By probe
palmerdolph@yahoo.com
 

email me with feedback(begging like a puppy)
Category: post invasion/ Angst
rating: PG for language and implied violence
spoilers: um...the end and maybe season 3.
Disclaimer: I’m just a fan with an over-active imagination.
Please don’t sue me!
summary: what if the faceless rebels hadn't
gotten to the frozen alien embyo before Krycek?
Thank you! Thank you! to MaybeAmanda who was my beta(she's
really smart) and also Franthe Wonderhorse who has to
virtual hand hold with me through every new fan fiction
experience

(18 months earlier)
February 1999
El Rico Airbase
West Virginia

I had wrapped the alien fetus in newspaper before stuffing it into
my backpack. The truth was that the thing scared the fuck out of
me. I didn’t want it defrosting on my watch, couldn’t risk anyone,
of any species, getting pissed off at me this late in the game.
I slung my pack over my shoulder and bolted out of that place ? the
faceless rebels would be right behind me and we were all screwed ?
deal off and no survivors if they got the little frozen freak show
before I did.
I had the company car’s speedometer 50 miles over the limit
until I reached the hangar doors at El Rico. If the cops had tried
to stop me, I fully INTENDED to mow them down with the
arsenal piled in the backseat. But no problems ?
maybe there was something in the air that smelled like the end of
the world. No one gave a shit about my car speeding to the airbase
hangar.
Spender took the fetus as soon as I got there.
It looked like he hadn’t bothered to let long lost Jeffrey in on the
big exodus from earth. I shrugged it off. That was his business.

The hangar was damn cold and the looks I was getting from my fellow
space-bound passengers equally icy. Diana made it a point to avoid
eye contact ? to let me know she was avoiding eye contact.
staring me down, then turning away as if she didn’t recognize
me. I guess she wanted it obvious that she considered herself
far above the assignments we’d shared in Europe, especially those
parts where we’d fucked. She was part of the elite inner circle now,
one of the nameless, and she expected me to act accordingly. Bitch.
Cassandra Spender got wheeled into the mess. I guess we were all
ready to go -- me, and a bunch of people who would just as soon kill
me or let me die. I have to admit it: eternity was already looking
a little tarnished before Mulder and Scully showed up.
Skinner was behind them, his head shiny, sweat dripping down the sides
of his face. Mulder nodded at Diana and got the privilege of
a return nod. Mulder was about to charge in my direction. I have
no idea what he might have said to me -- maybe he just wanted to hit
me one last time before his Close Encounters wet dream was
realized. God forbid I should hit him back and scratch that priceless
alien-enhanced head of his.
How the hell had they gotten him here? Maybe Diana deserved her
haughty stance near the old boys.
Mulder didn’t quite make it into my face though. A small hand had his
arm, stopped him in his tracks.
Scully wasn’t staying.
“This isn’t right Mulder.” Her voice was breathy and low and
absolutely certain.
“It’s the only way to survive,” Mulder told her and he sounded
primed for a fight. Before anyone could blink he had his gun out
and trained on his partner. “You’re not going anywhere.”
All conversation stopped and Diana joined Mulder behind the barrel
of his gun. “Agent Scully, what’s the problem?” she said in her
newly awarded voice of authority. See, this was why it took
someone like Diana, someone willing to do whatever it took to work
her way into this hangar, so damn long to get out of those vague
European assignments ? she just can’t objectively judge her own
success and failure. I think Diana expected to gun down Scully for
being a party pooper or some such shit. Which was all wrong, of
course.
“He won’t shoot her,” I said calmly. And that was the truth, even
if Scully and I were the only ones who believed it.
“Put down the gun, Mulder!” and Skinner had his out, too. This was
getting interesting.
I know the bluebloods had to be wondering who the hell
had invited these three to their salvation. Someone behind me
actually gasped, and it was all I could do not to turn and stare.
Give me a break! Was anyone in this room innocent of spilling
blood or letting it be spilled for them?
“Mulder,” Scully put her hand on the gun. Scully looked unafraid.
Her pale skin was nearly glowing in that gray-lit cavernous room.
I remember realizing then that there was one innocent person ?
someone who wouldn’t climb over a corpse just to save herself.
Outside, a powerful wind rattled the entire building but the
low tones of her voice were plain.
“You go on,” Scully said. “You need to see your sister and you
need to see the truth.”
Watching her give up this escape I’d prized so highly for so
long - I felt something. It affected me ? that’s all I can say.
Diana looked relieved when Mulder lowered the gun and hung his
head to put his gun back in its holster. He started crying.
Of course. Pussy.    
I remember thinking I give him a year, maybe two, without her.
Then Skinner had her by the lapels.
“Scully, you’ll die. They’re all going to die.” But even Skinner
knew he stood less chance than Mulder of swaying Scully’s opinion.
“I want to do what’s right,” she told him.
Mulder dragged her into a bear hug. He was sobbing out loud, by
then -- very pathetic. Probably Skinner was crying too. Little did
the bald bastard know that there was no chance in hell his name had
made the guest list for this cruise. Looks like he could have used
some of Scully’s heroism that night. What a shame.
The hangar doors opened and light spilled into the room. If Scully
was going to leave then it was time to go. Mulder gripped her
hard.
I pried them apart. “Come with me,” I said and I actually
pulled her from her trench coat because Mulder had it like a vise.
Don’t even ask me what I was thinking.  I’d take it back if I
could.
I nodded Mulder towards the light. “There they are,” I told him.
Oh, he looked ? of course he fucking looked. I mean, here they
were -- the answers, the truth, the missing sister! Hell, Scully
would keep just a little longer.
Mulder turned and I took Scully into my jacket,
dragged her out of the hangar and out of the light and into the
darkness on the other side. And this is the part that continues
to fuck with me. Why? What the fuck did Scully do to me?
Because it WAS her. She fucking blinded me with her fucking
Idealism Spell.
I gave up certain survival with the cowards and traitors in that hangar.
That hangar was where I belonged!
Maybe Mulder regrets that moment ? turning to the light of the ship
and away from her -- just as I regret not doing the same. But this is
how we wound up: Me, with all the hell of catastrophe, plague and
invasion, fighting beside this woman I believe in --
the ONLY thing I've ever believed in, but who hates
my guts, and Mulder…
Well, I have no idea where he ended up.
 

