Disclaimers in Part One.
The first awareness she had of her body was pain, a distant unfamiliar ache. And it seemed that there were voices around her, her mother's, her sister's, her father's. Each talking to her, cajoling her to return.
Strongest of all was an unidentifiable one, a quiet woman's words. The second feeling was the touch of that figure, a gentle hand on her forehead, bringing with it a reminder of life and a summons back to it.
She feared to open her eyes. For a long time she was convinced that should she do so she would see an emerald green film, that the only life that awaited her was not a life at all. She debated whether death would be better or worse, balanced visions of heaven and hell against the gauzy nightmare of existence in an empty tank.
Even once she understood that despite her terror she in fact lay in a hospital bed, tubes running through her, breathing and beating and living for her, she hesitated. So much easier to not make a choice at all, to simply lie still. Even when they cut her away and her body again was her responsibility she found it better to drift toward whatever future awaited, making no move of her own.
At last a hand grasped her own, and in his words Scully remembered her assignment. What she had left still to do, what responsibilities still rested on her. Obeying all the wishes of those surrounding her she blinked and awoke.
Within a week she discharged herself, finally stood alone in her own apartment. Her mother had cared for it, and Mulder as well she suspected; dusted, polished, even a full refrigerator.
After she had seen to everything to her satisfaction, she sat on her bed, stroking her good satin sheets. Her mother had intentionally put on her favorites and she relished the silkiness under her fingers.
Her other hand was pricked by the sharp corners of the cross around her neck and the chain cutting her fingers. Unclasping it, she watched the light flicker across its spinning form, flashing white and gold and brown, different shades as each tiny plane reflected the lamp from a new angle.
As she reached to put it on her bed stand the doorbell rang. And then she heard the door open and knew who it was.
Quickly she opened the drawer, dropped the cross in and shut it, having barely the time to stand before he strode in.
For once he didn't swagger; his stance was almost meek. "Are you opposed to a visitor?" "Not in the least," she answered him.
And he waited for her to approach him. His touch was gentle, practically tentative.
"I won't break," she murmured, and proved it to him with a hold tight enough to crack him instead.
This time discussion waited until she had sated desires lost for the last three months. Gone with everything else of that time, in a place she didn't want to pry into. It disturbed her, that emptiness; but not enough that she wanted to recover it.
When she told him afterwards how she remembered nothing he didn't press further. Instead he tried somehow to redeem himself in her eyes, an impossible task but she didn't call him on it. She didn't demand redemption.
"I couldn't do anything for you," he argued. "My position is much too low. I didn't even know where you were taken."
And you couldn't have stopped them from taking me at all? she asked of him silently. He might be low in that echelon but his own forces were at least as strong and under his command. Perhaps once they had her his hands were tied, but before that-- she wouldn't be surprised if Krycek had assisted in her abduction. No matter how much he plead innocence.
"At least we could help once you were back," he murmured, words muffled by her hair.
She twisted over to face him, their noses inches apart. "What do you mean?"
Bestowing a surprisingly tender kiss on her forehead he explained, "You didn't think Nurse Owens was an angel, did you?"
Her mind unwittingly flew to the golden cross hidden by her bedside. "It had crossed my mind," she admitted. "I didn't know what to make of her. I wasn't sure if she even lived outside of my imagination."
"Oh," he assured her with a faint chuckle, "she and her kind are very real. But they're not heavenly hosts any more than us. Maybe their sins are less overt," and his hand slid across her stomach, "but they're just as real. Despite the miracles they perform."
"She gave me life."
"You definitely wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for her ministrations," he agreed. "A deed for which I'm grateful," and he proceeded to express his gratitude in a short and sweet burst of sin.
Next she had questions for him. Wrapping the satin around herself to temporarily avoid distraction she quizzed him about the events of the missing time. Most prominently about her re- instated partnership. "So the X-files are opened again? Do you take responsibility for that?"
He frowned for an instant. "No. None of us or them had much to do with that, other than letting it happen."
"Then how--"
"You remember Assistant Director Skinner?"
"Of course."
Krycek grimaced. "He has far more initiative then anybody knew. If they hadn't pulled me out of there so fast after you were taken he would've called the federal hounds onto me. Single- handedly at Mulder's say-so--he growls at Mulder but he's at your partner's beck and call. Watch for that."
"Don't worry," she purred back. "In the long run that means he's my piece too. Would you be happier if the leash weren't so entangled?"
"I thought you didn't do double targets."
"Times change. I've never done an assignment like this. And Skinner won't be a trick. He's an honorable man; I've had practice getting under their skin from the start." "Just don't be too obvious about it," he whispered easily. "Some of those honorable men are alive to remember, if you give them a reminder."
