hell, we can 
go all the way and do the living room up as a 
beach. I'll even wear my Speedos."

She laughed, then her eyes held a glint that he 
was glad to see as she asked oh-so-coyly, "Is 
there any rule that says we can't make it a nudist 
beach? For males, anyway." 

So they pretended that the sofa was a deck chair 
at the beach on a tropical island and that Scully 
was a rich visitor. Mulder was her personal 
waiter. 

"Want me to wear a bow tie?"

"That all depends on where . . . ."

xXx

Mulder watched his partner get worse. She was 
still able to function at home, however it was 
like a leak in a dam. When a trickle, no big deal, 
but as the hole gets bigger, it has more and more 
of an effect, but still no major problems. Finally 
the hole was going to get so big that the dam 
would burst. 

It wasn't about to burst just yet, but . . . . 

The trips to the hospital for the treatments were 
taking a lot out of Scully. Often her control and 
determination were a marvel, however her temper 
was getting shorter and more explosive when it 
did break through, and it was a strain to monitor 
everything he was about to do or say, to try to 
minimize any flare ups. Having to rely so much 
on others and not be able to do her job or much 
else during the course of a day was hell for her, 
he knew. Being extremely intolerant to any form 
of exercise, after being such a fit and active 
person was a constant source of irritation too.

And there was the frustration of having to be so 
aware of quarantine procedures, which had really 
put a damper on their holding and touching. The 
masks. So they went back to the 'old days' of 
communicating so much with their eyes, though 
they also said a lot with words that they would 
not have told each other in those old days. And 
often after a flare up, Scully would get upset 
with herself and apologize to him.

She slept a lot anyway, and he continued on with 
his research. After exhausting the Gunmen's 
library, he paid a visit to Chuck Burns, who 
knew about their situation.

"Mulder! Great to see you. How's Scully doing?"

"Not good. Can I go through your stacks? You're 
bound to have magazines and articles that could 
have slipped under my radar, or the Gunmen's."

"I pride myself on finding obscure releases. Sure, 
you're welcome to borrow whatever you want. 
Are you looking for anything in particular?"

"Hopefully I'll know when I see it." They ended 
up discussing some rather remote possibilities, 
but to no end.

xXx

Scully had been on the drug therapy for two 
weeks, but now was going downhill too fast for 
it to remain a viable option. The doctor was 
baffled and frustrated by the rapid deterioration. 

She was being given blood transfusions during 
her trips to the hospital, to try to correct her 
anemia. Fortunately she hadn't started bleeding 
yet Ð her platelet levels had not dropped that 
low. That sort of bleeding was an acute medical 
emergency, with the danger of fatal hemorrhage 
occurring.

Her brother Bill, mother and surviving relatives 
proved to be non-compatible for a bone marrow 
transplant. Seeing that Charlie Scully appeared to 
have Consortium links and had tried to kill 
Mulder recently, the chances of him suddenly 
turning up and offering to have his blood tested 
for compatibility were remote. They couldn't get 
in contact with him anyway Ð and Maggie, who 
had no idea about just what her son had become, 
believed he was currently unreachable because he 
was on a long term undercover assignment. 

The database of donors was being searched, so far 
with no luck of a match with Scully. 

Maggie was staying with her daughter all the 
time during the day and a home help nurse came 
in when required. At night, Mulder was the 
caregiver, and he regularly got up and checked 
how Scully was during the night.

Scully had a PICC line inserted in the crook of 
her arm. It was a special IV that would not need 
changing for weeks, so the line could be used for 
antibiotics at home and for the drug therapy and 
transfusions in the outpatient clinic, without a 
new one having to be inserted each time. 

She also had a liquid oxygen tank with a nasal 
cannula. The tank was set up in the bedroom, but 
had tubing long enough to allow Scully to move 
around in other rooms of the apartment while 
still getting the oxygen. She and her caregivers 
just had to be careful not to trip over the tubing 
or get it hooked up or accidentally put something 
on it, like a chair leg. 

Scully was out in the living room. At the 
moment she was not receiving anything via the 
PICC line, and it was heparin-locked, capped off 
so they didn't have to deal with an IV stand and 
its various paraphernalia for now.

 "I wonder . . . " Scully began, then tailed off, as 
if realizing she was saying a thought 
inadvertently out loud.

Mulder looked at her, knowing that she hadn't 
stopped talking only because she was short of 
breath. "What?" he asked, fearful of what she was 
going to say, but he had to know.

"I don't want you to take this the wrong way. 
But I wonder whether the chip or my medical 
past . . . might be accelerating the progress of 
this illness."

Mulder's heart sank even more. She was going 
downhill a lot faster than expected, without even 
something like an infection to really gallop it 
along.

"Sorry, Mulder. I shouldn't have said that."

"You could easily be right."

"But without that chip . . . wouldn't have had 
seven extra years with you," she finished 
sincerely.

Without me, Mulder couldn't help thinking, you 
wouldn't have been abducted and had the cancer 
or needed another chip.

"Mulder, I know what's running through your 
head. Stop it. You know that I could well have 
never joined the FBI and stayed in medicine . . . 
only to get killed in a car accident coming home 
from a shift one day. Life has no guarantees."

He nodded, trying to put on a good act so as not 
to further worry his partner.

It had been a bad day. Mulder knew that if this 
kept up, in a few days Scully would have to be 
admitted to the hospital. Since she was a doctor 
and had twenty-four hour care and a home health 
nurse, her doctor was still letting her try to stay 
at home for as long as possible, but there were 
limits and she was close to reaching them.

"Bedtime," Mulder said softly, dreading how 
tired the trip would make her. And that she 
might resist and make things worse.

"Too bad the bedroom . . . wasn't closer to the 
beach," Scully said wryly.

An idea sparked in his mind. "Well, instead of 
the rich woman on the tropical beach, we could 
do 'Gone With the Wind'."

She smiled and he knew she was pleased at his 
efforts to keep their spirits up. "Sweep me off 
my feet . . . and carry me up that staircase, 
Rhett."

"Staircase? Have you and your mom been 
renovating while I've been at work?"

He was relieved that she had acquiesced, that he 
had found a way to carry her without making her 
feel weak and upset. Or too much so.

It wasn't quite as easy a task as the 'Gone With 
the Wind' scenario: there was the oxygen tubing 
to factor in, but they managed. And somehow it 
still felt romantic, the closest they could get at 
the moment.

END ACT ONE:

xXx

ACT TWO:

Later that night:

Once again he was back at his desk, on the 
computer and poring through journals and 
magazines and anything he could think of which 
might provide some help.

He was going through one of Chuck's 
paranormal magazines when he found it.

A letter in a magazine. The letter was written by 
a thirty-five year old man called Corin Harper, in 
which he claimed that at age eleven he had 
somehow been cured of a deadly childhood 
illness, but on the same night as that happened, 
his mother had died. Recently he found out that 
she had died of that very illness. It was cystic 
fibrosis, which was incurable, so Corin should 
not have survived it in the first place, and it was 
impossible that his mother had suddenly 
developed it in adulthood.

Corin said he had only recently recovered 
memories of that time, which had made him 
curious, and led him to access his own and his 
mother's medical records. He wrote: "It's as if a 
trade occurred between us," and was enquiring if 
anyone else had undergone a similar experience 
or knew of anyone who did. He urged them to 
contact him. 

