Title:  One thought part three

Author:  probe

Email:  PalmerDolph@yahoo.com

Category:  post colonization, angst

Rating:  PG-13 language, violence

Spoilers:  no

Disclaimer:  I'm just a devoted fan and I make no money at all from 
this.  Please don't sue me.

Summary:  You really need to read part one and two or you will be 
hopelessly confused

Thank you everyone who emailed me after part two

Thank you Amanda for all the hard work you do as a beta.  You are 
incredible and I live for your approval.

Thank you Frannie the Wonderhorse for the emotional reality check (for 
when I think everyone hates me) and support (for when I think I write 
slow and the story sucks and even more people should hate me besides 
the usual everyone who hates me) Not to worry, I'm on medication.


Camp Four
Human territories
Late November 2000

I gave Skinner the little amount of food I'd managed to hide from Camp 
Four's gate guards, just some beef jerky and a Ramen noodle package.  
Mulder had tried to give me flashlights, matches, candles and 
everything else he knew I needed and had been living without, but I 
only took food and medicine for the camp, nothing for myself.  I even 
refused the warm bath he'd run for me.

His bathroom was beautiful.  Like something out of a hotel brochure, 
with marble and gilt and fat, expensive looking towels.  All the rooms 
belonging to him were unexpectedly luxurious considering the otherwise 
antiseptic cold of the base.  God, how I'd wanted to climb in that 
bath, close my eyes, and pretend I still didn't believe in the aliens

Instead, I'd shaken my head.  "Mulder, this isn't you."

"What choice do I have?"  He trailed his long fingers through the 
water.  "I don't belong out there with the human race.  I'm not one of 
them anymore."

"That isn't true."

"It is, Scully.  My fate was decided a long time ago."

I held his gaze, my lips pursed, my eyebrows raised.  It was the old 
standoff -- he believed in something that I refused to accept.  He 
nearly smiled at me.  He must have been thinking it too.

He shook the water from his fingers.

"Leave this place, Mulder."

"This is where I belong."  He strolled from the opulent bathroom, maybe 
still hoping I would take advantage of it and assuage his guilt.

I slammed the bathroom door back open.  "I'm ready to leave."

His eyes were dark and his bottom lip jutted forward in a pout that had 
once meant he might cry.  I wondered what it meant for this Mulder, 
this Mulder who had abandoned humanity in exchange for every creature 
comfort.

"Scully," He reached for me but I stepped back from him, something I 
don't think I'd ever done before.

"Mulder."  My voice was hard and sharp and his name was all I could 
say.  If he could really see inside me then he knew all the things I 
left silent.

Still, I couldn't turn down things that I knew other's back at the Camp 
needed.

I made the return hike to Camp Four alone.  Mulder had the Hover ships 
grounded, and the juveniles locked up so there was nothing to fear.  
The gate guards at Camp Four took the pack and everything I'd carried 
in my pockets:  medicine, powdered milk, freeze-dried vegetables and 
rice.  I'd tucked the jerky and the Ramen noodles under my shirt for my 
mother but I was too late to give them to her.  Or to tell her good-
bye.

*

Skinner stayed long enough to help bury my mother in the nearly frozen 
ground outside the camp.  "Thank you, Sir," I told him.

He was dirty and sweating in the freezing air, leaning on the shovel 
for a moment of rest.  His eyes had filled then.  "Walter," he 
corrected me.  "I don't think I've been worthy of 'SIR' for a long 
time."

"But -"

"I let you down at El Rico," he said, his voice gruff.  "I was a 
coward, Scully, and everything I've done since has been a kind of 
penance for that one decision."

"I've survived to fight them."  I said.  "And so have you."

He nodded.

He replaced the last of the dirt and tapped it tight again with back of 
his shovel.  We both stood silent while the sky darkened.

"Mulder didn't give up, Scully, not completely," Skinner said.  "He's 
been doing what he can for the Rebels and for earth.  I'd been ready to 
die when you and Krycek interrupted the interrogation.  Keeping 
Mulder's role hidden from the aliens is more important than my life."