"I'll be quiet as a mouse," she replied, and shed her satin skin with the faintest hiss. He squeaked obligingly.
She didn't understand all Krycek had meant with his talk of miracle workers until Mulder attacked her in a hotel room and then wasn't Mulder anymore, but some strange non-man. When she saw many identical men vanish from secured cells and a corpse corrode in bubbling green, then she began to understand.
She didn't immediately recognize the woman Mulder traded for herself and then watched die, but when he shouted her name she remembered where she had seen the face, the eyes now living. Proof additional of what she meant to him.
When working desperately in Alaska to keep his heart beating, there were long hours she completely forgot the assignment, being so wrapped up in the immediate project. When she had time to breath, she pondered whether his "drawing the line" was a positive or negative sign. Abandoning her to protect her? Lack of confidence in her ability or desire to keep up with him?
Her smile upon his waking was genuine. A doctor proud of her achievement. A person pleased that her assignment went on. And of course superficially an agent delighted to still have a partner. Back at work again shortly.
Krycek lived close by. She never encountered him on the street or outside of her apartment in fact, but they shared a few brief interludes, at times she knew Mulder was occupied. It wouldn't do at all if he saw them, even if he saw only Krycek alone. She could see deep enough into Mulder's soul to know that revenge, though not his style, was not out of the question.
And then she heard nothing from him except an oblique warning on her phone line.
"Get it out of his hands," instructed the muffled voice. Too hushed to be identifiable but she could guess. "We need to know exactly what's on it but it might be dangerous to us if he keeps it."
It didn't take a high IQ to connect that information with the DAT tape in the office, with the Navajo code, with the bloody, feverish Mulder on her doorstep. She didn't know who killed his father, only that it wasn't him. She didn't have the time to play guessing games; too many mysteries abounded already. Too many worries--his accusations, almost as if he knew. For a time she feared he had discovered everything.
The dialysis filter answered some queries. Mulder and Krycek's appearance outside her partner's apartment answered more.
Krycek had been correct. They underestimated the danger of their pawn, and they hadn't the slightest idea how to manipulate him. Whatever drug they had tossed in Mulder's water to off-balance him turned a relatively sane man into a killer, an uncontrolled power nearing psychopathic proportions.
The Fox Mulder that she related to might lose control, but the viciousness of his attack and the wildness in his eyes as he fought in the dirty street--that Mulder she had no influence with.
In his grasp Krycek struggled, shoved against the car hood. His eyes also were wide, and there was real terror in them. A creature of confidence until he found himself in a position that he had no effect on, a cobra powerless in the talons of the enraged hawk.
That cowardice was new to her, and she filed the data away for future speculation. And so she would have a reason for that speculation, and because of his connections to resources she required, she fired her own gun.
The moment he was freed Krycek ran, meeting her eyes only for a second, not long enough to even mouth a thanks. Wise move, knowing she had duties, having his own tasks, and of course they could never show any bond outside. Just because he was gone didn't mean that there weren't others coming. They never sent too few to accomplish a mission. And the others wouldn't have loyalties to her and her assignment.
Aware of her limitations, she took the only option open to her-- she fled. Dragged Mulder all the way to New Mexico, where a man awaited them who might have answers to both their questions.
Her first meeting with him was disconcerting. Albert Hosteen looked as she had pictured him, a wise elder of his people. And he greeted her with gentle courtesy.
But when she showed him her partner, and he brought her what she needed to fix Mulder's shoulder, he eyed her shrewdly, saying, "You call him your partner."
"In the FBI, most agents have partners."
"Even when you're partnered with another?"
Scully shrugged. "If you mean sexually, we're discouraged from having affairs with our work partners."
He shook his head ponderously. "There are many different kinds of relationships between two people. Some are helpful. Others are painful. When one heart is taken and nothing is given in return- -that can be very dangerous."
"What do you mean?" She held herself back from squirming under his penetrating, calm gaze.
"My people have a story--a myth, you'd say. A long time ago a tribe was unhappy, because they couldn't see to travel at night.
"Now, Coyote the trickster once had captured the sun, and they decided that if he would steal the sun again they could put it up at night as well. But they knew that he wouldn't do anything for them just because they asked.
"So they decided to play a trick on the trickster. The chief called his daughter and asked her to go to Coyote and get the sun from him. Coyote loves to love women, so she was the best choice.
"She went to Coyote, and danced for him, and he desired her. But she told him that though she loved him, she could not make love to him, because her father had forbidden anyone to have her that was not worthy.
