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It was foggy in the canyons at this hour. The mist hung heavy in
the meadow across from the parking lot, and there was only one
other car parked in front of the wooden fence. Scully locked the
door of the rental and pocketed the key. She hadn't been here in
more than fifteen years, she realized, but nothing had changed.
Well, not much, she amended, when she spotted the portable toilet
at the edge of the parking lot.
The trailhead was at the top of the parking lot, if she
remembered correctly. Scully checked her watch and set off at a
slow jog. The trail started in the bottom of the canyon, its
wide and trampled surface curving slowly upwards through live
oaks and manzanita shrub. Clear in the damp soil were the prints
of other runners, dogs, bicycles, and the occasional horse. It
was cold; Scully rubbed her hands together, wishing for gloves,
then pulled the sleeves of her light jacket down over them.
Scully needed this, needed the mist on her face and the uncertain
surface of the fire road under her running shoes. Sometimes,
after an autopsy, she just couldn't stay indoors amongst the dead
and their memories. The soulless furnishings of an office or
motel room were oppressive in their reminders of the inevitable
end of all life. She needed the wind and smells of the outdoors
to wash the odor of rot, of sterility, out of her hair.
She was moving very slowly, she realized, the gradual but
consistent slope of the trail keeping her steps to a slower
rhythm than usual. But she didn't mind. She hadn't run much in
the past month -- the weather had been dreadful and they'd been
on the road a lot. It didn't bother Mulder to run in the dark in
a strange city, but Scully was more cautious than that. She
couldn't run with Mulder very often, either, because his pace was
too quick: he didn't get the workout he wanted and she always
ended up winded and frustrated. In this at least, they did
better alone.
About ten minutes into the run, she felt her body begin to relax
into the movement, her muscles move more smoothly, the pain in
her chest and thighs begin to recede. Her hands had warmed up as
well, so she pushed the sleeves of her jacket up. She was able
to focus more on her surroundings, and she looked around as she
crested the next rise of the trail.
The mist was beginning to lift from the hills around her, and the
trail had temporarily come out of the trees into more open
country. She could see further now. To her left the hill rose
sharply, covered in late fall's dry grass and low shrubs, the
bushes' glossy green foliage dark against the golden hillside.
To her right the ground dropped away to the level of the creek,
hidden now by the trees that followed its course. Ahead, the
fire road continued to loop and climb towards the summit of the
hills. Despite the fact that this park was only minutes from
major highways and millions of residents, it was quiet. Scully
couldn't hear anything other than the breeze through the grass
and a single jet climbing steeply more than a mile overhead.
This death had been a bad one. The case had appeared interesting
but not too terrible at first. No children, no mutilations, no
religious overtones -- instead just a scientist in a high-
security federal laboratory, dead in her chair with the door
locked from the inside. Because of the sensitive nature of her
research, the Justice Department had been called in, and Skinner
had assigned the case to the X-Files Division.
There was someone else on the trail. Scully tensed momentarily,
conscious of the fact that her gun was out of reach in the car,
then forced herself to relax as the figure approached. It was a
young woman with a black dog, his bushy tail curled jauntily over
his back and small ears flopping with every step. The woman,
sweating heavily even in the cool morning, and moving with long
loping strides, smiled and raised a hand casually as she passed.
The dog, running off-leash, paused to mark his territory on a
shrub at the edge of the trail. Then he nosed Scully's hand,
giving her a friendly lick, before shifting suddenly into warp
speed and racing down the trail after his owner.
Scully had performed the autopsy last night, working late in the
County morgue as she carefully sliced into the body of this young
woman, dead at the age of 33. This brilliant bio-medical
engineer, who was engaged to a software programmer, and who was
dying of cancer. That discovery had made her put down her tools,
step away from the body, and reach for the phone.
The angle of climb suddenly steepened as the fire road approached
the head of the canyon. Scully downshifted, taking shorter steps
as she climbed through a copse of eucalyptus trees. The surface
of the trail was heavily rutted from bicyclists and horses, but
the climb was short and she soon emerged at an intersection with
two other trails. That was the hardest part of the run, as she
recalled: from here she had a long downhill stretch, and then
about a mile along the canyon floor. She paused to look around
and catch her breath, stretching the muscles in her calves and
thighs.
