Substitutes

The phone on Mulder's desk rang for the third time. He pulled his head out of the bottom file drawer where it seemed Spender had stored all of the real X-Files that had come in during his tenure, and answered it.

"Turn on CNN International, Agent Mulder," the voice was mechanically generated and sounded as though it were coming from a very long distance away.

"Why should I?" Mulder asked reflexively, wondering if it could be some member of the Syndicate that still remained at large after some miracle escape from the burning at the hangar. The DNA typing still wasn't finished on the burned bodies from El Rico Air Force Base, but C.G.B. Spender's remains still hadn't been located, nor had Fowley's. And with Jeffrey Spender's murder, there were only two names that immediately sprang to mind. Unless it had been Krycek, but why would he bother? There were only three unidentified bodies remaining at the base, one of them a child's. Mulder had to believe Fowley and Spender were still at large.

"It's information you need to know," the voice said, and then the caller hung up. The call had been far too short for even the beginnings of a trace.

Mulder got up from his desk and turned on the TV he kept in the office mostly for the purpose of viewing videotapes. They had cable hookup. He made sure it was connected and began surfing through the channels until he got to CNN. That blonde woman announcer with the strange looking eyes was reading the news, file footage of familiar-looking charred corpses running behind her, the location listed as Verviers, Belgium.

"...the area around the corpses is strangely unaffected. While it is scientifically unlikely, mass spontaneous human combustion has been suggested by some theorists. The Belgian army has secured the site and has released this film of the burn victims. They are attempting to identify the bodies with medical records."

"Oh shit," Mulder said, as the newscaster moved on to the latest round of fighting in the Balkans, hand still clutching the remote. He'd been so mesmerized by the news report that he hadn't heard the tell-tale sounds of high heels clacking on the floor tiles to herald the entrance of his partner.

"Oh shit, what?" Scully asked, with a worried frown.

"Um, bad news from around the world," Mulder gulped, his fevered brain running over the options of "tell her/not tell her" and not liking the results of any of the deliberations.

"What kind of bad news?" Scully asked. "It's not killer bees is it? They're not starting colonization anyway?"

"Um, no," Mulder said carefully, searching her eyes to find the best way to break it to her.

"What is it then, you're white as a ghost," Scully, stepped forward and put a hand to Mulder's forehead. "You don't have a fever, so it has to be whatever you saw on TV. I know it was the news and not one of your videos that aren't yours, so what is it?"

"Mass burning in Belgium," Mulder said, taking her hand in his and lowering from his forehead. "Just the kind we're used to."

"Who? I thought they'd gotten all of the members except for C.G.B. Spender and Fowley," Scully said, not taking her hand back and starting to look a little glassy around the eyes. Mulder didn't often notice things like that, but he thought Scully was looking a little freaked.

"Krycek's missing, too, remember," Mulder said. "But I don't think he was ever at the hangar in the first place. But this was a lot of people, Scully. Hundreds of bodies."

"Like in Pennsylvania," Scully said hollowly, and her attention drifted from Mulder's face over to the TV screen, where bodies were being carried away in bags after some meaningless atrocity or another.

"Yeah, just like that," he said, wishing she'd look at him again. "Look Scully, it's bad. But it doesn't have to be as bad as all that. I mean, this one was in Europe. They're probably just doing a clean up, on the people who were leftover after the attacks in Russia and Pennsylvania. I'm sure we don't have anything to worry about."

"Why were you watching the TV, Mulder?" Scully asked, looking at him again, with a frown of concentration.

"Um," he panicked again, but he didn't know how to lie to her about something that affected her so directly. "I got a phone call."

"From whom?" Scully asked.

"I don't know," Mulder said. "I figure it was someone who's voice I'd recognize. The caller was taking some care to disguise him or herself. Using a mechanical voicebox."

"But you did it anyway," Scully said.

"All they did was tell me to turn on the news, Scully," Mulder told her, giving the hand he still held a warm squeeze. "It's not like they asked me to go out and meet them at the old ravine."

"But you would have gone anyway, even if that was what they'd told you," Scully sighed. "Like you said Mulder, with the destruction of those people at the hangar, all bets are off. We don't know what's coming or who it's coming from, and there are enough people left out there with grudges and scores to settle that things are going to be very very dangerous from now on. I know that you didn't want to tell me this, but keeping information from me is only going to weaken us. It always has, but now more than ever. Can't you see that?"

"I just don't want you to worry yourself to death over something that probably won't affect us in any way," Mulder said sincerely. "That was the only reason I thought I might keep it to myself. The only reason, Scully."

"Whatever," Scully told him, and attempted to regain possession of her hand, but Mulder held it tightly.

"Like you said, Scully, things are going to be very very dangerous from now on and I don't want you marching around here pissed off at me when I'm just trying to help you out," Mulder told her.

"What's with the PC language all of a sudden, Mulder?" Scully asked. "You know you weren't 'helping me out'. You were doing what you always do, trying to protect me by not telling me what I need to know. And we know how well that's worked out in the past on so many occasions. You can trust Diana Fowley while she's selling you out to C.G.B. Spender and all the rest but you can't trust me to handle information that might affect my life, or end it. I guess that just goes to prove that the more things change the more they stay the same."

Mulder let go of her hand and Scully stalked across the office to the desk that had been Fowley's and was now hers. She sat down and began doing what he'd been doing before he'd gotten the phone call, going through Fowley's desk to see what had really been going on with the X-Files during the time they'd been in exile.

Mulder didn't know what to do about Scully or what she'd said, but he did know that trying to talk to her now would be like talking to a brick wall. She was in her obstinately angry mode and it was no use trying to deal with her until the mood passed. And the fact was, she'd been nothing but angry with him ever since they'd gotten the X-Files back. Despite his explanation of what C.G.B. Spender had told him about the project and its purpose and what those old men had been trying to do all of those years, Scully didn't seem to care. She could view it intellectually with reason, but it didn't change the way she felt about any of it. But then, she'd been one of their experimental subjects and he hadn't.

He figured that she must feel toward them like the Rhesus monkeys felt about the people from the CDC. It didn't matter why it had been done. Just that it had been done. And he could understand that, too. He just couldn't understand it in Scully, always the rational scientist, always trying to get a view of the big picture. But when it was finally explained, she only cared about one detail - the one that affected her.

But then Scully had proven amazingly contradictory about other things as well. Like her fixation on Fowley's 'betrayal' of him. He didn't see a betrayal. She'd simply been working to save the world as she saw fit, the same way his father had been his whole life. Did that make her evil? He just couldn't be certain any more. But he knew Diana. He knew she didn't want to hurt him, to hurt anyone. It just wasn't her. But Scully refused to see it.

He wasn't really certain how to deal with a Scully that was emotional all of a sudden. Or rather, he wasn't certain how to deal with a Scully that actually acted on her emotions, even if she continued to deny that she had them.

He'd seen it from her before from time to time. Most notoriously just before the incident with Ed Jerse. And he knew that the things he did affected her when she was like this. But he'd never really been able to work out the complex geometry required to calculate how his actions were going to affect her.

He could deal with her when she was being cold and rational. But when she was acting on her deeply and purposefully hidden feelings - Mulder found himself at a loss. Despite the years of profiling. Despite the years of association. Scully played things notoriously close to the chest. Almost like she had something to hide. And he knew her. He knew she was honest, that she had no secrets. But she acted like she had something to hide. Now more than ever. He could see the beginnings of it just under the surface sometimes, when she forgot to be so guarded. But the clues were so veiled he still had no idea what it was. Just that it was Something. Something she felt she had to keep from him.

And it hung there between them like another cancer.

And it made him feel like a Medieval Barber worrying about her bodily humours when he really should have been ordering a CAT scan.

Mulder went back to his desk. Might as well get some work done. Any fun the day might have promised had just been shot to hell.

Scully was grateful when five o'clock came and she was able to leave the office for home. Mulder had sulked the rest of the day and while they'd gotten a lot accomplished, it hadn't been any fun at all. But then, things seldom were any more.

She had thought things were looking up when they'd been given their crap assignment, in some cases literal crap, because he'd seemed to view them as in the mess together at least. It wasn't just Mulder and his X-Files with Scully tagging along any more. It had been Us vs. Them for once. And Scully had been sure she was one of Us, for one of the few times in their partnership.

But after she'd been shot everything had changed again. It was as if, by accepting that one assignment, even though she'd assured him that it was only that one and had meant it, that Mulder had begun separating himself from her. There was no Us any more, just Mulder and Scully, who had been assigned as partners at the FBI.

She had felt him slipping away again, and she hadn't known how to react. Without the X-Files she was entirely dependent on how he felt about things, how he felt about her, to keep them as Us. But she knew about that. She knew exactly how he felt. He'd proven it, so very recently.

He'd proven it during all the madness with Cassandra Spender and the announcement of imminent Colonization. He'd been in the car with Fowley, speeding to join the men who'd taken his sister and he'd spent years trying to stop. Scully wondered what would have happened if she hadn't called him then. If she hadn't known where they were taking Cassandra.

She didn't like to think it, but often it came upon her in the middle of the night. The scene played before her just as if she'd really seen it somehow, Mulder and Fowley, hand in hand in the hangar, waiting for Alien deliverance with the Old Men and their families while the rest of the world unknowingly awaited death. While Scully awaited death, or whatever the Aliens had planned for the rejects of their experiments. Slavery perhaps? Or maybe food, though they'd seen no evidence of that.

She thought about it until she wept. She thought about Mulder and Fowley. He'd even called her once when she'd been crying. On a Saturday night, when she'd been alone and had felt she could indulge herself. Just one of his random, late night musings. And she'd had to lie. To tell him that she'd just run up from the laundry room and that was why she sounded like she was sobbing. She was merely out of breath.

He'd bought it. He always bought it when she lied to him. Because he didn't want to know. He didn't want to think what else it might be. That she might have feelings about things.

While Mulder, himself, was a veritable fountain of feelings that sprayed out in all directions wetting passers-by, he seemed to find it disturbing in others. If she cracked a smile or frowned unexpectedly, he was disturbed by it. In a way, it helped her keep her guard up against him. It helped her be strong under the onslaught of his own emotional firestorm.

Like just a few months before when he'd told her that he loved her. He'd been on drugs, of course, and she hadn't believed him certainly, but she had thought about it from time to time. And thinking had made her weaken, let her guard down slightly. She'd thought that perhaps there had been some feeling there. She'd opened herself up to him. Opened herself up only to be hurt, it seemed. Because now it was proven just how wrong she'd been.

She didn't want to think about it now, so she kicked off her shoes and turned on the television, changing it to the news channel to see if she could pick up any more details about the incident in Belgium. She had some salad in the refrigerator and she was too disheartened to really cook anything, so that would be her dinner.

Something about basketball on the news, so she went into the kitchen and ripped up some greens in a bowl, smothering it with some really very decent fat free Italian dressing. She choked on a piece of raddichio as she emerged from the kitchen and caught sight of the familiar burn victims on the television, but this was somewhere in a desert, with the sun beating brightly down on miles of sand. A caption came up on the screen that said Tunisia.

So the Rebel Aliens had cleaned out that Syndicate stronghold as well. But there were a very large number of bodies spread around the burned domes and the fire-blackened corn. It sort of reminded her of the scene in Star Wars when Luke returns to his aunt and uncle's farm to find them dead and the buildings burned. Except for the large number of bodies. She couldn't imagine that all of those people had worked there. With modern agricultural methods it took very few people indeed to grow corn in the middle of the desert. And again, there were hundreds of bodies. She didn't doubt that if they bothered to autopsy them they'd find chips in each of the necks.

So the burning in Belgium was the final cleanup?

Damn Mulder and his wishful thinking, anyway. Now she was going to have to find some way to keep herself from answering the inevitable call and escaping the fate of the others like her, innocent victims of the Invaders and their human collaborators.

"Well, Langly, do you have anything yet?" Mulder asked for what was probably the nineteenth time since he'd reached the Gunmen's house with his problem and a big bag of Thai takeout.

"No, Mulder, how many times do I have to tell you?" the blond haired Gunman gave him a dirty look through the thick black rims of his glasses. "Stats take time even with computers because humans have to define the variables. We're working on it. Why don't you go surf the net some more."