Still, I wasn't ready to forgive Mulder's betrayal.  "He could join 
with the Rebels the way you've done.  He could fight them openly, give 
the people left alive strength and hope to fight too."  I hated the way 
my voice shook.  I was determined not to cry.  "He could fight beside 
me."

"Scully, I've seen him communicate with them.  He can do almost all the 
same things they do.  Maybe he's where he belongs."

"I don't want to hear this."

Skinner wiped the sweat from his face with the edge of his t-shirt.

"What about the Rebels?  He could fight beside you."

"No."  He gathered his sweater and coat from the ground.  "He 
couldn't."

I crossed my arms.  "Why not?"  I said, hoping to trigger the part of 
him that had once been my boss.

Skinner stood and grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me around, one 
finger tapped hard onto the back of my neck, finding the spot I kept 
cut as a decoy for the gate guards to check.  The chip was safely 
beneath the cut.  Skinner felt the tiny bump that he knew I couldn't 
live without.

"Here, this chip that keeps you alive?  This chip you have to hide from 
the humans you fight beside?  The aliens changed your DNA and then 
marked you like this for a reason."

I whirled to face him again, "Why?  What do they want with me?"

"Spare parts.  They can't survive here anymore.  They've already 
adapted to their other planets.  When Earth becomes toxic to them, they 
can harvest what they need."

It was too horrible to hear.  "That's enough."

"All of you who have the chip, Scully, "

"Stop it!" I slapped him hard in the face before I could help myself.

He didn't even flinch.  "The Rebels want all of you killed or the chip 
removed.  Either way, Scully, you die."

I couldn't hide the tears then but I was too angry to really be crying.  
"Then I picked the right side to be on," I told him.  "I'm not fighting 
for the aliens or the rebel aliens, I'm fighting for Earth."

Skinner stuffed the food I'd given him, some matches and a bottle of 
water into the deep pockets of his navy pea coat.  It reminded me of 
the coats issued to my father and brothers in the time before the 
invasion.  I'd dropped to my knees at the foot of my mother's grave and 
tried to pray but there was so much to pray about and I wasn't sure 
what to ask for.  I knew it wouldn't be long before Krycek came back 
outside to bring me back to the hut.  It would be just the two of us 
now.

"I'm going now, Scully."  Skinner put his hand on my shoulder and I 
looked up at him.  "One day, I'll come find you again," he added.  But 
I wondered how likely that really was.

He helped me stand.  "But if I die before then, I want you to know 
something."

I braced myself for whatever he'd held back from all the awful things 
he had already said.

Skinner pulled me to him and kissed me hard on the mouth.

I was speechless.  He turned to go then.  At some point twilight had 
turned to dark night and the bombing had started.  I watched his 
progression into no mans land by the strobe flash of the alien attack.

* * * *

"Can't a guy take a piss?"

The last two Camp Four honchos, Simmons and Waller bum rushed me before 
I could get my fly opened.

They held my face flush to the cement perimeter wall.  Waller had his 
hands in my jacket and under my shirt.  "You two want to tell me what 
you're looking for?"  Food?  Weapons?

"He's got a fake arm!"

I could have over-powered them easily enough, fucking amateurs.  Still, 
killing these idiots wouldn't help our situation any.

We'd been getting a lot of squinty-eyed appraisal; I could practically 
see the word "traitor" in those perusals.  We'd started having problems 
the minute Scully got back.  She had that fucking unbelievable tale of 
the former partner who had given her all the supplies she could carry 
and then just let her go.  Someone who still had good inside of him but 
had lost his way enough to be a big shot with the alien side.  I'd been 
cleaned up.  Skinner talked about his connections to the "good" aliens.

It was all too suspicious.  Time to go.

"He doesn't have anything," Simmons grudgingly admitted.  Waller gave 
me another shove as he took his hands from my jacket.

"No, I don't fucking have anything," I echoed.  "I'm the same as any 
other cold and starving bastard in this camp-" I turned back to the 
perimeter wall "-except I have to take a leak."