There was something about the way the letter 
was written that pulled Mulder in and made him 
not dismiss the writer as a crank. It was a 
heartfelt enquiry for answers. There was not 
much in the way of detail about what memories 
the man had recovered, but it came across to 
Mulder as the writer being cautious about the 
sort of responses he would get. Like not telling a 
psychic much about your life and seeing what 
they came up with, to test how accurate their 
responses were.

Mulder checked the date on the cover. This 
magazine was published twice yearly and this 
issue had come out nearly five months ago. 

He mused over the words. Like a trade had taken 
place. . . .

Mulder read back through the letter very 
carefully. The man said that he had medical 
records, so that would be some proof. He decided 
to phone Corin Harper in the morning and talk to 
him. Within the last five months other people 
may have written to Corin with their theories or 
stories. Mulder was interested to find out what 
they had said. 

He looked again at the contact details. Corin 
Harper lived in Sharpsburg, Maryland. That was 
about an hour and forty minutes away, or a two 
hour drive with rush hour traffic. So it was 
possible to visit the man fairly easily if need be, 
instead of relying solely on phone contact.

Because if the phone call went well, Mulder 
wanted to see this man for himself. A visit 
would not be to just go over his evidence, but to 
see him face to face and gauge if he was genuine. 
Hopefully he had a potential way out of Scully's 
suffering.

xXx

FBI Building
X-Files Office:

Over the phone, Corin Harper promised to fax 
Mulder copies of his medical reports and his 
mother's autopsy report. Corin also said he 
thought that he had pieced together what 
happened on the night that he became a healthy 
child, thanks to responses from people who had 
read his letter. "My mother took my illness into 
herself. And she's not the first or the last person 
to do such a thing." 

Hope and curiosity set Mulder's heart beating 
faster at hearing this.

Before Corin could go into more detail, Mulder 
could hear the sound of a doorbell. "Damn. 
Sorry, can I call you back?" Corin asked.

"Please fax those medical records to me as soon 
as you can. And could I come and see you 
sometime today? Would that be convenient?"

"Sure. What time?"

Agreement was quickly reached. Soon the 
paperwork appeared on the fax machine in the 
basement and backed up what Corin claimed in 
his letter. Though paperwork can be forged or 
mistakes made, Mulder told himself. He sighed 
and started to get ready to head to Sharpsburg.

xXx

Mulder checked the street sign and nodded to 
himself. He wasn't far from Corin Harper's 
home. And the trip had gone well. 

Apart from the niggling guilt about keeping this 
from Scully.

Mulder took a deep breath, again going over his 
reasonings, justifying them to himself.

Time was running out. A donor match might be 
found in the database, but it hadn't happened yet 
and hopes were fading. The drug therapy wasn't 
working. There had been no luck at tracking 
down any of the other potential means of help, 
like the healing aliens.

And Cancerman hadn't popped up to dangle a 
cure at the cost of a deal. 

Mulder didn't want to raise false hope in his 
partner about Corin Harper's discovery, in case it 
turned out to be false or for some reason not 
work for them. 

And he wanted to find out everything he could 
about this trading ability first, because if it did 
work, he didn't want Scully to be able to reverse 
the process. Not if it meant her dying.

He had made sure his cell phone was fully 
charged, so if Scully or anyone wanted to phone 
him, they could. Just hopefully she wouldn't ask 
him where he was . . . . She thought he was at 
work for the day.

I am working. This qualifies as an X-File.

And it isn't like I'm doing something like 
sneaking onto a Consortium base.

Corin Harper worked from home as a carpenter 
and woodworker. As Mulder got out of his car, 
he could see a workshop at the end of the 
driveway, behind the house. A large and 
beautifully carved wooden business sign on the 
fence directed customers to the workshop. The 
front door of the house opened as Mulder was 
deciding which building to try. A man appeared 
in work overalls, greeting him and waving him 
up onto the porch. 

"I've left a sign on the workshop door for people 
to come to the front door instead," the man 
announced. "And my business phone will divert 
through to the house. But hopefully we won't 
have any or many interruptions."

"That's fine. I appreciate you letting me visit at 
such short notice."

Corin was a cheerful man with close-cropped red 
hair. The living room they went into contained 
beautifully crafted and finished wooden furniture 
and fittings. As Mulder settled down in a 
comfortable chair, he noticed a glass cabinet held 
a lot of sporting trophies and items from around 
the world. The mantelpiece contained a lot of 
family photos Ð Corin as a boy and a woman 
who would have to be his mother. A vase of 
fresh flowers was next to the main photos.

"Did you make all of these?" Mulder gestured at 
the furnishings.

"Yes. It started out as a hobby in my teens and 
sort of snowballed from there."

"It all looks great."

Thank you. Would you like some coffee or 
food?"

"No thanks. Not at the moment."

"Okay. I guess to business then? So, you work 
for a branch of the FBI that investigates strange, 
potentially paranormal, happenings?"

Mulder nodded. He had approached Corin in that 
way, instead of mentioning that he had a sick 
partner. 

"Well, if you're hoping to find out how to save 
dying people by this particular method, the news 
isn't that great. Someone still has to die." The 
man's eyes, now sad, went to one of the pictures 
on the mantelpiece for a few seconds.

Mulder had another look at the photos. The ones 
he could see of young, pre-teen Corin showed a 
frail boy, but the few beyond that showed a 
remarkable difference. Mulder decided he'd been 
right not to mention the real reason why he was 
here. Corin could clam up and not tell him what 
he needed to know Ð he might have even been 
burned by people wanting a miracle cure after the 
publication of his letter. Mulder would just have 
to see, and hopefully no desperation would show 
through.

Corin pulled his eyes away from the photos and 
mustered a smile. "Anyway, I know you want 
the whole story, so where would you like me to 
start?"

"According to the letter, you were eleven when 
your mother died."

"Yes, but I couldn't remember the period around 
her death until well into my adulthood. Before 
that, I could just remember that I was a sick 
child because of cystic fibrosis. It was and still is 
an incurable and eventually fatal childhood 
disease." He paused, before continuing,  "Then 
suddenly my mother was dead, and I wasn't sick 
anymore, which was quite a contrast, because I'd 
been living with that illness since birth. My aunt 
and uncle raised me after my mother died. They 
didn't have any children of their own and were 
my only living relatives. They talked about my 
mother, but not about her death, just that she had 
suddenly died when I was in the hospital. So I 
grew up thinking she'd had a heart attack or a 
stroke, and that some sort of miracle had 
happened in regard to my own sickness."

"How did you recover your memories?"

"They started coming back to me in the last five 
years, in my dreams. Or rather, in my 
nightmares." Corin shifted in his armchair, one 
hand absently stroking the polished arm rest. "At 
first I didn't realize what they were, because I had 
a partner, and she would wake me very quickly 
when she could hear that it was a bad dream. It 
wasn't until after we broke up about eighteen 
months ago that the dreams lasted longer and I 
was able to see that they were about my mother. 
Hazy bits of images of her standing over me in 
the hospital, her concentrating, and then falling. 
Nurses running in. I thought it was my 
unresolved grief about her death, but then I 
started to wonder if these were actually memories 
instead of just things from my imagination."

"Did you try hypno regression?"