"Because I'm not getting anywhere with that," Mulder said impatiently. "We've already got the hard info from the Mufon groups and every fucking rumor from everywhere including last night's Art Bell broadcast. I've got everything there is. It's time to crunch."

"Well, you might be ready, but I'm not, and I'm the programmer, so get out of my hair, Man," Langly snapped back. "I'll tell you when it's time."

"I'm sorry," Mulder said. "But I have to know how many more of these burnings there are going to be, so we can make sure they don't come after Scully again."

"We know that," Byers said, handing Mulder his seventh cup of coffee. Byers had switched what was in the pot to decaf two hours before and Mulder hadn't noticed, so he figured he would get away with this one, too. "None of us wants anything to happen to her."

"The woman I love, I should say not!" Frohike said, coming out of the kitchen with nuked leftover Pad Thai that Mulder had brought for Byers.

"I was wondering, Mulder," Byers said, after a calming sip of his own decaf. "Why isn't Scully here with you?"

"Because she doesn't know I'm doing this," Mulder said looking into his own cup, and the Gunmen exchanged significant looks while he wasn't watching. "I... I just don't want her to worry if she doesn't have to. She's been through enough. And... and I'm starting to think that maybe she doesn't trust me any more. That she doesn't think that I'm trying to help her. That it's me trying to control her instead. She said as much earlier today. I want to prove that I meant what I said. You know?"

"We understand, Mulder," Frohike said, setting down his fork and pounding Mulder's bicep in a friendly fashion.

"But, seeing she said she wanted to be included, don't you think maybe you ought to include her?" Byers suggested. "Maybe the problem is that you've both been doing so much investigating on your own. I mean, we hardly ever see the two of you together anymore. It didn't used to be like that."

"No Man, it's like the last three times I saw Scully she came over here alone to have us run checks on Diana and stuff," Langly chimed in, still typing code into the computer.

"She's obsessed with Diana," Mulder said angrily. "Or she's obsessed with this idea she has about Diana betraying me and the fact that I know Diana to be good, just like you all know her to be good, doesn't mean anything."

"But Diana was working for them, Mulder," Frohike said around a mouth of noodles. "The whole time she was gone and probably before. Probably the whole time she was at the Bureau. We found indications of that, nothing definitive."

"You sound like Scully," Mulder told him, folding his arms across his chest in unconscious self-defense.

"Or Scully sounds like us," Byers commented. "Mulder, we ran the checks. Fowley looks dirty. Or if not dirty than at least involved in a very active way. And for years. We like her. It's not that we don't. But, doesn't it mean anything to you that you might have been just another one of her assignments?"

"That's ridiculous!" Mulder snorted. "What evidence do you have of that?"

"This is going to sound totally rude, and I don't mean it to be," Frohike said. "But why else would she choose you? Out of all the guys in the Bureau. I mean, Diana's hot. She could have anybody. Why you?"

"Because she feels the same way as I do about things. She was always interested in the paranormal, in the X-Files," Mulder protested, and he didn't have to see the looks on their faces to realize just how lame that sounded in light of their suggestion.

"Mulder.." Byers began only to have Mulder interrupt.

"So you're all on her side then?" he asked looking from one to the other of their faces and not liking what he saw there at all.

"Mulder, this isn't about sides, it's about facts," Byers protested. "It's about evidence. While we all like Diana and we'd all like her to be one of the good guys, the evidence says otherwise. She was one of the ones involved in the experiments. Why else would she have visited all those Mufon groups? She was checking up on the victims, Mulder. The victims like Scully. Can't you understand how Scully wouldn't want you to trust her?"

"They almost killed Scully, Man," Langly spoke up, fingers still busy on the keyboard.

"I could never go to the hospital for her again after seeing that," Frohike said softly, looking away so they wouldn't see the tears that came every time he remembered what she'd looked like covered in those tubes and wires. Every time he remembered what it had been like knowing she would surely die.

"Diana didn't do that," Mulder protested.

"Even if she only did the follow-up, Mulder," Byers said, gesturing slightly with his coffee cup. "That's bad enough. At least it's a reason for Scully to feel that way. A real-life, honest-to-God, reason. What reason do you have to trust Diana?"

"Other than the fact that she was your chica?" Frohike asked.

"Sure. Fine. Diana's evil. She's the devil with a soul as black as hell. Scully's right. I'm wrong. I'm deluded. I'm fucking irrational! What the fuck do you guys want?" Mulder ranted slamming down his coffee hard enough to spill most of it out of the cup.

"We just want you to look at it rationally, Mulder," Byers went on in his usual quiet way. "We just want you to consider the facts."

"You don't have to admit anything, Man," Langly said. "Just look at it." Then he stopped typing. "Hey, I'm done. We can run the numbers now."

The men crowded around Langly and the monitor as the processors crunched out the data.

Scully considered herself for a moment as a werewolf. Mulder would love that. But, with the chip in her head, she could at any moment be entirely out of her own control and in that of the Invaders. So she had to take precautions, not so that she wouldn't hurt other people, but so that she wouldn't be hurt.

The easiest way seemed to be chaining herself to her bed. She didn't remember how she'd gotten to Pennsylvania the last time, she didn't remember much of anything except hearing herself on the tape after hypnosis talking about things she'd supposedly seen. She hoped that the Aliens could only spur automatic, normal actions in their victims. It wasn't normal to have to unlock handcuffs to let yourself out of bed, so Scully hoped that would keep her safe.

She used Krycek's method, wrapping duct tape around the cuff so it wouldn't scratch her headboard, and chained her left hand securely to two of the headboard rails. As she lay there trying to sleep she could almost wish for Krycek's presence again. Having someone to watch her back would be comforting. And she knew he'd do it, too, if it meant getting what he wanted. Whatever that might be this time.

She'd considered and rejected the idea of calling Mulder fifteen or so times throughout the course of the evening. But she just couldn't bring herself to admit to him that she was frightened. That she believed something was going to happen. He already interpreted her misgivings about things as weakness and overreacted accordingly, becoming paranoid about her safety. She couldn't betray any real weakness in front of him, not without telling him how much she needed him, the bastard. And she couldn't do that now. Not after what had happened at the hangar. Not with how she knew he felt about Fowley. She couldn't let him know how pathetic she really was, or she'd have to give him up, leave the X-Files for good. And that would leave her with nothing.

As she drifted off several hours later, she wondered if her pride was finally going to cost her her life.

Scully could see them up ahead of her through the trees on Skyland Mountain, some already on fire. She could see them, and she knew what it meant. But she couldn't stop. The summons was too strong.

Scully walked forward.

She knew what was going to happen, but she wasn't afraid. The pull of the chip was strong and it calmed her. It had a sense of inevitability, of rightness. The fire would clean up the mistakes. It would end the collaboration with the Invaders. It would cleanse them all and leave them with no path but resistance.

She'd walked into the broad black-clad chest before she'd even realized someone was in her way. She didn't look up into his faceless face. She didn't want to be frightened, and she didn't want that to be the last thing she saw in life. She tried to conjure up another face instead, as if he was there with her at the end, even though she wouldn't wish it on him. She waited for the man in front of her to touch her with his burning device. The wand she remembered from before, to roast her from the inside out.

He didn't say anything, just wrapped an arm around her waist and dragged her off the path, through one of the patches of scrubby pines that dotted the hillside. She went along with him, his arm and his momentum too strong to resist, even though they seemed to be heading in the wrong direction, even when the pull of the chip made her want to turn back toward the fires and away from the slope of the hill.

But the one she was with drew her on, running like hell, down the hillside toward the river. Scully turned mid-flight and looked behind them. Fires flared here and there on the hill above, some brighter, some moving as the victims tried to run away, only to crumble to ash where they stood.

It was like looking onto the gaping maw of Hell itself.

Suddenly, there was a flash of fire to their right, a man coming alight and revealing the Faceless One who burned him, turned away from them searching for more stragglers.

The one she was with cut left abruptly, on a much straighter line toward the river. She didn't know why he seemed to think that would help. She thought the alien rod would most likely work under water as well. But she couldn't stop herself as he dragged her away, despite the siren song in the back of her head.

He stopped them, sliding partway down the hill as they reached a smoldering pile of meat that had once been a human being. The alien who had done it was already gone, maybe the same one who they had seen above them on the hill. Scully just kept looking backward, up the hill, to where the chip wanted her to go.

His hands fumbled at her throat and she gasped as he tore the cross from her neck and flung it down on the ground by the body.

"Come on!" he hissed, dragging her forward again. "That ought to throw them off."

The hillside steepened as it neared the river, and Scully could see one of the Faceless Ones, heading down the hill as well. She wasn't certain whether he had seen them, or sensed them, or whatever it did, but it was going in the same general direction.

"W...One is coming," she gasped out as he dragged her by the hand toward a footbridge over the river.

He looked behind them and caught sight of the Alien as well.

"Shit," he said and stretched his long legs further, dragging Scully stumbling along behind him.

Scully saw the alien behind them veer off suddenly to their right, and a flare of bright fire through the tree branches was a glowing testimony as to why he'd done so.

"Th... they got another one," she said as they reached the bridge.

But there was a long stretch of bare hillside between the bridge and the treeline, and the alien was nearly behind them again. Her companion didn't hesitate, he let go of her hand and jumped off the bridge into the rushing dark water. It reached his waist. But before she could turn back to answer the call of the chip, he'd gotten hold of her ankle and had pulled her off the footbridge into the water beside him.

Scully gasped at the touch of the frigid water and thankfully ceased doing so before she went under. When she surfaced he pulled her along with him under the footbridge, nothing but their heads above the surface of the cold, black river.

"Oh," was all she could say before her teeth began chattering as the chill water swept what little body heat remained away and downstream.

Her companion gathered her against him, pressing her face against his neck, perhaps for warmth or perhaps to stifle any noises she might inadvertently make as she shivered.

She could hear the Alien even above the rushing the water made as it sped past them. His heavy footsteps thundered above them on the footbridge. She hoped he wouldn't be able to see them there, huddled in the darkness, just inches above the water. Suddenly her companion took a deep breath and disappeared below the surface of the water. Panicking, Scully wondered what had happened, whether to follow him or to remain where she was. And, without him holding her in place, there was still the call of the chip summoning her to the hillside and her certain doom.

She began creeping to the downstream edge of the bridge, readying herself for the short swim to the shore and her inexorable fate. The Alien was still above her, hesitating and looking out on the downstream side just feet above her.

Suddenly, her companion surfaced beside her, taking a deep, but quiet breath and motioning for her to do the same. Scully obeyed and felt him pulling her down, deep into the freezing water beneath the bridge. They lay together at the bottom of the stream until Scully feared she wouldn't be able to hold her breath any longer and would end by drowning rather than burning to death. That or freezing. She could no longer feel her hands or feet. She struggled in the grip of the man that held her, she had to get air and she had to get it now or drown. As if sensing her desperation or perhaps feeling the need for air himself, he loosed his hold on her and they surfaced together, Scully taking care to make as little noise as possible.

As soon as her head broke the surface of the water she knew that the Faceless Alien was no longer on the bridge above them. It had been perhaps two minutes.

She looked into her companion's face and saw him motioning for her to take another breath. She did and followed him down again to the bottom of the river as the water swirled away what little heat remained trapped inside her sodden suit and coat. She was beginning to feel sleepy and she knew that as a sign of encroaching hypothermia.

This time he had to pull at her to get her to follow him up from the bottom of the water, and he didn't return them to their place by the pilings of the bridge but dragged her along behind him as he crossed the river, still beneath the footbridge. They left its shelter only once, as they had to get by the pilings that supported the center, and then resumed their course beneath it until they reached the other bank of the river.

"Come on, Scully!" he whispered harshly, half dragging her from the water and into the chilly night, her sodden clothes weighting her down like lead.

"I...I don't think I can," she breathed.

"You have to!" he hissed and pulled on her arm hard enough to hurt, but it got her moving up the bank, though she did lose one of her pumps in the mud as she climbed.

"I...I lost my shoe," she whispered as they reached the bank and he began pulling her forward at a run.

"Leave it!" he said, hauling on her arm and looking worriedly behind them. "I can't carry you, so you have to run. Just watch out for rocks and sticks."

Scully did her best, and the numbness of her extremities helped. She was probably doing herself a great deal of damage moving at a dead run through the trees away from the burning, but moving she was.

