From: clone347@aol.com Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 23:00:12 EDT Subject: xfc: NEW : Becoming Judas II : Resurrection --- by darkstar (0/32) Introductory Notes Source: xfc Title : Becoming Judas II : Resurrection Author : darkstar Email : clone347@aol.com Feedback : adored and craved Website : For those of you who have not read the prequel to this, it can be found at my website : http://members.tripod.com/darkstar_phile/index.htm Archive : I would be honored, only please let me know. Category : MSR, Angst, Post colonization or Pre-Season Seven Alternate Universe Spoilers : Nothing big enough to note. Rating : PG-13 for war violence Author's Notes : Let me begin by sending out a huge public thank you to the three brave ladies who worked with me to make this sequel a reality-- Suzanna, Do, and Lixy. I've told them before how incredible they are, but I want everyone else to know it as well. I didn't originally plan a sequel, but I had several requests and felt a general lack of resolution in Becoming Judas, so I began to consider the idea, and before long, I was hooked. This will most likely be my last long work of X-files fan fiction. It saddens me to say that, but the demands of my senior year of school and of college preparations are filling more and more of my time. I hope to continue writing short fiction and poetry, but this is my last novel. I hope that it will be a viable contribution to the post-colonization genre, a field of fan fiction that I have come to respect and love. There is one point about Resurrection that I want to bring up in advance. I wrote the original novel, Becoming Judas, the summer before season seven. Samantha was still alive and Mulder's abduction Scully's pregnancy, and Krycek's untimely demise had not yet occurred. The sequel is set in the same universe. I hope that will clear up any confusion over the many references to Samantha and the fact that Scully is still childless. I will be posting this on a schedule of three chapters per day, and four chapters the last two days. Dedication : To all the writers of post-colonization fan fic who have inspired me over and over again, particularly Darkstryder and Rocketman for their incredible Emissary stories. And to my fellow philes on the Poetry and XF list-- you guys keep me going. Summary: He sold his soul. Now he wants it back. Disgusted with the life he is living and the man he has become, Mulder breaks from the Colonists and risks everything for one last chance at humanity with Scully. But redemption, like betrayal, has its own price. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The Legal Stuff : Disclaimers Any characters in this story previously affiliated with the X-files belong to Chris Carter, and I'm not trying to make any money off them, so please...no lawyers. The following songs or poems are either quoted in relation to the story or as a part of it, and are the property of their respective artists. I am merely borrowing their genius and inspiration --- 1) "One Man Army" by Our Lady Peace 2) "Inferno" by Dante Alegheri 3) "The Hollow Men" by TS Eliot 4) "Preludes" by TS Eliot 5) "You Must Love Me" From the Broadway musical "Evita"; Lyrics by Tim Rice; Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber 6) "The Sky Is Broken" by Moby 7) "Run To The Water" by Live 8) "Paradise Lost" by John Milton 9) "Hemorrhage (In My Hands)" by Fuel - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (1/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - Long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to the light. - John Milton "Paradise Lost" In the last rites of darkness before dawn, a man picked up his pen and began to make conversation with his ghosts. Dear... No, not quite enough. She had been life, at one time, the brace that kept his veins from collapsing. Yet....she was gone and how quickly he had fallen when left alone. Three strokes of ink on paper corrected the injustice. Dearest Samantha, He paused, waiting for the tears that were not to come. The calluses must have grown stronger, for tonight there would be no facade of humanity, however slight. The corners of his lip twisted the moonlight into the tiny curves of irony. Tonight there would only be himself, alone where no light shone. The dead had no need for such comforts, and neither did he. Flesh and flesh alone separated him from their world; his spirit had taken residence there for quite some time. The grimace stretched into a thin laugh. To think at one time they had all called him a passionate man. A true believer. My, my, how things had changed. Had the thought come a few hours later, under the sanity of the