What had appeared to be a classic closed-door mystery, right out
of Agatha Christie, turned out to be something much less
intriguing, and more tragic. Laurie Peters had been dying of
adrenal cancer, and she had known it. The local cops, in an
sublime display of incompetence, had not even reviewed her
medical records. Within three hours of identifying the tumors in
the body, Scully had determined the method and type of poison
that Laurie had used to take her own life.
She had finished up in the lab around 5:30 a.m. and had headed
back to the motel. Once there, she quickly realized that there
was no way she was going to be able to sleep or even stay in her
room for very long. A stray comment by one of the scientist's
coworkers the day before had reminded Scully of their proximity
to this park; and here she was. She had left a note taped to
Mulder's door, promising to meet him for breakfast around 8:30
a.m.
They still had a few things to do, to wrap up the case, but
functionally it was closed as soon as Scully had found the
poison.
Poison. That was it, she realized, that was why she was out
here. A brilliant young scientist, dying of cancer . . . the
parallels were disturbing. Laurie Peters had chosen another path
than Dana Scully had, but who was she to judge? When she was
young, the Church had called it the ultimate sin, a turning away
from the loving hands of God. Scully wasn't sure of that
anymore, if she ever had been. She knew that God's infinite
mercy could manifest itself in different ways to different
people. And merely because *she* had been the recipient of a
miracle, well, that was no reason to insist everyone else rely on
them. Miracles don't come for the asking, after all.
The downhill section of the trail was a relief after the steep
climb. Clammy on her skin under her shirt, Scully's sweat
chilled her a bit as she picked up speed. Her feet pounding out
a rhythm, she stopped thinking about the case so she could dodge
exposed roots and the muddier sections of the trail. The fire
road was back in the trees now, and Scully was surrounded by tall
eucalyptus, their distinctive scent filling the air, elongated
leaves and sections of peeling bark carpeting the ground.
The trail leveled out after about a half-mile, then turned
sharply to follow the creek. This area was heavily wooded and
heavily used: the surface of the path was sticky with mud and
partly-decomposed vegetation. Scully passed several other
runners and a few dog-walkers. She was moving easily now,
faster, loping smoothly along despite the mud building up on the
soles of her running shoes.
She broke out of the trees as the path left the creek for the
last time to skirt the rim of a broad meadow. The grass was damp
with dew, the moisture catching the light of the sun as the last
of the mist burned off. Scully caught a movement out of the
corner of her eye. She was more relaxed than she usually was in
the field; instead of reaching for her gun, she merely paused.
At the far edge of the meadow, still slightly out of focus in the
trailing edges of mist, was a male deer.
He didn't seem to notice Scully, barely 50 yards away. She held
her breath as he walked out of the shelter of the trees. He
lowered his head, nibbled at a shrub, lifted his head again. She
caught another movement, and another, and realized there were
half a dozen deer in the trees and shrubs on the far side of the
clearing. She didn't move until a heavy-set older man, puffing
along in a dark-blue jogging suit, came trundling down the trail.
The deer scattered without a sound.
The older man slowed as he approached her. "You all right,
miss?" He cocked his head in concern.
"Fine, thanks!" Scully flung a smile at him before heading along
the last stretch of the trail. When she came out into the
parking lot there were another eight cars around hers, and the
sun was bright.
Forty minutes later, closing her motel room door, she felt rather
than saw her partner come up beside her. In the air, she
registered shampoo, aftershave, and coffee. She put out one
hand, the other occupied in stuffing her key into her pocket.
Her fingers shaped themselves around the warmth of a paper cup,
and she looked up, smiling.
Mulder stood, as so often, a little closer than anyone else
would. "You're all pink, Scully. What *have* you been up to?"
"I, um, I went for a run up in the hills. Couldn't sleep."
He nodded absently, his mind evidently racing ahead to the day's
tasks. "Did you have a good run?"
Scully sipped some of her coffee and raised an eyebrow: Mulder
had gone to Peet's. They walked out of the motel and across the
parking lot to the car. Students and office-workers streamed by
on bicycles and buses. A dog barked nearby. A dark-haired man
on a unicycle spun in smooth circles while he waited for the
light to change.
"Yeah, Mulder, I had a good run."