Title: Patchwork- Part 1 of 3
Spoilers: Early season 6, after Triangle but before How The Ghosts
Stole Christmas.
Classification: XA
Summary: Mulder goes off on a trip to investigate a so-called
patchwork creature reported to have been seen in Cheyenne, Wyoming,
but ends up getting involved in more than he bargained for.
Rating: PG-13, for disturbing imagery and events.
Keywords:
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, except the OCs.
Feedback: Welcomed at pomme_noire@hotmail.com
Archive: Just let me know beforehand.
Author's Note: I apologize for any geographical or other
inaccuracies regarding the town of Cheyenne. I have never been to
Wyoming personally, so all of my information comes via Wikipedia.

~~~~~~~~~~
Scully listened to Mulder silently as she ate her sandwich, letting
him give his whole presentation without interruption.

"And so, I was hoping... if you're not busy, we could go out there
this weekend," he was saying. Scully watched him fiddle absently
with the straw in his glass of Sprite. "We could get away from
Kersh. It'd be like old times." At this, he grinned at her
expectantly.

Scully couldn't help but smile slightly in response, even as she
shook her head. "No. Mulder..." She sighed. "If you're going to
find X-Files for us to work on in our spare time, please work a
little harder to find something *I* would be interested in, too."

He looked disappointed and a bit offended. "You don't want to go
with me to track down this mysterious 'patchwork creature' out in
the wilds of..." he glanced at the tabloid in front of him again--
"Wyoming?"

"Mulder, it's probably just another Fiji mermaid," Scully told him
with a shrug. "Been there, done that."

"Ah, but that's where you're wrong, Scully," Mulder said, leaning
forward excitedly and narrowly missing knocking over his glass as
he pointed at her. "There are several witnesses who say they've
seen this thing walking around, alive. And there are pictures!"

She looked at him and laughed a little. "The same blurry pictures
that show up in every tabloid article like this, Mulder! They show
nothing-- nothing clear, anyway."

Seeming to sense that she wasn't going to change her mind, Mulder
closed the magazine. "Fine." He sighed. "You're probably right."
They finished lunch in silence, and then went back to work, to
their background checks. As she started to dial another number,
Scully had to admit to herself that even chasing another Fiji
mermaid would be more interesting than this.

~~~~~~~~
Mulder couldn't help it. He sighed, stretched out as much as he
could in the airplane seat, and smiled, probably for the tenth
time, practically giddy at this chance to get away. He was out from
under Kersh's thumb, free to follow up on an X-File that had caught
his eye, and no one was going to stop him. Of course, he would be
even happier if Scully had wanted to come along, but he was
definitely still happy. Mostly. Though he couldn't help but wonder
what Scully was doing with her weekend, how long it would take her
to find out he was gone, and then how long it would take to guess
where he was.

He shifted his thoughts back to the prospective X-File, mentally
going over how much he knew. From the tabloid (which was, he
admitted, not a really reliable source), he knew that there had
been three sightings of a strange creature in the forests around
Cheyenne, a creature that all of the witnesses independently (or so
the tabloid said) described as looking like a bizarre patchwork of
different animals, including a deer, a horse, and possibly a
coyote. As Scully had pointed out, the included pictures were all
either too blurry to be helpful, or too perfect to be anything but
altered. But still, the eyewitness accounts alone were intriguing
enough to warrant another look. And when you added in actual
newspaper reports from the area, which contained quotes from
respected local leaders, well, it had been too much for Mulder to
resist. Of course, he already had his own theories about it, but he
would keep those to himself for now.