"H...how far?" she gasped, the frozen water having taken most of her breath along with her warmth.

"Not very," was his reply.

It didn't seem like it was not very far. It seemed they ran forever through the cold night, wet clothes flapping in the stiff wind as Scully grew colder and colder and cared less and less if the Aliens captured her. Burning alive was seeming like a better and better option.

She hated the cold. She hated being cold. She and Mulder had had more bad experiences in the cold in the past six years than she could count. Ice worms, nasty green cocooning bugs in the forest, moth men in chilly winter Florida, and the madness that was Antarctica. She didn't think she could take any more. She knew she didn't want to. No more cold. No more cold.

"We're almost there, Scully. We won't be cold any more," her companion assured her.

She hadn't realized she'd said it out loud.

Suddenly, Scully saw a light ahead of them, through the trees. It was steady. It was yellow. It was artificially generated, not the flickering flames of the burning dead. It seemed to welcome them toward it like a sign from God.

When they finally stumbled through the trees and undergrowth Scully finally saw the source of the light, just as she stubbed her toe up against the concrete barrier for the nearest parking space.

"The S..s....s..leepy Mum..mountain Muh...motel?" she heard herself say as her jaw quivered uncontrollably with cold.

"Best I could do on such short notice," her companion shrugged and his teeth flashed in a smile in the dim light, just before they started chattering in time with hers. "It's h...heated and has g...good water pressure. I know I'm g...going to want a sh..shower. I'm fu...fucking frozen."

He led the way across the parking lot, fumbling in the pocket of his jacket for the key. Scully limped after him, avoiding some broken glass on the asphalt, hoping he hadn't lost the room key in the river.

He had the door open before she reached him, and he stood aside to let her enter first, in gentlemanly fashion. She went inside, but stopped just as she crossed the threshold, exhausted suddenly, and absolutely unsure as to what would happen next.

She heard him shut the door and lock it behind them. But still she didn't move, she just shivered and dripped onto the carpet.

"C...come on Sc...ully," she felt him tugging at the collar of her trenchcoat from behind her. "We've g...got to get out of these c...clothes b..before we freeze."

She just stood where she was, as if she'd already turned to ice.

"I know i...it's h...hard," he said compassionately, still tugging ineffectually at her coat. "B...but you've g...got to h...help me h...here."

Scully shrugged her shoulders and he pulled her trenchcoat off her shoulders and onto the floor. It fell like a black puddle at her feet. It was as wet as a puddle, too. He put his hand on the small of her back and propelled her toward the bathroom.

She kicked off her remaining shoe on the way and the next thing she knew he was helping her off with her suitjacket and doing his best to unbuckle her belt as she shivered away from him.

She needed to know what had happened. Why he was here, what was going on.

"W...what a...re y..you doing h...here? W..why t...tonight?" she managed, taking over the unfastening of her belt, and allowing him to work on removing his own sodden garments.

"B...because I knew. I...I knew it was t...tonight. I kn...knew you'd b..be h..here. I...I just d...didn't want them t..to to k...kill you, Sc...Scully," he said. He'd managed to get off his jacket and unfasten the fly of his pants, but he was having a lot of trouble with the buttons of his shirt. He was shivering badly, and it was already a difficult task one-handed.

"K...Krycek, I d...don't know w..what t..to s...say," Scully said, and unfastened his shirt buttons for him.

"I th...think 'Thanks' w...would p...probably b..be appropriate," he said, and smiled again through chattering teeth.

Scully smiled back.

While it was truly surreal to be undressing Alex Krycek in a motel bathroom at Skyland Mountain, she was glad it was this and not the alternative. But God, she was cold.

Scully shrugged out of her own silk shirt as Krycek turned on the water. She was ecstatic when she saw it begin to steam.

As they'd already seen each other naked, Scully didn't bother with modesty. She just wanted her sodden clothes off and herself in that hot water as soon as possible. It seemed Krycek had the same idea because he was peeling his clothes off as fast as shaking hand and frozen fingers would allow. Stripping off her bra and panties, Scully made it into the tub just seconds before Krycek himself, and found herself locked in battle with him over the prime place under the spray.

"Y...you're b...blocking the w...water! G...get out of the w...way!" Scully commanded imperiously, giving him one of the looks she reserved to cow Mulder.

Krycek just smirked at her.

"T....too bad if you're t...too goddamned sh...short," he said. He stood under the spray for a few more seconds to make his point, and then he stepped back behind the water jet and let it hit Scully full-force with its nearly heavenly warmth.

Scully shut her eyes and let the water beat down over her face and run down her body, making the barest beginnings on warming her river-chilled flesh. She was smiling up into the spray, she could feel herself doing it, and she knew that it was weird, but she felt oddly euphoric, as though she hadn't just escaped a horrible death and run headlong into what might be a fate worse than that. Endorphins, one part of her mind told herself, but she just didn't care.

"N..now who's hogging the w...water," Krycek said, and placed his hand on her hip, pushing her around toward the inside wall of the tub so he could move back up to share the spray. Scully stepped backward to distance herself from him and slipped on the wet enamel. She felt herself starting to go down and flailed her arms to catch hold of the wall, of anything to prevent one of those really stupid accidents that everyone has but never wants to admit to. And she certainly didn't want to have to admit to anyone that hers had happened in a rather seedy vacation motel room with a wanted criminal.

It all happened very fast, but she was lucky that Krycek had good reflexes, or maybe not so lucky as it turned out. But he caught her with his good arm and the next thing she knew she was clutching him for dear life while he helped her get her feet under her again.

"Whoa, Scully," he said, grinning at her like a maniac. "A...are you all right?"

Scully looked at him like he'd lost his mind all the while sternly reminding herself that it was most certainly NOT good-looking-naked-man-who-just-saved-my-life-rubbing-warmly-up-against-my-skin but evil, lying, killing, raping, conspirator Alex Krycek trying to take advantage of me while I'm down. Scully waited for him to try to take advantage of her while she was down. And she waited. And then she waited a few seconds more.

Finally, Krycek turned her a little to the left so that the warm water was hitting them both and running down the few gaps that remained between their bodies. He wasn't smiling any more. He was looking at her speculatively.

"What's going on in there?" he asked finally.

"W...what do you mean, Krycek?" she countered.

"I mean there's something about as complicated as quantum theory going on behind those blue eyes. What are you calculating?"

"I asked you before, Krycek, why are you here?" she asked, getting her shivering under control a little, now that she had the added heat of his body and her own embarrassment to help the water along.

"I told you before," he said. "I knew this was going down and I didn't want you to get killed. So I came here to stop you before you could get up there on that mountain and get burned with the rest of them. I owed you that. For how badly I fucked up the last time we both were here. Or, how I didn't fuck up. Or, well, you know. I'm sure Mulder must have told you what I did. He probably got it pretty much right except for the embellishments as to motivation."

"H... he said that you k...killed the tram operator. That you tried to kill him up on the tram, stopping it and then starting it and knocking him off the side and almost dropping him down the mountain. That you told Duane Barry where I lived. That you killed B...barry and tried to frame Mulder and then disappeared when he made his report to Skinner."

"Yeah, that's essentially it," Krycek nodded. "Except for the part about trying to kill him with the tram. I stopped the tram before he got to the top, that's true. I was supposed to delay him so they could take you. But then the idiot went climbing out and was trying to get up on the cable or some damn thing. I couldn't really see what he was doing very well, but he was going to get himself killed, and I was under orders to make sure he didn't get killed. So when he was that stupid, I started the tram to get him to get back in the car. He fell. That wasn't what I was trying to do, I almost had a heart attack when that happened, believe me. It would have meant my ass. So, when he was hanging off the side I moved the tram up to the top so he could get off safely and wouldn't drop."

"And the rest of it?" Scully asked, finding it a lot easier to remember he was evil, lying, killing, raping, conspirator Alex Krycek now, despite the fact that he still had his arm around her back and was holding her tightly against his wet, naked body.

"It's all true, Scully. I worked for them," Krycek said seriously, and there was trouble there in his green, green eyes. Scully knew what real trouble looked like, what guilt looked like. She'd seen it often enough on Mulder over the years, and most recently in the mirror. "But what nobody knows is after what happened with you and Barry I asked my boss what the hell was going on, what they were going to do with you. He told me I didn't need to know. I asked him why they didn't just kill you both if you were such problems, why all this jerking everyone around? He told me that if I didn't like it he'd essentially take care of me. You don't have to believe that, but a few months later, after your sister was killed by accident, he decided I was getting to be too much of a problem, asking too many questions, questioning too many decisions, so he had the guy who killed your sister try to kill me with a car bomb. I got away. Went to Russia.

"I worked for them, Scully, but I didn't like what they were doing, or what they were having me do. I couldn't see the reason for any of it. It didn't make sense or go along with what I consider, I don't know, professional ethics, I guess. I'm not trying to shy away from the responsibility for what I did. I am responsible for everything I did myself. Including what I did to you. But I was really fucking stupid not to know more of what was going on when I was doing those things. Being the good little soldier and not questioning authority. I'm sorry for that. For all of it. And I'm doing my best to try to make up for as much of it as I can.

"I owe you Scully, for what I did on their orders. And for the way you've always been decent to me even though you knew I was involved somehow. It's not professional any more between us. It's personal. And with all those old men and their families getting fried in that hangar, personal is all any of us have left."

"Is that meant to be some sort of an apology, Krycek?" Scully asked, feeling more than a little overwhelmed.

"Not some sort of an apology, a bona fide, genuine apology," Krycek told her, tightening his arm around her slightly in something disturbingly like a hug. "I know it doesn't make up for any of it. I KNOW, Scully, because I got fucked by Them, too. Except in your case I was one of Them. But I was younger and stupid, and I didn't know any better. I learned better. And now I'm trying to, I don't know. I can't fix it. I know better than that. But I just want to.. .I just want... oh, fuck, I don't know! I just want to do something good for once. Something morally fucking unambiguously good.

"Do you know how hard it is to spend your life screwing everyone over? Not trusting anyone, and not deserving to be trusted either? Just waiting for the next fucked-up thing to come along the pike in your totally fucked-up life? I mean, who says "I want to be an assassin when I grow up." I mean, I sure didn't. I wanted to be fucking rock star. I'm not saying I could have been, I'm not fooling myself, but at least it was something normal to want. What's normal about this? What's normal for any of us? I'm just so sick of all of it!"

Scully looked at him and she didn't doubt it. She didn't doubt any of it. His anguish was too real and too obvious to be feigned. He'd have to be the best actor in the world, ready to make his acceptance speech to the Academy, to fake that. The self-blame and guilt rivaled Mulder on his worst day. Or maybe on his best.

"Try having a chip in your neck," she said with a rueful smile. "I spend my whole life waiting for them to call, for the cancer to come back, to wake up one morning and not know who I am. To wake up one morning and find it's years later and I'm as crazy as Duane Barry. Believe me, Krycek, I know what it's like to be sick of your life."

"And you get the added fun of taking shit from Mulder, too," he said. "At least I get to skip that part, most of the time. All I have to take is the occasional smart ass remark and slug to the gut. I don't know how you take that steady erosion. Those looks, that guilt he lays on you like a blanket. I would have killed him by now."

"I thought you didn't want to kill him the last time you saw him," Scully commented.

Krycek half smiled.

"What the fuck was that about?" he said shaking his head at the memory. "I don't know what I was thinking. No, wait, I do know, but it's still fucked up. I'd been... I'd been having to do some stuff, Scully. Stuff that I don't like to do, but sometimes is necessary if you want to stay alive and have favors in the right places to call in when you need them.

"When I look back on my life now, I can't believe half the things I've done. I can't even look at them most of the time, because...well, I don't know how to without going crazy, finally.

"I have....I don't really know how to put this, or how to express it adequately. I have debased myself in every way it is possible to do it. I've sold out every single principle I've ever had, done every single thing I ever believed was wrong, and have managed to do it all without putting a bullet in my brain just to fucking end it.

"Sometimes the only thing that keeps me going is hate. Hating fucking Them for putting me in a position where I had to do those things to survive. I can't even believe it.