"No. I think what I can remember now is all that 
I'll be able to recall. On the night that my 
mother ended up dying, I was in the hospital 
because I was getting worse. I had a bad infection 
and my lungs were so clogged up . . . . The 
doctors didn't expect me to live long. I either 
had sedatives in my system or was asleep when 
my mother came into the room, so that's why I 
can only recall hazy bits of what happened next. 
Mom was standing there, concentrating, there 
was a blackness between us Ð"

"A blackness?"

Corin nodded. "A haze. When I recalled it, I 
thought it was just the drugs or the fact that my 
eyes were just cracked open a little. Then my 
mother clutched her chest and collapsed. Next 
thing I can remember, there were medical staff 
rushing my mother away, out of the room, and a 
doctor checking me. I could breathe properly."

Mulder wanted to ask more about the black haze, 
but Corin kept speaking.

"Cystic fibrosis is something that no adult 
should spontaneously develop. It's something a 
person is born with."

Mulder knew that Scully would think that 
Corin's illness could have been misdiagnosed, 
and was something hereditary that tests failed to 
pick up about twenty-four years ago when 
Corin's mother died. Or that someone bungled 
the finding that Mrs Harper died of cystic 
fibrosis. Therefore, no X-File, no trade. 

"As you've already seen, I managed to trace my 
old medical records and my mother's," Corin 
said. "They confirm what I remember. Somehow, 
suddenly and inexplicably, my mother got this 
disease. The autopsy report confirms it, as 
impossible as it is, because she had been healthy 
all of her life before then. It looks like the 
sudden shock killed her, though the infection 
soon would have anyway. Suddenly her lungs 
weren't working right." He swallowed. "She 
probably felt like she was drowning, unable to 
take a deep breath." 

He shuddered, his eyes getting damp. "The 
weirdness of it must have really freaked my aunt 
and uncle out Ð that's why they didn't talk about 
my mother's death. I think it came as a relief to 
them that my memories of that time were 
blocked out. Even when I asked Aunt Isabel 
about it not long ago, telling her what I could 
remember, she did her best to avoid the subject. 
Perhaps they were even a little afraid of me. My 
mother was very much into meditation and the 
new age way of thinking, while my aunt was 
anything but."

"So once you got the memories back you decided 
to track down these medical records?"

"Yeah. I had those snatches of memory, and the 
knowledge that I'd had cystic fibrosis as a kid 
and somehow been cured. The impossibility of it 
had always nagged at me, so that's why I was so 
curious and started digging once those memories 
returned."

"So how did your mother take your illness onto 
herself? You said on the phone that you think 
you now know."

"I *think* I've found out via others how she 
managed to do it," Corin stressed. "About twelve 
people have contacted me with similar 
incidences. And most of those occurrences seems 
to match the bits I can remember of the night she 
died."

"Most?"

"Yes. There are a few that I think are fake, 
cranks. They just don't 'feel' right."

Mulder nodded, well aware of how he himself 
was able to discern cases with a 'paranormal 
bouquet'. And at the moment, he was getting the 
feeling that Corin was genuine, that the man did 
believe in what he had written about. 

Corin said, "The ones that ring true are very 
interesting, and collaborative. Some people have 
been able to concentrate hard enough to actually 
'lift' the affliction out of their loved one and take 
it onto themselves instead."

"But if sheer willpower/prayer/hope/wishful 
thinking, whatever, are all that is required, then 
such a trade should be much more common, 
especially when parents are having to watch their 
children dying in hospital," Mulder pointed out. 
Heck, if that were the case, he would have been 
able to do that with Scully when she was in her 
coma or with the cancer.

"Yeah, I wondered about that too. I examined all 
the occurrences I could find and I think I've 
found two similarities. The main link seems to 
be that the person who is able to take the 
affliction onto themselves has had a near death 
experience in their past, like an accident that has 
brought them medically close to death or they 
have needed CPR."

That made Mulder sit up straighter. "So they 
actually had to have found themselves on another 
plane of existence or in a hallway moving 
towards a light, until they were brought back?"

"It might be enough that the person had a close 
brush with death. The people who have contacted 
me haven't all mentioned imagery like that. 
Some of them don't know for sure if the person 
who sacrificed their life for them actually had 
such an experience. I talked to the survivors and 
some can give me an instance where, for 
example, their benefactor had been in a car crash 
a few years beforehand but survived against steep 
odds." Corin ran a hand through his hair, 
contemplating the issue. "That person just may 
not have talked about what they went through, or 
remember it, or they might not have had the 
tunnel and the light, etc. It might not be 
necessary."

"Do you know if anything like that happened to 
your mother?"

"Yes. She told me when I was little. When she 
was a child, she and some friends tried to make a 
snow cave. It collapsed and my mother was 
caught in it. She couldn't breathe, and a feeling 
of incredible peace came over her. Then suddenly 
it was gone Ð her friends had dug around and 
managed to uncover her face, just in time. She 
said that after that, she didn't fear dying. I guess 
knowing she felt that way is some comfort. And 
it made me feel better when I was little that death 
wouldn't be so scary. But until people got in 
contact with me about my letter in the magazine, 
I hadn't considered that experience of my 
mother's as a factor in regard to what she ended 
up doing for me." Corin looked over at the 
photographs. "A miracle that could do so much 
for sick people, but at quite a price."

The carpenter blinked, then looked back at 
Mulder. "Perhaps a person who has a brush with 
death then possesses some sort of talent or 
power. Hopefully more people will write to me Ð 
I could do a follow-up letter in the next edition 
of the magazine, an article even, and publish in 
some others too. Then we can see if the same 
pattern keeps emerging. But I'm in two minds 
about doing that." The carpenter did not elaborate 
though. "I haven't got long to decide before 
submissions close for the next edition."

Mulder made a mental note to ask Corin about 
that hesitation, but first he reminded the 
carpenter, "You said there were two similarities."

"Yes. I'll tell you the other after I've got us 
something to drink. I think we need it," he 
replied with feeling. He indicated a folder on the 
coffee table. "There are the letters I've received, 
my copies of the medical reports, and my notes, 
including the 'rules' of this trade, as far as I can 
make out."

Then Corin went to the kitchen to make some 
coffee, and Mulder started looking through the 
paperwork. He also started to muse on what he 
had learned. 

Near death experiences and brushes with death. 
He'd certainly had those.

But so had Scully.

xXx

When Corin came back and they settled in their 
chairs again, he continued. "The second thing 
seems to involve visualization and focus. A 
person who has the necessary close brush with 
death might have a child who is sick, but 
wishing and praying that the illness goes or is 
given to the parent instead doesn't seem to work. 
My mother was into meditation; she was very 
visual. One person said that her father pictured 
the illness in her body and mentally focused on 
lifting it out. She said she saw a cloud of 'black 
light or mist' rise out of her own body, and go 
into her father. Just like I saw. When I read that, 
I knew I was on the right track, because I hadn't 
mentioned that in my letter. Several other people 
wrote about it too in their letters to me. That 
seems to be how the illness appears, how it 
manifests: a dark cloud. And once it is out of the 
sick person's body, they are fine. It's like all the 
damage and weakness it caused has gone too."

Time for the million dollar question. Mulder 
mentally crossed his fingers and asked it. "Due 
to the rules, as you know them, if one person 
manages to get the affliction out of another, 
could the cured person turn around and take it 
back?"

"I'm not sure. It does seem that the person who 
has taken the illness onto themselves can't then 
remove it from their own body, for example to 
try to transfer it to someone else. And it looks 
like it has to be a fatal disease for the trade to 
occur." 