***

Halloween 2000
Camp Four ? Human territories
Eastern Colorado

My mother made a batch of stick figure dolls out of twigs and
strips of cloth for the two of us to give away. The first group of
children came by at dusk. The last group would probably pass before
the stars came out. That was when the war and all its fireworks
would take over as the night’s entertainment.
We were all so desperate to act normal ? Halloween, whatever it
meant before, was a human celebration, and taking part seemed
interwoven with survival and every act of defiance against the Grays.
It meant that we were still here.
The adults in camp scrounged for something to give away. For
costumes, the children turned their clothes inside out, wore them
backwards, switched with friends. “Trick or Treat!” they whispered
outside our little shack. We were close enough to a warfront for
silence to be mandatory until complete darkness. Whispering would be
allowed this one evening.
I let my mother give out the dolls. The children cradled them in
their palms, “Thank you,” whispered solemnly in return. It wasn’t
food but it was the best that mom and I had to give.
The couple living in the tent beside us was giving out goldfish
crackers. They’d let Mom have one. Me, they didn’t like very much.
“Trick or Treat!”
Mom held the twig dolls rolled in the hem of her shirt. I tried
not to notice how thin she was, how the bones of her spine were a
knotty rope beneath the fabric. One little dark head poked around
our cardboard door. “Doctor?” I tried not to know their names
and never gave mine while we were in a camp, but I think I melted
a little at the boy’s almond eyes and his plump lower lip.
“Yes?”
“It’s me, Adam Treemont. You set my arm two days ago?” He held up
the newspaper and glue cast I had made him. He hadn’t cried at all
and I bet it hurt like hell when I had to press my fingers into his
arm to feel for the break. Tough kid.
“I remember” As usual, my voice was far too flat for my mother and
she shot me a pained look over her shoulder, One that said, Why
can’t you be nice to them?
I ignored her.
Adam dragged a tall girl into our shack. They were both red cheeked
and panting from the cold. “This is my cousin. She just came through.”
"Just came through” meant that before she could enter the camp, the
girl had been cut and bled to prove she was human. It was usually a
slice down one arm for the blood and one on the back of the neck for
the chip, both cuts ideally made quickly and with a clean razor blade.
But no such luck for Adam’s cousin. Herarm had two jagged wounds that
looked like they were made by a saw and on the back of her neck was a
crooked smile cut some 5 inches across.
“Who did this to you?”
It came out shrill and she looked back, afraid, and tried to pull her
arm from my grasp. The children at the door scattered.
“Dana!” my mother gasped.
“Look at this!” I twisted the girl’s ragged arm to show my mother
and the girl whimpered.
“Sorry Doctor Lady! Sorry!” The girl was pleading and pulling her
arm from me. Adam had his hands over my mine. “Doctor! Please,
just forget it okay? Okay?”
I let her go. “Sorry,” just as flat as before but without the
answering criticizing look from Mom. Both she and the girl were
trembling I noticed. When did I become such a bully, such a bitch?
I used to believe in this. I sighed.
“I’ll get you something for that,” I told her, and I went behind the
curtain where my mother and I slept, where I kept all my
instruments and medicines and the gun I hadn’t used
since that night I shot the train carrying Cassandra and
the horrible fate of this world.
“You’re a lucky girl, I actually have clean bandages on hand.” We
boiled cloth in a tea made form onions to kill bacteria and help
prevent infection. After the cloth was all gone as wrapping on
their heads and arms and legs and stuffed into tooth sockets and
padded over swollen eyes, my mother sometimes let camp children and
women dip their hands in the pot.   It made me sick to watch
children clamor for the pungent stuff like they had for candy or
soda in the days before the war with the Grays.
If I wasn’t treating patients I just kept to myself.
“What’s your name?” I asked Adam’s cousin.
She whispered Cindy or Linda or Sandra. I didn’t ask her to repeat
it. I squeezed the onion tea over her wounds and wrapped her arm
tight. Once it was clean, the neck wound didn’t look so bad. “Why
don’t the two of you go next door and see if they have any goldfish
crackers left.” Ahh, that perked them up.
“The man you came with gave us these,” said Adam and he held out a
little matchbox car and what looked like a diamond engagement ring.
“Really?” I smirked. The boy flicked his eyes at my half-smile
with interest. I guess he thought he was on to something that might
make me happy ? pay me for my trouble.
“He had a bunch of things ? toys and rings and a harmonica.”
No, I couldn’t really smile for Adam, although I appreciated the
attempt he made. God, he really did remind me of-
- well, the eyes and the lower lip and the general dark haired
lankiness reminded me of-
He just looked a lot like…him.
“You better get going.”
My mother said something nice and showed them out. I went back
behind the curtain and flopped onto the mattress we shared. She
enjoyed the banter, the attempt at normality but I was just too
exhausted. My stomach rumbled. I closed my eyes.
So, Krycek was giving children trinkets from his little tent
guarding us? Probably the things he found using a metal detector
the last camp had paid us with. I had started to tell them to
forget it; we didn’t need anything metal, we needed food. But
Kycek never turns down a payment of any kind. Fine. Let him lug it
through the apocalypse with him.  Whatever.  
Children whispered at the door again and I could hear my mother
scooping up the dolls but I stayed on the mattress with my eyes
shut. So much for Halloween. At least this year I wasn’t in a
muddy trench waiting to be killed, listening to a recording of
Diana Fowley’s voice telling me “The aliens mean us no
harm. they want peace, just as we do” The idiots poking their
heads out in hope were killed immediately of course. You’d be
amazed how long a simple trick like that worked - people want to believe.
Maybe I dozed off because the trick or treaters were gone. The
cracks in the roof showed the sky glowing red and orange with
explosions I pulled the curtain aside to find that my mother had
left the shack. Great, just great.
I opened the door. Krycek was huddled in conversation with some
other men. No sign of Mom. I hung by the door and waited for
Krycek to finish. This camp had wanted my services and I suppose
the men respected that my mother and I were with a man, but you just
can’t be too careful. Better not to draw attention to myself, not to
get anyone started thinking of me as anything other than ‘The Doctor’.
The men stayed their distance and Krycek strode back over to me. The
cold didn’t bother him as much as it bothered me. I rubbed my hands
together and breathed into them for warmth. He hadn’t even zipped
his battered black leather jacket.
“Where’s my mother?” I asked him.
“She said she wanted to go for a walk since the silence
is lifted for the night.” The aliens had some kind of weaponry
that sought targets by the variance in naturally occurring sounds. A
waterfall crashing against rocks or a thunderstorm might make a
nearby human voice imperceptible to a human ear, but the aliens
could zero in on what didn’t belong, no matter how
loud the surrounding natural noise. The weapons were specific and
deadly ? the Grays wanted the planet mostly untouched and the
people eradicated.
“Do they want you to fight?” Sometimes this was part of
the deal. Krycek would have to join with the other men in camp to
sabotage alien outpost machinery or shoot missiles.
“No, they want you, actually.”
I raised an eyebrow. After over a year together I wasn’t too worried
about what that might mean. “For what?”
“Hey, it’s some equipment they have. I told them you
were a scientist and used to be FBI. He grinned at me. The rat.
“What the fuck did you do that for?” There was no FBI any more,
but there were plenty of people ready to blame them and the CIA
and DOD for the shit we all lived in now. Military was the only
large organized presence still functioning in the world ? rag tag,
scattered, doomed to failure.
“Scully, just do it. Okay?” He leaned in on me. That had been
bothering me lately - Krycek always hovering and leaning breathing
into my hair, whispering in my ear.
“Why should I?”
“Because ? “ the flash of his white teeth again “-I think
they found a message from Mulder.”