"I get up in the morning and look in the mirror to shave and ask "Who the fuck ARE you and what have you done with Alex Krycek?" Alex Krycek was not a bad guy all in all. Alex Krycek had a college education, graduated Quantico, had a job, had a life. Alex Krycek had friends and an apartment, and a car. Alex Krycek had normal things that normal people want. And he had every expectation of keeping all of them, like Bill Mulder, and Marita Corvorrubias, and all of those Old Men and their families.

"And then one day I got the orders to be Mulder's partner. The son of the Great Old Man. I thought it was great. I thought they had something cool planned for us. I knew I was supposed to watch him, to watch you. I thought it was time they were going to tell us both what was really going on. To turn Mulder into their instrument, like I was. Bring us into the plan. And what happened? We all got fucked. All three of us. They fucked me and used me to fuck you. And I lost my life. Lost everything. And for what?

"I mean, I know what it was all for now. And it was wrong. And stupid. We all lost what we've lost because of someone else's stupid miscalculation. Someone else's bonehead plans. It's the ultimate fucking raw deal."

"I know," Scully said.

"I know you do," Krycek replied. "So now's when we have to decide what to do. Now they're gone and their plan is gone and it's our turn. Now is when we get control over our own lives again, at least a little. So, this is what I've decided to do with my own life. What do you think?"

"I don't think I'm in any position to argue about your choices so far," Scully told him with a small smile. "Is this hat change a permanent one?"

"Oh don't be looking for white on this boy," Krycek smiled back. "It was far too late for that before you ever met me. But a nice grey would be good. I'd just like to have something to look back on that I can be proud of for once. It's awfully fucking hard to be bad, Scully, when you know what good is. You've got to have a good reason. You've got to make choices. It would be easy if I was a sociopath, or a narcissist or a zealot. But I'm not any of the above. I just do what I think I have to to survive.

"And sometimes I just do what I want.

"And sometimes I just do anything to make me forget about it for a few minutes, you know?"

"I know," Scully said with a sigh. "I know about wanting to forget. Mostly I pick fights with Mulder. Oh, he doesn't even realize I'm picking. I just get really silent and look at him skeptically and then he picks them himself. I pick the fight and he takes the blame."

"Nice work if you can get it," Krycek said with an evil grin. "I think abusing Mulder would come high on my list of favorite pastimes if I was allowed to indulge myself. God knows abusing me is one of his favorites."

"After what happened in Rhode Island, I'd stay out of Mulder's way if I were you," Scully told him.

"I don't think that's going to be possible," Krycek said. "Besides I want him to know. I want him to know that I saved you when he didn't even give a fuck. I mean, where WAS he Scully? He saw those burnings on TV. I know, because I'm the one that called him. Why wasn't he watching you? Why wasn't he camped out at your place until he was sure you were safe? Hell, I would have been camped out in your bed with you handcuffed to me to make sure you couldn't go anywhere."

"You do seem to have a thing for handcuffs," Scully said, unable to suppress a smile.

"Very funny," Krycek said, but then he grinned himself. "I mean, if you'd really prefer it I suppose I could be persuaded to locate some. But, judging from the way your wrist looks, you've had enough of handcuffs for one night, don't you think?"

Scully frowned.

"They've stopped calling me right now, but what if they call again? I think I may need them."

"No, you don't," Krycek told her, pulling her even closer to him if that were possible. "I've got you. And I have no intention of letting you go. I'm not a jackass like Mulder."

"I'm sure Mulder just thought I'd be angry with him," Scully said, craning her neck up to look at his face. "We had quite a fight today. Because you called him and he didn't want to tell me about the burnings. He said he didn't want me to worry."

"So he'd let you get killed instead of brave some yelling?" Krycek sounded incredulous. "He really is a jackass. Either that, or he's more whipped then even I'd imagined."

"What are you talking about?" Scully asked.

"Whether or not you've actually fucked him, Scully, you have him totally whipped. All you have to do is quirk an eyebrow and the man cowers," Krycek smiled wickedly. "Must be nice to have that kind of power over someone, but the fact is you've got him so cowed he's actually not any good for you any more."

Scully gave him one of her patented skeptical looks and he just smiled more broadly.

"Yeah, like that," Krycek told her. "You just do that and he backs down. When all the while what you really want is for him to back you up against those file cabinets of his or toss you down on the desk or the floor and have his wicked way with you eyebrows and snorts be damned."

Scully was somewhat alarmed to find that as Krycek had been giving his explanation he'd backed her up against the cool tiles of the bath, pressing the length of his naked body against her as he'd just envisioned Mulder doing against the filing cabinets. He was getting more than a little turned on, and Scully found it more than slightly alarming that Krycek could be aroused by a fantasy of Mulder that she'd had herself at least half a million times. Was he imagining he was Mulder or that he was Scully? After what had gone on in Rhode Island, despite Krycek's protest that it had been momentary madness on his part, she really couldn't be sure.

And the worst part was how little she actually cared.

What was that old women's restroom saying, a good man is hard to find, but a hard man is good to find? Well, Krycek was quickly becoming the latter and Scully, despite her attempts to maintain some kind of objectivity, was not about to let it go to waste. It was somewhat awful to think that Krycek was the only man she'd had sex with in more than five years, but the first time, despite it not having been her idea, had been far from an awful experience.

At the moment she just felt so wrung out emotionally at being so out of control and at the mercy of the men that had put the chip in her head that a little physical affection would be one hell of an excellent release.

Scully had a momentary pang of guilt. She'd be using him. And she wasn't the sort of person who did that. But Krycek made his living, or stayed alive by using people himself, so it wasn't like he was unaware that she might have her own agenda. It didn't make it right, but it wasn't like he was an innocent, or that he was expecting it to be love.

"How many times have you thought of that, Scully?" Krycek continued, grinding his growing erection against her belly as he spoke. "Hmm? How many times have you wanted him to fuck you right there in the X-Files basement?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Krycek," she said in her best haughty tone. Krycek's green eyes sparkled wickedly. He saw right through her wall of bullshit and it was really kind of amazing, because Mulder never did and she would have said he knew her better than anybody.

"So is it the file cabinets or the desk, hmm?" he continued, bending his head to press his mouth to the side of her neck, leaning into her and pressing her flatter up against the wall.

"What makes you think that I have fantasies about Mulder at all?" Scully asked, annoyed at how breathless her voice had become, but Krycek was talented and his lips were blazing a hot trail up the side of her neck to the sensitive spot just behind her ear, and she wanted more, despite the fact that she had her hands plastered flat at her sides against the slick tile of the bath. She wasn't going to touch him until he laid off about the Mulder thing. It was starting to get kind of creepy.

Krycek just chuckled and ground her flatter into the tiles, slipping his hand between their slick bodies and inserting it deftly between her thighs.

Scully almost levitated straight up the wall, both from the possessiveness of Krycek's touch and the fact that it felt so damned good.

"If it had been me," Krycek said between hot kisses trailed down her neck to the hollow of her throat, while his hand made itself very busy at its task and Scully suppressed a gasp. "It would have stopped being a fantasy years ago, Scully. You would have been mine years ago. Not like Mulder. He's an idiot. A fucking idiot. No, a non-fucking idiot. A fucking idiot would be better, because at least you'd be getting some kind of compensation for putting up with his shit."

"Krycek," Scully said reaching out to steady herself on his shoulders as he lowered himself to his knees in front of her. They were lucky the tub was fairly wide, because as it was he had to practically cross his long legs to make it down. But Scully couldn't bring herself to stop him as his mouth joined his hand between her legs. "I...it doesn't matter about Mulder. Nothing's ever going to happen with Mulder. If it had, it would have, years ago."

There, she'd said it. She didn't know why. But she'd said what she'd been secretly thinking, fearing, since she'd been diagnosed with cancer. That all the bickering, the jealousy with Mulder and his Bambi and his Detective White, her stupid attempt at a fling with Ed Jerse, had just been them ironing out the fact that he looked at her as his little sister, a Samantha surrogate. That he wanted to take care of her, but that was all.

She'd known it as long ago as the hallway of the hospital, the night Penny Northern had died, foreshadowing her own impending fate. Mulder had been there for her, of course. He'd held her. He'd reassured her. She had even thought for a moment that it was going to be something more, that he would kiss her somewhere other than her forehead, but no. And she'd contented herself by imagining he didn't want to pressure her while she was ill and had so much else to worry about.

But that had been a lie. Another lie to herself because she didn't want to know the truth.

Just as the moment last summer in his hallway had been as much of a lie. Mulder would have kissed her, she knew, to make her stay. He would have done anything to make her stay. He HAD gone to the ends of the earth to save her. Because he loved her, she knew. He loved her, but not how she wanted.

It had been more than evident with Diana Fowley's reappearance and Mulder's refusal to hear any ill of her despite the evidence to the contrary, but Scully still hadn't wanted to believe it. Even when he'd gone with her, even when he'd been on his way to the hangar to be burned with the rest, Scully had only wanted to believe that he'd wanted to find the truth, to know, finally what his father and the Smoking Man and all the rest had been doing for so long. To know everything from the horse's mouth.

But what Mulder had really been doing had been ditching her again. To go off with his lover. To leave her and go off to the alien spacecraft, or the Consortium stronghold, to find the truth, and Samantha and be with Fowley, a woman he viewed as a woman, not the emotional substitute for his little sister lost so long ago.

Scully moaned and leaned back against the tiles as Krycek's talented hand and mouth sent tremors of pleasure through her abused body. What did it matter who it was? That all she wanted was for it to be Mulder's tongue lapping at her clitoris, Mulder's long fingers pressed up hard inside her. Mulder making her shudder and writhe against his face. She would never have that. She would never have what she wanted, and Krycek seemed to want her. It didn't matter why.

And in an odd way, he was the perfect substitute. He'd had Mulder, after all, both as partner and as lover, even if it had been by force. Scully hadn't even had that dubious pleasure, she could never force Mulder to do anything he didn't want. And he obviously didn't want her. And at least Krycek was like her. He knew what it was to want Mulder and not be wanted back. There would be sympathy between them if nothing else. There already was. She'd felt it from the first, and she knew that he did. Or why would he keep coming back? Why save her? This wasn't because of Mulder, but because of her. He'd wanted to save her. And now he wanted to make love to her, to show her that someone valued her as a woman even if her partner did not.

Scully was absurdly grateful.

It was so pathetic.

Here she was in another dingy motel bathroom having voluntary sexual relations with a man who less than a year before had tied her up and raped her. And she was grateful to be doing it. She was putting her hands in the back of his hair and pressing his face harder into her crotch. And he was making little humming sounds and moaning himself and she was coming, God, she was coming. And it was good. It was so good. It was good even if it wasn't Mulder, even if it wasn't the one she wanted. At least she was wanted. By someone. Even if he was a liar and a murderer and a rapist and whatever else he was.

And Krycek was kissing her belly and pressing his face against it.

"Oh, Scully, that was so good. You're so beautiful," he said, his voice a warm buzz against her skin as the water turned lukewarm around them.

"Krycek, I think we ought to get out of the shower now," Scully still had her fingers in his wet, spiky hair. "It's getting cold."

"Right," he said, heaving himself up from his knees. And Scully had to appreciate how uncomfortable it must have been for him, kneeling on the shabby porcelain while he'd pleasured her. "And I've seen about as much cold water tonight as I ever want to see."

"I agree," Scully said, shutting off the shower as the water temperature dropped a few more degrees. She turned back from the faucet to see Krycek eyeing her speculatively. She raised her eyebrows at him.

"Come here," he said, and held out his arms to her, the real one beckoning, the other, held stiffly straight out at his side.

Scully only hesitated for a heartbeat. Then she threw herself into his arms, pressing her face into his broad chest, not looking at his face. She didn't know Krycek's reactions yet, and she was afraid to look.

He wrapped his arms around her and held her close. Then he kissed her on the top of the head gently, for all the world like Mulder, though he claimed they were so different.

Scully idly wondered why they did that. Was it just because of the extreme height difference? And then she decided she didn't care. It was just as comforting when Krycek did it. And at least she was assured he was interested in her as more than a sister substitute.

Suddenly she lost the feel of his arm around her, then she felt Krycek's long fingers underneath her chin. He tipped her head up to meet the warmth of his mouth, and that as well as his still prominent erection was more than enough to reassure her that this was no platonic comforting.

And again she was insanely glad, nearly euphoric. Sure, it was probably adrenaline from the run, and the sex, but she felt good. He was making her body feel good. And that was more than she'd had in a long time. Too long a time.