"And you got someone at the alien base," said Waller.  "And some of our 
guys got killed there."

Well, I couldn't really whip it out after that, could I?

I turned back to Waller.  "He isn't her partner anymore.  She told you 
that."

Inwardly I was wondering why the hell Scully had to tell them the truth 
about how she got her pack of goodies.  "Vaughn and those others would 
have come back too if they hadn't panicked when the alien monsters 
attacked."

"Yeah, funny how you and her made it out and not Vaughn and Johansson.  
Those guys used to be cops, ya know," Simmons cut in.

It was like dealing with children.  "Scully was an FBI agent."

Simmons sniffed.  "What about you?  CIA?  Secret Service?  Or some kind 
of secret soldier?"  He actually slapped Waller on the arm, he was so 
pleased with his joke.

If they only knew, I thought.  "I told you, I'm just another poor 
bastard trying to survive, same as you."

Simmons was basically an idiot.  Waller was the one I was worried 
about.  He had his head down and was chewing over everything that I 
said, watching me.

"He let her go," said Waller.  "No, wait, he actually helped her first, 
didn't he?"  His voice made my body tense into all the things that 
Simmons had jokingly called me.  "Gave her all those things she asked 
for first?"

Simmons couldn't tell the difference but I could read the understanding 
in Waller's cold eyes.  He took a few slow steps backwards like he had 
a little more idea what I was capable of.

"Hey, down there!" Some kid was running towards us, yelling.  "Hey!"

Only Simmons turned towards the breathless little kid.  "Go on home.  
It's almost dark.  You aren't allowed to play after dark."

"Hey!  Please!"

"Go home kid!" yelled Simmons.

"Please!" Even from the corner of my eye, I could see the kid's shirt 
was soaked in blood and he was hysterical.  "Not me, it's my cousin.  
She's hurt.  She's cut."

Waller looked over his shoulder at me.  "Get Scully."

I knew where to look for her.  I'd helped dig Margaret Scully's grave 
and then left her alone with Skinner.

After he'd told me about the Rebel aversion to the chip in her neck, I 
decided I could trust him.  The sad fuck had it bad for her, still, and 
at first I'd worried that he would try taking her away from me.  I 
wasn't giving up Scully or my sacred spot at her side.  She was my 
salvation, and I'd killed for less.  Maybe it was better if I didn't 
think it through too much.

Her chip saved me the hassle of having to kill him.

Skinner had already left when I found her.  She looked shaken, and 
shaken by more than her mother's death, but she jumped right back into 
the business of being the camp doctor.

Scully knew the kid who had flagged Waller and Simmons and me down.  
"Adam, are you hurt?"  Scully checked the kid's pulse and his pupils.  
"Get a blanket for him and some hot water to drink."

The kid shook his head.  "No.  Not me.  My cousin.  Come on!"

She must have been alive when he found her, but by the time we got 
there, all Scully could do was pronounce the girl dead.  Her neck had 
been sliced open, and she'd suffocated on her own blood.

Adam started to cry.  Poor kid.

I wrapped Scully in my arms and lead her back to the hut.  She was 
really exhausted and didn't fight me when I took off her boots and 
wrapped her in a sleeping bag.  Mulder had sent her back with her 
sweater and jean jacket cleaned but she must have refused anything 
more.  She must have stuck to her principles.  I brushed the long 
tangles of her hair from her face and she opened her eyes.

"When you look at me like that," she whispered, her voice hoarse, "what 
are you thinking?"

"I don't know," I whispered back.  "I really don't know."

* * * *

I wasn't sure if he understood that his cousin was really gone, so I 
wanted to be there when Adam woke up.  I wanted to know what he had 
seen.

Someone had wrapped the girl's body in a piece of burlap.  She'd bled 
out and the cloth had hardened into a cocoon.  It made a ripping noise 
when I separated it from her stiff flesh.

I was going to stay and catch the killer.  I wanted to do that for this 
little boy.  He had trusted me with his cousin once and I still felt 
responsibility for her.