Okay so I’d done more than kick up dirt in search of Halloween
treats. I’d snooped around, wanted to see what was here. That
was the great thing about the metal detector; it was maybe the
perfect alibi in this fucked up world we were all dying in. Someone
comes by - hey you, what the hell are you doing over there? -
I give him a handful of buttons or a broken army knife or a piece
of jewelry and he lets me go on my way. I mean I wasn’t taking food
and the thing just lit up instead of beeping, so it was all good.
Scully just wasn’t one for seeing the potential in things.
I’d gotten us in this camp because it was close to a front and it
was poor, dirty and over-crowded. And the crime was supposed to
bad here - lots of murders, lately. Lots of suspicion
that the camp had been infiltrated by shape-shifters, too, so lots
of cutting and bleeding. I was desperate because the good camps were
doing her no good. Scully was losing her faith.
We were losing. Well, that was to be expected. We were going
to lose, we were always going to lose, but it hadn’t mattered all
that much. I mean, I was doing what was right. I was following
someone I could trust to lead me towards this…rightness…this…moral
ground that I had never stood on before. Laugh all you want; I had
found atonement.
And now the bitch was going to fuck the whole thing up! She’d lost
whatever made her give up life at El Rico, whatever had dragged me
like a damn apostle behind her.
I guess I pictured her as the last human on earth ? the Grays circling
in on her like a pack of wolves, her saint-like death. She made me
believe and I wanted - no, I needed ? that belief back. I was going
to die clean.
Camp Four was going to be just the shit hole to perk up my floundering
messiah. The place had one hell of a stealth operation going on
against the Grays. They had stolen all kinds of shit ? tanks,
instruments that they couldn’t work, and weapons.
I’d used Scully’s history on the X-Files to get us a pass to see the
crap and hoped that she might at least know how to turn something on ?
impress the camp honchos a little. She and Mulder must have seen at
least some of the Gray’s hardware in action.
They’d gotten their hands on some of the noise busters ?
those things that can pick up a baby’s cry in a hailstorm and blast
the thing from its mother’s arms. They had even
identified an alien base that they could hear with the thing but ?
you guessed it ? the mother-fucking Grays don’t make a peep.
Occasionally they picked up really distant sounding human voices
but they were snatches of conversation ? nothing. I could listen
if I wanted. Yeah. Sure. Why not? I thought I might look around
for stuff to steal while I did.
The thing is like a VR suit with these clamp on armbands and silver
mittens, no thumb. Then the helmet clamps on behind your ears. These
giant smoked bulbs lower over where a gray would have eyes ? “don’t
even bother looking in those ? we can’t adapt them to humans” -- fine
by me, right? We were in the same bunker the camp hid most of it’s
food stores and I was trying to make out what they had in the
pilfered clone tanks ? popcorn? Rice? Was there any chance I
could get in here alone?
Then I heard the stuff they had been listening to ? recorded
silence ? like a blank tape or an empty record and then a muffled
word or two… “about”? or maybe “again”? And then more silence….then
the word “please” definitely “please” louder and some kind of
moaning or singing…
Okay so I’m thinking about how they’d blindfolded me on the way
down here but I’d counted the steps, the turns, hell they didn’t
know who they were dealing with -- I would need something to carry
the rice in if I stole it out of the tank….
And then I heard it
? just a little more clear than the other crap ?
“To thee old cause! Thou peerless passionate, good cause,
thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea, Deathless
throughout ages, races, lands after a strange sad war…”
Son of a bitch!
It was Fox Mulder quoting from Leaves of Grass. That poor, pathetic
piece of shit. If that was him, begging, moaning, “please” ? and I
could see it now ? I had one guess what he was longing for, what he
wanted.
“Gentlemen,” I announced, and what a joke because we
were all filthy, hungry, and longing to kill, “I think I can help
you work this thing.” I yanked my hand from the listening
contraption, gestured at the stock piles of alien bounty. “Help you
work all this shit and even get you inside that base”
I had them.
“The doctor I’m with?” Some of them nodded. “She used to be a
scientist with the FBI, was trained with listening equipment,
high tech stuff. She was one of the ones who tried to stop the
invasion.”
“No one tried to stop it,” someone said from the dirty little crowd
of men.
“Some did ? this doctor did. She can help.” We needed to get a
message to that base, let Mulder know that Scully was here.
Then start making our demands.

“Electronic Voice Phenomenon,” I whispered to Krycek once our hoods
were off and we stood in the bunker.
“What the fuck is that?” he shot back. One of Camp Four’s finest
came forward and ended any chance of private conversation with
Krycek.
“He says you might know how to work some of this.” I was ushered
to a long row of items they had removed from various raids on alien
outposts.
I didn’t feel like explaining EVP to Krycek ? one of the
less interesting cases the X-File division never solved. "'Spirits
in the room caught on tape’ is gist of it." Alien invasion had made
me a believer in all Mulder’s theories, even the ones where I once
thought it was perfectly clear I had proved him wrong.
But Electronic Voice Phenomenon would mean Mulder was dead
I strolled the line of objects. The big finale to this display was
going to be the listening weapon.
I shook my head. Whatever Krycek had planned here wasn’t going to
work. Mulder wasn’t at that base; he couldn’t be. Not after all this
time, not so close. I lifted the silver wand and gave it to the man behind
me. “This will kill the shape shifters ? plunge it in the back of
their necks.” The gruff flannelled men circling me seemed
impressed. “You must be very precise.” That advice hadn’t worked
for me. I shrugged and silently wished them luck.

I swore I was going to fucking kill that bitch. Then she picked up
the shape shifter weapon and made the needle pop out. Damn, that
was slick. Totally won them over.
Of course Scully won’t work some kind of bullshit on the stuff she
doesn’t recognize. Would it kill her to just grab something and
pretend that it emits poison Gray killing gas or phones up the
rebel aliens, or helps you shit out the alien embryo? But no,
Scully’s completely legit, doesn’t lie, doesn’t even stretch the truth.
God damn, if she wasn’t my ticket to the big El Rico airbase hangar
of the afterlife I would seriously fucking kill her.
So after the alien equipment dim sum party, we got rounded back to
the silver helmet of the listening weapon. They snapped all the
shit on her.
The smoked bulbs lowered down, only they lowered way down, like they
were suddenly automated. The guy fitting her up said so too. “I
think this thing is working better.”
Scully gasped and straightened up like she could really see something.
“What did you do to it?”
All the Camp Four tough guys were jostling the technician. “I don’t
know! I don’t think I did anything to it!”
“Well you must have done something because you made it
work,” I told him, but I didn’t really think that was it.
Scully had the chip.
She kept this slice in her skin just below it and mostly no one
checked to make another slice. She was the doctor and they were
busy making whatever deal with us - board and food for doctoring
and maybe fighting, and she was already cut, so…
“I see the base,” she said.
We all shut up.
“Tanks.” She was whispering like we were outside and it was daylight.
“Grays….it’s a big base” Her voice is all screwy, hoarse and
cracking. “There isn’t much noise but I can hear some of the
people from El Rico…”
“What’s she talking about?” someone grabbed me by my
prosthetic arm.
“I don’t know,” I said, yanked my arm free.
Scully was crying, tears dripping down from under the silver
mask and onto her jean jacket. “I see Mulder,” she said.
“Who the fuck is Mulder?” someone grumbled behind me.
Scully sniffed, started to laugh… “and I think he sees
me.”

It wasn’t the right word - he wasn’t seeing me but, I think,
feeling me. I remembered the balled light that I had somehow known was
him ? his presence. He seemed aware of me watching him in that
same way. He had been waiting for me, eyes closed, kneeling in
darkness, waiting for me to see him. When the helmet came off I was
still reeling from what I had experienced. It had been like moving
around inside the base and not just watching it or listening in.
“Does this mean they see us as well as hear us?” a man
said over my head but not to me. Already someone else was pulling
the weapon from my hands and arms and putting it on.
“Well you have the weapon trained on the base, don’t
you?” I asked him. All the men looked down at me. “I don’t think
that they see us until after they pinpoint our location by sound.”
I wiped at my tears with the palm of my hand, tried to be as matter
of fact about that as possible.
“It isn’t working again.” The newly suited up man said.