"Some diseases are fatal to children but not so 
much to adults . . . . Some forms of leukemia, I 
think," Mulder said.

"I haven't had any cases where something like 
that has happened. Whether that's because for 
some reason the trade can't take place under those 
circumstances or I just haven't been contacted by 
anyone like that yet, I don't know. In the child 
to adult trades that I've read about, and 
experienced, the disease or illness was strong 
enough to kill the adult."

Corin told him more, recounting how one person 
had found out from someone else how to do the 
trade, so she decided to try it with her sick child. 
She got the illness out of her child and then as 
the dark cloud came towards the parent, she held 
up one of their farmyard animals in front of her, 
trying to see if the mass would go into the 
animal instead, therefore sparing both her child 
and herself. But it couldn't Ð it had to be human 
to human.

And the mass couldn't be lifted out of the victim 
and then mentally 'thrown away' by the person 
doing the lifting. 

The haunted look was back in Corin's eyes, 
making Mulder uncomfortable, considering what 
he was planning. 

Corin said, "Now that I know what my mother 
did for me, I'm kind of torn. I'm grateful for her 
sacrifice, but it's hard to accept that I'm only 
here because she's dead. She may have felt guilty 
because cystic fibrosis is inherited, so she could 
have passed the disease to me in that way, as a 
carrier. But she always tried to make things 
happy and positive. When I became healthy, I 
was determined to live life, to make the most of 
it, and I have." Corin gestured at the glass 
cabinet, full of trophies and evidence of his 
travels. "I guess now I need to keep focusing on 
that. Not to waste what Mom gave me, despite 
the cost." 

Mulder hoped Scully would see it that way, if he 
did manage to pull off a trade. He found himself 
asking, "Do you believe in fate? That this was 
perhaps meant to be?"

At that, Corin paused for what seemed a long 
time, before finally saying, "I honestly don't 
know. Perhaps to some degree, but a lot of free 
will and luck too. Mom used her free will. This 
is what she chose. I'm also torn about writing a 
follow up letter or article. I mean, in a way this 
is giving people a chance to save a loved one, 
however it could also be seen as aiding murder or 
suicide . . . ."

Soon Mulder was about to take his leave. He 
indicated the folder on the coffee table. "I'd like 
to take copies of what you've got there."

"Of course. I've got a printer in my office that's 
also one of those copier, fax and scanner 
combos."

Once that was done, Mulder looked at the 
collection of papers. I still have to go through 
these thoroughly, but I am probably going to try 
this. I've got nothing to lose, apart from Scully, 
which is not an option.

"Thank you, you've been very helpful."

He saw a look go through Corin's eyes, and a 
hesitation, and for a moment he thought that the 
carpenter suspected that Mulder wanted to use 
this trade himself and was about to ask. But the 
moment passed and Corin instead ushered him to 
the front door.

When he was leaving, Mulder almost told Corin, 
'I'll keep you in mind for your furniture too. I 
had a fire in my apartment recently and could do 
with some new things.' But then he thought that 
there was also a good chance that he might be 
dead of aplastic anemia soon, if the trade worked.

No! He couldn't let himself think like that. If 
this did work, there was the chance of a donor for 
him, or a chance of drug therapy working. He 
had to try it Ð there were no other options at the 
moment. His innate stubbornness and arrogance 
and 'never give up' mentality were assuring him 
that somehow he would find a way to outwit this 
trade or make it work out.

And if the trade didn't work, there was a good 
chance that Scully would die, and his life would 
be over anyway. So any thoughts about buying 
or ordering new furniture were definitely on the 
backburner at the moment.

xXx

Mulder returned to D.C. in good time and 
without Scully being aware that he had taken a 
little trip. He phoned her from the basement to 
check how she was, and then went home that 
night at the usual time.

"My next doctor's appointment . . . is tomorrow. 
And I think he'll want . . . to admit me," Scully 
told him quietly after Maggie had gone.

Mulder looked at his partner. She was lying in 
her bed, with the nasal cannula, and he was 
wearing a mask. To a degree she was already in a 
hospital. He nodded, outwardly appearing to 
accept the inevitable.  "We're going to be okay."

She managed a smile. "You go have dinner. 
Mom's already . . . given me mine."

"Okay. Do you want anything? Another audio 
book or something?"

"No. I'll have a nap . . . Then you can read to me 
. . . or tell me some jokes."

"Jokes? Now that could be interesting. Let me go 
through my prolific selection, and just ring the 
bell if you need anything." A hand bell was set 
up within easy reach for her.

xXx

Several hours later:

She was sound asleep. It was time.

Mulder carried one of the chairs from the dining 
table set into the bedroom. He put the chair next 
to the bed, its back up against a bookcase, on the 
side that Scully was sleeping on. 

He sat down. Hands resting on his knees, he 
took a deep breath. 

Please let this work, he thought, while another 
part of him was internally raging, rebelling 
against such a drastic step. The thought of 
willingly allowing a deadly disease into himself 
. . . . He did have a strong instinct for survival Ð 
he'd had to, considering what he'd managed to 
overcome over the years. However this was for 
Scully. He would willingly take a bullet for her 
in the line of duty. This was no different. He 
remembered how close to the brink he had come 
when he thought he would lose her to the cancer.

And there will be a way to get rid of this, he told 
himself. There has to be, and I will find it. I've 
done it before. There will be time.

But for now . . . .

More deep breaths. He concentrated on Scully, 
the features he knew so well. Then he pictured 
her illness as a dark cloud inside her, an invader 
in her body.

For a little time, there was nothing. He 
concentrated harder.

Suddenly he could feel it. Not see it, but his 
mind brushed against something. The impression 
of something strange, leaden, in Scully. 

He concentrated more, visualizing his enemy, 
and he felt himself mentally connect with it. He 
'pulled'.

You picked the wrong place to set up as a 
squatter, buddy. Eviction time.

He pulled harder, his mind straining.

And to his astonishment, relief and fear, a black 
cloud rose out of Scully's sleeping form, to 
hover just above her.

Am I imagining this? Sheer wishful thinking? 
Mulder was so surprised and startled, that he 
started to let go of his mental grip. The cloud 
began to sink back into Scully, but he quickly 
halted it. 

He could be imagining it, or have fallen asleep 
and be dreaming Ð things certainly felt surreal at 
the moment - but he had to assume he wasn't.

Okay, I've lassoed the varmint, he couldn't help 
thinking to himself. Now I have to pull it away 
from her. 

He could feel the cloud was trying to go back 
into Scully's body. And Corin was right: no 
amount of effort on Mulder's part could make the 
mass go anywhere else but into either himself or 
Scully. He felt panic, then resignation. He kept 
reeling the black haze in. His body could not 
move while he was doing this. Somehow it was 
immobile.

Once he got the cloud over the halfway mark 
between their bodies, the gravitational pull of his 
own body took over, and suddenly the cloud 
easily flowed into his torso with a speed that 
took him by surprise.

Simultaneously his mind yelled both a 
triumphant, hopeful 'Yes!' and a horrified, 
helpless, 'No!' at what he had just done.

Mulder blinked. The cloud was gone. He could 
see no trace of it, either in the air or on his own 
skin. Perhaps he had imagined all this, and just 
fallen asleep in the chair instead.