Krycek had told me that Mulder wanted me far away so he couldn't hear 
me, but I thought that was his own conscience he was listening to.  Let 
him be tormented by the truth.  He should be by my side.  He should be 
fighting.

By looking at the corpse, I knew that the killer enjoyed the 'Jack the 
Ripper' tag he'd been given and was doing his best to live up to it.  
The girl's torso had been slashed with a razor in a clumsy attempt to 
disembowel her.

"Adam."  I sat on the little cot beside him.  His eyes were red and 
swollen.  I smoothed his dark hair back from his forehead.  "Can you 
tell me about last night, when you found your cousin?"

Adam nodded.  He was a serious boy with the expression I remembered on 
Gibson Praise.  He had seen too much to ever again be completely a 
child.

He told me that his cousin had been afraid of the gate guards after the 
way they had cut her arm to check for red blood and sliced the back of 
her neck for the chip.  Adams cousin had been on her way to one of the 
camp wells for water.  He thought she had probably taken a lonely route 
to avoid the gates in the perimeter wall.  Adam had been sent to hurry 
her along and he had found her in the last minutes of her life.

By the time Adam finished his story, Krycek was at the door motioning 
for me.  We walked side by side without talking.  Krycek's eyes darted 
to every dark spot where someone could be waiting to ambush us.

I frowned at him.  "You know, Krycek, the serial killer picks women who 
are alone, at night."

"I'm not worried about the killer," he said.  Then, "Serial killer, 
huh?"

"I think he took the girl's water bucket as a trophy.  I bet if we 
check into the other victims we would find he took something from them 
as well."

"But we're leaving," he reminded me, "so we won't be able to check into 
the others.  Right?"

I didn't answer.

"Oh fucking come on, Scully!" He stopped and turned me towards him.  
"Listen, everyone here is suspicious of us.  They think we handed the 
others over to the aliens, That maybe we've been working with them the 
whole time."

I crossed my arms and looked up at him.  "I'm going to find this killer 
FIRST."

Krycek looked towards the sky in exasperation.  "Fucking great."

*

I'd been to Waller's hut back when Krycek, my mother and I had first 
come to Camp Four.  His wife was eight months pregnant and he had a 
child with a bad case of eczema.  They both looked to be doing alright.  
The wife had diapers boiling over the small fire in front of the house.

"Doctor's here!  Doctor's here!" A little group of children ran ahead 
of us.  Waller came out and sent his wife inside.

"What do you two want?"

Krycek stepped up ahead of me with my theory about the missing water-
bucket and other trophies taken from victims.

I knew he liked to do the talking because he liked to gage whether to 
use lies or tell the truth.  It was something he didn't trust me with.

Waller nodded us to follow him into the hut he shared with his family.  
There was a small table in the front area and a sheet blocking out what 
I assumed was a sleeping area.  This was how my mother and I had 
arranged ours.

Simmons sat at the table rubbing at his face.  "The one armed 
assassin!" he said when he saw Krycek.

"Shut up," Waller told him.  Simmons face went red and angry.

Krycek and I exchanged looks.  There was a chair that Waller motioned 
towards and I sat down.  Krycek leaned back against the wall by the 
doorway.  His black leather jacket and black sweater and jeans made him 
nearly invisible in the dark hut.  He was tensed and watching and he 
reminded me of a panther.  When he smiled at me I knew that he could 
sense my aversion.

We let Waller talk.  "If this guy has these so called, trophies, then 
they're in his hut or on him.  Should be easy enough to catch him."

"We can't just go around, hut to hut, and check for the stuff!" Simmons 
barked.

"Why the hell not?"  Waller wanted to know.

"I think that we should get a group together now."  I told them.  "We 
need to do it quickly, before the killer can get the trophies out of 
the camp or discard them in a common area."