"Oh, how Coyote tried to prove his worth! She was very beautiful. He built a mountain by carrying pebbles to a spot until you could stand on the pile and touch the sky. But the daughter refused. He dammed a tiny stream until it became a sea; he convinced a blade of grass to grow up until it became the tallest tree in the world. But the woman was not his.
"At last she whispered to him that she knew what her father wanted--he wanted the sun. And Coyote was so eager to please her that he raced up to the sky without care, and the sun burned him so hotly that he fell.
"The tribe searched and at last found where he had fallen, and there was a little piece of the sun that he had snatched up. But Coyote was gone; they though he had been burned to ash. They all thought the trickster dead."
"And the piece of the sun?" she asked grudgingly.
"Of course, they put it in the sky, and it is the moon. Bright enough for lovers to travel by, but no one else. But the woman never saw the moon, because she went to the lake that Coyote had made and drowned herself."
Scully regarded the man Albert. He returned the look steadily. At last she turned away. "She wasn't a very strong woman."
Albert shrugged. "Love in stories is often dangerous."
"There's more dangerous things than that to worry about," she replied. "I need you to translate this. To help track down those things." And she gave him the MJ documents.
Many hours later, after she had slept, she found that what he had interpreted lead only to other questions. And more pressing ones as well.
Her own name, in entries only just recorded, next to the well- remembered one of Duane Barry's. So little data to go on; mentions of a test, columns of meaningless figures, more names she didn't know.
No one would tell her what they meant. There were only two men she knew who possibly could find out; and of them only one she trusted. One she could have do her bidding, without fear of betraying her when it mattered most.
When Mulder awoke she set him on the track immediately, confident in his ability to retrieve what she needed.
And then their cell phone link was cut, and when the boy took her to the place the desert was dry and empty and the boxcar filled with smoke. And her assignment was well and truly over. So she thought.
Scully's greatest concern was not knowing how to react. Usually she picked whatever was most logical, but in this case…She had no plan for the loss of someone supposedly so close as Mulder had been, yet not a lover or a relation. A partner strictly in the working sense, but Agent Scully's life was her work. So how--
She settled for being cold, composed as her behavior seemed to indicate she was. Obviously distressed--the sympathy she evoked in Skinner's eyes showed the progress she had made in that area-- but valiantly trying to hide it. And awaiting further instruction on how long to maintain the charade.
Then events slammed into her, piling up like an automobile crash, one after another, each increasing the disaster. Life, which seemed easy enough to handle, spun out of her control.
In her neck, the silver pinpoint, filled with microscopic circuitry. In her dreams, Mulder telling her he lived, and then at his father's funeral, being told that forces wished to assure that she did not. Skinner might have been their pawn, who knows what Krycek knew and what truth lay in what he had told her. And then Mulder truly was alive, only Melissa her sister was dying.
By the time they found the files, her exhaustion was such that he couldn't grasp what they had uncovered; when the little large-skulled people raced passed her for one of the only times in her life she couldn't distinguish her mind from her surroundings. She couldn't tell reality from fantasy. At the cafe, all she asked for was peace; she didn't honestly care if they got their tape back or if Mulder died to keep it or anything about the damn object. Getting it away from him was the main task; did it matter how she did that? All she cared about was seeing her sister…
And she still was too late.
A night after Missy's death, and Krycek appeared at her door, smirking. She opened it for him, and he charged in. "You won't believe it, how he reacted--" he began gloatingly. Her vision went red, and she wanted to hurt him, wanted to rip into his flesh until she reached his heart. Her teeth ached with an unfathomable urge to bite, her nails itching to tear at something thick with an ancient drive for violence.
Instead she sent all her fury into her voice, whipping him with her words. "My sister lies dead, I have no more desire for you, and your assignment may end tonight. Leave." His expression was honestly surprised. "Why? Why, when it's all going so well, when you hear what--"
"I don't care." She didn't scream. Her voice never raised above speaking level. Swears and threats are ineffective tools. And she could not even summon the means to produce them as it were.
But he understood, and set about restoring order. "I'm sorry, I honestly am sorry about your sister."
"Did you kill her?" He was their assassin after all.
"I killed Mulder's father, I won't deny that. But Melissa--" his hesitation so brief only she could have caught it--"I wasn't even near your place."
"You're lying." No chance for contradiction.
As if knowing the advantages of truth here and now he said, "I am. They sent me and another to kill you. She wasn't supposed to be there--I couldn't stop my colleague in time. I didn't pull the trigger. If it makes you feel any better, it was an accident we both regret."
"You would have preferred to shoot me? As you were instructed?"
He shook his head. "We had…contingencies. And if you were shot, no matter how badly, we could have saved you."
