The inevitable reaction set in that afternoon. What had he done this
weekend? Over and over again. He understood that one part of his brain was
giving the automatic "Danger, Will Robinson", telling him to reject Janet
before she could reject him. And another part kept saying, "Scully. She's
not Scully."

She's not Scully.

But he had to face it. He couldn't have Scully.

He felt as though he had been punched in the stomach, and quickly looked up
to make sure his partner was still out of the office. He randomly opened a
thick file from his "in" box and pretended to read it, in case she came
back.

He could never have Scully. His subconscious had been telling him that for
weeks. Months; it wasn't a new idea. She thought he had won. She'd told him
so, and she plainly wanted him to come up with a new list of goals, a new
plan of how to mop up the consortium, or at the very least, a new list of
unexplained case files, chock full of mutants and liverflukes. "Move
on,Mulder" seemed to be her unspoken thought.  He couldn't move on. He still
wanted to see his sister. He still wanted to know why she had been taken,
and why Cancerman had raised her.

(And why hadn't Samantha ever tried to find him? And why had she ignored him
for two years? One torment at a time, he told himself.)

Scully had recovered her health, but not, apparently, any inclination to let
him into her life outside work. She wasn't going anywhere; she wasn't
leaving the X-Files or their professional partnership, but she wasn't
getting any closer, either. The baseball thing--months ago. He was tired of
making up X-files, just to have an excuse to talk to her on Friday night.
Tired of making jokes and playing the obsessed victim of a global
conspiracy. The gunmen were tired of him--look how they had called _Scully_
to come to Las Vegas.

Scully.

He couldn't think clearly, about her any more. Every thought he had of her
was freighted with so much guilt and pain and bitterness,  that he didn't
want to think of her at all.

Janet would tell him to get on Prozac, he thought. Janet didn't know how
truly fucked up he was. He took her business card out of his pocket. What
would she think about a guy who was so paranoid, he ran a background check
on a possible one-night stand? What would she think if he told her about
just one of his regular work-months? Well, she read science fiction. She
even had it in the bathroom.

Janet. who wasn't Scully, who was the opposite of Scully, who laughed at all
of his jokes, and watched ESPN and bad movies with him, and didn't start a
sentence with "But Mulder, the evidence..." The one with the longer legs and
the bigger breasts, who fucked his brains out. Who didn't seem to regard him
as an encumbrance, or an idiot or a traitor to her cause. Who fucked his
brains out.

Okay, he told his id. You win. We'll see how long it takes to totally
alienate this lady.  Then I'll probably have to move, before she sends Big
Cornelius after me.