Lights Go Out: Part Four by Jintian

Everywhere around them the farmhouse is quiet, but her dreams… Her dreams are not. She is not in Nebraska. She is home. Georgetown. The morning after Krycek spoke to her.

In the dream the streets outside are gray with fog. Her car slices through it, headlights on low.

Her hands on the steering wheel are clenched so tight she can't feel them anymore. She pulls the car over to the side of the road, turns it off, and forces herself to relax, bit by bit. Her own harsh breathing is the only sound she can hear.

When her hands rest finally in her lap, she sighs and leans back in the car seat.

What would Mulder do? She had tried to ask herself that last night, but she hadn't liked the answer.

The clock on her dashboard says that it's just past six in the morning, still too early for visiting hours. But she doesn't care. She hasn't seen Mulder in two weeks, and she has to know. She has to try and talk to him, find some way to prove that he doesn't need Krycek. That he'll be all right, that I'm not desperate enough to take help from a killer.

But this is not really a dream. This is, of course, memory. And what is past cannot be erased. It can only be linked to other things, other sorrows. She can only stand outside of the dreamself and watch. There is no way to close her eyes here.

At the front desk she flashes her badge and a fierce expression, and the kid-masquerading-as-nurse opens the barred metal gate. She lets an orderly lead her down the sterile halls, refusing to let the chill air draw shivers.

This is the hospital she had Mulder transferred to just before she left for Africa, but looking around at the blank whiteness -- she hates it. Hates it with a cold fire born of fear. How could she have left him alone in a place like this? How could it be that she would even need to put him in a place like this?

Oh, God, she thinks. What is happening to us?

Yes, indeed, what is happening to them, as the orderly stops in front of room eleven, pulling out an electronic key card for the lock to the steel door. Anxious, she steps to the side and tries to see through the entry as he opens it.

Just behind the door is a small area, separated from Mulder's room by a floor-to-ceiling plexiglass partition. It is punctured at spaced intervals with air holes smaller than her thumb.

He is awake, her heart leaps in glad surprise because he is awake. Somehow she had not expected him to be up, waiting for her.

But something's different -- different from the times she saw him before Africa. She steps closer to the partition.

He is huddling against the plexiglass in nothing but a hospital gown. His eyes travel up her figure until locking with her own. His face is expressionless. There is no recognition.

In the farmhouse in Nebraska, sleeping through the memory, Dana Scully whimpers. "No, get out, get out of there…"

Trying to reach him, she kneels until her face is level with his. His eyes track her movement, until she is close enough to see light reflecting in his pupils. If the partition were not there, they would be breathing each other's air.

"Mulder," she whispers. "It's me. Scully."

Now finally there is something on his face, but it's an echo, an expression not quite fully formed. Her breath catches as she realizes what it is.

Suspicion.

"Mulder," she tries again, "do you re -- "

And the next thing she knows he is attacking the partition, screaming at the top of his lungs as he throws his entire body against it. Again and again, he hurls himself towards her. His angry cries, pound, and pound, and pound, and the squeal of his skin against the plexiglass -- the noises rip through her ears, split her head.

He snarls, pure hate twisting the lines of his face, his face so familiar --

oh God, Mulder, what --

-- and throws himself against the glass again. She feels the steel door against her back, realizes she has recoiled and backed away from the attack. She is shouting, as well.

"Mulder! Mulder!"

The sounds tearing from him do not make sense. There is no coherence, no sign even that he feels pain, despite the heavy thuds of his body hitting the partition. His screaming is raw and unintelligible.

Each charge he makes ends in a harsh thud as he bounces off the partition. He uses his fists as well, knuckles first, and she cringes when she sees that some of them have split open. He is bleeding, Mulder is bleeding, dripping his blood on the plexiglass.

The steel door swings open all of a sudden, taking away its support, and she stumbles backwards. Three orderlies barrel past her, yanking her back out into the corridor before she can finish yelping, "No!" The door slams behind them.

She plasters herself against the cold steel, watching through the window and knocking with the side of her fist.

They open part of the partition -- she hadn't noticed there was a door for that -- and tumble through, grabbing Mulder with a force she can feel even through the steel and glass. Two muscle him down as one administers a hypodermic to his arm.

He is writhing on the floor, all visible skin sweaty and flushed red. His legs kick and the hospital gown -- blood-spattered somehow from his knuckles -- falls back, exposing his buttocks and genitals. There is no shame, no dignity as he heaves against the other three men. Through the door she can hear the faint voices of the orderlies and Mulder's incoherent screaming.