Scully kept sleeping. Mulder found he could 
move again, and tried to work out if he felt any 
different. Tired for sure, but that could be 
explained away by all they'd been going through. 
And he wasn't sure how long it took for an 
illness to assert itself in a new body after a trade. 
Not too long at least, because Corin could 
remember his mother falling . . . .

Mulder stood and gazed down at his partner. She 
seemed to be sleeping more easily, breathing 
more deeply.

xXx

Next morning:

Scully woke up, but didn't open her eyes, just 
drifting in contentment in the warmth of the bed. 
Of course, it would be even nicer if Mulder was 
there with her. She would just have to imagine 
that he was Ð

Then she realized she wasn't short of breath. In 
fact, the fog of lethargy and illness that had been 
weighing her down, getting worse and worse, 
was gone.

She felt healthy, alert and awake. And even, 
thanks to her imaginings about Mulder, 
definitely in the mood for some fun.

Scully opened her eyes and looked around. She 
was in her bedroom, not a hospital. She still had 
the cannula and the PICC line, so her illness 
could not have been a nightmare she had just 
woken up from. But what was going on? She 
took a few experimental deep breaths. No 
problem. She stretched her legs under the covers. 
No aches, no strain. In fact, she sensed that if she 
got up and went to the bathroom, heck, even for 
a run, her legs would oblige her. 

She cautiously sat up. No dizziness or 
overwhelming tiredness hit her. She gingerly 
removed the nasal cannula, with no ill effects.

She looked at the bedside clock. Her alarm was 
due to go off in about ten more minutes. Mulder 
should be up, getting ready. He was going to 
come with her to the doctor's appointment, then, 
after the verdict, phone Skinner to tell him what 
was happening and whether he would then be 
coming in to work. 

She couldn't hear the shower running, or any 
other noise. "Mulder?" Her voice was strong and 
clear. No answer. "Mulder!"

Perhaps he had gone somewhere, or for a run. 
But he wouldn't have dared leave her alone. Not 
when she was this sick.

Only she didn't seem to be sick anymore. 

"Mulder!" Scully wondered if she was having a 
good hour or something, as impossible as it 
seemed at this stage, and that everything would 
come crashing back on her any minute. She 
turned off the alarm, and slid her feet out of the 
blankets and onto the floor. The PICC line was 
still capped off, so she didn't have to worry 
about taking the IV stand along as she headed 
towards the bedroom door.

But then there was movement, a shuffling noise, 
and Mulder appeared in the doorway. 

"Mulder, there you are! I'm Ð"

She stopped and blinked. The room was still 
somewhat dim, so she wasn't getting a clear look 
at Mulder's face, but she could hear that his 
breathing was heavy and see that he was holding 
onto the doorframe tightly. Had he gone for a run 
after all?

As she turned on the bedside lamp, she asked, 
"Mulder, are you all right?" at the same time as 
the same question came from him. Only his 
voice sounded very weak.

She blinked in the light and then finally got a 
good look at him. He looked like hell. In fact, he 
not only looked like, but sounded like . . . .

Herself, just yesterday. 

"Mulder, what's wrong?"

He ignored her question, but did not move 
forward from his grip on the doorframe. "Are you 
all right . . . Scully?" he repeated.

"I'm fine. Honestly, I feel fine. Like I'm not sick 
anymore." She saw him close his eyes, in 
exhaustion and Ð

Relief?

Then realization rooted her temporarily to the 
spot. She had somehow been cured, but at a cost. 
"Mulder, what did you do?"

"What makes you think . . . it was me? Your 
chip probably came . . . to the fore again." He 
was getting breathless already, just saying those 
few sentences.

"No. I know you're lying. Not only that, but 
you're looking and sounding like I was." Her 
tone brooked no argument, and it also contained 
traces of fear. She moved towards him, seeing 
the effort it was taking for him to stay on his 
feet, and then he stumbled forward. Between 
them, they managed to get him to sit on the bed 
without him falling along the way. 

She reached for the nasal cannula, intending to 
put it on him. "What have you done?" she asked.

"What I promised you I'd do." He paused for 
breath. "What you would . . . have done for me."

"Whatever it took . . . . Mulder, you didn't make 
any deals, did you?"

"I swear to you, no deals were made . . . . I just 
found a way to cure you . . . and against all 
odds, it worked. I have to admit, I'm just as 
surprised . . . as you are."

She had finished positioning the cannula and he 
took a few deep breaths as she was opening her 
mouth to instruct him to do just that, quickly 
getting some oxygen into himself. She stared at 
him. "But you've got the illness. Somehow, 
you've got it now."

"Yeah. I think so . . . . Have to run tests for sure 
though." 

"And that's a cure? You having it instead of me? 
Making me feel better in one way, but horrible in 
another!" She was nearly yelling at him now, 
even though she could see the pain and hurt in 
his eyes.

Then a ghost of an ironic smile flitted across his 
pale face. "You're welcome."

Trying to hold back her fear and questions, 
Scully headed for the nearest phone.

END ACT TWO

xXx

ACT THREE:

Tests confirmed it. Scully miraculously no 
longer had aplastic anemia. But Mulder was 
suffering from it, severely enough to be 
hospitalized. 

Scully sat by her partner's side, in protective 
gear, including a mask. Her PICC line had been 
removed. She was an internal mess of emotions 
at the moment. Anger at him for doing this 
clashed with her gratitude and love, fear that she 
was going to lose him was nearly smothering 
her, and a burning desire for answers and for his 
cure spearheaded through them all.

She felt awful pressing her partner with questions 
while he was lying sick, oxygen mask firmly in 
place, but this had to be done. For him. For 
them.

For what seemed to be the thousandth time, she 
asked him, "How did you do it, Mulder?" When 
he shook his head, she snapped, "I have the right 
to know! Look, if you've found a way to swap 
this illness from me to you, then surely there 
must be a way to -"

"No. Irreversible."

"That's not true. Otherwise you wouldn't be 
guarding the method so fiercely," she pointed 
out.

"Maybe I want to patent it . . . and make a 
fortune," he shot back. "Scully, we still have 
other options. The Gunmen are . . . looking into 
them."

"Healing aliens?"

"And hollow earth," Mulder said, referring to a 
race of highly evolved and enlightened 
humanoids they had encountered twice two years 
ago in a National Park in California. Those 
beings, the Agarthans, lived deep underground, 
and were able to easily heal Mulder's injured leg 
and a case of progressive amnesia that baffled 
human doctors. 

"Lathos said we wouldn't be able to contact them 
again for a while," Scully pointed out. He was 
the Agarthan who had taken them to his city.

"A while may be up. It was something . . . I was 
considering when you were first diagnosed, but 
at the time we thought . . . the other treatments 
would work or a donor would be found. . . . . 
Then by the time those things . . . didn't pan 
out, you were too sick . . . to make the trip."

"And so are you."

"Byers is willing to go to the campsite . . . and 
see if Lathos turns up. Or you could go. Or who 
knows Ð Cancerman might even . . . decide to 
intervene with some of his . . . alien 
technology."

Because he thought that Mulder was his son? 
"You're taking a hell of a gamble."

"That's me. And you're worth it. I just couldn't 
stand to see you . . . in a hospital again, Scully."

"I know. But here I am, in a hospital again, and I 
can't stand it, even though I'm not the one in the 
bed." Well, her heart was.