Scully, remembering Nurse Owens, did not doubt him. "But she wasn't worth it? I do your assignment so I can have miracles, but Missy didn't deserve them?" To add to her anger she felt salt water collecting her eyes, opened them wide to dry them before tears could fall.
"Dana," he murmured, and approached her, arms outstretched to offer empty comfort. "Dana, I'm sorry," but she jerked away from his touch, snarling, "Don't call me that."
"After three years we're not on a first-name basis?"
"I'm not used to it." She wasn't used to any name from him; names never were necessary, had no meaning, when his own was nothing but illusion. And his tone was too much like Mulder's, too reminiscent of the brief moment when her father died and he had called her by her given name, instead of the one she had right to by birth in the Scully family.
She didn't like her name being turned into a symbol, as if they somehow thought in it dwelt a key to her self. There were no such keys. She had thrown them away long ago.
"If you could have saved me," she whispered, "then why not her?"
"I would have tried." Now he spoke firmly, deliberately stressing the honesty in his tone. "I would have sent someone to help, that could have saved her--if it wasn't for your partner."
"What did Mulder do?" she demanded, startled by this revelation.
"He sent Albert Hosteen to her bedside. Albert's a very special man. He's one of the few complete humans who could have recognized whoever I sent for what they were. We couldn't risk that. We can't let them know that those ones exist." He lowered his head. "I can't show you proof. I have none. But believe me, other than for him I would have had a nurse by your sister like the one who saved you. And I don't make any promises but it's very likely she would have lived."
*************************
Scully curled herself up on the corner of her couch, withdrew inside, where almost nothing could touch her. A second gap there now, where Missy had been taken from. She thought of her sister, her smile and her support and her understanding, and wondered if she forgave her as her father had.
Missy was the most forgiving person she knew. There was no man or woman so evil that she could not find a slim shard of good inside.
Of course she had never encountered the people her sister dealt with. That might have altered her view. But then, still--Missy would understand. Dana suspected she might have guessed at least part of it already; she wouldn't condemn what she knew there was reason for. And she would always love her sister; Missy had told her that, once, when they both were children; but she knew it was still true, always true, a basic fact that she could rely on, even as the rest of the world warped under her feet.
As she thought, Krycek sat on the other end of the couch, slowly moving closer until he was near enough for contact. When she didn't shrug that off he dared put his arms on her, around her, and drew her in. Soon he was stroking her, in ways both calming and arousing.
She didn't resist. At last, with an inaudible sigh, she surrendered to him. Never, in either speech or body language, would she even allow him to guess how little she cared, how little this affected her.
And never would he know that for an instant she had longed for another touch, for the reinforcement that Mulder had offered her with the same gesture. Enfolding her in a hug that had meant nothing more than friendship in the physical sense, and everything in the emotional sphere. He taking as well as giving support, and she leaning against what he offered because it was all she had to stabilize herself.
He was useful, she admitted that, and she could afford to count on him for those brief instances because she had built him sturdily enough. Despite how odd it might feel to she who had made it a point not to rely on any man, not since she well-knew how they could treat her. Not safe, except in that he was her own creation, and she could trust him as a function of herself. Her assignment.
She never would dream of so using Krycek; but nonetheless he had his purposes and his charms, and she enjoyed them as she could. The physical and the emotional were two different relations; and the care she took to keep them separate served her well.
She wasn't opposed to using him in other ways. When she had brought him to the height of passion and even his stone defenses were low, she whispered in his ear, "Give me his name."
"Who?" he groaned, aching for completion.
"Melissa's killer."
"I can't." And the wall rose to full height, cutting off his lust, her influence.
"Why not?" she hissed. "You're more loyal to him than me? Who does your assignment and works toward your goals?"
"He might have uses still," he told her. "I don't want him dead yet."
She avoided glaring at him; the impotency of it would make any display a farce. But she reached under the mattress and removed the DAT tape she had picked from his jacket pocket. "I should give this to Mulder."
He laughed. "By all means. Tell him to spread it across the globe."
She tightened her fingers around it, for the first time actually holding the catalyst of the last weeks. "You wouldn't stop me?"
"I'm planning something of the sort," he smirked. "That's what I came here for…other than this," and his strong fingers stroked her thigh. "I thought you should know that I'm no longer one of their men. In fact they tried to kill me."
"Unfortunately not succeeding."
"That's certainly what he thought. Your nemesis, with the cigarettes," he mimed taking a puff. "I gave him a call afterwards, just to inform him--"
"To gloat."
"He's not a comfortable man. He may not know much about this, but he knows that I'm an enemy. One to watch for."