Krycek kissed her thoroughly for a good long while, unhurried, but seeming to want to taste every texture inside her mouth, and she allowed herself to explore him as well. And it was so good. He was so solid against her. It almost felt right. Finally, Krycek broke the kiss and whispered roughly in her ear.

"Com'on, Baby, it's time to go to bed."

It was so trite. He called her Baby. He called her Baby and she wasn't even mad. She didn't even feel like insisting that she was a grown person and deserving of more dignity than that. Because she knew, she just knew that he didn't mean it in any way that was injurious to her dignity. He meant it as endearment. And it was endearing. Scully threw her arms around his neck.

And Krycek laughed and picked her up. He picked her up with just his one, strong arm and carried her into the bedroom, sparing her the pain of walking on her lacerated foot. The foot that was even now beginning to pain her as the euphoria of sexual pleasure had begun to fade somewhat.

When he set her down on the bed, she must have grimaced as her foot hit the bedspread because Krycek noticed she was in pain. And since they'd left the shower, it had even begun oozing blood once more out of the deeper cuts. Krycek turned around and immediately headed for his bag.

Scully secretly called it Krycek's Bag of Holding after a magical device she'd read about out of one of Langly's Dungeon and Dragons books she'd idly picked up one day when she was waiting for Mulder to get some information he'd wanted from the Gunmen. It was like Mary Poppins' carpetbag, it seemed to have an endless supply of strange objects one wouldn't expect and it seemed to hold a great deal more than a bag of its size actually should. This time, however, he pulled out something that looked quite mundanely like a shaving kit.

"Krycek, what are you doing?" she asked, she couldn't imagine what he wanted out of that now. But then, Krycek was Lord of Random.

"Getting something for that foot," he said, returning with the shaving kit. When he unzipped the black leather, she could see that it did contain shaving things, but also some scissors and needle and thread, generic acetaminophen, tweezers, superglue, a leatherman's tool, toothbrush and toothpaste and a small first aid kit. That's what Krycek brought out, along with a tube of Neosporin. "Thought I'd return the favor, seeing you did such a good job on my shoulder the last time."

Krycek grinned and gently took Scully's foot into his lap, taking great care not to touch the lacerations. She focused her attention on his movements as he ministered to her injury. He examined the foot carefully, and Scully watched in fascination as he removed the splinters and bits of wood she'd gotten embedded in her flesh as they'd made their escape through the forest. Krycek was one-handed, but he was dexterous all the same, and he used the tweezers when he couldn't grasp the splinters with his fingers. It was a long and rather painful process, but he was typically thorough, and Scully was quite sure when he was done that she had no more foreign objects inside the ground-up flesh of her foot.

Krycek opened the tube of Neosporin and slathered it all over her abused flesh. Then he took some bandages and gauze pads from his first aid kit and carefully wrapped the foot up in a light protective layer. Scully didn't offer to help because she knew it would only insult him. He was very touchy about his handicap and wanted to do everything to prove it wasn't one.

And the plain fact of the matter was that he wanted to take care of her and she was finding it incredibly nice to be taken care of for once. With Mulder it was nearly always the other way around, no matter how hurt or tired or worn she was, he was always more needy so she put her own feelings on the back burner to ease his pain. Even when she was dying, she'd worried more about his reaction to her illness than the illness itself. Perhaps worrying about him had made it easier for her in some ways, but it was an odd situation to be in. To always have to be concerned with someone so fragile.

Krycek wasn't like that. If he had needs emotional or physical, he told you what they were and took steps to get them satisfied. It was straightforward and refreshing after years on end of the Mulder crystal-ego dance. She didn't have to worry about him shattering unexpectedly if she was merely honest.

Krycek's hand stopped as he tied the final knot in his careful bandages and Scully looked up at his face to see him smiling at her.

"Do I want to know what you were thinking about, or will it depress me?" he asked.

"I was just thinking how nice it was to have someone do that for me," Scully said honestly.

"How can he be such an asshole?" Krycek asked. Then he carefully packed up the contents of his shaving kit and returned it to his bag.

Krycek came back to the bed and turned down the covers on the side Scully wasn't on. She looked at him speculatively.

"I don't know when they last washed this bedspread," Krycek said. Scully immediately raised herself up on her good foot, and pulled the covers down to below the level of her ass. Then she stuck her legs under them and was immediately sorry she'd done so.

"Hurt yourself?" Krycek asked.

"Putting anything on this foot is a really bad idea," Scully said through teeth grit with pain.

"That's why the Lord made decorator pillows," Krycek told her and brought the two rather sad and saggy ones that had been on the bed over to her side, shoving them under the covers and making her a little house of sorts for her injured foot. "Something I discovered when I sprained my toes jumping out of a third story window once. Hurt like a son-of-a-bitch for nearly a week and I couldn't get into my shoes."

Krycek went around to the other side of the bed and got under the covers. Judging by his anatomy, he was still interested, but she wondered how he planned to do anything with her foot all secured against pressure like that. Scully realized then that she'd been looking forward to having sex with Krycek and that she was disappointed now that it looked like it wasn't going to become a reality.

That fact scared the shit out of her.

What had she become? Was Mulder right? Was she allowing Krycek to poison her thinking in some way? Had he done something to twist her thinking and turn her away from Mulder? Away from the Truth?

Scully thought about it hard. And the only answer she could come up with was - no. Krycek hadn't done anything except express his own opinion. He hadn't demanded she change hers, or agree with him or anything. He hadn't tried to convince her of anything. There had been no arguing. No long conversations where he'd harangued her about how she didn't trust him and wasn't he right all the time? No puppy dog looks, no emotional manipulation, no pouting or sulking or tragic glances full of hurt and betrayal.

Instead there'd been an apology, an explanation - admittedly skewed and biased and one-sided, but an explanation nonetheless. There'd been sympathy, for her position, for her plight, for the abuse she'd taken on an emotional level, for her emotional and physical exhaustion. And there'd been some pretty excellent cunnilingus mixed in with affectionate hugging and passionate kisses.

And while all that was much more than she'd had in, well, if she admitted it it was a lot more than she'd ever had seeing she kept falling in love with men who were too self-absorbed to really see her, while it was much more than she'd had, it was still not nearly enough to turn her head. Because while she was looking forward to having sex with Krycek, that's exactly what it would be - having sex. It would probably be really good. It would probably be sympathetic and affectionate. But it wasn't love.

Scully was already in love. With someone who was too self-absorbed to really see her, it turned out. With someone who would never love her the way she loved him. With someone she could never really have.

But she could have Krycek. He'd just offered himself to her.

And Krycek was something. He was someone.

She had no illusions about him being a better man than she thought. She didn't expect to suddenly be swept away by his fabulous compassion for humanity and his fantastic philanthropic desires. She was too much of a realist for that. And he was too much of a realist to allow himself to be swept away by any such grandiose strivings.

But he was real, and he was there. And he cared, for whatever reason. And she knew that her own heart wasn't yet so hardened that she could simply turn her back on genuine caring when she saw it. It was the same way she couldn't despise Frohike for his dirty mind, his lack of social grace and his geeky appearance. She knew that there was a great heart behind all the trappings of nerdom and the knee-jerk male defensiveness of ogling women. Frohike belied his appearance by his actions. Krycek was belying his former actions with new ones, or at least adding a new layer. And he'd always been a man of many layers.

He'd saved Mulder's life, for instance. How many times? He'd brought him warnings. He'd protected him from harm. And he'd mercilessly manipulated and used him for his own ends. And he'd suffered physical abuse at Mulder's hand. And he'd meeted it out upon Mulder as well.

Scully wasn't certain yet what Krycek really was. But there was more to him than Mulder's one-dimensional villain, that was certain. There was a person in there. And one who obviously had impulses and feelings as good as he had bad. Perhaps she could encourage him to act upon the good ones more often. She had no illusions that she could change him. But perhaps if she gave him good advice, he might make better decisions. Mulder said he had benefited from her advice. Why not Krycek?

"Where are you?" Krycek asked, his green eyes nearly black in the light from the shabby bedside lamp. "You've left me again."

"I was just thinking," Scully said.

"Obviously," Krycek said, moving closer to her and sending the slightest of anticipatory shivers up her naked skin. "What about?"

"Many things," Scully said, watching him closely as he bent his dark head and kissed her bare shoulder, leaning over beside her until his arm was propped firmly between her back and the headboard, not quite around her, but touching, so that she could feel the strength of his muscles against her.

"Shoes and ships and sealing wax?" he teased. "Cabbages and kings?"

"That's "talk of many things", not think," Scully corrected.

"Well, it's been a while since Freshman English," Krycek told her. "And some of us don't have photographic memories."

"Well, you should really never misquote nonsense," Scully replied, arching her eyebrow for effect. "Because if you do it wrongly enough, I should imagine it would come out sense, and that would be no good at all."

"Please don't channel Alice, ok?" Krycek said, trying hard not to smile and failing miserably. "Unlike Mr. Carroll, some of us aren't pedophiles. And if you were Alice what we're going to do would get me arrested in all fifty states."

"And just what is that?" Scully asked looking at him demurely from behind her hair.

Krycek smiled wolfishly.

"What do you think?"

"I really have no idea, Sir. But perhaps I should go home now," Scully continued, playing the small helplessness for effect.

"Oh, yeah, I'll take you home, Little Girl," Krycek said and wrapped his arm around her waist while moving around in front of her to straddle her outstretched legs.

"You know, my mother told me that if ever I found myself in a situation like this, I most probably ought to scream," Scully said, staring blatantly at Krycek's erection, now just a tempting few inches from her mouth.

"Oh, I think you'll be doing that in just a few minutes," Krycek said, green eyes twinkling with amusement. He probably hadn't known she was able to play. It was a side she usually only showed to Mulder, and only to him on rare occasions. But it just seemed right tonight somehow. Like laughing in the face of death.

"You know it's really not polite to point," Scully said, unable to stop herself from rolling her eyes slightly.

"All right, Young Lady, that's enough of that," Krycek said and lowered himself down on top of her, pinning her to the mattress with his weight and pressing his lips to hers, mercifully silencing her nonsense.

Scully wrapped her arms and her legs around him, flinching only slightly as her injured foot knocked against the tangled sheet. It didn't take Krycek long to take the hint, and she could feel his cock pressing at her moisture-slicked entrance. She knew what she wanted was the same thing he did, so she reached her hand between them and guided him in.

"Um, damn girl, that was direct," Krycek said, raising himself up on his elbow to look at her somewhat suspiciously.

"Shut up and fuck me," Scully ordered imperiously. Then she chickened out a little and pulled his mouth down to hers again, more to silence any response or protest he might make than from any need to kiss him again.

She gasped slightly as Krycek did as he was told. She hadn't been with anyone since, well, since him, and that had been a while back. But it was only a second before it started to feel really good and she gasped again, but for a different reason.

One thing you could say for Krycek and that was that he was hell in bed.

It had almost been a problem the first time. She hadn't wanted it then. But he'd been good. Too good.

But now there wasn't too good. And allowing herself to enjoy it almost made her feel guilty. It almost made her feel Bad. She was with a Bad Boy, after all. The kind of boy her Mother and Ahab and her Partner would NOT approve of. Did that make her Dirty at last? Would it make her the kind of girl Mulder liked to look at in his magazines? The kind of girl like Fowley that demanded his attention, his trust, his lust, his love?

He had been interested the other times she'd been with Krycek.

But he had always said it was about loyalty. He had never said he'd wanted her, even if it had felt like he did for a few seconds, like the other times she'd deceived herself about him.

But there was no deceiving herself about Krycek. She could feel his lust, it was as real as her own, and she allowed herself to be comforted by it. By the feel of his mouth, his hand, his body, his cock, moving on her and inside her - because it was real and not just useless wishing.

And Krycek was doing everything right. He'd angled his long body against hers so that each thrust provided ample stimulation just where it was needed. She was already close.

"Scully," he moaned her name into her mouth as she twined her fingers in what little of his too-short hair she could grasp.

"Come for me," she said. "It's good."

"Not without you," he told her.

"Mmmmnnnn," was all she could answer as he moved slightly and set off anticipatory twitches all inside her.

"Oh yeah," he said.

It wasn't poetry, but Scully didn't need poetry. She needed exactly what she was getting. And she knew that he did, too. And he was as close as she was.

