Unexpected

by StarShiny

Looking back on that first night I realize I should have expected it.  My life had been going too damn easily for a while.  The days had all been so routine.  Get up, go to work, shoot down one of Mulder's completely implausible theories, go home, et cetera.  I had actually been getting a little bored with the dull monotony of day after day of the same old thing.  I think in a way I crave a little danger.

But when I say danger I mean danger that I can control.  While that may seem like a paradox, it has been the very nature of my life over the past seven years.  Nearly every situation I have been in, with the exception of the goddamned abduction and the cancer I developed as a result, was because of a choice I made in one way or another.  Sometimes I wasn't even aware that I had made a choice, and realized it only in retrospect.

Mulder doesn't understand this aspect of my personality at all.  He prefers to think of me as either an emotionless robot or a surrogate sister, someone he needs to protect.  In either case, to him I'm not someone who has wants or needs.  He can bounce theories off me, finding comfort in the knowledge that I'll always be there to tell him he's full of shit.  He knows that if he calls me at three o'clock in the morning and tells me to get my ass to the airport, I'll hop out of bed and start packing.

I do it all, because I love him.

It's not the kind of love I need, though.  Not the kind of love I crave sometimes.  It's not Mulder I dream of.  The man in my dreams doesn't have a face, not yet, doesn't even have a true physical form.  All I know of him is the way he makes me feel, and even that can't be described in words.  I want someone who makes me feel like a woman instead of an inflatable doll.  Like a real person with real desires, and not the caricature of a perfect businesswoman that Mulder knows me as.

Oh, I don't mind it, not really.  In a way it fulfills me the way Mulder feels about me.  I know he sees me as a person; it just isn't the person I really am.  In his own way, I know he loves me too.  His sister occupies too much of his heart, though.  There just isn't enough of it left for him to give to someone else.  I've accepted that and life goes on pretty much the way it should be.

So it was a perfectly normal Tuesday night, more normal than most even.  When I got home I wasn't expecting to have to deal with anything more than making dinner and finding the remote control.  The key turned in the lock, making the same familiar click I've heard every other day of my life.  Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.  There were no signs, no ways I could have known there would be anything different about tonight.

You'd think I would have learned by then to always, always expect the unexpected.

But I was halfway through my moon-streaked living room before I noticed the dark male form sitting on my couch.  My response was automatic.  My gun was trained in the general direction of the couch, my finger firmly on the trigger, before the whole thing even had time to register.

"Freeze!"  That was NOT a tremor in my voice.  "What the hell are you doing in my apartment?"

The voice that came out of the dark was chillingly familiar.  "Relax, Scully.  I'm not here to hurt you."

"Krycek."  It was a statement, not a question.  I'd know that voice anywhere, although I'm not quite sure how.

Krycek stood up, no more than a shadow in the dark.  He began to move closer to me, apparently not fazed in the least by the fact that he had a gun pointed at his chest.  Probably it begins to lose its meaning for someone after it happens enough times.  Considering the number of people who wanted to kill him, God only knew how many times it had happened to Krycek.

For a moment his face was illuminated by a shaft of light from the streetlight outside my window.  It glittered off his eyes, for a moment producing an effect almost like the shine off the eyes of a cat.  The expression on his face was completely unreadable.  For a minute I was unnerved, and my gun waved unconvincingly in the air.  When I realized how vulnerable that left me, I tightened my grip and took a step back.

"Don't-" My voice cracked, and I had to will myself to calm down.  "Don't come any closer."

"Scully."  His voice was low, hypnotic almost.  "Trust me.  I could have killed you already if that was what I was here for.

I had to snort at that.  I may have been in a semi-trance purely from the tranquility of his voice, but I'm not completely delusional.  I wasn't quite to the point where I'd believe the words of a known liar and murderer.

Okay.  I kind of wanted to believe him.  But I didn't.

"I'm not even armed, Scully.  You can check if you want to.  I just need to talk to you."

"Well, I have no need whatsoever to talk to you."  Whoa.  That didn't sound very reasonable.  Calm down, Scully.  Deep breaths.

"I think you do.  I have some…information…that I think you'll be interested in."

Oh, so that's what this was about.  I wanted to put a bullet in his head, I really did.  But something stopped me.  I guess I knew that the part about the information, at least, was true.  And I wanted to know what it was.  But that wasn't it.  Startled, I realized that what I was feeling wasn't fear, but something very near excitement.  Telling myself that at least this would break up my boring day, but still going against every instinct I had, I lowered the gun.