daylight, he would have felt a loss and perhaps even a bit of fear. The sun had not risen. Darkness blended well with the color of his mind-- neither required him to be sane. The pen scratched on paper as his demons scratched at their cages. Patience, he whispered, as he attempted to exorcise them the only way he knew how. Thoughts took shape and began to fill the paper with words. I've never really considered what they would do if they ever got their hands on one of our letters. Probably throw me back into the Neuropsyche ward, only this time for the full brain rinse. They'd make sure I didn't remember who you were. Not to worry, love, they won't steal you away this time. I won't allow it. No one will hurt you again. No one.... I don't know if you even care what I write. You shouldn't. I am your monster. The one who destroyed everything about you.....why should you play priest to my lunacy?!? Sorry, sorry, didn't mean to yell. You hated it when I screamed at you. Sorry for that too. You know how I am when I get back from the missions. It was light work tonight. Only two men died. Did you hear me say only? I am laughing now because I think I really am one of them. A regular paid-by-the-head killer. I used to wonder what it would be like to play with the big boys. It isn't fun. We kill in tens and twenties but we die by degrees. Life is an odd creature, you know. Every time you destroy it, it destroys a little of you. I tell myself I am redeeming the loss because I filter information to the Resistance. Because it is something that humans do, and like any human I can die if I am caught. I tell myself many things. Maybe I write to pretend I can get well. Can I, now? I just suppose I can't stop hoping you will look at me *just* for this moment not as what I am. Not as the errand of death, but as the man who loved you and spent most of his life trying to save you. As- dare I ask?-- your brother. Only I didn't save you.. You are lost and I am cursed and the truth is even sadder. Do you want to hear, sis? Do you? I don't even know if I *could* have saved you, or if I would make the same choice a thousand lifetimes over. I tell myself I would have found another way. Deep inside I know it is a lie. I only loved two things in life, and they demanded one of them. They would have ripped her in piece, body to soul. Forgive me, please, for tearing you instead. And do you hate me when I say I still love you just as much? More, perhaps. I dream of you so much it hurts. It is always summer and you are always young. Beautiful. We play hide-and-seek for hours in endless forests, swim for hours in lakes without shores. Sometimes I see you as the woman you were, only in these worlds you smile and introduce me to your family. To the husband you never had, and the baby you always wanted. Then they disappear. You are left alone with me. In all my dreams, there is but one end. I watch myself take the gun my enemy put in my hand; I close my eyes; and I shoot you. Always in the heart. Always. I've tried everything to stop it. Warning you, destroying the gun, turning it on my head. Nothing changes. History truly must be written in stone. The pen began to tremble slightly between his fingers but he forced himself to finish the thought. You die. I kill you. No matter what I do, I can't bring you back or stop myself. I will never tell you how many other lives I have stolen since that time. Only this... Help me, Samantha. Please....I can't stop myself. Sam, I can't stop myself. Your loving brother, Fox . He closed his eyes and threw the paper into the fire. Already he felt the grit of ash and betrayal between his teeth. * * * * * * * * * * * * * Four hours into a sunless dawn, he watched the limousines move as sharks through the sea of human flesh and misery that was the streets of Washington DC. A prophecy of rain hung in the air, clinging to his skin and forming mists of hopelessness over the people. And then there were the voices.... He had grown used to shutting them out, but today, with so many pressed so close, that was impossible. Their cries ebbed and flowed against the walls of Mind like waves crashing on a cavern wall. Mulder could not make out words. Despair needed none. If one took a step back and surveyed the crowd, it seemed indeed like an ocean, rippling and surging against the police barricades that kept them off the street. /Help us./ The collective conscience moaned. /Help us./ Something inside him stirred to half-life with momentary pity for them all. For the starving idealists who clung to the belief that the new government would not let them simply die in the streets. After all, wasn't this still