Krycek thrust a few more times, hard, but quite spasmodically, and Scully shut her eyes as she lost control of her body and mindlessly reacted, her muscles uncontrollably clenching and unclenching around him. She could feel him shuddering as he was wracked with his own orgasm, but it was only peripheral to her own quasi-consciousness of her surroundings. Strange how something you did together ended up being something you only experienced alone.

And Scully was tired of being alone.

She kissed Krycek on the forehead as he lay collapsed on top of her, wrung out by the force of his own orgasm. He was so real, so human, she didn't care at that moment what else he was. She wondered if she'd ever care again.

Mulder's phone rang at 4:14 a.m. only half an hour after he'd finally been able to fall asleep after returning from the Gunmen's place. According to the numbers, the next burn attack would happen sometime between 24 and 36 hours from 6 a.m. that morning. He wondered who the hell could be calling him at this hour. He hoped to hell it wasn't Scully, but he couldn't think of anyone else it might be, unless the boys had found something else in their redundant checks. With Scully's life in the balance they were being even more thorough than usual.

"Mulder," he answered the phone, rubbing his eyes groggily.

"Get dressed, Agent Mulder, I'll be at your door in fifteen minutes to pick you up," said the familiar gravely voice of AD Skinner over the clear cellular connection.

"Sir, what is it?" Mulder asked.

"Turn on your television, Mulder," Skinner told him. "Any news channel will do. It's on everywhere. I'll be there in 14."

Skinner severed the connection.

Mulder fumbled for the remote, sitting up so quickly his vision blacked from the head-rush. He turned on the television, the audible moans and gasps telling him he was NOT on the news channel. He punched in numbers and plugged directly into the feed.

"...there appear to be hundreds of bodies, though the forest fire is now under control after the rain early this morning. There are only a few isolated patches now being contained by the rangers and local fire crews.

The similarity to other incidents in Pennsylvania and the Balkans is under investigation, but the authorities claim there is no reason for panic among the general public. All of the dead identified so far in this and the incident in Pennsylvania have been linked to activities in various UFO organizations around the country. Investigators are acting under the suspicion that this is some Millennial suicide pact coordinated through these groups."

"Suicide pact my ass..." Mulder mumbled, pulling his t-shirt off over his head and turning up the volume on the TV so he could still hear it while pulling clothes out of his closet.

"...no one quite understands the significance of the location, though advertising for Skyland Mountain has always included the phrase "ascend to the stars". Perhaps these disturbed individuals viewed that as some kind of omen."

At the mention of the location Mulder dropped the suit he was holding on the floor from fingers numbed by shock. This was not supposed to be happening. Not again. Not in the same place. It was against all of their projections.

He ran to the living room to look again at the reporter on the screen, a box behind her now showing spotlighted footage of the burned bodies of the dead littering the hillside. The same hillside he'd frantically ridden a chair lift up to try to get to Scully when she'd been abducted.

If it had truly ended for Scully in the same place, he didn't know what he was going to do.

But no matter what it was, one body on that hillside more or less wasn't going to make any difference at all.

Mulder ran to his bathroom to put on his clothes before Skinner arrived on his doorstep.

It was some time later, she wasn't certain how much, but the moonlight coming in the window was dimmer and at a different angle. Scully was warm. Held warm and naked against the equally warm naked body of a man. The wrong man, of course - Alex Krycek.

And Scully wanted to feel guilty. She wanted to feel that she had betrayed Mulder. She wanted to feel that what she had done was wrong, that it had somehow taken something away from them, had cheapened their partnership.

But she couldn't.

It wasn't that it had nothing to do with their partnership. It had everything to do with that. Or rather, the situation she now found herself in had everything to do with the fact that it was not Mulder there beside her in the bed. That it was not Mulder who had saved her. Mulder who had wanted her. Mulder who had made her scream his name in ecstasy. She knew in her heart that the only reason she was there, that she could be there, was that Mulder didn't love her. He didn't want her. So she was free. To be here, with Krycek, or anyone else she chose. There was no reason for her to be guilty. No matter how much she craved a reason. And she also knew with dreadful, hateful certainty, that it didn't matter who it was beside her in the bed, because no matter who, no matter what the one who was there meant to her, he would always be, at the base of it - not Him.

That's who Krycek was. That's who the next one would be. All down the long, dreadful years to come. No matter what else her life would hold - work, family, the end of the mystery, colonization or victory over the invaders - at the heart of it would be Mulder and his absence. Even if he was there with her, he still would be absent. Absent in the way she needed him, real and warm and next to her in bed, loving her as she loved him.

Krycek moved beside her in the bed, turning his body toward her and shifting her head to rest upon his shoulder instead of on his broad chest.

"I know you're awake," he said, his voice rather hoarse from sleep, and reminding her of His voice unpleasantly. "I've been thinking."

"Yes?" she said, for something else to think about besides wallowing in her own pain. Thinking of others was always so much better than thinking of yourself.

"What's going to happen tomorrow?" Krycek asked. His voice was open, neutral, wondering. As if he wanted her to tell him and was mildly curious.

"What do you mean?" she asked, without the strength to play games with him. Mulder had worn out her capacity for that over six long years of attrition. She didn't need games from anyone else. "You mean something, so you might as well say it."

"Fine then," Krycek said, taking a deep breath, as if steeling himself to do something difficult or unpleasant. "I'll tell you what I want to happen. And you tell me if it sounds all right to you."

"Ok," Scully said.

"But..." Krycek faltered, and, as she had discovered he did when he was uncomfortable, he changed the subject abruptly. "First, I... I don't want you to call me Krycek."

"What?" Scully asked, raising up on her elbow to look at him in the darkness. He did look uncomfortable, lying rather stiff and tense beside her.

"I mean," Krycek turned his head toward her in the dark, his eyes glittering slightly as they caught the moonlight from the window. "Is this a professional relationship? I mean, is this part of your job description? I know it's not part of mine, even though I sort of make up mine as I go along. You call colleagues by their last name. Or, at least we did at the FBI. But that's not what normal people do. That's not what... what lovers do.

"That IS what we are, isn't it?" Krycek asked, and for the first time in a very long time Scully saw something on his face that she recognized as fear.

And it was more than clear what he was afraid of.

He was afraid of her. He was afraid that she would tell him no. That she would reject him as she had been rejected without having ever had the courage to ask the question.

"I have to admit that I hadn't thought about it," Scully said. "I guess I've been trying very hard not to analyze this at all. It's so complicated. It's part of so many other things. It hurts my head."

"Welcome to my world," Krycek said with a rather nervous but simultaneously evil grin. "But even if you haven't thought about it, think about it now. Doesn't it seem weird? Doesn't it seem wrong? Impersonal? Distancing?"

"You want me to call you Alex?" Scully asked.

"Yes," Krycek said. "And I'd like to be allowed to call you Dana. I don't want to call you what he does. I don't want you to be listening for that when you're with me. Because it isn't about that. This is about us. This is about us getting something decent out of all this bullshit. Can you...will you let it be about us... Dana?"

Scully smiled. He said it so tentatively. Like he was trying it on for size and wasn't quite sure it was going to fit. And even she wasn't certain. She wasn't certain she even was Dana anymore. She most often thought of herself as Scully. Even when Mulder wasn't there to say it fifty times a day.

"I know exactly how you feel... Alex," she said. And his name didn't feel bad inside her mouth. And it didn't seem wrong. Or that it didn't belong to him, as Fox always did when attached to the person who was Mulder.

"Good, because I wouldn't do it unless you agreed," he said. "But I've been thinking about it a while. And I really wanted to do it. I think we need it. To get back to some part of ourselves. No one has called me Alex for so long... And I AM Alex. I am."

"And I AM Dana," she said. "I know what you mean."

"Ok, then," Krycek, Alex, she corrected herself, said. And he reached up and brushed her hair away from her cheek, his fingers warm and gentle on her skin. "Now we have to talk about what happens next."

"Why?" she asked.

"Because, like it or not, the future is coming," Alex said, his fingers lingering on her skin. "And I want us to agree. So we know what to expect from each other when it gets here. So we have something to count on. Something to look forward to. It's been a long time since I had that. And I think it's been a while for you, too. I think you've been living and just waiting for the other shoe to drop, for them to take the next shot at you. For the next awful thing to happen. And it shouldn't be like that. Not for anyone. Not for us. I don't want it to be that way."

"We can't change it just by telling ourselves we want it to be different," Scully said, pressing her cheek into his caress like an oversized housecat.

"Not just by telling ourselves, but that's part of it. You can't make anything happen without a plan, without having some idea what you're going to do, or a clear idea of what you want," Alex told her. "I know what I want. I just need to know if you want the same things so I can get them for us. So that we can get them together."

Scully smiled at that. Krycek wanted things. So what was new? It always seemed that he wanted something. And as long as she'd known him, even while he'd been working for someone else, he'd also been taking steps to make things happen. To get the things he wanted. And now she was one, it seemed.

But, just as he had in the hotel room in Rhode Island, Krycek wasn't taking, he was offering. He was asking her what she wanted. She couldn't remember the last time anyone had.

"What do you want, Alex?" Scully asked him, and he continued to caress her as he looked deeply into her eyes, as if he was striving to see her soul.

"You," he said simply. "I... I want you. I want to be with you. I want us to be together. We're good for each other, and it can only get better if we get away from here. We can find out more together. I know things. I can protect you. You know he can't. Or he won't. Or he's just too wrapped up in himself to give a damn. But this isn't about me vs. him. Or it shouldn't be. This is about us. This is about what we can be together, Dana. It can be good. It can. I can see it. In my head. And if I can see it there, I can make it happen. I can make it happen for us."

He meant it. He meant it all. There was no question. She could see it in his eyes, on his face. It practically shone out his pores, he meant it so much. And it was so different than the too wide-eyed, feigned truth she'd seen him use on Mulder. This time, he believed in it. He believed in his own power to change things as much as Mulder ever had in the Truth. Scully didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. It was so ridiculous, and so wonderful at the same time - and so impossible. So, she just threw her arms around his neck and buried her face in his chest.

And Alex put his arm around her and hugged her tight.

"God, how I wish I had two arms to put around you," he whispered into her hair.

"It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter to me," she said, kissing his strong neck. "But, God, Alex, Mulder is right about you."

"What do you mean?" he asked, not liking the sound of it from his tone.

"You ARE the Devil," she told him.

"Explain that, please," he said, gasping slightly as she ran her hands down his chest possessively.

"Because the Devil tempts, Alex," she whispered as she moved her mouth to take his earlobe between her teeth. "Because he offers you what you've always wanted, or thought you did. Because he makes you choose."

"We all have to choose, Dana," Alex said, moving his hand up to grip the back of her head and move her mouth to his. "It's not the Devil that does that. It's Life. And that's what I mean to give you - a life. Your life back. And you can choose to live it with me. You CAN choose that. If you want."

And he kissed her. And she considered it. Because it was real. And she could choose it. If she wanted.

Ignoring the pain of her injured foot, Dana made up her mind. Life was calling and she was tired of ignoring it. She moved her body over Alex's possessively, taking him inside her as if to force the emptiness out. It would be a long time in going, she knew. But maybe there was still a chance. It had been a long time since she'd had a chance.

And, as always, Alex was pleased by her. Made happy by something as meaningless as her body. It made her wish she could give him her heart or her soul. She didn't know if he deserved it, but she liked to make him happy. It was nice that someone was happy for once.

Skinner was awfully glad that he had insisted on driving. Mulder was a giant twitching mass of nerves and had chewed the fingernail of his left thumb down until it bled as he'd stared woodenly out the window on the way to Skyland Mountain.

Skinner himself was already surpassing the legal speed limit by at least ten miles an hour, but he would have hated to see what Agent Mulder would have done if he'd been in the driver's seat, if the constant motion of his feet and the bouncing of his right knee was any indication.

Skinner wanted to say something. That he was worried about Scully, too. That he had the very same sense of dread and coldness in the pit of his stomach as Mulder did, but he doubted Mulder would either believe or sympathize with anyone else's pain over Scully. He knew Mulder viewed Scully as his personal property. His concern alone. He was wrong, of course, but you couldn't tell him that. And it was Skinner's job to smooth things over and to take care of them both.