"This is bullshit!" Simmons shoved at the table as he stood and a neat 
stack of ceramic bowls crashed to the floor.  Waller's wife appeared 
from the hidden half of the hut to clean the mess.  "What about these 
two?"  Simmons gestured towards Krycek and me.  "What about her 
boyfriend leading the aliens?  What about Vaughn and Johansson?"

"Vaughn, Johansson and the others are dead," Waller countered.

A few men in the neighboring huts came to help conduct the search.  We 
split up.  Two teams on opposite edges of the camp moving inward.  The 
gate guards were told to seal the entrance.  The killer was trapped.

* * * *

By the time my team reached the center of the camp, I had stolen so 
much stuff that my jacket felt like it weighed as much as I did.  I had 
shoved as much as I could into the lining of my sleeves and the back.

No sign of the tin water bucket.  Waller was getting pissed off.  He 
had promised the people in the camp that rummaging through all their 
things would produce Jack the Ripper.  I could see that he meant to 
have something to show for his efforts, even if he had to drag forth an 
innocent man.  His role as the leader was at stake.

There was a big commotion outside the little hut I was digging through.  
I slipped a couple packages of licorice someone had hidden inside of a 
pillowcase into my pocket and wandered outside.  Our team, headed by 
Waller, had finally met up with Simmons.

All these low little fires going near the doorways of each hut were 
starting to make my eyes sting.  Maybe there is something primitive at 
work in us humans that makes us crave this initial discovery, fire.

I wanted to take Scully south.  The cold didn't bother me as much as 
the constant presence of smoke.

"I think your friends the aliens sent you back here to cause trouble," 
Simmons boomed.  The fucking asshole was dragging Scully by the arm 
from a little tarpaper and stick hut like the one I had just left.  
There was a crowd made of the two teams and all the stragglers that we 
had collected.

Scully and I had split up and I'd taken Waller who was the more 
ambitious and I figured the more dangerous.  Looks like I'd made a 
mistake.

I was by Scully's side in a flash, my shoulder under Simmons arm.  I 
could feel the pop as his collarbone snapped.  Another mistake.

Waller and the others pulled me off him and pinned me to the ground.

Simmons looked rabid.  "They've been lying to us!  They're with the 
aliens!  They're traitors!"

The smoke was right in my face.  "What the fuck is going on?"  I 
yelled.

Scully's voice, "Simmons won't let us check his hut."

"Everyone gets their hut checked out," barked Waller.

"We didn't look at yours," Simmons said.  He was panting from the pain.  
Considering there was no way to set his collarbone back in place I 
probably knocked him out of the competition for Camp Leader.  Too bad 
for me, Waller was too slow to realize it.

"What are you hiding Simmons?"  I yelled into the gray sky, into the 
faces of the stinking men who held me, and the sting of the fire smoke.  
"If you aren't Jack the Ripper, then let us in your hut."

A lot of confusion and yelling, someone holding me loosened his grip 
and I kicked free.  I couldn't see Scully anywhere.

Waller was facing down the crooked, gasping Simmons.  "Were going in," 
Waller told him.  Saying it made him in charge even though some men 
from the team had already shoved their way to the hut.  We could all 
hear them ripping the place apart.  Scully stood by Waller with her 
arms folded over her chest.  I moved slowly to her side, planning to 
pull her away from here.

We needed to get the fuck out of Camp Four.

The men came out of the hut shaking their heads.

"Nothing!" sneered Simmons.  He held his one limp arm bent like it was 
in a sling.  "I got nothing to hide," he bellowed to the crowd.

"Okay then.  Calm down," Waller told him.  It was obvious to everyone 
that Waller was disappointed Simmons wasn't the killer.

"How about you, Waller?  That leaves your place."

Simmons wasn't going to let Waller offer up his place to search.  "That 
means you're Jack the Ripper!" he said.

There were some gasps and a circle opened up around where Waller stood.  
"Go check my place.  I'm, I'm not the killer," Waller stuttered.

I had Scully's arm.  She turned toward me.  "Lets get out of here."

"No."  She broke out of my grasp and stepped in the open circle with 
Waller.  "We'll check his hut."