America? /Yes./ He could have told them. /Only the flag burned a long time ago. Why didn't you help me stop it? Yes, that's right. You never believed. But you do now, oh you do./ The faces were strange, but he could tell the stories by heart. There would be a pale young man seeking antibiotics for his deathbed ill wife. A mother, holding her listless baby against her dry breast and pleading for a carton of powdered milk, just one. A father, white-haired and trembling in the joints, hoping to approach the Synod to plead mercy for the life of his last son. The tales went on forever, but very few saw any happy ending. "Look at them all." His earpiece buzzed to life and a familiar voice scraped across his brain. "Reminds me of the Motherland before she fell. Different language of course, but the same stupidity. I stood in those crowds, as a boy..." The laugh of a cat on his seventh life. "And to think I came here with the notion that it would be different." "Funny." Mulder turned his head to make eye contact with the man across the street. "All this time I was thinking it was our unique employment opportunities. You know, that part of the Ellis Island experience where you sell your soul to a smoking man in exchange for a shiny new gun and a bag of cash?" Another laugh. "Several bags, my friend. Several." The skin on his lips curled up into a wry grin at the thought. "Alex Krycek, filthy capitalist at heart. Marx would be crushed." "Marx is dead. I don't plan on joining him any time soon. Besides," Krycek's finger stabbed behind him in the direction of the crowd. "I don't see you sending any of *them* your paycheck." "Well." His smile changed until it was something else entirely. "I guess that makes me like you." "No, comrade, not like me." A misplaced beam of sunlight bounced off his Russian grin to play in Mulder's eyes. "You aren't that good-looking." "Mobile to Ground Control." A new voice cut in the conversation before Mulder could form his comeback. Grudgingly, his mind shifted gears back to the mission at hand. "Commander Mulder. Who am I speaking with?" "This is the security escort for His Excellency Chancellor Sarkis." The words were spoken in a monotone, the only inflection being that of occasional condescension. Guardians. Mulder snorted in disgust. They were the personal guard of the Synod members, each genetically created to protect their master to the death. It went without saying that they were quite good at what they did. Better than any human, certainly, and even than most of their alien brothers. They also had a habit of acting as if they were the only life forms in the galaxy to possess an IQ level above ten. "We had reports of containment problems in your area. Is this going to be a problem, Commander?" "The crowd flared up a little while ago." He admitted. "But it is under control. Everything seems to be holding." "Seems to be is not good enough. for His Excellency. Initiate a sweep for hostiles." "We just finished one five minutes ago." "Reports indicate a high probability of Humanity Corps activity in your location." In plain English, you stupid humans better watch for suicide bombers. "Sweep again." "We'll be arriving in exactly two minutes. Have the location secure." It took all his common sense not to make his final "Yes, sir." sarcastic, but he'd learned a few things since he'd first become an Enforcer. One was never to annoy a Guardian, if you wanted to keep your limbs firmly attached to your torso. And the alien was right-- a lot could happen in five minutes. This was the third day of the Synod Conference, the annual meeting of the alien dictators and their human (at least in the biological sense) counterparts. It was also the Day of Amnesty-- which meant for three hours the tyrants would play mercy games with a small number of the peasants lining the street. If you were lucky enough to obtain an audience, you could ask for anything from extra ration marks to medicine to a limited political pardon. If any of the many undergrounds wanted to make a big, bloody statement, today would be the day. Two years ago, he would have been helping them. She would have fought beside him..... In fleeting dreams of blue eyes and red hair, she still was. But then he woke up-- he always woke up-- alone but for his demons. What was it she had said to him so long ago? Those who live by the gun, die by the gun? He gave the orders for another sweep off-handedly, his mind suddenly very far away. Yes, those had been her words. / "This is our future." she had whispered, with a tremble in her hand and a pain in her eyes. "We will run and we will fight and we will kill until we die, and then it will be