She closes her eyes, pressing her forehead to the window.

God, what have they come to?

The cold of the hallway wins out finally, and she can't fight it anymore. The shudders thunder through her.

Her cry breaks the silence of the farmhouse, dragging Alex from his sleep like a claw. He's off the bunk and standing, eyes darting from side to side in the dark, before he understands that the sound has come from her. She is sobbing. The sound is harsh, wounding the night air.

It takes two steps to reach her bed. He stretches out his one hand, sensing that she is just in front of him. As he grabs her shoulder he crouches, coming in close enough to feel the change in air temperature generated from her body.

She is struggling, limbs thrashing against the sheets, but he realizes that she's still asleep. She is in the middle of a nightmare.

"Scully," he says loudly to wake her, shaking her shoulder. "Scully. Come out of it."

"Stop, stop…" More twisting, almost dislodging his hand and making him lose his balance.

He senses her eyes come open at the same time she gives one last heave on the mattress. Her movement shifts his hand, so that it lands on her breast. His palm, his fingers, are spread out flat on top of her, and her nipple stings him through her shirt.

For some reason he doesn't understand, for some reason he can't think of, his hand remains where it is. Her breathing is a thing he can feel, heaving, trembling, all the way through his arm and into his own chest.

The moment is an eternity, a rip in both his conscious mind and his own sense of time. There are no thoughts in his head, nothing but blank rushing wind.

And then she breaks it, bringing up both arms to grab his wrist. And -- oh God -- she's pushing his hand down, down…

Down the curve of her breast, down her stomach, over the mound of her sex, pushing it between her legs where he can feel now, even through her clothes, her heat burning his skin. She closes her thighs around his hand.

"Shut up," she moans, and her voice is tearful, full of rain but still strong. "Don't say anything."

He gulps, tasting something acid in the back of his throat, something dry. He can't feel anything with his hand but the heat and the unyielding seams of her pants, and God, her hips are moving now, thrusting against his hand. There is an answering throb in his groin. His breathing shallows.

As a test he flexes his fingers against her, and the catch of her breath is a gunshot in the quiet house. He leans closer, bringing his head down. His mouth finds the delicate skin of her neck and fastens there.

From somewhere above his head her voice moans, "Oh God," and he takes advantage of the moment, lightning quick, to slide his hand out and then back down, under the waistband of her pants. No delicacy, shoving his fingers back into that furnace, only this time there are no clothes to separate, and what he touches is moist and searing.

He leaves her neck, travels down to her breast, closing his mouth over the material of her shirt. He breathes hot air onto her, then suckles through the fabric. He uses his teeth, nipping at the hard bud.

Her movements are frantic, they are both panting, her hands have come up to his head and her fingers curl through his hair. His own fingers curl against her at the juncture of her legs, delving into her, flicking her clitoris with more harshness than care. She thrusts so hard he can feel the strain of it in his wrist.

Somewhere in the back of his throat a moan is swelling, threatening to break. He still can't even see her in the darkness, but perhaps that is because his eyes are closed, perhaps he is still dreaming.

Fuck, he's about to burst, about to come right where he's kneeling, and if he doesn't get himself undone and thrusting into her in the next minute --

He raises his head and yanks his hand away from her, intending to unbutton his pants, but then all of a sudden she stills.

He almost doesn't understand the word through the red haze of his lust, and it takes a second, but he drops his hand. "Wh-what?"

"I said no." Her voice is breathy but strong, punctuated by the force with which she pushes herself up from the bed and stumbles around it in the darkness. No other words, just the slap of her bare feet on the wooden floor as she runs out of the room. A moment later, he hears the front door slam.

He is shocked, too shocked to follow her. Still in his awkward crouch, erection still huge and throbbing and hidden, unable to comprehend the last few minutes. What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck -- The thought whirls through the confusion in his head.

When he finally lowers himself to sit on the wooden floor, his legs are numb from holding the position so long. He lands on his ass in a graceless thump; it would almost be comic in another situation. Part of him feels like laughing anyway, great dark whooping howling laughing.

But instead he succumbs to the silence of the house, sitting on the floor without motion.

What the doctor told her, in the polite matter-of-fact tone of one professional to another, was that he didn't know what had caused Mulder's outburst.

Mulder had been stable while she was in Africa. The hospital told her there had been no more screaming fits like she saw with Fowley and Skinner. She'd checked on him periodically and the reports were all good.