It left him feeling vaguely pissed off along with the worry that had turned the coffee he'd drunk to keep himself awake into liquid acid in his stomach. He wished he had a Rolaids or one of those new acid-reducing pills, but he hadn't had time to grab anything on his way out the door that morning, and he felt vaguely guilty at worrying about something as trivial as his own discomfort when someone he cared about could be lying burnt to a cinder on a hillside somewhere. Lord knew, he'd do anything to save her, to change places with her, to protect her, and had, but this was different. It was almost cruel to have to go through it again when all those bastards were supposed to be dead.

He pulled up the dirt road to a hillside already covered with local emergency vehicles and had barely slowed the car before Mulder had the door open and was on his way out it.

"Hang on there, Mulder!" he said, grabbing the wayward agent by the back of his trenchcoat. "No use getting yourself killed getting here. Wait until I stop the car."

"But I've got to find her, she could still be alive," Mulder said mournfully. "She was alive the last time."

"The last time was a fucking miracle, Mulder, and we both know it," Skinner told him, playing the heavy as usual and not liking it any better than usual, either. "You need to prepare yourself for what we might find out there."

"I won't," Mulder said stubbornly. "I can't. There's no preparing for that."

"Just get a handle on yourself, that's all I ask," Skinner said, letting go of the back of Mulder's coat and getting out of the car, himself. He trotted after Mulder as the agent loped up the hillside to where the local authorities were hauling out the first bodies in black plastic bags.

Skinner had seen enough of those in his time to barely spare them a glance, but from the looks on everybody's faces they were in for a bad one. Everyone had the stony look of the truly shocked desperately trying to maintain an air of professionalism despite horror. He didn't have to ask to know that this time there were no survivors huddled in the woods.

Mulder had grabbed the nearest Sheriff's deputy and was flashing his badge around as Skinner strode up to join him.

"...in the woods and nearby areas?" Mulder was just finishing his question.

"There's no one, Sir. No one alive, anyway," the kid was young, and obviously deeply shaken, and the wild look on Mulder's face and the way he was clutching the kid's arm wasn't helping anything, either.

"Thank you, Deputy," Skinner said, detaching Mulder's hand from the kid's brown uniform jacket. "We'll just look around to make sure, if you don't mind."

"And you're?"

"Assistant Director Walter Skinner, FBI," he said tersely. It was enough. "Agent Mulder and I are looking for one of our agents who might have been here last night."

"If he was, Sir, it's going to be a while before we can identify the bodies," the kid looked white around the eyes. "They're all burned to a crisp. It's going to be dental records or nothing."

"Get ID out of the cars if you can," Skinner said. "That's how they did it last time."

"Right," said the kid, standing where he was and looking at the black mounds of the bodies dotting the hillside.

"You've got a job to do, officer," Skinner said, taking the boy by the shoulder gently. "These people's families need to know."

"Th...thank you, Sir," the kid said and swallowed hard. Then he started back toward the cars.

"She wasn't here," Mulder said positively. "She couldn't have been. I would have known it."

"And how would you know that, Agent Mulder?" Skinner asked him, but the man was obviously beyond rational thinking of any kind, it was more than obvious. He wondered if he'd ever be all right once they found Scully's body.

Scully's body, he didn't even like to think of it, himself. Never seeing her again. Never hearing that voice as she argued one of his decisions or seeing her as she gave him a look across the conference table as she tried to determine whether he could help them or not.

And he refused to think of the kiss in the elevator. She'd just been grateful. Insanely happy that she could go to Mulder. He wondered if Mulder wasn't thinking of things like that right now. Or more.

But he didn't want to know that. Not for sure.

Mulder had started walking down the hillside, toward the river, picking his way among the burned bodies of the dead. He was looking intently, ignoring the bodies, as if there was something there to find besides charred corpses.

Skinner followed, as Mulder zigzagged down the hill. He, himself, looked intently at each corpse he passed, searching for a telltale sign, a wisp of hair, a familiar button, or even size to tell him which one was the remarkable woman they'd both loved in their own way. But each blackened husk that had once been a human being remained silent, revealing nothing but their suffering as they burned, hands curled up, faces contorted in silent screams. He'd seen bodies like that before. Victims of flamethrower or napalm in the jungle of his youth, some also the corpses of friends. And they grew no less horrible with time.

He almost collided with Mulder as the man stopped stone still near one of the charred remains.

"What is it?" he asked. But then he saw. Clutched in Mulder's left hand.

Scully's cross.

He wordlessly put his hand on Mulder's shoulder, but the agent shrugged it off and threw himself to the ground, crawling around the burned corpse like a bloodhound.

"Mulder, what are you doing? Mulder, stop it," Skinner said, reaching down again to take him by the shoulder before he did something really crazy.

"There are footprints. Leading away from here. Big ones and small ones in heels. And the chain is broken. Someone ripped it off her and threw it down here. Maybe to throw them off the scent," Mulder said desperately, getting up from the ground, his knees filthy from the wet ground where he'd crawled. "They lead off in this direction..."

"Mulder, Mulder, you're not going to find her." Skinner said, heading quickly after Mulder, who remained just a few steps ahead of him, rushing ahead and babbling insanely all the while.

"She's not dead. She's just gone this way. The footprints lead this way. Look at them!"

"Why are you doing this to yourself?" Skinner said, hurrying in Mulder's wake, as he crashed through the brush toward the river below. "You know she's gone. You're just making it worse by not accepting it. All you're going to find that way is another body. Mulder!"

Skinner cursed as Mulder pushed his way through a thick clump of evergreens. Great, just what he needed, scratches to go along with the sick feeling of having to call Scully's mother and tell her the bad news.

He pushed his own way through the trees just in time to see Mulder land another one in the gut of the already bent-over and gasping Alex Krycek.

"Where is she? What have you done with her? Tell me, you fuck!" Mulder was yelling as he drew his fist back and landed one on Krycek's jaw this time. The ex-FBI agent stumbled backward, holding up his remaining hand to ward Mulder off, as he gasped for breath.

Skinner stepped forward and grabbed Mulder's arm, just as he drew it back to hit Krycek again. He had no love for the bastard, that was sure, but Krycek wouldn't be able to tell them anything if Mulder beat him senseless.

Skinner had no hope that Krycek knew anything about Scully, but he might know something about something. Like maybe why, if nothing else. A why was something to give Mrs. Scully along with the news of her daughter's murder, anyway.

"What are you doing here, Krycek?" Skinner asked, continuing to hold Mulder back and hoping Krycek didn't have time to get out his black box before he could see that Skinner was helping him, sort of.

"Sc...Scully sent me..." Krycek, gasped, picking himself back up off the ground where he'd fallen in his attempts to avoid Mulder's fist. "To...to get him." Krycek dusted the dirt off his jeans. "Though why she'd want to see that sick fuck I have no fucking idea."

"Oh, yeah, I'm a sick fuck," Mulder said with a degree of scorn superior to the one he usually reserved for Krycek. Interesting, Skinner noted. Something funny was going on. It was obvious by the way those two were facing off, even more hostile than usual, and Mulder didn't have his usual air of superiority, either. Something had happened, something he didn't know about. Maybe he'd get it out of Scully. She was at least capable of being rational when it came to Krycek.

"Well, Krycek, do what the lady asked," Skinner said. He didn't make it an order. He hated to admit it, but he didn't dare. "Take us to her."

"Sure, just as soon as I get my spleen back in place," Krycek said, rubbing his side where Mulder had slugged him. "I knew I shouldn't have agreed not to hit you. I don't know how she got me feeling so benevolent. It's like some kind of tiny, woman magic or something."

"Yeah, that's why you didn't fuck me up," Mulder said scornfully.

"I'm a professional assassin, asshole," Krycek said. "And I can still fuck you up with one arm tied behind my back, or gone, as the case may be. Or have you forgotten so soon?"

"Why don't you take us to Scully before I fuck you both up?" Skinner told them tempted to grab both of the younger men by their thick heads and whack them together until they saw stars.

"Yes, Sir!" Krycek said with a grin and a smart but mocking salute and click of his heels. "At least someone still has his shit together."

Krycek turned his back and led them down the rest of the hill and across the footbridge over the river. On the other side, he showed no sign of stopping, and Skinner was beginning to feel very exposed. He could easily be leading them into a trap.

He reached inside his coat and eased his Sig out of the holster. He moved it over to his pocket without Krycek noticing. Skinner scanned the woods warily as Krycek led them down a small footpath toward what looked to be a clearing in the trees.

It turned out to be a parking lot. With gravel and a few off-season tourist cars here and there along the length of the Sleepy Mountain Motel. Krycek led them to the door of room 17, on the end of the first building. He fished the room key out of his pocket and unlocked the door. Before he opened it he turned around and faced Mulder.

"Before I let you in there, you'd better get a fucking grip on yourself, Mulder," Krycek warned him. "She's been through enough already. She doesn't need any of your shit."

"Who the fuck are you to tell me what she needs?" Mulder said, grabbing Krycek by the front of his leather jacket.

"Maybe I'm just the man that saved her life last night when you were off wherever the fuck you were off to doing whatever you were doing," Krycek said, narrowing his green eyes like an angry cat. "Don't give her any shit, or I swear to God I'll make you sorry. Do you understand me?"

"Don't threaten me," Mulder said, unwrapping his fingers from the front of Krycek's coat and facing the door. "I'd never hurt her."

"Bullshit! You hurt her all the time," Krycek said, keeping the door shut in front of Mulder. "You hurt everyone all the time, Mulder. Not that you care or anything. But the fact is that I do. I'm keeping score here. And I won't let you hurt her any more. Do you hear me?"

"Open the door, Krycek," Mulder said.

"Not until you promise," Krycek said.

"Why? What am I going to see in there?" Mulder said, turning to face the younger man with a look of pain that Skinner had never seen him wear before.

"Nothing you haven't seen before," Krycek told him. "But I don't want you taking it out on her, do you hear me? Not on her. We can settle it ourselves later. But you lay off her or I swear I'll kill you this time."

"You can try," Mulder said. "Now open the door."

Krycek gave Mulder's stony face a searching look, but then he complied, and Skinner saw why he'd been so careful to warn them first.

Scully was there. Alive. And lying on her stomach, rumpled and half-asleep in a very rumpled bed wearing what appeared to be Krycek's undershirt. And she looked, well it had been a while since Skinner had seen the look, but it was definitely a morning after look, and not a morning after almost being incinerated by aliens, either. Something was going on here. And the rest of them all seemed to know what it was.

"Scully?" Mulder asked, and his voice sounded choked and broken. Skinner almost didn't know where to look. There were clothes strewn in a trail from the front door to the bathroom and crumpled towels on the floor. And something that looked suspiciously like Agent Scully's panties was lying just outside the bathroom door.

"Mulder?" Scully said, in a voice rich and heavy with sleep. She stretched slightly in the bed. "What time is...oh." She stopped as she caught sight of them in the doorway. Things got even more surreal as Skinner saw Krycek give her what could only be termed a reassuring smile.

"Oh, Lord, I must have fallen back asleep," she said.

Scully thrashed in the bed, flipping over and wincing as her right foot hit the mattress.

"Are you all right?" Mulder asked, giving Krycek an evil glare.

"I lost my shoe when we were running away," Scully explained. "My foot's kind of messed up."

"Are you all right besides that?" Mulder asked, moving over to the bed. He sat down on the edge and reached out his hand to lay it gently on Scully's upper arm. It was like he couldn't keep himself from touching her.

"Yes," she said mildly, looking at Mulder sideways from under her hair. Skinner could clearly see that she was frowning. Apparently concern wasn't the reaction she'd been expecting, though surely she knew he'd be worried about her. Didn't she? "I'm fine."

"God damn it, Scully!" Mulder snapped and the hand that had been on her so gently seconds before was now gripping her upper arm tightly while its owner shook with rage. "That's what you always say! Are you fine? Are you really? Is everything just fucking peachy keen?

"You were up there on that hill last night! You could have died! Then Krycek gets ahold of you somehow. What the fuck went on here? Why didn't you call me?"

"I did," Scully said, flipping her hair back and looking at her partner with cool blue eyes. "You weren't home."

Mulder winced and Krycek pushed past Skinner to stand inside the doorway of the motel room.

"I think you'd better go, Mulder," Krycek said.