She tossed him the DAT tape. "Do whatever you're planning. I couldn't give Mulder an acceptable explanation of how I came by it anyway."
He caught it, grinning. A boy proud of outsmarting the grown- ups, taking shallow delight in his wits. "I've got aliased plane tickets for tomorrow, taking me out of this country until the heat blows over. I won't be in touch, but you might hear something of this," he waved the tape, "if you listen at the right keyholes."
"And you'll eventually be back," she completed the thought, familiar with the drill.
"When I can be." They kissed. Gradually it lengthened until they were completing the interrupted undertaking.
She debated late in the night of stealing the tape still, or of running a magnet over it. Destroying it in some unobtrusive way. At last she concluded that such a petty deed had no function, and that the real enemy would be hurt more if it remained intact.
Never forget the real target. She fixed in her mind by whom she stood, and which sides of the line the rest of the world fell. And of course her assignment straddling it, pulled to one group and then the other, a puppet for whoever had the strings.
In the end, he was her marionette. Before Krycek departed she reminded him of the only element unguided. "When you come back," she warned him, "watch for Mulder. I can't shoot him every time he threatens you. And don't think for a minute that they're only threats--whatever action he'll take against you will be worse than whatever he says aloud."
"I'll remember," he assured her, rubbing momentarily as if to wipe away the faint bruises still on his face and neck. Then he left for his unnamed destination. And she returned to her work as if nothing had occurred.
She thought that everything was settled, until in Pennsylvania a group of woman undoubtedly knew her face, her self. They forced her to acknowledge what she ignored, and she began to regret not mentioning it to Krycek. Of course if he had translated the tape, perhaps he already knew. If she had dared and she had been positive she knew how, she would have contacted him.
And for a second time it was revived when Skinner told her that the Bureau had given up, that her final chance to revenge Missy's murder was lost.
She pushed him; if it had been his choice alone he would scarcely have had a choice but to obey her. But her anger was hopeless, for the forces opposing her had power over the assistant director's head.
Some portion of fortune sided with her, though, because tracking Skinner's subsequent shooter lead eventually to the only assassin who mattered, to Luis Cardinal.
The alley was dark and smelled of smoke, and she could barely old the gun steady, her vision going black and then red. She wanted to see his blood, but he gasped for mercy, groped for some salvation and stumbled across Krycek's name. She didn't buy his offer; he couldn't possibly know the location of his former associate. And Mulder had already told her that he as back in the States.
All that stopped her from pulling the trigger was the reminder of her assignment, the knowledge that such a killing could get her expelled from the Bureau or worse. And that her character of Agent Scully didn't crave revenge with the same intensity as her true self.
She never actually saw Krycek, though they were told he was in the missile silo somewhere, under the secrecy and the heavy weight of earth. The one concession she made was to get word of this out to his so-called comrades, allowing them to do as they pleased with the information.
Then she went to Melissa's grave, to apologize. Though Missy wouldn't have wanted vengeance. To ask forgiveness for not dealing out justice, when she had known the only place it could have come was from her hands. And she hadn't taken the only opportunity. Mulder came to her there, to tell her what false justice had been meted out. Cardinal hanged in his cell. Her sister's voice silent in her mind, no longer crying for a retribution now impossible.
He had brought flowers, to the grave of a woman he barely knew except in relation to his partner. And he drove her back, not even trying to talk. Respecting her silence.
A measure of control slipped, and somewhere during that ride she whispered aloud the words in her mind, "I'm glad he's dead."
Mulder glanced at her briefly and she damned her tongue, furious that she could have spoken so antithetically to what he knew of her. The tiniest glimpse behind the mask could be deadly, the least suggestion of the lie could bring every suspicion to bear, at last crack the illusion she had successfully maintained for three years. Not inconceivable that she had destroyed everything--"I didn't mean--"
But Mulder nodded, said, "Maybe you did." Calm, in no way accusing in tone or posture. "Scully, you loved your sister. What happened to Cardinal, that wasn't justice, and I know it doesn't heal that hurt, but what happened to Melissa wasn't just. In a way…"
"Eye for an eye, Mulder?" she asked tiredly.
"We don't and we shouldn't operate that way. I believe that as strongly as I believe anything," and the corners of his mouth smiled in self-mockery. "But," he went on, "I'd never condemn you for being human. And even if I can't endorse it, I'd never fault you for finding some relief in that bastard's death."
"Thank you," she told him. "Thank you for understanding."
"I try my best," he replied.
She deduced how he could understand so easily. Mulder himself, no matter his words about not endorsing such things, craved the death of another man in retribution.