over./ She would never know how right she had been. Of couse that was the point-- that she never knew the extent of his fall. All that mattered was that Scully was safe, even if her oblivion cost the lives of at least five men a week, plus tax. "Put on your happy faces, boys. The kingpin has arrived." Krycek's sarcasm came through loud and clear on the general frequency channel. The fact that he managed to say whatever he wanted and keep his tongue was a testament to his survival prowess. Most men envied him. They hadn't heard the way he screamed in the middle of a nightmare. The limousine glided effortlessly through the crush, a sleek black torpedo cushioning the deadliest of warheads deep inside. The fiery gold insignia of the Synod seduced the sunlight out from behind the clouds until the metal glowed with its own brilliance. His eyes detected a flicker of movement behind the heavily tinted windows, and just as quickly the door opened. Every agent around him stiffened into attention. Mulder did not move. The first creature to get out embodied perfection in both design and deadliness. He possessed the build of an Olympic wrestler, but the contemptuous intelligence in his eyes warned that the real threat lay inside the pretty package. That if someone chose to assault his master, the Agent K machine gun in his hands was the least of their fears. Before he was five steps from the car, he had scanned the crowd twice and the buildings around three times. So this was the Chancellor's Guardian. Impressive. Mulder's eyes flicked to the interior, landing on a figure the shadows fed from, darkness to darkness. The creature moved with the languid grace belonging to one who owns it all and knows it. He wore his human body well, without the awkwardness some of his kind could never overcome. Tall, but not too tall. Handsome but not ridiculously so. His sharp, aquiline features, and graying hair played a striking contrast against his completely black eyes-- the telltale mark of his true nature. He looked every bit his part of the emperor of the world. And its destroyer. /Walks like a man, talks like a man...bleeds like Satan./ Mulder had killed his kind before. With his own hands. His gut clenched with a sudden urge to do it again, to do it now. In his mind's eye he saw the stiletto deep in the alien's neck, felt in his fingertips the dark electricity of waning life. Humanity avenged! His own crimes paid for! Absolution, his spirit whimpered. At last. He did nothing. It would take a lot more to save the world than one grandiose display of patriotism, played out on a whim in the city streets. It would take a lot more, he knew, to save himself. As the Chancellor turned to face the people, a deafening (and of course, spontaneous) cheer erupted from his subjects. Right on cue. The Enforcers Krycek had placed throughout the crowd must be giving their "encouragement" just as planned. He swallowed his disgust whole as his Excellency turned to favor them with a nod and a patronizing smile. The fantasy of murder was still hot in his veins; it took work to keep the hate inside, where it didn't show. "Murderer!" The condemnation hit as soon as the cheers quieted, sparking a backlash of shock throughout the crowd. His gaze cut across the street to see a young woman standing on the base of a statue, a bullhorn in her hands and impassioned anger on her face. Beside her, an equally as young man held up a sign picturing the Synod insignia covered over with a skull. Both of them looked like they belonged in college. Mere kids, with no idea what they were doing. Krycek had already dispatched his men, but for a few seconds longer all eyes were on the two protestors. They appeared determined to make the best of it. "Down with the Nazi monsters!" She screamed, fist raised in the direction of the Chancellor. "And with their human lap dogs!" /Start running..../ He begged her. /You don't want to find out what we do to pretty little girls when they cause trouble./ Now she had turned to the crowd. "Don't ask for amnesty! Ask for justice! Your families, your children demand it-" The police baton caught her full in the face, shattering the bones and driving her to her knees. The boy gave up fighting, trying to shield her with his body as the agents dragged them into the crowd.Headed, most likely, for an alley and a more "complete" punishment. For thirty seconds he saw himself and Scully in those brave, stupid kids. For that long he missed it. "I thought you said you would sweep." The Guardian's words were laced with steel and meant to cut to the bone. "We did." Mulder met his stare without flinching. "The machines only pick up those