She hangs up the phone and takes off her blouse. Fox is resting and she really needs a shower. It hasn't been an easy day, especially not since his breathless, panicked phone call from a university stairwell.

It has begun. Deja vu all over again. She'd gone to him, collected him, and she's just told his
greatest enemy that game is in motion.

She almost expects to trip over Fox's briefcase on the way to the bathroom, find her own good silk blouse hanging in the bathroom in hopes that shower steam would get out the wrinkles.

She turns on the tap and hears Fox moan. She chooses to ignore it this time and tries to get the water scalding hot. The pipes creak and she sighs. They're old, the building's old, and she's old. Too damned old to be here now, playing games and letting that smoking bastard give her orders.

Fox was never supposed to get hurt. He wasn't supposed to get in this deep. She came back to ensure that. Jeff Spender was supposed to follow his father dutifully and Diana was supposed to hold Jeff's hand in the basement until the case could be made to close the X-files for good. Cassandra Spender was never supposed to be a successful prototype. None of this was supposed to happen.

She was supposed to be happily married, living in a Connecticutt suburb with Fox and their children (two, a boy and a girl). He was supposed to be fighting tangible villians and to have found Samantha. She was supposed to love him and honor him, and instead she was here, betraying him even now. For ten years, she had told herself it was for his own good, for their own good, that they'd be together in the end.

She closes her eyes and lets herself believe it was as simple as all that. She hears Fox call her name once, twice, and when she answers him she wants to believe it was always like this. Fox lying in bed waiting for her, not lying in bed sick and likely dying. He calls out
another name, not Diana but Scully. Scully.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

The water alternates hot and cold in the shower and settles on lukewarm. Diana cringes but washes her hair and scrubs her skin, trying to get rid of the cigarette smoke smell.

She climbs out of the shower and wraps herself in a towel. She's trying to put her hair up in one to dry it when she hears his voice.

"You look incredible."

He used to tell her that after long days in the field or battles with surly assistant directors. She doesn't dare look up, because it might just be her tired mind playing tricks.

"Diana, I..."

It's real. He's real. He puts his hands on her shoulders and she gives up on her hair.

"Don't say anything, Fox." She turns around, and without stopping to look at him, kisses him. He's shaking and clammy and she can almost feel his head pounding but he wraps his arms around her anyway and leans into her.

They break apart only when she can no longer support him. He sways and grabs his head, a low moan having nothing to do with pleasure escaping him.

She takes his hands and leads him back to bed. Her towel falls off somewhere along the way and she doesn't notice until he looks at her, wide-eyed and even amused through the pained and foggy expression. She blushes and tucks him in, not saying a word in acknowledgement. She turns to go back to the bathroom and he grabs her hand, pulls her down. He's squinting and wincing and clearly in no condition, but he kisses her with such force she forgets that she shouldn't. She forgets that she isn't supposed to.

She wants to.

He moves over on the bed and pulls her even closer, so that she falls down next to him. He struggles out from underneath the blankets and tries not to separate himself from her. She knows this urgency, remembers it from a time that might never have happened at all. She helps him pull off his shirt and removes his jeans.

They're frantic, unwilling to stop lest one of them realize how foolish this is. Diana moves on top of him, and when she comes she falls on him. That's the way it always was, and is now because she wants the fantasy, wants her vivid memory silenced for once. He groans beneath her and clutches her back, and she is thankful it has nothing to do with the pain this time.

She lays still, listening to him breathe. A phone rings and she doesn't want to move to answer it. She buries her face in his shoulder and he strokes her hair. When the phone doesn't stop ringing and his hand tenses and his body goes rigid, she moves. He curls up, away from her, into a tight ball and moans louder than before. The pain is back and the phone doesn't stop ringing. It has to have been twelve, now thirteen rings. She gets up and answers it.

The voice on the other end is so familiar, so convincing in its sugarcoated menace. She is surprised, as always, that he has no smoker's rasp to give away his vice.

"We'll need to move him soon."

"I know. How long?"

"In the morning. Will he hold out that long?"

On cue, Fox muffles a scream into a pillow behind her.

"I'm not sure."

"Make sure. Have him there in the morning."

She hangs up and goes to the bathroom. She closes the door and kneels down in front of the toilet. She is nauseous, like before. Ten years ago, the lies began like this. She remembers it so well. An afternoon in bed with her new husband, tangled in sheets and slick with sweat, giddy and horny and happy. An afternoon destroyed so effectively with one phone call, and Fox could never know.

She gets dressed and goes out to him. He's sweating now, tangled in the sheets. He's slipping away, grasping his head and mumbling unintelligibly. She's losing him.

She goes to get a glass of water and a wet washcloth. She wipes his forehead and leans down when he opens his eyes and pleads for her to come close.

"Scully." He says it and looks up at her as if she's supposed to understand.

She nods, not trusting her voice.

He closes his eyes and sighs. He turns over with some effort and buries his head in her lap. She hates herself for craving it.

She looks down at him and gives in. She stretches out next to him and holds on to him as another wave of pain crumpleshis body. She fears for him, but doesn't think about it.

She doesn't leave that night, and doesn't sleep. She just holds him, and cries silently for everything she's lost.

She cries for the dying man in her arms.