"This girl has friends at that alien base," he told the jittery crowd.  
"She probably has a chip too."

I lunged for Simmons but he was expecting me this time and he dodged 
out of the way.  I was tackled and my face went into the dirt.

"Let go of me!" It was Scully.

"Don't touch her!" I shouted.

Someone ground my face into the dirt.  "Shut up you," he said.

"Don't anyone touch her!"

The crowd was jostling, angry.  The cold, the smoke, the war was making 
us all insane and savage.

"Why should we check his hut?"  Simmons yelled.  "We know he's the 
killer.  He's the only one left!"

I could hear Scully scream, men and women shout, a baby cried.  The 
people holding me down let go.

I'd have jumped up but the hover ships were above us.  Their white 
light poured down suddenly like the voice of God.

Scully.  It was the only thing I could think.  Scully.

Even as the men who had held me down turned to ash, even as the smoke 
of smoldering human flesh stung my eyes, I knew she was alive.

The alien attack, the hover ships, this was Mulder's work.  It had to 
be.

* * * *

Simmons, his hand around my throat, had knocked me to my knees.  The 
crowd was beating Waller to death, ripping at his hair and gouging his 
eyes.  Simmons was stronger than I would have thought.  He smiled while 
he strangled me.  Killing must be something he enjoyed.

He released me and I tasted blood in my mouth.  The shoulder that 
Krycek had knocked hung at an unnatural angle.  It looked like a broken 
collarbone.  "Stop," I gasped.  "Stop them.  They're killing Waller!"

Simmons rooted in his jean pocket for something, his face was 
different.  He had the serene quality that I had seen on the criminally 
insane.  The flash of something silver in his hand.  He'd found what he 
was looking for.  A straight razor.

"You," I choked.

"Me," he agreed with a smile and held the razor in the air above my 
head.  When the light of the hover ship hit it, the glare was like 
looking into the sun.

Simmons was gone in that same instant.  The ash from his body flew into 
my mouth and my eyes.  The straight razor, blackened and twisted, 
dropped onto the sizzling meat that was left.

I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, Camp Four was destroyed.  Mulder had killed 
everyone and burned down every hut.  The perimeter wall had been 
blasted to rubble.  Krycek pulled me over it, the boulder-like hunks of 
cement and scrap iron.  My mother's grave was obliterated beneath.

The hover ships had gone and the air was cold, the sky growing dark.  
I'd insisted on walking through the camp before we left, looking for 
survivors.  There was nothing to find.  The pile of greasy ash in Adam 
Treemont's bed made me cry.

Mulder had saved my life but at the cost of people I was fighting for.

Maybe not everyone deserved saving:  monsters like Simmons or brutes 
like Waller and the gate guards.  But life, human life, was still 
precious to me.  My mother and Skinner and Adam, they all were worth 
fighting for.

Even Krycek was worth fighting for.

He dried my tears on his shirt, fed me stolen licorice and carried me 
with one arm when I thought I couldn't go on.

We walked for three days.

Somewhere far in the distance were the Rocky Mountains, in the alien 
territories.  There were no bombs in our zone.  There was no one to 
send them back from the human front.  On the third day, Krycek dropped 
to his knees.  "Need to rest, Scully," he said, his forehead on my 
shoulder.  "It's pretty cold."

I put my arms around him.  When the last of the sun was gone we were 
probably going to freeze to death.

Krycek had wanted to go back to the alien base.  We had no shelter or 
water.  Our blankets and sleeping bags had burned.

I refused.

'Stay away from me Mulder,' I repeated again and again in my thoughts.  
'You're a monster.  I don't want your help.' I remembered Adam looking 
at me with trusting hazel eyes.  Diana Fowley's voice promising 
sanctuary but delivering death.  Mulder pulling his gun on me at El 
Rico.  'I'd rather be dead,' I sent out to him.

Krycek fell to the side and lay in the snow.  His eyes blinked at the 
sky.  "North," he coughed to me.  "Camp Three is north."

"Get up, Alex."