"Tell me," I replied, my voice no more than a whisper.  I sat down numbly on the edge of the couch cushion, not even aware that I had moved over there.  All my attention was focused on those eyes.

God, those eyes…

No, this situation was not turning me on.

Denial is, of course, one of the most useful skills I've developed during my time on the X-Files.

He sat down on the couch too, clear on the other end, but my mind was still screaming "too close!"  I chose to ignore it.

My gaze was still locked on those incredible eyes as he began to speak.

"I know you won't believe everything I tell you, Scully.  It will all have to be proven to you.  And unfortunately, it all will be proven to you."  He paused and for the first time I saw actual emotion in his eyes, instead of that just quiet, hard intensity.  I couldn't quite tell what the look was, but had it been anyone else I might have guessed that it was sympathy.

"I-Scully, just know that I had nothing to do with this, okay?  There was no way to prevent it that wouldn't have killed you both.  But if you trust me and let me help you, you can get him back without him even being hurt."

I interrupted him then.  "What are you talking about, Krycek?  Get who back?  What did they do?  Who- who's they?"  A million other questions were running through my head, but I couldn't figure out how to articulate them.

"Scully, trust me.  I mean it when I say that you will get him back."  When did he get so close?  His hand was on my upper arm, not forcefully, but almost reassuring.  I knew who he was talking about without even needing to ask.

I looked up into those eyes again.  I wanted to believe him, I really did.  I've always believed that a person's eyes would betray what they were really feeling.  Mulder was a perfect example.  He couldn't hide anything from me when I looked in his eyes-they told everything.  You could learn some very interesting things that way.

Krycek was no exception to that rule.  His eyes had looked expressionless before, but up close they told me everything I needed to know.  Against all rational thought, going purely with the intuitive side I didn't like to admit I had, I trusted him.  All I saw in his eyes was compassion, even caring.  I believed that he was telling the truth.

But there was something else in his eyes too.  I couldn't tear my gaze away from the dark green pools, which reflected light that didn't seem to be coming from outside.  His fingers were moving absently up and down my arm, but I barely felt it.  Somewhere inside I think I knew what was going to happen, but it didn't register until I felt his lips on mine.

The kiss was so soft at first, just a simple meeting of two pairs of lips that didn't quite know where to go from there.  Half of my mind was screaming that this was the epitome of wrong, and the other half told the first half to go fuck off.  It must have listened, because I suddenly shed all inhibition and deepened the kiss.  My hand moved up to caress the short hair at the base of his neck.  His tongue was like velvet on mine.  All coherent thought was lost in about ten seconds.

Things progressed from there, building off of my need to forget for a while that Mulder was in trouble and I had to help him and oh, god, that felt so good and was this dangerous enough for me and then I didn't care and I was screaming his name and just for a little while the harsh reality of the world went away and oh, GOD, that was so fucking good and then the world exploded into a million billion little pieces and carried me with it and I was floating off and I didn't know if I'd ever come back, but in all honesty I didn't really care.

I guess the Reticulans must have carried me back to earth in their little spaceship because I was still in my apartment when I came to.  I wouldn't have believed that it happened had it not been for the heavy male figure draped over my body, apparently as catatonic as I had been.

God.  Who knew guys with only one arm could be so sexy?

Honestly, though, that was what I had needed.  I felt relieved, sort of, like I could finally concentrate on what was important.  I vaguely remembered something about Mulder.  What was it?  When I remembered I sat straight up, knocking Krycek off the couch and waking him up in what was probably not the kindest way possible.

There wasn't even any feeling of, 'oh my god what the fuck did we do?' For one thing, I didn't care enough to feel guilty about it.  Going with the intuitive side I didn't like to admit I had, I found myself believing him totally.  Well, maybe not totally.  I had trouble believing that his sole motivation in coming over here was to talk.  He had been too willing.  On the other hand, I was now definitely sure he wasn't armed.

Not with a weapon, anyway.

Anyway, I was way too preoccupied with Mulder.  Krycek's voice floated up to me from the floor beside the couch.

"Scully?  Um, what-what, um," was all he could manage to get out.

"Get back up here, Krycek.  We have some talking to do."

I peered over the edge of the couch.  He was lying there, looking slightly dazed from the combination of the activity in which he had just partaken and being knocked on the head by the coffee table.  He lifted his head and looked at me slightly cross-eyed.  He smacked his head back on the floor before hauling himself up next to me on the couch.  He leaned back and let out a little sigh that was completely unreadable.

"All right.  Talk," he said, still sounding a little bit fuzzy.  "Agent Mulder-is in trouble."