"There are also . . . experimental treatments. 
Could try . . . one," Mulder said. Scully and her 
doctor had considered several of these, but ruled 
them out for her on various reasons. But now 
that the aplastic anemia was in Mulder, perhaps 
those reasons no longer applied.

But he was deteriorating so quickly Ð there 
probably wasn't time to try.

Mulder must have done his best to cover his 
tracks to the secret of the trade, but there had to 
be some traces left, some clues. And she was an 
experienced investigator too, with contacts of her 
own.

And even if she didn't find out what he had 
done, she might be able to find another way to 
save him instead.

xXx

Several days later:

Scully stared despondently at the wall in 
Mulder's hospital room, unsuccessful thus far at 
finding out the secret cure. Or 'swap'. 

The Gunmen and Chuck all swore that they had 
no idea how Mulder had done it. And that they 
weren't lying to protect her.

She had considered going to see if she could 
summon Lathos, but Mulder had come down 
with a serious infection, and she was scared to 
leave him for too long. Especially when she had 
no idea how long it would take for Lathos to 
appear, or one of the others, if at all. So Byers 
was about to make the trip instead, fully briefed 
by Scully on all they knew.

Skinner had also promised her he would do 
anything he could to help.

"Mulder, there was still a chance that they would 
find a donor who was compatible with me," 
Scully said to her partner.

"Well, they hadn't . . . so far. Time was running 
out . . . for you."

"And now you've got an infection, a very serious 
one, that there is a good chance I wouldn't have 
even gotten." 

Time was running out quicker for Mulder. There 
was no donor match for him so far, but even if 
they did find a match, there was the danger that 
he was already too weak and unstable to have a 
transplant, or that it would most likely fail. It 
was a rough procedure and even patients without 
infections could have a bad reaction. Trying to 
control the infection was the doctors' priority at 
the moment.

Inwardly he was cursing the infection, while also 
being glad that Scully had been spared it. But it 
was stripping him of time he couldn't afford to 
lose and hadn't counted on losing. As Deep 
Throat had warned, he was a shark that was now 
no longer swimming.

"And if you won't tell me what you did, what 
this cure is, then isn't that preventing other 
people from being able to use it too?" Scully 
asked.

He didn't answer.

xXx

Scully's apartment:

Now Scully was the one sitting at a desk, poring 
over all the things that Chuck said he had loaned 
Mulder. Unless of course Mulder had removed 
anything relevant Ð Chuck had such a large 
collection that it was hard for him to keep up 
with it.

After going through Mulder's computer files 
herself, she had given his computer to the 
Gunmen with orders to see if there was any 
deleted information they could retrieve that could 
be of some help. Her computer. His office 
computer. She was using another, borrowed, 
laptop when needed.

The phone records from Mulder's cellular, 
Scully's home phone and the office phone 
yielded no clues. She even got her own cellular 
records checked. The bastard had probably used a 
payphone somewhere, if he had needed to contact 
anyone about this. His credit card transactions 
also gave no indications.

Amongst Mulder's paperwork, there were a lot of 
trails that led to dead ends, because her partner 
had been chasing down so many paths in trying 
to find a cure for her.

Scully believed that Mulder had kept records of 
what he had done and placed them somewhere for 
her to find, but not to come to light until there 
was no longer any possibility of her reversing 
whatever he had done. Because, like she had said 
to him, otherwise he would be preventing other 
people from being helped in the same way.

So she used her FBI credentials and her rights as 
his Power of Attorney to do some digging. His 
safety deposit boxes gave no answers, though she 
did have searches ongoing just in case Mulder 
had more out there she didn't know about or 
under a false name like George Hale. And she 
had contacted his lawyers to see if they were 
holding anything Ð she was waiting for the 
Rhode Island lawyer to get back to her.

Scully sighed. She had the feeling that whatever 
method Mulder had used, there had not been 
much time in-between him discovering it and 
then implementing it. So that meant not much 
time to cover his tracks. She had hoped that in 
his haste he would have forgotten something. 
And it also meant that the answers were likely to 
be somewhere in either their basement office or 
her apartment. So far her searching had not led 
anywhere Ð even in just those two places, there 
was a lot of ground to cover and a lot of time 
needed to do it thoroughly.

She checked her watch, intending to head back to 
the hospital in another hour. Mulder's infection 
was getting worse, and his temperature was up. 
Despondent, she swivelled in the desk chair, 
looking around her living room, trying to work 
out where to check next. 

If she were Mulder, where would she have put 
the answers? They would be in a place that he 
knew she would eventually look, but in 
something that she would be too distracted to be 
using, or needing something from, at such a 
hectic, frantic time.

A possible answer came to her with a jolt, 
without her eyes even having to land on it first. 
His photo album. He would have gambled that 
scanning his baby pictures was hardly a priority 
at the moment.

Scully hurried over to the shelf where the album 
had been put for safekeeping. As she pulled it 
out, it felt thicker than she remembered. Sure 
enough, a paranormal magazine was tucked 
inside the front cover, as well as various pages.

Heart thudding, Scully sat down to read their 
contents.

xXx

Scully had finished reading the hidden secrets of 
the album. This trading ability sounded 
fantastical, but . . . it was also the only answer 
that explained her recovery and Mulder's 
condition.

Potentially, it might be reversible. There were no 
instances of anyone who had tried it, but that 
could be because most of the cases sent to Corin 
Harper involved a parent and child, with the 
child unaware of what had happened until too 
late. Or the disease was 'generic' enough for its 
remission in one person and occurrence in the 
other to be seen as just a horrible coincidence.

"A near death experience is the key . . . ." Scully 
mused out loud. Her qualifying on that score was 
not a problem. No wonder Mulder had been so 
guarded about what he'd done.

She found herself wondering if she would also 
get Mulder's infection when she transferred the 
aplastic anemia back. But that really didn't 
matter. She fingered one of the pages that had 
been in the album: a handwritten letter from 
Mulder to her, that he had expected her to read 
after his death. It had brought her to tears, and to 
even fiercer determination.

All of the emotions he felt for her, that made 
him take this illness onto himself, she felt just 
as strongly towards him. She couldn't let him 
die.

It was time to take back what was hers.

xXx

Scully entered Mulder's hospital room. It was 
very late at night Ð luckily the medical staff were 
all extremely well acquainted with this particular 
FBI couple. 

Mulder was asleep, sedated. His fever was down, 
but it was only a matter of time before it rose 
again. The infection was gaining ground, despite 
what they threw at it. IV antibiotic treatments 
were buying some time and temporary respites, 
but that was all.

Scully sat with him, waiting for the next nurse's 
check. Finally someone showed up and went 
about their duties.  After the nurse left, Scully 
knew how long it would be until the next one, 
how long she should have before she would be 
disturbed. 

She had to try this now. Hopefully he was 
sedated enough, or at least deeply asleep enough 
not to wake up and realize what she was doing. 
But if this did work, what would be the affect on 
the monitoring equipment? If it started going off 
halfway through the trade . . . .

Scully considered whether to lock or bar the 
door. But that gave rise to danger if something 
went wrong and no one could get in. Perhaps she 
should call one of the Gunmen to come and stay 
at the door, but then she would have to wait for 
another shift and there was no guarantee that he'd 
be allowed into Mulder's ICU room when there 
was already one visitor.

Damn!

She decided to try the trade now and looked 
around. The curtains of all the windows were 
closed, including the ones in the walls that ran 
along the corridor. Good. 