with weapons." He carefully considered the consequences of his next words and decided to go ahead anyway. "But if Sir is threatened, we can arrest more children." The Guardian's eyes tightened. "Arrest who you like, but if the Chancellor is disturbed again, I will not be the one feeling a threat." /Oh my,/ Mulder couldn't help but think, /scary. You want to intimidate me you're going to have to do better than that./ Yet there was something else, sticking in the back of his mind like a thousand pins and needles. He had come to recognize the feeling from a hundred different cases, a base instinct that had made him the Bureau's best profiler back in the golden days. The wheels of his mind began to grind into motion, flipping through possible and implausible scenarios alike. What was wrong with this picture? Apart from the obvious soldiers and dictators... His Excellency the Chancellor seemed to be the least affected of them all. His smile only broadened as he turned to greet the flash bulbs and photography of the press. Unnoticed by the Enforcers who were still occupied with the rebels, a scrawny boy crawled underneath the barricade. The gleam in his eye was entirely too old for his body, however it might have explained the distinct bulge underneath his worn coat. A tinge of a child's sadness tugged at his insides for his two fellow soldiers. Both had sacrificed their bodies to distract the forces of the enemy. They had been so nice to him on the way to the city, almost as nice as the older brother and sister who died when the Bee Swarms came. He shoved the sentiment away. Bodies were made to be offered to the Cause, they had taught him. He learned well, so they had picked him for that great honor, the final step of manhood.. Slowly, deliberately, he began to walk toward the cluster of reporters where the Chancellor would be stalled. Beneath his load, his bones trembled from days without food, or was it from the fear in his gut? He must not fail now. He must not be found weak. /What is weakness?/ The voice of his teachers rang through his head. /Weakness is death./ A chorus of school-children voices answered. /What is life?/ "Life is Humanity." His sandpaper rough lips barely formed the words. "Life is Humanity...Life is..." Over and over and over again. Three days ago, he had turned eight years old. When the pieces finally clicked into place, they did so at the speed of light fibers. It had been too easy. Those kids hadn't even tried to run. If they had been the impulsive teenagers they looked like, they would have bolted at the first sign of armed soldiers. No one stood and took on Enforcers. No one was that stupid. Unless...you wanted to move them out of the way so someone else could get through. "Krycek--" He spoke quietly, eyes scanning the crowd as his hand reached for his automatic. "I have a question for you." "What's that?" "How do you sneak someone past a police barricade?" "You cause a distraction...." Krycek's smile disappeared and his words faded from English to something sharp and nasty from his mother tongue. He flipped to the general communications frequency. "All units return to the main street. We may have a hostile in the perimeter." Out of the corner of his eye, Mulder saw something small and foreign moving toward the gathering of the press. "Krycek, did you just see a kid?" The mist must be playing games with his mind. "A what?" "A...little boy... he was moving toward the Chancellor. It's impossible, but--." "I'm on my way." The boy stumbled away from the crowd onto the open street, eyes focused intently on the bright lights of the cameras. Was this what heaven would look like? It wouldn't be long until he knew. His hand reached inside his coat pocket to take hold of the detonator. /What is weakness?/ "Weakness is death." /What is life?/ "Life is Humanity." The muzzle of an automatic stared him dead in the eye. A man's voice told him not to move then asked if he was lost. "Please, mister," His eyes grew large and innocent, just like they had taught. /Weakness is death. Weakness is death./ "Can I please see the Chancellor? Please? My mommy is sick. My mommy is sick." "Go home, son. You don't want to talk to a man like the Chancellor." This man did not speak roughly, as the others. His words sounded oddly human. Impossible. /The Corrupted are not human. Only the Pure are human. Only those who honor the Cause may be cleansed./ Someone spoke from behind them, in silken, haughty tones. "Let the boy come. His picture will look good in the papers. A sufficient example of the utter dependency of humanity on our benevolence." There was pause, then "Yes Your Excellency." The boy smiled. Mulder