As soon as he landed and was settled in at the motel, Mulder called
one of those local leaders, a Mr. Aaron Willis (principal of a
Cheyenne elementary school), and arranged to meet him for dinner in
a couple of hours. He hoped fervently that he would be able to make
significant headway on the case before the weekend was over. He
didn't think he would be able to fly out again the next weekend
without Scully noticing, and he couldn't afford to make Kersh
angrier at him by not reporting for duty on time on Monday morning.

~~~~~~~~
When Scully tried to reach Mulder at his apartment late that
Saturday morning to ask him about something odd the Lone Gunmen had
sent them earlier, she got his answering machine. That was her
first inkling that something was wrong. Then she called his
cellphone, but got no answer. On second glance, her latest email
from him (sent at an absurdly early hour that morning) provided a
small clue. It was typical Mulder, though, she thought with a
frustrated sigh-- maddeningly cryptic:

Scully,
When you get this, I'll already have landed in the home of the
jackalope. Don't worry-- I plan to be back by Monday, bright and
early, ready to dive back into our new assignment with my
characteristic enthusiasm. If you decide you want to join me, let
me know.
~Mulder

Scully took another deep breath. "The 'home of the jackalope'?
What- Where do you come up with these things, Mulder?" she
muttered. She walked over to her bookshelf and found a dictionary,
wondering if she would even be able to find the bizarre word in it.
Meeting no success in the dictionary, Scully moved on to an
encyclopedia, figuring that if she turned up empty there, she could
always call the Gunmen. But she would really prefer to figure this
out for herself. She didn't want to deal with the Gunmen's
questions, even though she knew she wouldn't necessarily have to
answer them.

Thankfully, the encyclopedia did have an entry for "jackalope": it
told Scully that a jackalope was a legendary creature said to be a
cross between a jackrabbit and an antelope, which inhabited the
American West.

*Okay, mythical creatures-- so far, so good,* Scully thought, and
continued reading. Nothing jumped out at her until she got to the
list of other common names for the jackalope, and saw that one of
them was the Wyoming thistled hare. "Wyoming!" Scully groaned,
putting a hand to her head. That tabloid article... would he-?

She picked up her cell phone and tried his number again. He would.

~~~~~~~~
The sun was setting and Mulder was nearing the area where the
creature had been sighted when his cellphone rang. He answered it,
to hear Scully's irritated voice.

"It's me," she said, and without waiting for him to respond, went
right on. "You'd better be able to give me a good reason why I'm on
my way to Wyoming, Mulder-- and don't say it's because you think
you've actually discovered the legendary jackalope."

Mulder smiled. "So you figured out my message."

"Yes, I did." She still sounded annoyed.

"No, Scully, I'm not here to track down a jackalope," Mulder told
her. "They don't actually exist, you know."

"Mulder..." she said warningly.

He got down to business. "I talked to several of the people who
were interviewed in the tabloid article, and I also talked to Aaron
Willis, who's a school principal out here, who was quoted in a
local newspaper. He gave me directions to an area-- a rest stop
just outside of the city where the patchwork creature was seen. I'm
heading out there right now. Maybe get a chance to see it for
myself."

He could hear her sigh over the phone. "Where are you staying?"

"The Mountainside Inn," Mulder replied. "When does your flight
arrive?"

"About 10:00, your time," Scully said, after a pause. "I couldn't
get anything sooner, due to short notice... and the fact that this
isn't an official FBI case."

Mulder winced at the pointedness of those last remarks. "Uh huh.
I'll see you when I see you, then. I'm not going to be out here too
late." He was about to hang up when he heard her say, half
seriously, "Be careful out there, Mulder."

He grinned, and got in the last word before she hung up: "Yeah,
those jackalopes can be pretty deadly."

When he pulled into the rest stop that Mr. Willis had directed him
to (several miles outside the Cheyenne city limits), Mulder was
glad the sun hadn't set all the way yet. He hadn't spent much time
in this part of the country-- and had never been to Wyoming in
particular-- but he was pretty sure that there could actually be
things in the forest that he didn't want to run into at night.
Yellowstone had grizzly bears, after all, didn't it?

Mulder strode over to the little coffee stand and smiled at the
older woman behind the counter. "How's the coffee?"