So unless they were lying to Scully, this was Mulder's only violent episode in two weeks. And if one were to apply logic to the situation, one would conclude that it was because he had seen her.

After the blood tests came back -- nothing abnormal other than the tranquilizer, and that a formula she recognized -- she checked on Mulder again.

He was sleeping peacefully on his bed, knocked out by the drug. His chest, arms, and legs were bound with buckled leather straps. She stood there and studied his form, picking out all the differences that seemed to take him over even while sleeping.

He was too relaxed, zoned out from the drug. The Mulder she remembered twitched in his sleep, beset by dreams and memories. His hair had grown, also, while she was gone. The hospital gown was back in place, but his legs were still bare. Vulnerable. And there were bandages on his knuckles. A bit of blood had seeped through and stained them a dark red.

She refused to let the tears flow. He did not waken to see her again, even though she waited hours, until the afternoon painted the white walls of the building through the window shades. But when she finally turned her back on his room to walk down the hallway, to leave him in the hospital --

The crying started in the car and didn't stop, even when she got back to her apartment.

-- blackness around her head and in the night, from far beneath the surface she can hear ocean waves crashing…

Mulder, "But you're okay, aren't you Scully?" Mulder, face shocked in the white light of the cancer ward, "No, I refuse to believe that."

She rolls, forcing her body to face upwards. A light breaks over her face, something cold and wet. She opens her eyes.

The moon hangs huge and luminous through the dewy grass. Unblinking, white with promise.

Scully does not sleep tonight. The heat-seeking radar tracks her restless movements; on the screen she is a mass of red, orange, and yellow moving amongst greens and blues. The FBI agent makes little noise, not enough for the long-range microphone to transmit to the speakers in the van; but occasionally she scuffs her feet, or brushes against something.

The entire encounter with Krycek the night before has been recorded and copied onto tape, and in a moment Marita will be ready to transmit all of it to the smoking man. Sitting in the van with headphones hooked into the surveillance system, she adjusts a few more controls, eyes focused on the radar screen.

Does she feel surprise? Regret? Elation? She now has hard proof of betrayal by the old Consortium's most dangerous agent. He's caught in a snare he'll never be able to slither out of. The force of his will is not strong enough to break through this one.

But in the end it doesn't matter, because the old Consortium is dead, and the only other person who will hear the tapes is the smoking man. Krycek is as good as dead now, but she will not have the satisfaction of seeing him splayed out and defenseless before all of the others. Because those men have already met their fiery ends, and Krycek has survived them.

Part of her howls at the unfairness of it, that Alex Krycek could have come through the old Consortium's demise intact, still on his feet. While she, she has been swimming in nightmare and horror since that last time they were together in New York, the last time one of them betrayed the other.

Now, despite her time with the smoker, she is only a broken shell. He has told her the oil has been expunged entirely, but sometimes when she blinks the world hides behind an unexplainable film of blackness. As if her body is remembering something her mind can't.

She has dizzy spells, she has screaming spells. Her voice has been torn to irreparable shreds.

A new sound comes over the speakers and through her headphones now. She turns the volume higher, listening.

Scully is weeping. The sobs that transmit from her apartment are broken and whispery, shuddering and sorrowful. "Oh, God," she sighs. "Mulder, Mulder…"

Eventually, Scully sits in the middle of her couch, head bent. Her crying has stopped and she is silent, not even sniffling. She sits for perhaps twenty minutes, neither moving nor making a sound.

Then, motion. Alerted, Marita sits up straight. On the radar screen the red and orange blob that is Dana Scully reaches out an arm. The speakers transmit a familiar sound -- a phone being picked up. Another set of tapes, tapping Scully's phone line, clicks on. Scully punches in numbers, and there is ringing. An automated voice answers.

Scully presses the buttons for her own telephone number, then hangs up when the page goes through. And five minutes later, her phone rings.

She picks up in the middle of the fourth one, as if she had changed her mind at the last minute. "H-hello?"

"Two hours. Rest stop on I-95 south, after Virginia exit 103. Page me again when you get there." It is Krycek's voice, brief and curt.

"O-okay." And then a click as he hangs up, as she lets her own phone drop back into its cradle.

Marita leans forward in the surveillance van, watching the screen as Scully begins to move.