Quietly Scully stood up. She turned and moved 
the recliner chair out of the way, then came back 
to stand beside Mulder's bed. She stared at him, 
concentrating not on him, but on the illness, 
picturing it as a black cloud in Mulder's body. 
She felt rather self-conscious and somewhat silly, 
but forced those feelings aside. If this was what 
it took, then so be it. Mentally she imagined 
lifting the cloud up and out.

Nothing.

She tried again. Still nothing.

Scully felt panic creeping in. Had she been led 
on a wild goose chase? Or was her own 
skepticism getting in the way of this working?

There were more than enough brushes with death 
on her record Ð including her own bout of this 
aplastic anemia Ð to make this work. 

She looked at Mulder's pale, sleeping face, or 
what she could see of it around and through the 
oxygen mask, and her determination tripled. 

And this time when she pictured the illness, the 
invader in his body, she could *feel* her mind 
brush against it. The heaviness and dread of it. 
She took hold of it in her mind. Heat. 
Malevolence. Hunger. 

She swallowed and steeled herself. Remember 
me?

Scully pulled at it with all her willpower. She 
felt it resist. The infection was well-settled and 
spread and did not want to leave. But Scully 
could be and was a most determined woman.

A dark cloud lifted out of Mulder and hovered 
just above his body. 

Scully sucked in a surprised breath through her 
mask, and just like Mulder had, almost let go of 
the cloud upon seeing it for real. 

It *was* real.

But more importantly, this was working.

Scully tried to lean over, to get as close to the 
cloud as possible. But it was like her body was 
locked in position Ð already caught up in the 
battle to prevent the cloud from going back into 
her partner. So she tried to bring the cloud over 
to her with her mind. 

Slowly, ever so slowly, it began to move 
towards her.

Fear sent her heart racing even more. The notes 
had been right; she couldn't get the cloud to 
move left or right, or away from them both. It 
needed a body, and it was determined to have the 
nearest one. 

There was not much distance between her and 
Mulder, relatively speaking, but it seemed like a 
chasm. Scully's head was aching, and the cloud 
was halfway to her now. A little more and the 
'gravity of her orbit' would pull it in.

A part of her realized that she was crying. In 
resignation, relief . . . .

She felt the cloud coming Ð

"No!" came a hoarse, horrified voice from the 
bed.

Mulder's eyes were open, staring at the cloud, at 
her.

The black mass halted abruptly. Scully could feel 
Mulder's will come into play, as surely as if he 
was grabbing hold of the cloud with a mental 
hand. 

"Mulder, don't!"

"Scully!" His eyes were wide and wild, holding 
off sleep and sedatives somehow. His face was 
straining and his body was taut. She could tell 
he was desperately trying to move, but like her, 
his body was locked. Only their minds had any 
sway in this battle.

And their minds were an even match. Scully 
hoped that the sedatives and weakness would 
have some effect on Mulder, allowing her to take 
the cloud. Though now that the cloud was out of 
his body, those things could well be too. The 
darkness was suspended between them, straining 
as they both exerted their wills on it.

A bizarre tug of war, with only one 'winner'. 

"Mulder, please!" She almost found herself about 
to yell, 'It's mine!' like a child in a playground. 
But her desperate plea to him had just as much 
emotion in it.

The cloud moved closer towards her.

"No!" Mulder concentrated, and the cloud halted, 
like a dog reaching the end of its leash.

Stupid, stubborn man! And now that the illness 
was out of him, he was making the most of his 
renewed energy in trying to reclaim it.

She could feel him trying to pull it back. 

And suddenly she realized that something was 
happening to the cloud.

It was starting to churn. Flashes of electricity or 
energy appeared and disappeared in it. 

Her distraction allowed Mulder to move the 
cloud closer towards him. Scully quickly 
stopped that in its tracks.

Her head felt like it was going to split in two, 
but she had to keep this up. She tried to tell 
Mulder with her eyes to please let go, that she 
couldn't bear to see him go through this.

But his eyes were telling her exactly the same.

"Scully," Mulder managed to get out, past his 
straining and the oxygen mask. "See if we can 
move it away. . . Both of us together . . . might 
be able to . . ."

Two together might be able to do what one could 
not. It was worth a try, though she was at a loss 
as to how they were going to be able to get rid of 
it. "Okay, to my left!" she ordered.

But although they concentrated fiercely, the 
cloud would not bend to their wills in that way.

It was writhing in earnest now, little internal 
lightning bolts darting across its surface and in 
its murky depths.

Oh God, someone would surely notice this and 
come in . . . .

"Mulder, please let me Ð"

She stopped her plea when she saw something 
pass through Mulder's eyes. She had seen that 
look often enough Ð during the times he was 
making one of those spooky leaps of logic.  

"Keep it there! Keep it between us!" he cried out.

The cloud was roiling as if in a rage. The 
lightning had increased.

Then suddenly there was a flash of light and a 
bang. Something hit Scully with such force that 
she was knocked off her feet. She found herself 
lying against the wall, dazed. 

Mulder. She scrambled up, having to fight 
briefly with the recliner chair that was now lying 
on its side. Her mask was dangling around her 
neck, and the lights were blinking on and off but 
so rapidly she could still see. Alarms were going 
off on equipment. As soon as she stood up, she 
saw Mulder. 

He was still in the bed, but struggling into a 
sitting position and pulling off the oxygen mask 
and reaching out for her. If he wasn't tethered by 
the catheter and other tubes and leads, she knew 
he would have been out of that bed like a shot. 
Though a few of the leads and monitoring wires 
were hanging off or askew. The protests coming 
from the equipment seemed to be more from 
whatever had just happened with the power and 
Mulder losing some of the leads than him being 
at death's door.

She went to him. "Are you all right?" they asked 
each other simultaneously. Scully didn't even 
notice the bedrails pressing against her as she 
managed to embrace her partner. The lights 
stopped blinking as they held each other. 

Scully could hear that med staff were trying to 
get in the door. The recliner chair was in the 
way, jammed on an angle that was making 
things difficult.

Her heart was pounding, and she could feel 
Mulder's was too. "Which one of us did it go 
into?" she asked, looking up at him, more 
worried about that than letting the med staff in, 
for the moment. "I felt something hit me. It 
must have been the cloud going back in." She 
felt sore, but that could have been from being 
knocked down. And here was Mulder, holding 
her tightly, with no sign of frailty or fever or the 
need for oxygen. 

But she didn't feel sick either. Unless a trade 
took several minutes at least to 'settle' into a 
new body . . . .

"I felt something hit me too," Mulder said, still 
holding her. "But I think we're okay. I'll tell you 
my theory in a minute, but first you'd better 
open that door before they smash a window or 
get a battering ram. Coming!" he called out, 
reluctantly letting go of her.

END ACT THREE

xXx

ACT FOUR:

A few days later:

"Capable Carpentry, Corin speaking."

"Mr Harper, this is Agent Fox Mulder."

"Hi! You've got good timing. I was going to 
contact you today Ð I just received another letter 
and was going to send you a copy." 

"That would be great, thank you. I might be able 
to collect it in person if I can come and see you 
sometime soon, because I'm actually phoning to 
give you some news I'm sure will interest you 
very much . . . ." And so Mulder started to 
explain that his work as a paranormal 
investigator hadn't been the only reason he had 
gone to see Corin in the first place.

xXx

The next day, Mulder and Scully were sitting in 
Corin Harper's living room. 