She looked up from the magazine she was reading. "It's warm," she
responded simply. "Help yourself."

He thanked her, and took a cup. After an experimental sip, he
pondered for a moment, then said, "Not too bad." Then Mulder
noticed that the magazine the woman was reading was in fact the
very same tabloid that had sparked his interest earlier that week.
Gesturing to it, he asked, "This is the place where a couple people
actually saw the patchwork creature, right?"

Looking somewhat surprised, the woman nodded. "Are you out here
trying to get a glimpse yourself?"

"Actually, yes," Mulder admitted. "Can you tell me anything more
about it?"

"Well, I haven't seen it myself," she said regretfully, "but
Eileen, who's quoted on page 12, told me about it right after it
happened." She pointed toward a more secluded area of the park.
"She said it came right out from behind a tree there, seemed
utterly shocked to see her, and then disappeared into the woods. It
was a little later in the day than it is now, when it happened."

Mulder thanked the woman and quickly made his way over to the
picnic table in the direction she had indicated. The late evening
was getting a bit chilly, but he had his coffee, and besides, he
wasn't planning on doing more than looking around a little bit.

Mulder sighed. Despite its promising beginnings, this case wasn't
progressing as fast as it needed to, if he was going to get
anything accomplished before going back to work. He wasn't even
exactly sure what his next step was going to be... *Though,* he
thought suddenly, *I think I'll need to talk to Mr. Willis again.*
The man had implied something interesting about his own theories of
where the creature had come from, and it had taken until now for
the implication to sink in.

Abruptly, Mulder heard a branch snap in the brush not too far off.
Setting down the coffee on the picnic table, he crept closer,
trying not to make too much noise himself and again wishing it
hadn't taken this long to get here. Peering through the branches of
a large bush, Mulder could only make out a whitish blur that might
easily be some kind of animal. He moved closer, and the blur became
clearer even in the fading light. His mouth dropped open.

"Patchwork creature" was a surprisingly accurate description. The
head appeared to be that of a deer, the body of a horse, and the
tail was gray and bushy, like a coyote's. The places where the
parts joined did not have visible stitches (too 'Frankenstein,' he
thought), but it was still quite oddly matched up, and when it
moved, grazing for food, Mulder noticed that not all of its legs
were the same length.

As much as his curiosity was piqued, Mulder also felt more than a
bit sick. What was the point of creating a mis-matched animal like
this? It couldn't exactly be comfortable for the poor thing right
now, and he didn't want to think about what had happened to the
horse and coyote who had contributed parts of their bodies to the
final result standing in front of him.

He leaned forward slightly... and dislodged a rock right next to
his feet. The patchwork animal looked up, saw him, and immediately
started to run.

Mulder had the brief, idiotic desire to shout "Wait!", but
repressed it. He took out his flashlight from his coat and took off
after it.

It didn't take too long before the creature vanished into the
darkness ahead of him. Mulder stopped running, hoping he hadn't
gotten himself too lost. He shone the flashlight beam around him.
It illuminated nothing particularly helpful-- except what looked
like a trail going in the direction the creature had run.