“I think my partner influenced it somehow,” I said but
I was suddenly very aware of the chip. Mulder seemed like he was
waiting for me to find him using the helmet, but not like he was
powering it or controlling it.
“Your partner?” That voice sounded like he had found
new lynching material.
“She was an FBI agent, I told you, her FBI partner was
kidnapped by the aliens,” Krycek was going to try and spin this and
I needed to let him, trust him. This was his talent after all and
my mother and I had lived by it for all these months since the
invasion.
“The Grays don’t kidnap, they kill,” the lyncher talking again.
“This FBI agent was special. His family let the government experiment
on him ? he can talk to them,” Krycek was waiting between the
information he gave them to see how they swallowed it.
“Then he’s a traitor,” someone growled.
“No, he isn’t a traitor,” I said. “What my friend says
is true. The Grays wanted to see how his brain worked. They
wanted what to take away our successes at understanding them and
they have him there now ? watching him, studying him.”
Krycek looked at me with astonishment but thank God the
Camp Four men didn’t notice. They were actually considering all
that I had said. So I lied a little? Krycek lies all the time and
I don’t get all wiggy over it.
“Johanssen, Vaughn!” it came as a tinny, echoing page
in the concrete bunker. “Get up here! There’s been another one!”

There was a scramble to the north end of the room where
a metal door led to a dark stairway to the camp grounds. It seemed
that Krycek and I weren’t going to be blindfolded on the way out.
“Another what?” I asked the sweating bearded man trudging the
stairs beside me.
“Jack the Ripper,” he grunted.
“What?”
Krycek breathing in my ear again, “They’ve been having
murders here ? nasty ones.”
“This is a great place you picked, Krycek.”
He passed me on the stairs, watching me until a missile
flair lit all of us in gold and he found whatever he was looking
for in my face. “I think it is,” he said thoughtful. God, I think
he was about to touch me, stroke his one living hand down my cheek.
But the shock on my face must have scared him off. I got the
bright grin instead. “Yeah, definitely a great place,” he said
before loping away in his casual, shit eating way. His good hand
was in a pocket and his face tilted upward toward the exploding
sky, he looked like it was the most pleasant evening he could
imagine to be out for a stroll. I shook my head and started back
towards the shack.
I hoped my mother was back because I really wanted to
apologize to her ? what had gotten into me these months? I felt my
old certainty again. There was hope - I would die if I had to but
I would have hope.
In the shack my mother was pacing. “Dana!” she pulled
me close to her, pulled my face into her collarbone the way she had
when I was younger. “Dana, something evil is in this camp. We
need to leave here.”
I pulled away, “What are you talking about?” I wasn’t
going to leave now.
“A murderer ? killing women ? children” She was hoarse
but still shrill. Her walk tonight. Oh God. Jack the Ripper.
“Mom, one of the camp leaders said something about
murders happening here. You have to be careful.” I could leave
the theatrical tag that the bearded man on the stairs had offered
until daylight.
Her hands were like ice holding my cheeks. “I’ve felt
It, Dana, when we first came here and tonight on my walk… places the
temperature drops, the sadness…women were killed here.” She let go
of my cheeks and covered her eyes. Her rosary was looped around her
wrist into a tight bracelet. “I can feel these things, Dana. I
try not to, just like you, but I can…” her voice broke and she was
crying. “It’s such a terrible gift God’s given us.”
“Let’s get you in bed, Mom.” She had been through so
much, crossing the country with me and a man I wouldn’t let her
speak to. I had acted so terrible tonight after she worked to
make the little dolls. All she wanted was a little happiness, a
little normality. I led her to the mattress and tucked our clothes
and coats over her. We had one wool blanket and I folded it double
and put that on her to. I doubted I would sleep tonight.
“Dana?”
“I’m right here Mom.”
“Alex isn’t a bad man, is he?”
I stiffened. I hadn’t told her, of course, about Krycek and his
part in Melissa’s death. I couldn’t tell her that it made my stomach
roll to think of her making conversation with Krycek, to think of
the secret I was keeping from her.
“It’s better if you just let me talk to him. Stay away
from him, Mom, trust me. ”Her eyes were closed and she was drifting off.
She looked so old to me right then, the weight loss and the constant
exposure to weather and grief had left her face wrinkled and scarred.
I brought my knees to my chin and watched her sleep, listened to
the sky crackle overhead, flexed my toes inside my boots to keep
them warm. One thought, under my breast, beat time with my heart.

He’s alive. He’s alive. He’s alive. He’s alive…
 

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

Early November 2000
Eastern Colorado --
Just outside Camp Four human territories
No Man's Land
 
 
Here's one of the reasons I always work alone: incompetent assholes.

Like this big guy, Vaughn, who was smoldering beside me.  There we
were, both face down in the dirt and waiting for the alien hover ship
to pull away.  You don't move, they don't see you.  Easy enough to
remember.
But the big moron had to look back and motion for Scully to stay
still.  He even whispered, "Don't be afraid, just stay still."  When
they zapped him, that idiot Vaughn probably thought he was dying a
hero.
Don't be afraid?! It took all my willpower not to crack a smile. For
Dana Scully, 'don't be afraid' was a joke. In all the swarms of
killer bees, exploding cities and baby aliens feasting on human
flesh, I still had not once seen Dana Scully afraid.  It was part of
what kept me at her side, what drew me to her in the first place. I'd
been scrambling to stay alive for so long.  guess I wanted a little
of what she had.    Scully never scrambled.
The hover ship moved on.  Gotta love that blast of white light.  I
was rubbing spots out of my eyes after the ship took off. It was dark
and I couldn't see a fucking thing.  Please tell me we can go back to
the camp now.
"Get up." Scully was at my side and yanking on my prosthetic ˆ how
many times do I have to tell the bitch not to-
"It's what I said," came the bass whisper of Johansson.  "Women don't
belong out on these hunts."
Oh fucking great.  I was on my feet and forcing my pupils wide until I
could see again.  Johansson was a barrel-chested ex-cop and he looked
at me like I was a punk kid he would have liked to arrest back when he
had a badge and a jail. "Vaughn should have been minding his own
business."
 "Scully was an FBI agent before the invasion. She can handle
herself," I said, but that kind of logic was going nowhere with old-school
Johansson.
"And when she can't, I take care of her."  There was the beat of a
second where I wondered if I'd judged correctly and the macho
posturing would work on these country cops.  I just hoped like hell
that Scully wasn't about to crack up laughing or behind me.
But it looked like I'd assessed the Camp Four honchos pretty well.
Johansson and the others nodded with comprehension.  Scully was my
woman as far as they knew and Vaughn had overstepped his bounds to
try and protect her.
I turned to face the laser-eyed hatred from Scully.  It made her
angry to be confronted with any kind of dependence even when the two
of us were getting along, which we weren't at the moment. She
preferred to barely acknowledge that we were traveling together. Too
bad, Bitch; you wanted to come on this little alien base raid.
Oh, I knew what she was thinking.  She was going to find
Mulder, and then she was going to drag his poetry quoting
sappy-ass back with us to the murder and starvation paradise that was
Camp Four.
The tension over the cause of Vaughn's death was pushed aside and we
all turned back to the distant blue glow of the alien base. I made
sure to wait for Scully ˆ it looked more territorial.
So now it was Johansson, me, Scully and the three remaining camp
honchos on the raid.  Too big a group in the first place if you ask
me, but hey, my covert operations training on two continents
WOULDN'T impress the band of small town cops and survivalists who
make the decisions at Camp Four.
We trudged over the frozen mud and scrub grass. At least the wind
was at our backs.
Scully stumbled at my side, scowling as usual.  I tried to drop
behind her, save her from some of the wind.  "Listen," I told her,
careful that the others wouldn't hear.  "We should just hang back
this time.  Let these guys think they're showing us the ropes."
She pursed her lips at me like she had a lot to say and didn't trust
herself not to shout.  We let the others get ahead of us.
"Or maybe you should turn back, let me check things out," I repeated
for the hundredth time that day. "Let me get a feel for what Mulder
wants. " I thought I could see what I could deal Mulder might have
access to food and weapons,  or maybe he could get us on board with
the winning side.  Oh, I wasn't about to trade him any of that shit
for Scully. She was my talisman. I'd earned her,and I'd earned the
redemption she was going to bring me.  But I could let him think I'd
trade. The Mulder I‚d known would believe anything.