She saw that man some months later. Krycek dressed all dark, hovering out on the fire escape. She opened the window and he darted inside.
The sublime confidence, the poise, was absent. He didn't seem able to sit or stand still, but paced the room agitatedly, as if he were searching for something. At last, finding nothing, he slipped close behind her. Not a hair's breadth away, but no contact.
He was changed, and she felt relieved, because in this state he would be less likely to notice changes in her own self. Her past had not fully prepared her for the events of the previous few months, and she couldn't help but feel their effect.
"What's wrong?" she whispered to him.
At that his arms wrapped around her waist and drew her close, making as if nothing was the matter. "Not anything of consequence," his murmur assured her. "It's dangerous for me to be anywhere near these parts."
"It's always been that way." She twisted in his embrace, shoving him back enough to examine him closely. His face was little altered, marred only by slight dark patches beneath the eyes; his hair had been chopped short recently but that most likely involved whatever role he currently played.
His body language told a different story, in its strung-out tension, in the convulsive way he had grabbed her and his tremulous hold now. For the first time she perceived real fear in him, real nerves poking through to the surface. "What's so dangerous now?"
"Nothing." He pushed her back, freeing himself. "Nothing except my perspective." Shaking his body like a wet dog he peered into the corners of her room. When it came, his laugh was short, harsh, and uneven. "I always thought I was a night creature and until recently I haven't been able to even sleep in darkness. Let alone function."
"What happened?" she asked cautiously.
"I went to the bathroom," he grinned humorlessly, "and when I woke up I was on top of a pyramid as big as the moon with my eyes and my nose and my mouth filled with oil. And I saw--I saw /it/ worm its way down into its ship, and even if I didn't remember I knew what had happened.
"I've seen variations of it, I've helped with the solution to its infestation but I never thought I'd encounter the grandfather worm, the first one that we were working with. I never knew" and he shivered once, didn't continue.
"How did you get out of there?" she asked, remembering the steel doors slammed shut with him behind them.
"I must thank you for that," and he passed his arms around her again. "They sent some small-fry assistance. I wasn't in there for long." But his eyes darted around the room again. Long enough, apparently, for claustrophobia to set in.
She reached up and he accepted her embrace, burrowing his head under her hair, against her neck.
A brief snatch of memory visited her, of Mulder responding with the same pressure to different needs, an expulsion of his pain and guilt and anxiety in the tears on her shoulder. But Krycek of course shed no tears, and purged his own worries with an action both more pleasing and more violent than Mulder would ever attempt with her.
She suppressed that memory of her partner mourning by his mother's bed, burying it as she lived the current experience.
"Why are you here?" she asked Krycek, when he could speak calmly.
"Because I have a new task to fulfill," he explained. "And I thought it best to warn you before I came and dropped this in your midst. It involves--those monsters, those aliens, however you define them. The solution to their infestation." What he described was tentative, full of fits and starts, explaining next to nothing. She grasped that the danger he alluded to in his roundabout way was greater than he let on; that he had large fears and hopes and that Mulder was key to many of both.
And that much of it opposed the enemy that Mulder and her both fought; she could see that revenge motivated Krycek now, payback for his time imprisoned in the silo and the black oil that had moved his body and mind for the period before. His plan was smart, using her knowledge of Mulder for the leverage and control of that pawn.
It also was risky and unwise. No matter how he used his brains, Krycek was letting emotions dominate, his desires and his fear motivating his behavior. She didn't argue; she plotted with him, but all along she knew his machinations would fail.
It went well enough at first; his blunt and openly vengeful attitude worked wonders on Mulder. They retrieved the rock fragment without incident. Scully almost smirked at his expression when they decided on the "safe house"; from her descriptions of how Skinner felt of him Krycek knew what to expect.
And then both Mulder and Krycek vanished, leaving her to testify in front of a senate committee while she personally witnessed the black danger that he had so feared.
She knew they were in Russia, but not even Skinner knew that she was aware of that. What she didn't know was if they ever were to come back, either of them. A foolish plan, as she had thought; and if it failed completely both her assignment and the one assigning it might be lost for good.
*************************
Mulder at last returned, alive and whole, and from what he told her and what she already knew, she suspected Krycek to be in much the same condition. Confirmation of that didn't arrive for several more months, however.
At last coded instructions brought her one afternoon to a payphone in a mall outside Washington. When she answered its ring Krycek's voice was on the other end. Clear as a bell despite the distance it travelled overseas. The wonders of technology.
"Some discoveries have been made that you might want to hear."
"I'm listening."
"We've finally translated and researched all the data on the DAT tape, as well as investigated the leads you gave us about those women in Pennsylvania."