reluctantly stepped aside to let the child pass. The boy wore a thick winter coat despite the heat, the skin in his face and hands stretched taut over his bones. His eyes stared blankly toward the Chancellor, but not really *at* him. No, they were glazed over with a look he had seen somewhere before. Never in a child. Never. The pins and needles began to tingle again until his brain was buzzing with them. "Take off your coat for the picture, son." A reporter nudged the boy toward the Chancellor. /Your coat./ he thought. /Your hot, heavy coat that you are wearing in ninety-degree weather. To hide the bulge that sure isn't baby fat/ Then it hit, ice water on the spine. His finger jammed his earpiece. "God, Krycek, the kid's a bomb." The boy raised his eyes toward the alien. Always look your enemy in the face when you defeat him. They had built his life around this single moment of glory. /Life is Humanity./ "Mister Chancellor." he said. "I have a message from my people for you." His Excellency smiled warmly. "And what would that be?" "Die." His finger pressed the detonator. Before the realization had fully hit Mulder, he was flying through the air in the direction of the boy, hands stretched out in a desperate bid against time. The world bent around him, a distorted blur of sound and light in which the only clarity was the downward motion of a little boy's finger. His tense muscles could already feel the searing heat, the elemental fury that would tear his body apart along with everyone around him. So soon he could see his flesh and bones separating as the invisible bullets of atoms and neutrons stripped him to the soul. No! He would not die now! Not without her. For two heartbeats he saw fate and his only thought was that he did not want to die wearing the cursed uniform. Then his hands found the boy, fingers locking around fingers in iron grip. The detonator remained in the down position, armed but not yet released. It was in that moment that Mulder found himself eye to eye with the.....hostile? Impossible. This was no battle hardened warrior. No sucidal fanatic. It wasn't even one of the teenage guerrillas who ran around blowing up cars and stealing from warehouses. The face was that of a child, a little boy who had suddenly realized what he was doing and was very, very scared. /I am not going to let you die like this./ A weak promise at best. Security moved in to grab the boy, but he threw a hand back to stop them. "Get back! There's about fifteen pounds of C-4 here waiting to blow up in our faces so GIVE ME SOME ROOM!" The child flinched at the roughness of his voice. "It's all right. It's all right." What else could he say? He felt the boy's pulse through his skin, a mad race of life beating furiously toward the finish line. If he could just get the bomb off, he could persuade them to let him live.....he knew it. "Everything will be fine. Just let me hold onto this for you, okay?" He tried to pry the boy's fingers away from the detonator. The kid shook his head, a glimmer of tears in the corner of his eye. "Weakness is death. Life is Humanity." His whisper did not even believe itself. Slowly, minutely, his grip began to waver. His fingers uncurl, releasing his hold on death. Mulder smiled. Then choked. Over the boy's shoulder, a blur of wicked black metal arced through the sunlight as the Guardian lowered his gun. His face was set in the killing mask, his finger already squeezing the trigger. And there was nothing to stop him. "Son of a-" A sky-splitting CRACK! tore his words off before he could finish them. The boy's body was driven into his as if by some unseen freight engine, knocking him to the ground. Mulder waited for the bullet to pass through the boy and into his own body, but there was no exit wound. Hollow point bullets, he realized in anguish. They exploded once inside the body. Two seconds after impact, that is exactly what happened. Mulder caught what was left of the boy in his arms. The streets had fallen silent as the belly of a tomb, a tomb that never should have been. For the first time since he could remember, he was shocked. For the first time, all the memories came back. He wet his fingers with the blood soaking his uniform and it was Samantha's blood. He looked at the boy's eyes and there she was, innocent and dead. /What are you doing, Mulder? What are you doing here?