Scully cocked an eyebrow at me. Even angry and dirty the woman was
all control and certainty. And, for the most part, she really did
take care of herself.  When the others were far enough in front, she finally
spoke,  "Do what you want, Krycek."
"You said he saw you and you saw him."  Facts always got her
attention.  She nodded at me and stumbled again.  I had to catch her a little
with my good arm and she pulled away so fast she nearly fell again.
"Okay, so maybe he was looking for you," I said.  "But -" and
here was the source of our disagreement "-maybe it was the chip he
sensed."
Her scowl intensified.
"Or maybe it was just the fact that the listening device was working
that he sensed."
She stopped to look me in the face and I nearly plowed into her.
Johansson and the others passed us by with a few curious looks.  I
would have bet my next meal that they thought Scully was begging me
to be careful or telling me she was afraid OR some such bullshit.
"So what if it was," she said.  "I found him. We can help
him." She looked down and the wind whipped the ends of her
hair against my face. "Or he can help us."
This time when I brought my arm around her, I didn't let her step
away or squirm free.  My face was close to hers.  "He isn't on your
side anymore, Scully," I whispered between gritted teeth. I
didn't want Johansson getting too far ahead of us so I released her
from my hold.
"Mulder wouldn't turn on me," she said.
"He already has."
Sharp hate from her eyes.
That look might have scared Mulder but it only made me want
to fight. "You haven't seen him for two years.  You haven't heard
from him for two years. You don't know what they've done to him or
who he is anymore."
Even in the night I could see that her eyes were getting wet and it
made my stomach drop.  I'd seen her cry plenty of times.  In the
beginning when she couldn't save someone she was treating.  Or when
we were cold and hungry in the mud trenches the first year and Diana
Fowley's voice was reassuring us from loud speakers to trust the
aliens.  Or even the first time, in the first camp,  when she saw
camp leaders - another band of terrified
men trying to keep order carve the chip from a young
boy's neck and then execute him.  She wasn't made of
stone.
I didn't want to make her cry. Through all this hell I was not to
blame for one tear from Dana Scully. It seemed like a sin to me in a
way, to shake that coolness from her. I was fucking up.
"Scully," I pleaded.  I could hear it in my voice and I just counted
my breaths until my stomach unknotted.  Please just don't cry.
"What do you want me to do?"  I finally whispered.  I felt like shit
inside.  I never felt like this before I started trying to save my
soul. Redemption sucks ass.
She turned away from me and we continued our miserable trek to the
alien base.  "We'll lose them if we don't hurry," she said.

* * *

Krycek was worried about that listening device.  It hadn't worked
on anybody but me in the three days since I'd worn it.  It was
only a matter of time before someone suggested putting it back on
me and realized why it worked. I think his enthusiasm for this raid
was a way of distracting everyone from trying the device on me again.

Usually they removed the chip, then the host was killed and the
body burned. Because even burning didn't destroy the chip,
it was left out in an open area for the aliens to find.  Reclaim.

He knew why I wanted to come along. We'd fought about it the
entire day. I'd been so certain when I'd worn the listening device that
Mulder could see me, could hear me.  But I can't deny
that Krycek's argument hadn't worn on me all day.
What had Mulder been trying to tell me when I'd seen him at that
base?  He had been kneeling in one spot with his eyes closed and
not acknowledged my "presence" at all.  Was he telling me to stay
away?
I shook my head to clear all the doubts. He needed me.
And I needed to find him.  This fight was so hard, sometimes too hard.
And I felt so alone.
 
The blue lights of the base shot into the sky in pillars and
marked the perimeter of the underground base.  I'd been in one
before,to place explosives in an attack, one which was
ultimately crushed by the aliens.  The alien bases were really
very similar to what I remembered about the ship Mulder had
pulled me from in the Antarctic: cold, dark, lots of metal
winding corridors and vast open pits for maneuvering between the
corridors.
When Johansson came to the hover ship exit, he crouched low and
crawled over to the closest blue pillar.  These pillars marked rounded
vent shafts leading down into the base.

At the vent, Johansson kicked aside a trap door made of sticks
and dried mud and steam wafted up parallel to the blue beam.  The
aliens detected you in a second if you made contact with the blue
light.  We were all breathing hard,afraid to even whisper
as we waited our turn to slide in.
The vent shaft was wet and muddy at the top and the blue
light lined one side. We had to flatten to the far side of
the shaft as we slid down.  Krycek was behind me and then on top of
me, shielding me from the light and sending me down faster into
the base than the careful progress I'd been making.  Even with
that prosthetic arm he was more agile than any of us making
the descent. I thoughtabout the training he'd had to make him so
good at stealth work and the terrible ways he'd used that training.
I think he read it in my face because he was grinning at me like he
always does when he realizes he's offended me.
Inside, the base was like the others I'd been in --A freezing,
barely lit, near empty maze of metal and dripping water. Johansson
motioned for us to follow him and we crept along in single file.
Krycek was so close behind me that I could feel his breath on my
neck.
We spiraled downward as we followed the Corridor.  Finally, We
came to a ladder leading about ten feet up towards a door and Johansson
started up it.  This must have been where
they were salvaging  *or stealing* all the junk they had taken.
"Storeroom" whispered Krycek.  I didn't want to see
in a storeroom full of alien appliances.
"I'm going to..." I nodded towards the corridor. I wanted to check things out.
 Krycek's face went white with anger.  He gripped
my arm and tried to force me up the ladder in front of him.  The
others were already inside the metal door and it was creaking
closed.  I'd gotten in plenty of these physical struggles with Krycek in
our two years together.  He tried to force me to take shelter in
bombings or tried to pull me back into the trenches when I had leapt
up to stop others from going to the aliens, or even to keep me from
the injured during bee attacks.  So I knew it was a losing battle; he was
stronger and a better fighter than I was.  I let myself be carried up the ladder
and through the metal door and he tossed me on the floor like it had
hardly cost him any effort.
The room was just what I'd pictured - a big damp space piled with
things we humans either didn't know how or couldn't use.
I rubbed at my arm while Krycek stood between me and the door
with that same furious stance.
"Don't worry," I grumbled.  "I won't make a run for it if that's
what you're thinking."
Underneath me the floor began to rattle like an earthquake.
"Shit!" Johansson yelled.  "Take cover!"  The men dove
into the stacks,trying to hide.  I hate to agree
with Krycek about anything but they really were idiots.
Kyrcek and I both dropped face down on the muddy, wet floor, and
tried not to breathe. The juvenile aliens were just like the
hover ships outside - don't move and you won't be seen.  They
stepped on Krycek like he was garbage. It had to hurt but he
didn't make a sound and let himself get tossed over on his back
without blinking.  The safest thing would be to close your eyes
but neither of us ever did.
Behind me, Johansson and the others were screaming as they were
ripped apart.  Rivulets of blood made their way to where I sprawled
on the floor and soon I was face down in gore.  At least it was warm.
 
