Title: Battle Orgy
Author: Dreamshaper 
Feedback: Love it. :) Send to dreamshpr@aol.com, if you're in the mood. 
Archives: Yes to goss and spookys and everyone who has archived my work 
before. New archives, send a little note so I can add your site to my fave 
places. 
Category: Post-Ep, MSR
Rating: PG-13 (sorry folks, despite the 'orgy' in the title, there is no 
nekkidness here.  An entirely different kind of orgy. )
Spoilers: Post-Ep for Fight Club, little spoiler for Brand X
Summary: "Eerie, Scully thought. Same kind of partnership, same kind of 
feeling. She wondered if they knew what they had, or if they were still in 
the denial phase that she and Mulder had only so recently broken through."
Notes: Thanks to Shawne, the only person I know who could write 13k of beta 
notes for a 12k story. I love the way you nitpick.  
I took the liberty of naming the two agents that we saw in the beginning of 
the episode, since no one could find anything giving them 'real' names.
Disclaimer: It all belongs to CC...for at least another 2 weeks, anyway. 

************

Scully opened her eyes--eye, technically; only one lid had lifted. The other 
seemed to be swollen shut. 

She raised her hand very slowly and carefully, feeling muscles pull and ache 
at the motion, and touched her fingers to her face. Bandaged, she noted 
calmly. And most definitely swollen. When she traced her fingertips across 
her cheekbone, where the bandage began, she noticed some bumpiness, a light 
pulling sensation--

Stitches. Wonderful, she thought grimly, picturing a huge, angry scar. But 
then she thought about Mulder, about the wild thrill of kneeing him in the 
groin and watching him topple over, and decided that maybe a scar was worth 
it.

But if it turned out to be a really bad one though, she was going to kill 
him...

Assuming that he had survived the last beating.

Scully turned her head very slowly and blinked her good eye. Mulder was 
sitting in a chair next to her bed, reading a newspaper. There was a cast on 
one of his arms and a brace around his neck, but as far as she could tell, he 
was relatively unbruised. What bruises he *did* have seemed to be faded, 
nearly gone.

How long have I been unconscious, Scully wondered with mild panic. And then 
she wondered why her partner's face just...didn't look quite right. Why he 
didn't feel quite like Mulder.

"Mulder?" she tried to say, then grimaced because it came out as a 
semi-plaintive whisper. And then she winced because grimacing hurt, and then 
she nearly cried because wincing hurt *more*--

The man seated beside her raised his head and met her gaze. Scully blinked 
again.

"You're not Mulder," she said, and her throat was sore, her voice husky and 
rough, but at least she could speak at a normal volume. She cleared her 
throat, and the man who looked like Mulder but was not Mulder poured a glass 
of water and stuck a straw in it, holding it in his good hand so that she 
could drink. She was too thirsty to refuse, even though it made her nervous 
to be accepting help from an obvious clone.

"You ok?" the clone asked, and she nodded, feeling very strange and wary. He 
looked eerily like Mulder, and that she could deal with, almost. Kind of. 
Maybe. But not only did he *look* like her partner, he sounded like him. 
Almost exactly like him.

Eerily like him.

The man put the glass down, settled slowly back down into the chair, feeling 
obvious discomfort. "No, I'm not Mulder," he said, and then he smiled. "And 
you're not Agent Sloan."

Scully eyed him narrowly and he chuckled. "I'm Agent Marks," he explained. 
"And Agent Sloan is my partner. The two of you look alike, actually. I hadn't 
really noticed until her swelling went down. You met us right here in this 
room a few days ago, though I don't blame you for not recognizing me. I was 
pretty well covered in bandages and plaster casts. Remember now?"

Suddenly, she did remember, and everything clicked into place. "Oh, right. 
The agents who had beaten each other senseless. Your partner tried to run you 
over." Scully studied the agent critically, and he coughed. "You look pretty 
good for a man who was in traction a little while ago, Agent Marks," she said 
suspiciously.