/ The hatred came from the marrow of his bones, a hundred sleepless nights of guilt and murder boiling up through his skin until he could breathe it with the air itself. The Guardian's stone face never cracked. He wasn't the one wearing the child's heart. Justice, the blood screamed. Samantha's voice. His gun hand moved automatically, up, up, dead level with the monster's face. They would shoot him dead, but he forgot why he wanted to live. All he heard was Her call, as clear as it had been the day he shot her. Avenge him. Avenge me. Avenge me. A spin of motion hit him from the left, knocking his gun from his hand and pinning him to the pavement. Krycek's angry voice hissed into his ear. "You can't bring him back, Mulder, so don't get yourself killed trying!" "Get off me." Mulder whispered through clenched teeth. " *No*." Then it was gone. The anger, the passion, all of it. His husk lay motionless on the city street, drowning in blood and pieces of broken child. The gun clattered to the cement beside him. Just as soon, Krycek was back on his feet, making sure to keep a boot firmly pressed on Mulder's back in case he changed his mind. "You'll forgive my partner for his miscalculation." He nodded curtly in the Guardian's direction. "Suicide bombings are always heavy on the nerves." The alien simply nodded, but his eyes said that he knew otherwise. His Excellency came out from behind his shield of bodyguards, visibly red. "We extend to them our grace! Our kindness! And this is how we are repaid! This!" The heat left his tone, replaced by the coldest kind of ice. "Very well. If they want to kill their children, we can certainly accommodate that." He waved the Guardian in the direction of the crowd. "Five should do nicely." to be continued. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (2/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mulder's spine tightened with sudden horror. /Five....no..../ "No!" He rose halfway to his feet, but the boot slammed him back down and made sure he stayed. The Guardian and six of his men-- all identical worker clones--moved at once to the crowd. Mothers, clinging desperately to children, were selected at random and dragged into the streets. Fists pummeled the clones, fingernails raked across skin that felt no pain. Raw pleading begged the Chancellor, begged God, begged anyone to please save their babies. A few well-placed tear gas cannisters silenced any momentary indignation of the crowd. He could only watch, only listen to the rising crescendo of Her voice in his head. /Fox, what are you doing? Why are you letting them hurt those children? You're not one of them...../ Oh, but he had the gun and he wore the badge and he wore the blood.... /Fox, you said you love me. If you love me stop them..../ "Krycek," he growled. "Let me up." "Are you suddenly out of your mind? You lay still and keep your mouth shut and maybe, just maybe, I can talk them out of sending you to Neuro." Mulder spit a curse in his face. The gunfire began, barely audible over the fever-pitch screaming of the women. He closed his eyes and pressed his face against the pavement. Was it too much to ask that the earth swallow him whole? /This is not worth it. No life is worth this./ Red hair, blue eyes, soft lips.... Truth, justice, freedom.... The struggle between the two was going to rip him into pieces right there where he lay. In three minutes the carnage was over. The Guardian returned to his master's side, oblivious to the blood spattering his face and clothes. Behind him, Mulder could see the aftermath. The mist in the morning air had turned scarlet, blood spray caught up in water vapor. It gave the scene the flavor of some surreal nightmare, but the wretched sobbing of those left alive placed it all too firmly in reality. This, he remembered, was why he had fought Them. "Get your man out of here." The Chancellor addressed Krycek, a slender finger pointing to Mulder. "Your Director ensured me only the best Enforcers would be present here today. I assumed that meant those who had learned which side to point the gun at." /Oh, I know. I know just who, you slimy little spawn of hell./ Only there was the vow he had sworn to himself, long ago in the barbed wire and dirt of a prison camp. It promised his allegiance to only one cause. To Scully. To keep her safe. He had sealed it with the blood of his sister, and at that price he dared not break it now. Yet when the cost was this great, and lasted this long..... As Krycek half-led, half-dragged him to a waiting car, Mulder chanced one last look back at the graveyard street. His breath crystallized in his lungs. *She* was there. Samantha. She wore a simple white dress and her hair fell down around her shoulders as she walked. /I sent a woman to heaven and an angel fell in her place./ In one arm was the boy who had worn the bomb.Her free hand gently held the hand of one of the other murdered children, a little girl, with pale blue eyes and