Mulder weighed his options, and reluctantly decided it was not a
good idea to attempt to follow the creature any farther. He would
try to find this place again in the morning, when he was better
prepared, and when he wasn't hampered by lack of light. Perhaps he
could persuade Scully to come out with him. He was just about to
turn around and find his way back to the rest area when something
heavy struck him on the back of the head. The flashlight fell out
of his hand as he slumped to the ground, unconscious.

~~~~~~~~
Scully was more than a little miffed when she arrived at the
airport, got her rental car, and throughout that time Mulder still
wasn't bothering to answer his phone. She found the Mountainside
Inn without any trouble, confirmed that Mulder had a room there,
and checked into the room next to his, checking her phone more than
once to see if she had missed a call. She hadn't.

It was 10:37. He had told her he wouldn't be out investigating too
late, and Scully found it hard to believe that he could be able to
find much out at a rest stop at this time of night. However, she
didn't much want to go out looking for him, either-- probably his
cell phone wasn't getting service out in the middle of nowhere, as
usual, so she had no idea how she would find him. She didn't even
know which rest stop he was at.

Sighing, Scully went to talk to the man at the front desk of the
motel. When she explained what her partner was doing, the young man
nodded eagerly, and told her the number of the rest stop where he
would have likely gone. "But I don't know what he was expecting to
find at this time of night," he said, eyes wide.

*Neither do I,* Scully thought wryly. She walked back to her room,
deciding that she would get up early tomorrow, and if Mulder still
wasn't back and hadn't called, she would try to find him then. She
tried not to think of the last time Mulder had run off to
investigate some crazy idea of his, and had ended up facedown in
the water in the Bermuda Triangle, half-drowned. Scully wondered if
there would ever be a time when he *didn't* pull insane stunts like
this-- when he actually looked before he leapt.

~~~~~~~~
Mulder came to slowly. He was moving-- that was the first thing he
noticed, right after he became aware of his pounding headache.
Blinking, he tried to take stock. He seemed to be in the back of a
pickup truck. His face was pressed into the truck bed, and his
hands were duct-taped behind him. He tried to move his legs, and
found that they were bound together with some kind of wire. His
mouth was not duct-taped shut, but Mulder had the feeling that
shouting wouldn't help at all at the moment: the road noise was
quite loud, and more importantly, it looked like (from what little
he could see from his awkward position) he was being taken
somewhere even further into the middle of nowhere.

The metal of the truck bed was extremely cold, and Mulder shivered.
He had no idea how long he had been out, and how far the drive had
already taken him away from the rest stop. Fruitlessly, he
attempted to reach into his coat pocket to get at his cell phone;
no matter how he twisted and turned, he couldn't reach quite far
enough. His exertions only succeeded in causing his headache to
worsen, and in making enough noise that his captor was probably now
aware that he was conscious.

Mulder's next thought was whether he could attempt to jump out of
the back of the truck, even tied up as he was. He managed to scoot
himself over to the edge and was in the process of pushing himself
up against the side when the vehicle hit a pothole, jolting him so
that he hit the back of his head against the truck bed in exactly
the same spot where he had been struck before. The resulting agony
caused him to black out once more.


"Are you sure he isn't going to wake up?"

A pause. "No. Better give him a sedative."

Mulder heard the two men's voices, but the ache in his head made it
very hard to realize what their words meant. He shifted slightly,
and a moan escaped his lips.

"Yeah, he's coming to," the first voice said, sounding irritated.
"You should have given him the sedative as soon as you had him
down."