"I don't think I can."  He put his arms around me and we huddled 
together.  "After I'm dead -" he started.

"I won't let you die," I told him, but he laughed at me.

His chest rattled when he sucked in air.  "Listen to me, Scully, this 
is important.  After I'm dead," he began again.  He was struggling for 
every breath.

"After I am dead, you can have my leather jacket."

I smiled against his chest.

"Did you hear me?"  he asked.  He lifted his head up a little and then 
let it plop back into the snow.

"Alex," I told him.  "You've been at my side this whole time.  Since El 
Rico."

I put my face over his so I could look into his eyes, so I could be 
certain he heard me.  "I used to think you were my enemy.  That you 
were the personification of deceit and treachery."

His face was that look he gave me that I never understood.  "You don't 
think that anymore?"  he wheezed.

"No."  I whispered.  "For whatever it's worth, Alex Krycek, you've 
redeemed yourself in my eyes."

He closed his eyes and nodded and I lay on top of him.  We were dying.

'Don't come for me Mulder,' I chanted inside my head.  'I won't go to 
your side.  I don't want your help.'

The snow fell, blew over us.  We would be covered soon, then buried.

'I'd rather be dead,' I thought to Mulder.  'I'd rather be dead.'

* * * *

The Rebels have those same underground bases as the aliens we're at war 
with.  The good news being that the place is absolutely smoke free.  
The bad news is that day or night, it's freeze your balls off cold.

Skinner says I'll get used to it.

Another important difference is that the Rebels have the decency not to 
feed their babies human popsicles.  This produces a much more docile 
monster.  They don't try to eat us when they've been raised on the food 
from their own planet.

Still, Mulder's the only one of us humans at the base who seems 
completely comfortable with the things in the room.

I haven't talked to him that much.  Skinner says Mulder used his alien 
healing voodoo on me and now I owe him my life.  I say that if I don't 
remember it then it didn't happen.  I'm heading south first chance I 
get.

Mulder came over to the Rebels on a trade:  They let him keep Scully 
and he kills every living thing in his alien home base.  It makes me 
laugh.  They should have asked for more.

Skinner warned me that the "killing every living thing" half of the 
deal is not to be told to Scully.  I told him she'd figure it out and 
that I don't lie anymore.

"Fuck you, Krycek," he'd growled.

I just shrugged.  I don't need him to believe me.  I guess Mulder told 
her some version of what he'd done that she approved of because I saw 
them smiling at each other in one of her brief moments awake.

Mulder knew Scully and I were dying that last night in the snow.  While 
I was carrying her across the plain, Scully was telling him he could go 
fuck himself if he thought she would let a traitor save her life.

This is in my own words of course.

Whatever she did, she managed to show him that there was a way out of 
the hole he'd crawled into at El Rico if he wanted it bad enough.

And of course he wanted it, wanted her more than he'd ever wanted his 
life of luxury at the alien base or his answers, even his truth.

It was the oldest trick in the How to Play Mulder book; put Scully's 
life in peril and have him eating out of your hand.  I'd have done it 
myself in my old life.

I'm a reformed man now.

Scully is asleep in Mulder's room.  She's been pretty much out of it 
for the last couple days since we were rescued.  Mulder doesn't leave 
her side except when the Rebels need him for something.  I'd like to be 
here when she is up and feeling better, but I don't think she needs me 
anymore.

And she already gave me what I needed from her.

Thirteen hours from now, a Rebel transport leaves for what used to be 
the Gulf of Mexico.

I'm going to start a life, help the human colonies there rebuilding 
agriculture.  Maybe.

Do something worth something.

I knock on Mulder's door.  When he doesn't answer I stick my head in 
anyway.  They're both asleep.  Scully's arms circle Mulder's waist.  
Her head is tucked beneath his chin.  I probably won't get the chance 
to tell them goodbye.

Scully's hair is brushed and clean.  Her clothes are new.  Mulder 
healed the frostbite burns and her skin is smooth and white again.

She looks just the way she did that night at El Rico, only happy.