A cold shiver crossed her spine at the hesitation in his tone. "Yes?" she pushed.
Speaking hurriedly, as if the phone bill could possibly matter, he explained, "The implant and the abductions are directly correlated with the cancer. The medical data will be faxed to the correct source for you to view, but I can tell you the basics.
"If you haven't monitored this, every one of the women you met last year have developed brain tumors, malignant masses in their nasal passages. Half of them have died already. They can't be helped and it's very likely their health is being intentionally worsened."
"Covering up?" she asked.
"Not sure. Possibly just another sequence of experiments. But the basic facts are clear--you yourself have this cancer. The tumor might not even be detectable now, but it's there and it's growing."
"How long before I can test for this?"
"I'm not a doctor. Maybe now, if you have the right techniques.
Soon, certainly."
"And what do you want me to do about it?"
"You aren't going to die," he assured her. "You have resources they all lacked. I could send--"
"Nurse Owens?"
"Her kind, yes." The miracle workers. The savers--and destroyers--of lives and souls; how much had Krycek heard of Jeremiah Smith and the un-man who slayed him?
He interrupted her thoughts. "I can send one, but there are other ways more useful to our cause."
Of course the assignment; it was why he cared at all. "You want me to find the cure they have."
"If they have one, we want to know it. Could you do it?"
She could do whatever he asked. "Mulder might." And that was what he desired, of course. Maximum use out of the captured piece. She had all the proper tools at her fingertips.
And he commanded her to use them. "Wish I could watch personally, but there's so much to do here. I won't be back in the states for months yet, I'm sorry to say. I'll see you when I return."
"I'll be waiting." He disconnected. She returned to work.
Days later, the flaw in Krycek's words occurred to her.
She hadn't the chance to consider it thoroughly, but in the depths of her subconscious questions had boiled, finally bubbling over. After a night of sifting through data, of perusing her memory and files and every hospital record from that wretched time two years ago, she reached the correct conclusion.
Mulder somehow picked up the shreds of it in her look, her body language and her voice. Interpretation was impossible, knowing so little as he did, but when his queries after how she felt met with no response he became edgy, solicitous yet angry with her as well, as he at last perceived something hidden.
She tried, but she couldn't cover this as she had so many times before, with so many other things. At night her bed felt cold, sleep distant as her mind asked her where her life was, where it could go. During the days she felt increasingly divided between a self that she thought had almost been adopted as reality, and her inner nature feeling itself eclipsed and already dying.
It was enjoyable to let that self slip out for the one night when Mulder couldn't see. To excite a stranger's blood, to feel his presence freely, without the odd false tension of interacting with her partner or the force of Krycek's expectations. Even despite the sorrowful conclusion she took pleasure in it.
A mere week after she awoke one dark night, Leonard Betts' words echoing in her ears and her own blood on her hands. And she felt a peculiar sort of relief, knowing that the subterfuge was over.
As soon as she confirmed it scientifically, so there could be no chance of doubt, she set Mulder on it. Krycek's assignment, but more so her own goal. Of all those for and against her in the world, Mulder was the only one who could succeed. Krycek's promises were not to be believed. She could not trust in the mysterious powers of the miracle-workers.
Then her only hope of life lay in Fox Mulder's hands. Her assignment. She had molded him for Krycek, for his circles and interests, but she hadn't been forbidden to use him for her own purposes. And since she was the only one alive now who held the key to his being, no one could even stop her.
The moment he gave her the bouquet in the hospital, she knew she had him. Every motion, every nuance of action, every look in his eye, told her eloquently of her success. The very fibre of his being was altered.
Before, when she had entered his office years ago, she had seen and knew a man possessed. Focused solely on one goal, to the exclusion of rest, of happiness, of life.
And less then five years later, she had changed that goal. With simple words, simple looks, with an x-ray and a nosebleed, in less than a day she had redirected his existence.
He might not even see it himself. All people are inherently blind to their innermost heart. But much as he still loved his sister, finding Samantha had been surpassed by another dream, of finding Scully's life, of finding her cure.
Krycek's assignment fulfilled. But this wasn't why she found a pay phone scant days later, spent precious time bickering with underlings until she had contacted him directly.
Before his greeting could die on his lips she whispered her question. "Why am I dying, when your Nurse Owens cleansed my body of everything damaging?"
"Because you were going to first try with your assignment, so I haven't given them instructions," he explained patiently.
"No." Scully shook her head, invisible though it was to him.
"When she saved me before. Why didn't she heal the element that's turning cancerous now?"
The briefest of pauses. "She only did as she was told, bring you back to life."