Mulder felt his right sleeve being pushed up, and a needle was
stuck into his arm. The world began to darken around him again. The
last thing he heard was the second voice saying, "We need to get
started as soon as possible. He's an FBI agent-- he'll be missed
soon."

~~~~~~~~
Scully's alarm woke her at 5:00 the next morning. For a second, she
wanted nothing more than to turn over and go back to sleep, but
then she came awake completely, grabbing her phone to see if she
had somehow missed a call from Mulder last night. Finding nothing,
she put on a jacket over her PJs and went to knock on Mulder's
door. "Mulder?" There was no answer. *Great,* she thought, and
quickly walked back to her room to get ready to go find her missing
partner.

After a hasty breakfast of an apple and a cup of coffee that she
took back to her room, Scully drove out to the rest stop that the
attendant at the front desk (who confirmed that Mulder hadn't come
back last night) had told her. It was almost an hour's drive out,
even at the speed Scully found herself driving.

When she pulled into the parking lot, her heart sank as she saw the
car that Mulder had rented still parked there (she had been sure to
check that information before leaving). Wondering if the woman who
was behind the counter at the coffee stand could possibly have been
on duty last night, Scully walked up to her. She felt a surge of
hope when she saw that the woman was reading a tabloid, possibly
the same one Mulder had showed her at lunch that past Wednesday.

"Excuse me," Scully said, and the woman looked up. "Did-- did a man
come here last night, asking about the sightings of the patchwork
creature?"

"Yeah-- tall fellow, dark hair, good-looking?" At Scully's nod, the
she continued. "Must have been about 9:00. He got a cup of coffee,
and I told him where the creature had been seen here." She pointed
to a corner of the park area.

"Did you see him leave?" Scully asked.

The woman blinked. "Well, now that you mention it, I didn't. I
guess I just assumed that he looked around for a while until it got
dark, then left."

Scully took out her badge and showed it to her. "He didn't. That's
his car out there. He's my partner, and he was supposed to meet me
back in Cheyenne last night. I'd like you to please call the
police. I think something may have happened to him last night."

Plainly shocked, the woman nodded, and hastened off into the main
building. "I'll call them right away, ma'am."

As soon as she was out of sight, Scully sighed and rubbed a hand
across her face. Then she walked over to the area of the park where
the woman had indicated. There was a styrofoam cup on the picnic
table, still half-full of coffee.

*So what did you find here last night, Mulder?* Scully wondered.
She looked around, and saw a patch of grass that might have been
trampled down, at the edge of the forest next to the table. Had he
wandered off into the forest, at night? An image of Mulder,
unconscious and injured out in the woods, came into Scully's mind.
She shook her head. That kind of thought was *not* useful.

Just then, she heard a car approaching, and looked over to see a
police car pulling into the parking lot. Scully quickly went over
to meet the two officers that got out of the car.

"I'm Rachel Willis, the sheriff, and this is Deputy Charles Greer,"
the woman introduced. "I understand you're with the FBI, Agent...?"

"Dana Scully," Scully said, showing them her badge. "Yes. My
partner, Agent Mulder, was out here at 9:00 yesterday, and was
supposed to have met me back at the Mountainside Inn later that
night. I believe something may have happened to him."

Sheriff Willis nodded her head, accepting the information. "And you
haven't been able to contact him at all?"

"No," Scully said. She took out her phone. "No service out here,
anyway."

"What brought your partner out here?" Deputy Greer asked. He was
looking at Scully with frank curiosity.

Scully hesitated. Finally, she decided that the truth was the best
option here. "He was investigating the reports of a patchwork
creature that had supposedly been seen in the area."

"Huh," the deputy said, smiling condescendingly. "I didn't think
that the FBI was interested in stuff like that."

Fighting down a sudden rush of anger, Scully took a deep breath and
simply said, "The FBI isn't. But Agent Mulder is."

"Let's stick to the investigation, Charlie, not making comments
about the man who's missing," the sheriff said to him, and the man
had the grace to blush. Then she gestured for Scully to continue.

"The woman at the coffee stand told me she saw him go to this area
of the park-" Scully started to walk back towards the picnic table,
"but that she didn't see him leave. His car is still in the parking
lot." The three of them approached the table.

When she saw the coffee cup, the sheriff immediately took out an
evidence bag. "Is it possible that he went into the forest last
night, Agent Scully?"

Scully appreciated the sheriff's directness. "It is possible. I was
hoping you could organize a search of the surrounding area." She
paused, struck by a sudden unpleasant thought. "Have there been any
reports of anyone else going missing recently?"

The deputy, Charlie, looked at the sheriff, then at Scully. "Well,
yeah-- Amber McConnell, a librarian, has been missing for about two
days. No one's seen her since she left for a hiking trip, and
didn't meet up with her friend that she was supposed to be hiking
with."

Scully kept her face composed though her fear had been confirmed.

"You think there might be a connection?" Sheriff Willis inquired.

"They both went missing in unpopulated areas, right?" Scully looked
at the deputy for confirmation, and he nodded.

"We'll get a search team out here as soon as possible," was the
sheriff's response.

"I'd like to be part of it," Scully said quietly.

"Of course."