"Our bloodwork is clear," Scully told Corin. 
"Neither of us have aplastic anemia anymore. 
And Mulder's infection has completely gone."

The carpenter looked happy and amazed in equal 
parts. Mulder had told him over the phone, but 
actually seeing for himself was another thing 
entirely. "And you think it was because you were 
able to keep the cloud suspended between you?"

Mulder took up the explanation. "It all came 
down to physics and our tug of war over the 
cloud. It had converted into a mass of energy to 
exit the body, and couldn't remain in that state 
indefinitely. It either had to be in a body, or it 
had to discharge. And fortunately Scully and I 
were able to keep it outside of its natural 
environment for long enough that it was forced 
to discharge. In a 'normal' trade, there is only 
one person battling the mass and they only have 
limited control over it, but for two people it is 
possible to hold the cloud in place and force its 
hand."

"Talk about a lucky metamorphosis!" Corin 
commented.

"Very. Though it certainly took a lot of energy 
and strain on our parts. From what we can tell, it 
converted into a bit of a shockwave Ð flash of 
light, a bang, a rush of air strong enough to 
knock Scully back and pin me to the bed for a 
moment. Fortunately no actual explosion to 
speak of, no electric discharge, or not much of 
one, otherwise the room probably would have 
been incinerated or there could have been a nasty 
reaction with the oxygen supply I was on at the 
time. And even though we were both hit by the 
'wind', the cloud was now in a different state and 
harmless as was. So, no illness."

"We beat the trade," Scully said, still with some 
disbelief amongst her relief. "We found a way."

Yes, Mulder thought. Because we're two people 
who are so completely stubborn when it comes 
to each other's wellbeing. If this outcome hadn't 
happened, he could only imagine the two of 
them continually trying to 'steal back' the illness 
from each other, if possible, until the aplastic 
anemia reached a point where it killed whichever 
one of them it was in at the time. Other just as 
awful scenarios also came to mind. He tried to 
conceal a shudder of horror.

Corin was ecstatic. "What a loophole. I've got to 
put this in my follow-up in the magazine! This 
makes me determined to do one now, because 
this is the ultimate case! Other people can be 
saved." Then his smile dimmed. "Though if only 
I'd known this back when my mother saved me . 
. . . She could still be alive today."

"You were eleven years old and very sick, 
Corin," Scully pointed out gently. "You had no 
way of knowing."

He sighed and nodded, still looking regretful.

They sipped at their drinks. The agents were still 
feeling sore from the bone marrow biopsies done 
on them to make sure they were cured, but that 
was nothing compared to what they had just been 
through. And due to the bizarre nature of their 
recoveries, the tests and results had been rushed 
through a lot quicker than normal. 

Corin had a thoughtful look on his face. "I have 
a feeling that the two of you won't be able to do 
it again," he remarked after a pause.

"I'm just glad it worked this time!" Mulder said 
with feeling. "But what makes you think that? If 
it was a case of 'once swapped, no refunds', then 
Scully wouldn't have been able to pull the cloud 
back out of me."

Corin elaborated. "Mulder, you told me a bit 
about some of your near death-experiences."

The agent nodded. When Mulder had phoned 
Corin with the good news, the carpenter had 
wanted more information about their own close 
calls, to see if it all matched in with the 'rules' 
as he knew them so far about the trade. Corin 
had provided them with so much help and 
information that it was only fair they did the 
same for him.

"You said that in one of your near-death 
experiences, you could remember something 
about being on a bridge that spanned two worlds 
Ð which would be the real world and the spiritual 
world. Those that have had near-death 
experiences probably retain some residual access 
to that bridge, that connection, even 
subconsciously, to be able to do the trade. But 
due to what transpired, I think you may have 
sealed that connection off. For now, anyway. I 
guess we'll have to see, as it is a rather unique 
case." 

"Yes, we specialize in those," Scully said with a 
grin.

Mulder laughed, then said, "Corin, please keep 
us updated about any other instances you find of 
this phenomenon."

"I'll be glad to."

Eventually it was time to go. Mulder shook 
Corin's hand. "Thanks to your letter, you saved 
us both."

"My mother deserves the credit," came the 
wistful reply. "Now, before you go, come out the 
back."

When they entered Corin's workshop, Mulder 
was pulled away from admiring the objects and 
items by Corin saying, "Agent Scully phoned 
yesterday, without you knowing. She had a 
request for me, one that I was happy to fulfil. 
Something she wanted to get for you." 

He led them to the back of the workshop, 
laughing at the quizzical look that Mulder gave 
Scully. She just smiled mysteriously in 
response. 

"What do you think?"

Mulder stared. Corin was pointing at a beautiful 
wood cabinet, one that was holding an empty 
forty gallon fishtank. The tank fitted perfectly, 
and the cabinet was designed with room for the 
tubes and wires, plus storage space underneath 
for all the necessary paraphernalia and more. 

"Hand rubbed walnut," Corin supplied with 
pride.

"And hand carved," Scully said, admiring the 
intricate borders and patterns. 

"You couldn't have gotten this ready so 
quickly," Mulder said, a little stunned.

Corin answered, "I didn't. It was one of several 
I'd already made. And this one matches the type 
and measurements that Agent Scully wanted."

"Better than I ever imagined. If you want it, 
Mulder, we can get it delivered to my 
apartment."

Mulder said honestly, "I love it. It makes metal 
stands seem obsolete. But where are we going to 
put it in your apartment while I'm looking for 
another place?"

"We'll find room. I wanted to get you some fish, 
and it will be nice to have them around. 
Especially in this marine Hilton!"

Mulder laughed and nodded. "Thanks, Corin. 
You've made a sale. And when I'm looking for 
other furniture, I know where to call."

"Excellent!"

Scully insisted on buying the cabinet for Mulder 
as a gift. They decided to get a tank in D.C., 
then made delivery arrangements with Corin, and 
said goodbye. 

As they pulled away from his house, Scully said 
to her partner, "Let's go back to D.C. and pick 
out some fish and a tank with all the 
trimmings."

"After we go back to your apartment and I show 
you my gratitude," he said with a smouldering 
look.

"Deal. And from now on, the only trades we're 
doing involve matters like housework or food."

"Agreed." He also knew that he wouldn't be 
looking up what apartments were available for 
rent, not just yet anyway. 


THE END.


MEDICAL NOTES: A lot of the medical 
information on aplastic anemia I got from the 
MEdIC Aplastic Anemia Answer book on the 
internet, and from friends with medical 
backgrounds. Beta opinion varied on medical 
aspects like the lengths of treatment times, speed 
of scheduling for tests and when results would be 
available, etc, so I have gone with the times and 
scenarios that best serve the plot. Any mistakes 
are my own. 

AUTHOR'S NOTES: The idea for this story has 
been bubbling in my head for years, originally 
conceived for a planned fourth season alternate 
universe fic as a way that Mulder cures Scully of 
her cancer. Influence probably came from a fanfic 
I remember reading in around 1996, which I 
think was called "Driver", where Scully becomes 
blind. With the help of a woman's mysterious 
powers, Mulder takes her blindness instead. 

And the show itself has done some episodes 
along similar themes, like 'Tithonus' and a 
season eight episode, the name of which escapes 
me. So it was fun to try to find another angle.