* * *
 
Fucking Hell my back hurt!
How long can it take a pack of those things to finish off four guys?
If I could have just pulled the damn prosthesis out from under my
spine then my outlook on life would have been so much better.
They'd left me face up looking at the ceiling and from where I was
left by the dripping alien brat-pack, I couldn't see Scully.  She was
behind me somewhere, closer to where those things were dining on Camp
Four's finest.
She was worrying me some.  Finding Mulder had brought back a little
more of the old Scully than I would have liked. .  I'd forgotten how
rabidly devoted she could be to that sap ass Mulder.   I stared at the
corrugated ceiling and thought, Please GOD don't let her sprint for the
door to get to him

The aliens were out the door before I could fully consider what
clout a request from me would have with God.

When I turned around I saw Scully was still on the floor, but
now covered in blood.  No, no, come on God you can't do this to
me...
"What are you looking at?" she snapped at me.  She was having a
hard time pushing herself up because of the blood and alien slime.
"I thought you were hurt," I said simply.  What WAS that shit the
alien's dripped?  When I went to help her up, I tried to scrape some
of it from her face.  It was gooey and stuck to my hand.
"I'm fine."
"Good," I shot back.  I like this "fine" thing she does.  It
would be such a pain in the ass if she needed me to baby her or
even to really talk. I like how she always seems as contented as
I am to just move on from whatever nearly kills her.  She pulled
off her denim jacket and then her sweater. Underneath was a
tight black t-shirt she didn't look half bad in. The sweater got
most of the gunk off her face but she had to be freezing.
"You want my jacket?" I asked her.
"No, I'm fine."
See what I mean?
We both moved slowly from the room and down the ladder.  Neither
of us looked once in the direction of the alien monster feast.
Back in the corridor I pulled her into my leather jacket and
and she didn't resist.  Her teeth had been chattering and I'm
not a bad guy.  Or at least I was trying not to be.
We weren't headed back to the vent but I didn't hassle her.  The
place was so empty I thought maybe it was alien naptime.  I wanted to
look around myself.
When we heard voices I pushed us both to the slimy dripping wall.
Human voices, it sounded like.  Maybe someone screaming or
shouting?  Then, more voices.  From my past experiences I would
have identified it as an interrogation of some sort.
"Can you tell what their saying?" I asked her.
She had this strange look on her face her forehead making those worry
creases I had learned to recognize as proof she was distressed.
She didn't answer but shrugged out from my jacket and just kept
moving down the bend of the corridor.
"Scully!" I whispered as harshly and loudly as I dared.  That
pack of the juvenile aliens was still in my mind and probably
not so far away.  She was around the next bend and out of my
sight without even looking back.
"Fuck!"
From behind me came the scuffle of the pack moving across
the grated metal floor. If she hadn't heard me then I would have bet
she wouldn't have heard them either.  The floor was already shaking.
 
"Scully!"  I rounded the bend in front and plowed over her and onto
the floor.
Even though my body was on top of hers, I could feel the
trembling grates of the corridor floor. In moments they'd be
nearly on top of us.
Up ahead of us the talking and the shouting had stopped and I could
hear the heavy clank of a metal door being slammed.  Don't move
Scully, I thought.  Don't blink.  Don't breathe hard.
Cold slime dripped onto the back of my neck.
One of them was checking us out. It gingerly placed his claw on my
back.  FuckFuckFuck. Scully had goose bumps on her flesh.
Don't let your teeth chatter, Scully.  Don't shiver.
There was a burst of steam from above and the monsters scattered
and pressed back from us.  The metal door clanged open again and
white bio-suits came at us.  In back of us, the alien pack was
riled up but the steady bursts of steam kept them away.  Arms
pulled me off of Scully and hauled her up from the floor.
I tried to grab her, but the heat from the steam was fucking
killing me.  My eyes were tearing and I choked on the shit.
It felt like getting maced.  I reached out towards a flash of red hair
and clutched the stuff like a lifeline.  The biosuits dragged us ahead
through the clanking metal door.  I had finally shut my eyes against
the chemical steam but my grip was still hard in Scully's hair.  The
door shut behind us and both Scully and I gulped in clean air.
 
 My hand was still tight in her hair when I puked.

* * *

My eyes cleared before Krycek's eyes did.  I'd finally freed his
hand from my hair but he held on to my arm like he expected them
to wrench us apart. The two men in bio-suits had deposited us
near the door and shed their masks.  They had gone back to a
vertical table where I assumed they had their interrogation
subject strapped down. I could only see the raised back of
the table and the top of the man's head.
"Then who are these two?" One man yelled as he gestured
towards Krycek and me.  "They're here to rescue you, aren't they?
They're part of your force here on the ground?"
"I'm alone,"the tortured man strapped
to the table choked out.
It couldn't be who I thought it was.  I moved
forward to see but Krycek's hand held me in place.
"I'm alone," the tortured man repeated.
I didn't like the sound of defeat in his voice.  Something about
his voice had reminded me of the past, of the person I used to be
-capable, strong and sure
of the rules of the world around me.
Krycek wobbled a little and I thought he was going to vomit
again. Instead he sniffed back his streaming nose and stood up
straight and a sour smile twisted impossibly at his mouth.  He
let me lead the two of us forward.
"Stay back you two!" one of the interrogators yelled.  But I
didn't need to come any closer.   I could see the face of the
man on the table.  His eyes were blackened and he had lost
weight but he was still every inch the imposing man he had been.
The biosuited interrogator slapped him hard across the face.
"That's enough!"  it was out of my mouth before I could
think. The man's head lolled to the side and he saw me.  "Scully?"
I thought he might cry.  I tried to move towards him
but both Krycek and one of the biosuited men held me back.
"Sir," I said and my voice cracked.  "Skinner. it's me.  I'm right
here."
"Scully," he said again but it wasn't a question.  It sounded
like a prayer.
The two interrogators looked at me then and I felt like I had
offered up whatever information they had been trying to beat from
Skinner.
"So you are working with him," one accused.
"No, we aren't," said Krycek.  "We came down here looking for
food."
"Right," said the man and he smiled a tight oily smile that said,
"You're lying."
I shook my head.
"No one comes down a base for food.  You are food down here," he
said. He had gray hair and eyes and a pinched look about him.
The other biosuited man was heavy set and younger looking.  They
both looked too soft and well fed to have spent much time in the
world above ground. In back of them a set of glass doors opened
and more biosuited men appeared.  I didn't recognize any of
them.
I don't think they could have pried Krycek's hand from my arm if
they'd tried, but they didn't.   When the needle went in my arm I
felt him latch the belt loop of my jeans to something on his
jacket.  I don't know why he thought they wouldn't just detach us
once we HAD passed out.
I kept my eyes locked on Skinner's as long as I could,
tried to will him some of my determination.  Then I remembered,
"Mulder?" I asked him, but he just stared back at me.
"Scully Scully" he said.  I'm not sure if he knew I was there or
he thought he was dreaming me.
Mulder's name did catch the ears of all the biosuited men the
one who'd shot me full of whatever was taking me under drew back
in surprise.
"What did she say?"
"She asked for Mulder,"  marveled the man with the syringe.
I was too fuzzyheaded to say anything else and they knew it.
"Are you sure it was Mulder?"
I never heard the answer:  I fell back into Krycek and we both
slid to the ground.
"I got you.  I got you," he whispered into my hair.
 
* * *
 
"God Damn!" my stomach heaved and my eyes felt like were
on fire but that wasn't what I was yelling about.  Diana Fowley's
pointy toed shoe got me right in the balls.