"No, it's all right," Scully told the ex-agent resignedly. "He can do whatever he wants. It doesn't matter."

"He's hurting your arm," Krycek said, his voice quiet with well-contained rage. "You're going to be bruised."

"I said it's all right," Scully said, and though Krycek's eyes locked with hers for a long few seconds, he backed down, trusting Scully's judgment about what to do with Mulder.

"We need to talk," Mulder said. He looked pointedly at Skinner and Krycek in the doorway. "Privately."

"No way," Krycek said, grabbing his artificial arm at the elbow with his good one, in his equivalent of a defensive posture.

"Fine, Mulder," Scully said.

"Do you mind?" Mulder asked them.

"Yeah, I DO mind," Krycek said, taking a step forward. "I don't think this is a good idea, Dana. I don't think you need him bullying you right now."

"I understand that you're concerned," she said, and Skinner could see the gratitude in her eyes at Krycek's desire to defend her. "But I'm a big girl. Let me handle my own life, ok?"

"I don't like this," Krycek said doubtfully. "But it's your call."

He turned on Mulder. "If you fuck with her, I'll have your ass," Krycek said, and Mulder looked sour. "And it won't be the first time."

Mulder looked at Scully.

"Am I just supposed to lie down for that?" he asked.

"Do whatever you feel is necessary," Scully said.

Mulder looked at her for a few seconds, and then in a move faster than Skinner would have thought him capable of, Mulder leaped off the bed, hands outstretched to grapple with Krycek or take him by the throat.

Krycek hadn't been expecting it, but instead of watching him get his ass kicked by Mulder, as Skinner was used to doing, he watched instead as Krycek reached out and took Mulder by the shoulder as he made his headlong rush toward the ex-agent. Skinner watched as, instead of pushing him away to deflect the blow, Krycek pulled Mulder forward, right into his upraised knee. Skinner winced as Mulder dropped to the ground, clutching his groin in both hands, gasping for breath.

"Alex!" Scully said, hitching herself over to the side of the bed and hurrying over to her partner's side as fast as her injured foot would allow. "Don't you think that was a little excessive?"

Skinner noticed as she did so that she was definitely not wearing underwear.

It looked like Mulder had more than a little reason to be concerned - and pissed off. Skinner was more than a little concerned, himself. The implications of one of his agents involved with someone like Alex Krycek were alarming, to say the very least.

And Scully was the last person on Earth he would have imagined doing something like that. What the hell was she thinking?

"Mulder!" Scully said, pulling her gasping partner's head onto her lap. "Mulder, are you ok?"

"No!" Mulder choked out.

"Do you need to go to the hospital?" she asked.

"No!" Mulder said, shaking his head vociferously.

"I didn't hit him THAT hard," Krycek said.

"And why did you choose to do that, may I ask?" Scully said, looking up at the tall Russian.

"I don't want him causing you any trouble," Krycek said mildly.

He was obviously lying his ass off.

"Go outside," Scully said. "Mulder wants to talk."

"Ok, but I'm leaving the door open," Krycek said. "Come on," he jerked his head toward the parking lot, and Skinner followed him out to the center of the gravel expanse.

It was awkward as hell, the two of them standing there. But it was more than obvious that Mulder and Scully really did need a little privacy. They obviously had things to discuss.

Krycek was looking across the parking lot, past the river and back up the hillside where the authorities were still hauling off bodies from the carnage of the night before. Skinner had seen sights like that too often to want to look. He kept his attention on Krycek, visually frisking the man to see where he kept the device that had Skinner by the balls.

"Do you care to enlighten me about what's going on here?" Skinner asked finally.

"Not really." Krycek said, turning his green gaze on the older man. "I don't work for you, so it's not my place. Scully should be the one to explain it, I guess."

"There's a lot more to this than whatever went on last night,' Skinner said. "That's obvious enough."

"Must be why they pay you the big bucks down at the FBI," Krycek replied. "You have your head partially out of your ass, at least."

"In case you don't know, it's more than that," Skinner told him, tucking his hands into the pockets of his black trenchcoat and fingering his Sig to reassure himself. "These people are my responsibility. And what's more.... Well, I can't say we're friends actually, there are things that preclude that, but they're good people and I care what happens to them. You're fucking with them. You've fucked with me in the past. It hasn't exactly been pleasant. I just want to know, is it business, or is it personal?"

"What makes you ask that?" Krycek was intrigued. "You know I'd sell my soul to the highest bidder."

"That's what Mulder thinks all right," Skinner told him with a curt nod. "But I'm not Mulder."

"Fortunately for the world," Krycek said. "One whining asshole like that is more than enough."

"So are you going to answer my question?" Skinner prompted.

"I have no reason to," Krycek said. "But the fact that Mulder wants my head on a plate and that Scully doesn't hate me at all is all personal. Business is business, but it doesn't have anything to do with that. So, tell me. Is that useful information? You gonna tell the Old Man, or what?"

"I doubt he'd find it useful," Skinner replied. "But it makes a difference. Maybe all the difference in this situation, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," said Krycek.

"Getting at Mulder through Scully is a lot more subtle than I would have given you credit for," Skinner said. "That's strategic thinking. Not to mention sadistic. You never seemed the sadistic type, despite what you've done to me."

"That's right," Krycek replied. "I'm not sadistic, unlike a few other people I could mention. I actually don't get off on hurting people. I don't torture them needlessly. That's not what I'm doing now. Mulder's torturing himself, as usual. I'm not getting to him through Scully. It's about Scully."

"Really," Skinner said skeptically.

"And you doubt that because?"

"You don't even know her," Skinner told him simply.

"That's what you think," Krycek replied. "I know her a lot better than either of you, despite the fact that you're around her all the time. I know what she wants. I know what she needs. And what that mostly is is to get the hell away from Mulder. He treats her like shit."

"Don't tell me this is one of those high school "I'll fuck your girlfriend to get back at you" things, or I'll kick your ass, nanites or no nanites," Skinner said. "That's messed up shit. And Scully is way too good to be the object in some game of "who's got the bigger dick" with Mulder."

Krycek grinned evilly.

"Actually Mulder does, but I don't think you want to know how I know."

"You're right, I don't," Skinner replied. It would take him some weeks of heavy drinking to banish the images that conjured to mind. But knowing Krycek, reality was probably even worse.

And Mulder and Krycek had spent all that time in Russia together, before Krycek had lost his arm. Mulder had never said much about it, except that Krycek had betrayed him and seemed awfully friendly with the Russians. But they'd been together a couple of weeks. And Krycek had pretty much been at Mulder's mercy. And Mulder hated his guts and would do almost anything to hurt him. Maybe not just almost anything. Maybe everything.

Skinner pushed the thoughts away. He couldn't hack it right now. He had other problems to deal with.

"So you're trying to get Scully to leave Mulder," he asked the Russian.

"You grasp the essential point," Krycek agreed. He looked back at the motel room and looked grim. The door was now shut.

Skinner saw where he was looking and frowned.

"I don't think you have anything to worry about. You hit him hard enough."

"Wow, you're just hitting them out of the park today, aren't you, Walter."

"Don't be such a fucking smartass, ALEX. Makes you sound like Mulder," Skinner said pointedly.

"What is taking them such a long time?" Krycek said frustratedly, running his hand over his cropped hair.

"They've been together for six years. They have things to say to each other," Skinner told him.

"But they haven't. Been together, I mean. At all. Ever," Krycek said. "But he still insists on treating her like she's his fucking abused wife or something. And she buys into it and lets him. How sick is that?"

"We do a lot of things for the people that we love," Skinner said, thinking of more than one personal example. "Including taking a lot of shit off them."

"She has no reason to love him," Krycek said sullenly.

"You don't need a reason," Skinner said. "Sometimes you just love someone without a reason. She loves him. They need to work it out. Then she'll make her choices."

"Who are you, fucking Obi Wan Kenobi?" Krycek asked and strode away to the far side of the gravel parking lot.

"Right now, I feel a lot more like fucking Jerry Springer," Skinner mumbled to himself and turned back to the motel to wait for his agents to emerge.

"Come on, Mulder, let me help you get up on the bed," Scully said, putting her arm under his armpit and hoisting him upward as much as she could manage without putting much pressure on her injured foot.

"I don't want to get up on THAT fucking bed!" Mulder gasped, taking his weight on his own feet and hobbling over to one of the nasty orange-plaid upholstered chairs the management had provided along with the ever-present rickety circular table with one leg shorter than the other near the motel window.

"Oh, yes, I'd forgotten. You don't want to touch sheets sullied with our sin," Scully said, closing the door to the motel room so they could assure their conversation would be private before sitting down in the nasty chair across from him. She almost drew her feet up onto the edge when she remembered that she wasn't wearing any underwear and left them chilly down on the drafty floor.

Mulder glared at her in silence.

"We've been through this before, haven't we?" she asked. "Do we have to go through it all again. I'm really kind of tired for another scene."

"Fucking all night will do that to you," Mulder replied, still hunched over uncomfortably, hoping that one day his testicles would resume a normal shape. "Or so they tell me. It's been a while."

"Did I mention that I'm really bored of your obsession with this aspect of my personal life?" Scully said with a sigh.

"I just can't understand how you can let him..." Mulder began and she began to give him the look, the eyebrow one, the one she used for his most outlandish theories. But this wasn't an outlandish theory. This was common sense. Fucking common sense that anybody in their right mind would understand. That Scully would understand if it were happening in reverse. But she couldn't see it now. She was as blind as anyone else, it seemed when it came to trusting the person you happened to be fucking at the time. "How you can trust him.... like that. After everything he's done. He could kill you, Scully. He could do it so easily. When you had your eyes closed. When you were asleep. He could just... just kill you. Just like that."

"He won't, Mulder," she said.

"How do you know? How can you?" he asked. "You can't trust him. You can't possibly. What reason has he ever given you to trust him?"

"He saved my life, Mulder," Scully said. "He saved me and he never asked me for anything. At least nothing that wasn't mine to give. Why trust anyone? You just know whether you can trust someone or not. You can feel it."

"That's the kind of crap I'd expect to hear out of other people, Scully, but not you," Mulder told her. "You always have a reason for doing everything. You can't just suddenly decide not to think about it. Especially not when it's something like this. Not when it means your life, Scully."

"I trust him, Mulder, and I know that I can when it comes to this," Scully said. "He loves me, Mulder. As much as he loves anything, I think. And I don't believe that simply because he's said it. It's the way he said it. It wasn't easy for him, but it wasn't forced. He wasn't lying. He believes it. As much as you ever believed in the Truth, Mulder. It was just the same. He talks about love like you talk about the Truth. If I don't believe him, I should never have believed you, either. And I do believe you. I believe in you."

"That's because you can trust me, Scully," Mulder said, reaching out for her hands, but she held them away from him in her lap, drawing into herself as she always did when he reached out to her. "You know that you're the only one that I trust."

"That's bullshit, Mulder, and you know it," Scully said bitterly. "You don't trust me. You've proven that over and over. Going off on your own. Ditching me. You don't tell me anything, holding what you've learned over my head until we get to wherever you're dragging us off to each time. Then springing facts on me in front of the local authorities or the people we're there to help until I look like the worst idiot straight out of the Academy. And you do it all the time.

"Don't give me that bullshit about trusting me. You don't trust me. You never have."

"You're the only one I trust, Scully," Mulder said. "You're the only one that's never betrayed me."

"That's right. But it really doesn't mean anything in the long run, does it?" Scully said, clenching her hands in her lap. "Because you still don't trust me. Not really."

"I've told you that I do trust you, Scully," Mulder said helplessly. "What more can I do?"

"You could have showed me," Scully said hunching even further into herself. It was cold in the room, but not from the temperature. It was the same as ever. "But you never have. You've shown more trust to the Gunmen, to Skinner, to....to Diana Fowley, than you ever showed to me, Mulder. Do you know what that felt like? To be your partner and to have you running off alone all the time because you didn't think I could be trusted with even information about your whereabouts? Do you know the kinds of things I've had to do to get information about you when you disappear, or are hurt somewhere? Do you know how people look at me when that happens? Can you even imagine it?"

"No, I can't, Scully," Mulder told her. "Because when you disappear people fall all over themselves to give me whatever help they can. Because they all love you, and they want you back.

"Nobody cares if I come back. Nobody but you. At least