More than anything she wanted to see his face, though the lie was clear in his voice. The tiny quiet, in which she had heard the annihilation of her life. "But they can do more?"
"Of course," he assured her. "They can save you."
Liar. She didn't repeat her thought aloud. She couldn't be positive; it was possible, perhaps even likely that he believed in what he said.
She couldn't believe it herself, though. They had limits, these gods. They could be killed; they were neither immortal nor omnipotent. Krycek, because he hadn't seen so personally, might completely accept their power.
But the ones who had given her this disease invisible inside her. They could fathom those limits. Those who had disposed of the Jeremiah Smiths across the nation might have done something purposely beyond their capabilities.
She passed only a hint of her conclusion to Krycek. And he blew it off casually, as if angry at her doubts. "If I ask, they'll save you. That's all it depends on. Whether or not I say the word."
"When it's necessary, see that you say it." No matter how pointless it may be. Too dangerous now to reveal her doubts, so she turned her talk away. "Take caution, though," she mentioned.
"They're watching, closer than before."
"As long as you're aware of them, it's no worry."
"I've always kept my eyes open. In five years they haven't seen anything."
"We're watching too. Though not me personally. I won't see you in a while yet; there's so much still to do," he sighed.
"Until when?"
His answer was indistinct. "Hard to say. But you're still important. Don't forget that. You're working on our side, with us."
Because it had always been in her best interests to do so. Because he had offered and given her power, an assignment of interest, a purpose, and he could trust her to be loyal to that.
If he only realized now how slim a hold it all was. With her life now a set clock, rewards lost their shine, power lost its promise. And the influence he dangled over her head, the cure he leashed her with, she saw it for what it was. No chain at all, nothing but impotent illusion holding her in place. Easy to recall how much she was on his side.
"I won't forget," she said, and couldn't help but add ironically, "You hold my mortality now as well." His voice was cool. "I remember."
Before any more promises or disguised threats could be extended she pushed down on the phone's hook, at last lifting her finger and listening to the low hum of the dial tone.
And life rushed onward. She continued at her job, her occupation, with renewed vigor. Mulder balanced his efforts and his desperation with the quiet support and teasing sarcasm he had always offered.
He tried to forget his task, though every time he looked at her somehow he caught a hint of the death beneath the surface of her face.
Yet somehow, despite his fears, she had confidence in his abilities. Backed by his determination death felt nearly as far as it had when Krycek first had told her, and the cure seemed so simple, this obstacle nothing more than another step along the path. Instead of the final march.
That was the way it went until the results came. The cancer inside metastasizing, and finally they could give her a straight number, a prescribed amount of days that she could not live beyond.
Mulder, her hope, her assignment--Mulder was gone, not the first time, but for her it was the first time that he was so conspicuously absent. The time that she realized how much she was depending on him, for so many things. Dangerous in itself, how many different ways she needed him.
And then the man Kritschgau appeared, with his information sharp and plausible. A possible cure, a definite danger. And facts that even Krycek had never had access to. Those she relayed immediately, by the measures that had always kept her assigners informed.
And finally, the death and the plan, buying Mulder time to buy her own life.
So now she sat in her dark apartment, and tried to choose the best action. Call them, tell them, give them the truth behind the lie.
A truth they were bound to already have. A great risk, to contact them at all.
She owed them little. They didn't hold her life; that lay in her hands, in Mulder's cause which she possessed the only key to.
Krycek had given her this assignment and hadn't known where it would lead, hadn't even been sure she could accomplish it. But she had told him the truth, she could do whatever he had asked, and she had done this better than any previous task.
She wished he were here now, so instead of calling some stranger's voice, she could tell him personally. Purr the truth in his ear as he held her, and feel his response to her words against her body.
Except that if he were here, she knew that the passion would not be in her, that her desire would look and reject him. Find him not worthy of a new standard that had developed beyond her self- set limits.
A frightening proposition in itself, that anything could happen outside of those boundaries. They were the only rules that checked her, because in dying she now was free from others' restraints.
What Mulder never perceived, beyond how blind he still was to her machinations, was how much a pawn he was, how deeply he existed under the control of so many forces.
Now, for almost the first time, he lived in command of his own actions, uninfluenced by any source except herself. And she was part of him. That had been her assignment from the start, and she had succeeded, so well that in what he did for her he did for his own self, and what he did for himself was also for her. Dangerous, as Krycek always had said. An uncontrolled pawn could, would, wreak havoc on all sides. Independent, yet working for her goal. Fox Mulder, her assignment, and she owed the giver nothing and everything. Scully picked up the phone, dialed a number, and began to speak.
The End
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