"I'm awake! I'm awake!"
In her pressed white suit and expensive heels, she looked like
something from one of my "Bad Heaven" dreams. Like this one I have
where I make it through the pearly gates holding on to the edge of
Dana Scully's shirttails but get booted out at the next ID checkpoint.
Wait, should Diana Fowley be running Gestapo operations in the after-life?
And what the fuck was holding my ear?
"Okay  I'm awake!" I repeated. I tried to stand.  Bad idea.   "Just-"
I slapped her polished nails off of their twisting fix on my ear,
"- give me a second here."
It looked like I'd been dumped in a padded psych cell: no windows,
no furniture, nothing I might injure myself on or make into a weapon.
The walls and floor were spongy mats like I'd once trained on for
hand-to-hand combat.
White of course. Someone had taken my clothes away and hosed me
down. The prosthesis was still on but wet inside very
uncomfortable.  "Where's Scully?"
Diana nudged a metal crate with my clothes inside towards me.
They looked laundered, and the laces on my hiking boots had been
replaced.  I tried not to gape at the miracle of clean clothes.
"Get dressed," Diana said.  But I wasn't sure I could comply with
that right away.  I was dizzy and nauseous.  What the fuck had
been in those syringes?
"Where's Scully?" Yelling was not helping my symptoms die down.
I rubbed my hand over my face.  "Just answer, you fucking whore,"
I whispered. Diana's face turned red.  Ah hah, some color in all this
antiseptic white.  "Listen"  I thought, maybe I should play
nice.  Maybe I should make sure they aren't just cleaning me up
so they don't have to hold their noses when they kill me.
"Diana-"  I used a contrite inflection that I can do very well.
Can't we just forget about that "fucking whore" comment?  "-Scully
and I aren't a part of whatever Skinner was getting beaten out of
him."
She crossed her arms and managed a look with a little less
hostility.  Surely she wasn't just going to take my word for it?
"We just came here with a bunch of idiots in a shanty town close
by.  We came to see what we could pinch." I shrugged.  Now
this she has to believe.
I was trying to pull my thermal underwear on
and my t-shirt.  I thought if I could just get dressed and stand
I might be able to kill her, find the way out of the padded cell
and to where they had Scully
"Hey, it wasn't personal.  I know you're probably fighting on a
different side than those guys were and-"  the boots, the jacket,
almost there "- I got no problem with that.  I can respect that."
Now I just had to stand-
"Don't move, Alex."
I was looking into the barrel of a 45.  Fucking great.
"No problem," I slid back down. If I hadn't still been semi-
loaded on the tranquilizer I would have rushed her and been on my
way.  But the world was still a little fuzzy.  For the life of me
I couldn't come up with a Plan B.
However, I could see Diana more clearly than at first. I have to
say, alliance with the aliens did not seem to suit her.  I mean,
compared to girls above ground she looked pretty good. There was
the tailored suit and the washed and styled hair and perfume?
I'm sure I smelled perfume.
But her eyes were shadowed and nervous and her lips were tight on
her face.  She'd aged the way that people under stress do.  It
wasn't attractive on her.  And she must have known it because she
didn't like me sizing her up.
"Were going to let you go," she said.
This couldn't be for real.  "You are," I stated back to her.
 She didn't move or answer.  Was she afraid?  "Okay then," I
opened my hands, palms up to her.  "We'll leave."
She shook her head and made a taut line of her lips.  She was
afraid, I was certain.  But not of me, no way.  The Diana I knew
would have coolly blown my head off - no, scratch that -would have
had it blown off by someone else.  Then, "Just you, Alex. Scully stays."
 
"No deal."  I did stand up then and she backed up enough to keep
the gun aimed at my chest.  I felt pretty stable.  I suppose
killing her was worth a try.
"It isn't a deal. I'm telling you what to do."  She let the gun
drop to her side.  What the fuck was going on here?  "If your
thinking of trying something, killing me even, it won't work.
Scully's with Mulder and you'll never get past him."
I think the room was spinning. All that God Damn white made it
impossible to know for sure.  That indention in the padding, had to
be the door right? "Let me out of here."
"You should leave, Alex."
"Should?"  I turned to face her.  She really didn't look good.
Her makeup was too heavy on the bags under her eyes.  "I thought
you were giving me an order."
Diana shoved the gun towards me.  I stepped back in shock but
then grabbed it away from her.  "What are you afraid of?  What's
gone wrong here?"
"It's Mulder," she said.
Mulder?  Pansy-ass Mulder, who I could throw to the ground with
one arm just as easily as with two? Mulder the cry-baby, the
poetry quoting love-sick-
I shook my head and smiled at Diana.  "You knew what he was,
the things done to him when he was a blob in a Petrie dish.  Don't
tell me it worked?"
"Of course it worked.  It was Spender's pet project. The best
geneticists in the world-"
I waved her away and started for the door again.  "I've heard it,
Diana. I was assigned to boy genius myself once, remember?"
"Mulder controls the juvenile aliens.  He can talk to them."
"No shit?"  What, like they follow simple commands ˆ sit, heel, play
dead, shake?
"He's the only one the aliens will communicate with.  He
negotiated our role helping them eradicate the population ˆ"
"Wasn't all that in the bag already?"
Oh man, the expression on her face was priceless after all the
double-crossing she'd done in her life.  I couldn't help my smile.
Payback is a bitch, Diana.  Didn't anyone ever tell you that?  "So
they went back on the deal?"
 

* * *

At first, all I could do was sleep.
It had been two years since I'd been in a real bed with sheets
and pillows - clean sheets, clean pillows.  When I could keep my
eyes open, all I could see were shadows.  I was in someone's
darkened bedroom.  In someone's bed.  I didn't think beyond that
reality.
Mulder was sitting beside me when I woke.  "Two days," he
whispered.
"That's how long I've been sleeping?"  It was, perhaps, the most
ridiculous conversation we had ever begun.  After all that had
happened in the world around us, the horrible fate of everything
we knew.  I couldn't seem to say more than this.
He looked older - more that the two years could account for - and
he looked even more haunted than when we were on the worst
cases, even worse than the times he'd been teased with Samantha
and tormented with the tangles of conspiracy and Mulder family history.
"Mulder?"
He was chewing at his lower lip, his jaw working the way I'd seen
it a million times before.  His eyes were filled with apology.
"You're going to have to go back to the camp.  Krycek's waiting there
for you."  I sat up.  I was still in the filthy jeans and black t-shirt that
I had been caught in.  I brought a hand up to my face and brushed
back some of my tangled hair.
"I'd forgotten how beautiful you are, Scully."
He had never spoken to me like this before the aliens.  I let my hand
drop down to the bed again.  I felt foolish to care about my looks when
people were starving and cold in the camp I had just come from.
Mulder smiled at me and tapped between my breasts where my heart was
beating like mad.  "Here is where you're beautiful.  Inside," he said.
We both reached for each other at the same time and crushed the
other into a hug.
The tears came to me first for all the days that I had fought a
losing battle above ground.  And then I was sobbing because I'd
had to fight it alone.
"I'm sorry.  I'm so sorry," he kept saying.  My face was against
his far too prominent collar bone and when I pulled
back and held his face in my dirty hands, I was finally aware
that something was wrong.
"Mulder, what is it?"
"Scully, I'm what you've been fighting against these two years.
The aliens - they don't know this planet or us.  They spent so
long studying us and infiltrating our most powerful governing
forces but they still couldn't determine the best way to wipe all
of us out."
I let my hands drop from his face and he clutched them in his
own. He looked like he had when they had drugged his water and
he'd been manic and raging.
He tipped his forehead against mine and closed his eyes but I was
tense and afraid.
"They put me in charge of the war here on the planet," he
whispered.  I drew back.  "I don't believe you," I told him. "Open
your eyes, look into mine and tell me that it isn't true."
He shook his head.
"Open your eyes Mulder.  I know you.  I know you would never
agree to that."
He did open his eyes, his beautiful eyes, and they were as hard
and as cold as I had seen them interviewing suspects.  "You saw
what they were doing to Skinner?"
I nodded.  His grip on my hands was so strong that it hurt and I
tried to pull away.
"I gave that order.  I had him beaten. Skinner's been working
with the Alien Rebels to end the takeover."  He let go of my
hands.  "I gave the order to torture him until he revealed his
contact with my people."
"No, Mulder, I don't believe-"
He stood up. "I'm telling you the truth." he said.
 