Just before dawn he hears her come back into the farmhouse. Lying on his back with his eyes closed, he listens as she makes her tentative way through the dark. His muscles are tense and ready, in case her noises indicate she is planning something amiss -- leaving me? finding her gun and shooting me? trying to fuck me again? -- but his breathing is deep and even, so that she will think he is asleep.

When she enters the room, she shuffles over to her bed. He opens his eyes a slit, to let them adjust to the darkness in case there is to be some action.

But no. She pauses in the space between their bunkbeds. He can hear her breathing over the sound of his own.

"I know you're awake," she says, and her voice is clear. "I just want you to know that I…. What just happened here…it won't happen again. I was upset and…." She takes a breath, then repeats, "It won't happen again. I'm sorry."

"We should just forget it. Move on. Because…because I'm not leaving." Another breath. "I mean, I'm not leaving without you."

"I…" and she falters for a moment. "I want to live. I want to live for as long as possible. And I know there's no way I'd…there's no way I'd survive alone."

Part of him, the part that makes him finally sit up and turn to acknowledge her, recognizes what strength it required of her to say those words aloud. The Dana Scully he remembers would never have admitted weakness -- not to him, not to anyone. She would never have shown that part of herself.

But of course, as he keeps discovering, this Dana Scully is different from what he thought he knew. She is a much more adaptable creature than he had expected.

Not adaptable… that voice whispers, the one from before, from North Dakota. Not adaptable. She still doesn't know the whole truth, does she?

No, she doesn't. In the dark her figure standing before him is just a dim outline. She could be a ghost, for all he knows, if not for her breathing, if not for the fear radiating from her in cold waves.

But instead of listening further he stands, towering over her. His voice is blank, without expression. In control once more. "Then we should leave," he says. "No use staying here any longer."

He waits a second more, in case she wants to say something else. But after a minute, they both begin to move around the darkened room, gathering their belongings.

So now, she wonders, pacing in her bedroom, how does one pack for a trip with one of the most dangerous men walking the earth?

Lightly, she decides, and comfortably. She leaves the business suits and dresses hanging in her closet, leaves the dress shoes and the pumps in a neat row beneath them. In the back of her closet she finds her hiking boots and an old knapsack from some long ago middle-of-nowhere case with Mulder. These she dumps on her bed with an athletic bag.

She packs jeans, a pair of loose khakis, t-shirts, sweaters, socks. Underwear. From the suitcase she still hasn't unpacked from Africa, she scavenges travel-sized toiletries. She's packed for trips so many times it's second nature to her, the items she needs. But the thing that keeps creeping up from the corners is that this time it's a very different kind of trip.

The last thing she puts in the knapsack is extra ammunition, and she checks that her gun is in full working order before holstering it at her back.

When she checks the mirror, her face is pale and sick-looking. She touches the area around her eyes, the only bit of color with their red puffiness.

In the bathroom she splashes cold water on her face and lets it drip down her neck, under her shirt. The sound of her breathing is thunderous in her ears.

There is no answer. After a moment, she shuts off the bathroom light and goes to finish packing.

The rest stop is one of the smaller ones on the I-95 in Virginia, and at half past midnight the parking lot has only three cars -- one of which is Scully's rental. The other two belong to families, typical middle class sedans.

She sits in the dark of the driver's seat, listening to the passing cars on the interstate. The windows are cracked just a bit, enough to feel some of the summer breeze on her skin every now and then.

The clock on her dashboard changes to 12:31, and she glances down at her cell phone. It's on, the display green and glowing. Krycek's pager number is already dialed in. All she has to do is press the *snd* button, punch in her number at the signal, and wait for him to come.

But instead she just sits there. Apparently, she's driven all this way through Virginia just to stare at her cell phone.

To others, it's one of the most useful inventions ever to hit the working public. To her, it looks like the gate to hell.

I wonder if my sister had owned a cell phone, if she'd still be alive. If I'd just been able to reach her that night…

But she hadn't. As savvy as Melissa was, she had not believed in much of the new technology out there, things like email versus a hand-written letter. Scully doesn't know if her sister's personal philosophies extended to cellular phones, but it's an irony -- to say the least -- that a common piece of machinery, a staple of her own occupation, might have saved Melissa's life.

People live dangerous lives these days, unaware that one day they could become targets mistaken for family members.

Most of the world is probably also unaware that one day a piece of metal with a Bible verse etched on it in Navajo might unbend them a little.

Scully sits waiting in the car, and it seems there are ghosts and almost-ghosts sitting with her. Their faces -- Melissa, Emily, Mulder -- beseech her to find answers for them.