Marks laughed. "Yeah, well, I guess all the plaster and tubing made my 
injuries seem worse than they actually were. I'm feeling relatively all 
right, now. And I'm glad you remember."

"How could I forget?" Scully struggled to sit up, determined to make it 
despite wrenching pain in  all of her muscles. Marks rose to help, and then 
propped a pillow behind her. The gesture, while automatic and impersonal, was 
also very...it reminded her of Mulder. It was smoothly done, speaking of 
frequent repetition and genuine concern--just like when her partner did it, 
minus a little of Mulder's warmth.

"Agent Sloan and I spend a lot of time here," Marks said, apparently sensing 
her line of thought. "It's like our home away from home." He grinned and 
Scully smiled wearily in response, then sighed and closed her eyes, suddenly 
tired. Sitting up had exhausted her far more than she had imagined that it 
would. She could feel painkillers working through her system and she just 
wanted to go back to sleep...

"Agent Scully, I need you to stay awake a few minutes longer." Marks sounded 
apologetic but insistent, so Scully opened her eyes--eye--and met his gaze. 
"Agent Mulder isn't going to be a lot of help," he said, and motioned past 
her. 

Scully turned her head and saw her partner lying on a bed just a foot away 
from hers. Mulder was looking back at her, awake and apparently aware of what 
was going on. She studied his face for a moment, feeling guilty--and darkly 
triumphant--as she took in his various injuries. 

"You look alert enough," she said to him. "Why can't you help Agent Marks?"

Mulder just made a face at her--and in his battered state, it was a truly 
*horrendous* face--and Scully realized that his jaw was wired shut.

"Between the time you couldn't talk after the bugs and this, Mulder, I'm 
going to forget the sound of your voice." Scully frowned at her partner, a 
very small, tight frown--her lips were so dry and cracked that it felt like 
they were going to split, or possibly fall off--and Mulder rolled his eyes at 
her.

"Bug thing?" Agent Marks asked, and Scully turned back to him, surprised--she 
had almost forgotten that he was still there.

"Bug thing," she confirmed. "Long story, and one you really don't want to 
know the details of."

"Ah." Agent Marks fished a pen out of his pocket and grabbed a pad of paper 
off the table near her bed. He had to wedge the pen between his fingers and 
the edge of his cast but it looked like something he was used to doing.

"I know some of what happened," he said as he struggled to keep the pen and 
paper balanced on his knee. "But a lot of the details are...sketchy. At least 
with respect to the night of the fight. All of the witnesses...well. The two 
of you are the *least* injured out of the whole crowd. Everyone else is still 
out of commission." He shrugged, sighed, and looked at Scully expectantly.

She was truly surprised. If they were the least injured...she didn't even 
want to think about what the rest of the people in the arena must have looked 
like after--

"The press is calling it 'The Battle Orgy'," Marks said, faint amusement and 
mild disgust in his tone. 

"'Battle Orgy'," Scully repeated slowly, and heard Mulder snort from the bed 
beside her. The name was right up his alley of interest, apparently. "They 
couldn't just call it a riot?" she asked.

Marks smiled, shook his head--it was more like he twisted his torso, 
mimicking the actual movement. The brace around his neck prevented a lot of 
side-to-side motion. "The press is having too much fun making it kind 
of...well. I guess the word 'orgy' sells more papers than the word 'riot'."

Scully smiled faintly back at him and changed the subject. "So, how can I 
help you, Agent Marks?"

"Why don't you start by explaining what exactly tied Betty Templeton and LuLu 
Pfeiffer together? No one has been able to tell me with any coherency."

"It seems that they were both conceived through artificial insemination," 
Scully said, speaking slowly because Marks was taking notes, and it looked 
like a difficult and rather painful process, considering his cast. "The two 
of them have the same father, a convicted felon named Vincent Damphousse--"

Suddenly, with a loud creak, the door opened. Before Scully had even turned 
her head to see who it was, she was aware of a change in the atmosphere of 
the room. There was a swift rush of electricity, a warm and almost familiar 
hum of tension.