I looked at him. He was dressed in gray wool slacks and dark sweater
that looked like the expensive cashmere I had always loved in my
previous life.  Where I'd been sleeping the sheets were streaked with
blood and dirt.  Had he given up everything we'd believed in for these
creature comforts?  I thought that he must be congratulating
himself for abandoning me at El Rico now that he could see the
filth I had brought with me, that I was literally covered in.  I
thought he must be disgusted that I had ruined his pristine sheets.
When I looked at him he winced as if in pain.
I remember him telling me in his apartment hallway that he didn't
know if he wanted this fight if I wasn't by his side.  And now I
didn't know if I wanted it either.
Had he ever been the man I'd thought he was?
Krycek told me every day that we were going to lose
that I was a fool for risking my neck to save people who were all
going to die.
"You're not a fool, Scully. Don't give up."
I started a little at the tone of his voice, flat and sure, more
than his words.  I'd heard that sad and certain tone before. In
Gibson Praise, I thought.
"You can hear me?"
He nodded sadly.
"Is that why you were made the leader of the war here?"
"They trust me," Mulder said simply.  "I was one of the first
test subjects.  Samantha too, only she was a disappointment to
them so they threw her aside like trash."  He had the cold look
in his eyes again.  "They consider me one of them."
 I couldn't help myself.  I gasped.
But your not, I was thinking.  You're not one of them.  I thought
then about his first words to me, that he was sending me back.
He nodded and I could tell he was grinding his teeth.  His old habit that
meant he was very, very serious.
"Then, you'll kill me if we cross paths above ground?" I asked
him.  He nodded again.  "And you should try to kill me.  We aren't on the
same side anymore, Scully."
I didn't believe him, I couldn't.  No matter what he had done, or
given up to survive, I could never believe that Fox Mulder
would be my enemy.
 
* * *
 
Back at the camp, Skinner had his wits about him enough to sit by
Margaret Scully's bedside, make that sleeping bag side, and hold
her hand while she died.
I'd had to drag him from the alien base for the first hundred yards.
When the bastard finally came to he actually tried to punch me.
"What are you doing, Krycek?" he'd snarled at me.  His eyes were
both completely blood shot and his nose was broken. The human
captors had ripped three of his fingernails out of his left hand.
He looked the worst I'd ever seen him.
"I'm saving your ass, man."
"Take me back."  He spat onto the ground, blood and snot.  I
laughed at him.  There was sleet coming down and the temperature
was dropping.  Already I couldn't feel my toes.
"You're fucking nuts, Skinner.  They were getting ready pull your
Goddamn teeth to get you to talk."
I was panting. Dragging Skinner hundred yards took a lot
more effort than carrying Scully twice that.
"Mulder-" Skinner said and spit more blood onto the frozen scrub
grass. "Mulder shouldn't have let me go.  I need to go back
before-"
I wanted to shake him.  "Have you noticed that it's fucking
freezing out here?"  I said.  "They're way better in this stuff
than we are."
"They'll know he's been working with the Rebels," Skinner choked
out.  I have to admire the loyalty Mulder had inspired in his
previous life.  Skinner would rather get tortured to death that
have the aliens turn on Mulder.
"He said he can lie to them now." My teeth started chattering.
 
"He's more than they counted on."
Fuck, it was cold.  "Come ON, Skinner. "  He had dropped to one
knee. "Get up!"
I didn't think I could drag him much farther.
 "Scully-" I said, yanking him up and pulling one arm over my
shoulders.  I said it just the way he had when he saw her, like it
was something sacred, like a prayer.  "If the aliens find out they can
use her against him, they will.  He's going to send her back
and then we have to take her away from here, away from him,
because-"
Because Mulder couldn't stop listening to her when she was so close.
He'd been blocking her by reciting poetry, humming, counting to a
thousand but it was too big a temptation.
"Eventually they'll look into my head again," Mulder had told
me,  "and they'll find her there."
The poor bastard, after the things they did to him, El Rico
didn't matter.  He never had a chance.
"I'll always hear her." He'd said it like it was a threat and
I wasn't about to scoff at this new Mulder.
 "It just won't be so strong.
Everything she touches and hears and sees and-"
He put his hands on hips and turned away.  I guess he had
been tortured to have her so near, to be living inside her and
have her completely unaware.
She was sleeping in his bed in back of us.  He hadn't let anyone
near her so she was still as dirty and disheveled as I'd last
seen her.  But even filthy with tangled hair and ragged clothes,
she was still Scully - honorable and decent and the one person I
believed could grant me absolution.
"When she wakes up, I'll bring her back to you," Mulder told me.
He looked like he was going to cry then. His face crumpled and
his breath hitched. I guess some things never change.
Skinner seemed to get better the closer we got to the camp.  He
stopped spitting blood and he walked on his own more easily.  The
guy had become the muscled Marine again since the invasion.
 I had a hard time trying to recall the softer bodied
assistant director he had been.  "How'd you hitch up with the
rebels, anyway?"  I asked him.
"That night at El Rico."  Up ahead we could see the camp gate and
we both sped up a little now that we had our goal in sight.  "The
rebels showed up after everyone had gone.  No faces," he said.
"Right, no face on the rebels," I said.  Then, "So they left you
behind."
"Must have been my lucky night," he grumbled.
I have no idea if he meant it as a joke or not.
We were trying to get warm by a smoking fire at the camp when
word came about Margaret Scully.  She'd been acting really flaky
since we'd come to this camp and in her last hours of
consciousness she kept repeating, "the evil, the evil."  I
thought that pretty much summed up all we had seen.  She also
asked to be buried outside of the camp fence. I figured the evil
could get her just as easily no matter where we dug her grave,
but Skinner promised her that he would see to it.
I tried to stay away.  Scully had warned me often enough that I
was to keep my distance from her mother.  In two years I'd hardly
spoken to the woman. Still, I regretted seeing her die.  It would
hit Scully hard.
I left Skinner in the dark, holding Margaret Scully's hand while
she chanted about the evil and I went back to the fire. The smoke
burned my eyes and lungs, but it gave the illusion of warmth.
Camp Four was a shit hole. I would be glad to leave and take Scully
somewhere Mulder couldn't feel the tears slide down her cheeks,
the rocks under her sleeping bag, or the scalpel slice just under
her chip so we could sneak through camp checkpoints. Mulder
sending her away would hit her hard too.  I frowned thinking
about dragging her out of here.
Through the campfire smoke I caught flashes of other dirty,
hungry faces and they were all frowning at their own dejected
thoughts.
I'd put a lot of faith in the possibility of something waiting
after this crappy existence we all had.  Something for me, Scully,
Camp Four, and the rest of the fucking miserable human race.
But at least I had faith now. I'd never had faith before.
I looked up at the sky.  The damn explosions started again -
our side, their side - it was hard to tell who was firing at who
with the heavy sleet still in the air.
I flipped up the collar of my leather jacket, nudged the prosthesis
back in place, and waited for Scully to come home.
 
 
 
____________