She closes her eyes, defense against the assailing memories, and her thumb presses *snd*. The sound of the other end ringing floats up to her ears.

Thirty minutes later he pulls into the rest area in a nondescript Bureau-type car. She watches him park it at the other end of the now-empty lot, watches him step out and stand. His head turns toward her, and although she's too far away to see his face clearly, she shivers.

He is clothed in some dark color, perhaps gray or blue, a sports coat and slacks, collared shirt unbuttoned at the top. From the passenger seat he pulls a black athletic bag and a knapsack not unlike her own, which he slings over his shoulder. Then he strolls to the trunk and removes an aluminum case, and from the way he hefts it out she can tell it's heavy.

He walks toward her, tall and graceful despite the weight of his luggage pulling him to the side. Radiating some dark energy with every sinuous movement. As she looks on the air seems to ripple around him, as if she can see the wave of molecules he displaces as he draws close.

Before he gets to her car she remembers herself and unlocks the doors, steps out herself to stretch her legs --

-- and blood rushes back to her thighs, her ass, as she meets his eyes over the car's roof.

"I was going to leave in another half hour," she remarks, trying to ignore the kick in her heartbeat and the sudden shallowness in her lungs.

When she helps put his bags in the trunk, she pays attention. The realization hits as soon as she sees the prosthetic hand, ungloved now. But she can hardly wrap her mind around it -- so much danger embodied in this man, and he's missing something so vital.

Unable to control herself, she points to the plastic hand protruding from his coat sleeve. "That happened in Russia, didn't it?

"Mulder never told me you might be subject to that as well," she says, half-relieved he hasn't become angry. She doesn't know if she's prepared to face such a thing.

"He probably didn't realize it himself," he says, shutting the trunk. "Not until later."

They walk back up to the front of the car, she on the driver's side and he on the passenger's. Before getting in, she asks him over the roof, "Where are we going?"

Now there is a flicker of expression, something in the way his eyes study her face. As if he's wondering what her reaction will be. But part of her, somehow, expected his next words anyway. Expected something like them, at least.

When the list of possible necessities they can take from the farmhouse is exhausted, and Krycek has finally shut the trunk, pink tinges the eastern horizon with encroaching sunrise. She leans against the side of the car, watching the sky, but before she can discern any actual in-progress change of colors, he opens the driver's side door and gets in. The ignition rumbles a moment later, her cue to follow his lead.

She takes a breath first, her eyes lingering on the shadowy shapes of the farmhouse, the silo, the tall-grass plains extending outward. Another memory, another snapshot of America. Another chapter of her life closing. She can feel it happen, like a door around her heart, latching shut.

Last night she had told him, "This won't happen again." She had said the words, but it had surprised her that she had even acknowledged the event out loud. It is easy to say, "We should forget," but to actually erase the memories is another matter entirely.

She cannot deny their actions. She had known that, running blindly through the grass around the farmhouse.

She remembers Krycek's face in the kitchen last night, how she had glimpsed the emotions behind his mask for a few brief, thundering moments. The brush of his body against hers.

She cannot deny either her survival instinct. Hours spent drowning in memory, yet in the end she has swum back to the surface. The world as it is now is foreign to her, dark and loveless. But she wants to live. Death, although a close acquaintance for the past few years, is not welcome here.

Perhaps later, when they reach a safer area, she might be able to strike out on her own. Later, when the memories of life before have lost their jagged edges.

She gets in the car, buckling her seat belt. Krycek is silent as he pulls them around in a tight circle, driving back the way they arrived the previous afternoon. This time when the grass brushes her window, she does not draw back. Instead, she lowers the glass and reaches out, skimming her hand along the top of the strands. They are damp with morning dew, and when she touches her fingers to her face the wetness smells fresh, living and earthy.

By the time Krycek finds an intersection the sky has lightened enough that he turns the headlights off. The sign for the northbound road indicates it is a state highway. As far as they can see in either direction, the land is deserted. The horizon in the east is streaked red and purple, in the west a gradually lightening blue.

He turns the car north, and the sunrise fills the view of her window. Here in the middle of the country, they are experiencing what those in the east -- whatever species they may be -- have already witnessed, several hours before. She wonders what sights the morning has illuminated already as it spread itself over the world. What it will illuminate for her today.

Then, like a child, she presses a cheek to the glass, letting the first rays of daylight caress her face through the window.