This is just bizarre, Scully thought, looking at the woman who had come into 
the room and seemingly sparked the new energy. It was like looking in a 
slightly warped mirror, or through a pane of foggy glass. The woman was a 
skewed--and pretty battered--version of herself.

"Agent Mulder, Agent Scully," Marks said quickly, "this is Agent Sloan. My 
partner." 

Scully glanced at Mulder, found him gazing back at her. She knew they were 
thinking the same thing--Marks had said 'my partner' the way another man 
might have said 'my wife'. Combine that with the energy in the room, and 
Scully thought it was pretty clear what kind of partnership had been built 
between Sloan and Marks.

She looked away from her partner to see the other two agents smiling at each 
other. Agent Sloan had come to stand by her partner, and even through the 
painkillers in her system, Scully could feel the intensity of their bond.

Eerie, Scully thought. Eerily just like...us. Same kind of partnership, same 
kind of feeling. She wondered if they knew what they had, or if they were 
still in the denial phase that she and Mulder had only so recently broken 
through.

"Nice to meet you again, Agent," Scully murmured, and watched the other woman 
look at her partner and raise an eyebrow.

"They do remember us," Marks said in response to his partner's unvoiced 
question. Then he looked at Scully. "Some of the rioters don't even remember 
their own names," he told her. "We really weren't sure about the two of 
you...we just had to hope."

Scully nodded. "Understandable. I didn't actually remember when I first woke 
up." Mulder made a faint noise, and Scully translated it as, "Neither did 
Agent Mulder. But we've both got it now."

"And you remember everything about what happened?" Sloan asked, but Marks 
responded before Scully could.

"Agent Scully seems pretty clear on it," he said quietly, looking at his 
partner for a second before smiling at Scully, who nodded.

"What I don't remember I have saved on my laptop, as well as handwritten 
notes in a pad," she assured them.

"Well, then." Agent Sloan dropped a hand onto her partner's shoulder. "I 
think we should let them recover a bit more before we start dragging the 
answers out of them," she said quietly, and Scully wondered if other people 
thought that the world seemed to close in like that around her and Mulder 
when they stood near each other, talking.

Yes, she thought, looking back over at her partner, who was watching her with 
amusement--and a little pain--in his eyes. Definitely yes. 

Then she realized that Marks was looking at her, apparently waiting for 
something. She shook her head, shrugged. He glanced up at Sloan, then looked 
back at Scully. 

"Uh...do you want us to come back tomorrow?" he asked, obviously not for the 
first time.

"Sure," she said. "Fine. We'll probably be able to remember it more clearly 
if you come back after the drugs wear off a bit."

Sloan and Marks nodded, and the male agent pulled himself out of the chair. 
"We'll be back to see you tomorrow then," he said with an easy smile, one his 
partner echoed. Then they hobbled from the room, leaning on each other a 
little. 

Scully watched them go and then turned back to Mulder, reaching across the 
space between them. He followed suit, touching his fingertips to hers before 
she laced their fingers. It hurt to extend her arm like that, but she just 
felt...so much better once they had connected.

"Hey, Mulder," she whispered, and then smiled, broader this time in spite of 
the fact that it hurt. "I'm sorry that I kicked your ass."

He rolled his eyes at her and glared, and Scully let herself chuckle. "I'll 
take that as an apology," she murmured and then sighed when he blew her a 
kiss across the vast distance between their beds. "Though I really don't 
think you need to apologize," she said after a moment. His expression turned 
quizzical, and Scully smiled. "You didn't kick my ass nearly as well as I 
kicked yours."

She was still grinning when she looked away from him, pointedly oblivious to 
the outraged noises he was making. She focused instead on the way his hand 
was wrapped around hers, and let the world close in around them as she 
drifted back to sleep.