I rolled my eyes.  The man may have been sexy but he could still be a goddamn idiot.  It was comforting, actually.  It reminded me of Mulder.

"Krycek, I am going to be frustrated very quickly if you do not tell me what the hell is going on," I said, my voice rising quickly, and I had to will myself to calm down.

Another deep sigh.  God, how bad was this?  "They took him.  The people I work for.  Used to work for, they, I- I was in a position to know these things.  But I was not in a position to stop it.  They would have killed him.  And you.  And they would have tried to kill me."

"Still think you have nine lives, do you, Krycek?  How do you know you haven't already used up eight?"

He chuckled softly.  "I'm fairly sure I have at least one or two left.  Anyway-" his face became serious again- "I can help you get him back before they hurt him.  But you have to trust me, okay?"

Trust.  That was what it all came down to, always, wasn't it?  Deep Throat had told me years ago to trust no one.  I had tried to live like that.  I had really tried, finding myself trusting Mulder because I knew I could and Skinner because he had proven himself.  No one else had penetrated that barrier for as long as I could remember.  Was I really ready to let someone else in?

My answer came back to me loud and clear: I don't know.  In the second (or maybe more) completely irrational decision of the night I decided to trust him-for now.  Just until I could decide for real who this guy was really working for.  Besides himself.  If there was anyone else.

I realized I had been staring at a spot on his shoulder for a while and snapped my eyes back to his face.  I tried to remember what he had been saying.  Trust him.  Right.

"I- I'll try, okay?  That's the best I can do."  I shook my head, confused by the way the night was going, and especially the way I was acting.  "Where, uh- where did they take him?"

"Where do you think?  I'm-not-entirely sure, actually, but it's somewhere in New Mexico.  Or maybe Nevada."

I narrowed my eyes.  "Krycek, are you as full of shit as I think you are right now?"

"I swear, Scully, I am telling the truth.  I have ways of finding out exactly where they took him.  They won't even have to know about it until he's out of there."

"Then what?  What will they do once we get him away?"

He sighed.  "Then, I lose another one of my lives, probably.  Or at least another limb."

I shook my head, not understanding.  "Why are you doing this, Krycek?  Why come to me at all?  Why are you trying to get him back?  What-what's in it for you?"

"Easy," he replied.  "If Mulder dies, I can't kick his ass anymore.  It's too much fun.  And, well-ah, shit, Scully, you don't deserve this."

"Stop it, you're scaring me.  You actually sound like you have a conscience."

I wasn't completely kidding.  It was hard for me to reconcile the thought that this man felt sorry for me with what I already knew about him.  This man must have killed hundreds of people, ruined the lives of who knew how many more, cheated, stolen, lied, all for himself.  He just didn't seem like the type that would feel anything at all for someone else.

The corners of his mouth turned up slightly.  He had a very far-off look in his eyes.  "I actually think I do have one, somewhere.  I just…haven't used it in a very long time."

My voice was drier than I meant it to be.  "So why start now?"  I asked him.

He didn't answer me, just stared off into space.  I wondered if he didn't know, or if he just didn't want to tell me.  The silence was heavy, hanging over the dark room and making it hard for me to think.  Say something, Scully.  This is too damn awkward.

"Uh, anyway," I said, shaking my head a little, trying to clear the fuzziness.  "Why did they take him?  I mean, why…"  What did I mean?  "What are they going to do to him?"  No, that's not really what I meant either, but it'd do for now.

"Tests.  I don't know what kind, exactly, but-you know the colonization date is just getting closer and closer, and they're still hoping Mulder will come work for them.  They have ways-that's the reason we need to get to him quickly.  It's not that they'll hurt him physically, they value him too much.  They'd never hurt him, not seriously, just enough to get him to do what they want."

Holy shit.  Maybe it's not my mind that's making me so confused.

"They'll never get to him through pain," I told him resolutely.  "Mulder's too strong for that.  He'd let them kill him before he'd go against something he believed in-"

Krycek's voice broke in gently.  "You've seen what they can do, Scully.  You know that they have ways of making people believe whatever they goddamn want them to.  Mulder won't even know what hit him.  They'll make him believe without question that he's doing the right thing."

I did know.  I'd seen it.  But not Mulder, Mulder wouldn't let them do it.  He just wouldn't.  He couldn't, he has too much strength in what he knows is right.  He believed in his work so completely that they couldn't get to him, not all the way.  They simply couldn't.

Krycek must have seen the struggle I was having internally, because he attempted to reassure me.  "You'll get him _back_, Scully.  You have to trust me."

And I did.  Why?

Because I had nothing else left.

End

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