curly black hair. They were all there. All of the freshly slaughtered innocents whose bodies had not yet grown cold on the ground. "Sam...." She turned when he called her name, but he knew his voice had not been that loud. Her eyes burned into his. Staring, silent and reproachful, with the rest of the children. The contours of her face seemed to waver between pity and condemnation. Eyes frozen together, for the longest breath in eternity. Until he blinked, and the specter was gone. He didn't want to turn away. "C'mon Mulder." Krycek push-pulled him toward a waiting car. "Let's go get drunk." At once his limbs were weighted with lead, and he made no further protest as they moved. So the insanity had, at last, set in. All he could say was it's about time. * * * * * * * * * * * * * Hard drinking was an art form. You had to throw it all back in a swallow, before it really started burning through your tongue, then hope it stayed put once it hit your stomach. That had never been a problem with him. A little gift from dear old Dad, he supposed. He could remember watching his father down half a pint of Scotch a night. An entire pint, once Sam was gone. He had never been one of those little boys who wanted to follow in his father's footsteps, but here he was. Slightly different demons. Slightly different drink. Same desire to forget. S-A-M. His fingers traced her name in the condensation on the side of his glass. Mulder stared at it pensively a moment, eyes filled with white dresses and angel hair, before wiping the glass clean. When the moisture began to return, he shaped a new name. S-C-U-L-L-Y. A school boy impulse urged him to carve her initials beside his on the bar counter. D.K.S + F.W.M Friends Forever. And all the little children go to heaven...... He shoved his empty glass toward the bartender who had been instructed not to say when. "What were you thinking out there today?" Krycek, running neck and neck with Mulder on his eighth glass, opened a conversation he had no business touching. But who cared, anymore. "Pretend you're a human being long enough to remember that they were kids. Not soldiers. Not rebels. Little kids who were supposed to be back home eating peanut butter sandwiches and cookies." "Look at it this way. The boy knew what he was doing. He wore the bomb-- obviously he wanted to die." "You didn't see his face." The memory required another gulp of whiskey before he could stand to have it inside his brain. "The undergrounds must be pretty desperate if they're using little boys to run their errands now." Krycek took a small sip of his drink and chuckled. "Ha, maybe we killed off all their men." "I'm glad you find it amusing." he growled, his voice slurred so that the disgust was smeared into annoyance. "What is it with you, Mulder? This whole wounded hero bit you're dragging around on your shoulders like your own personal cross. Why can't you just drop it? You've had it way better than you deserve.....believe me I know." "Oh yeah, I'm real lucky. Playing hit man for baby killers, yeah. That's the charm of the gods." Suddenly his glass was empty. "Bartender!" he waved his hand. "I can see the bottom again!" Krycek yanked his arm back down to the counter and jerked his face so they were eye to eye. "Get your face out of your booze long enough to look around you. You were supposed to die years ago, but you're alive. That's lucky. The men who once would have shot you on sight now pay you a weekly salary plus benefits. That's lucky. If you're too weak to do the job, that's your own problem." It had to be his imagination, or else he heard resentment and envy in the tone of the man who had everything. "At least try to act like you're man enough." "Man enough?" Mulder snorted, the insult mixing with the whiskey in his blood like powder in a keg. "Maybe not, but at least the woman I love is still alive. What about yours? Does she visit you in dreams, with blonde hair and secret smiles and blood on her shiny silk nightgown? Marita, you scream in your sleep. I always wondered what little Russian boys dream about when the lights go out in Moscow...." "So Scully's alive." You could cut diamonds with that tone. "Too bad for your sister though. I saw her once or twice, back in the old days. She was barely out of her teens then, but still........a great piece of work, if you know what I mean. Who knows, if you hadn't wasted her, I might have had the chance to relive old times--" Mulder choked on his drink and his fist exploded up from the counter. Right into the middle of that cocky Russian smirk and he hoped he broke teeth. Three seconds later, a glassful of hot whiskey caught him square in the eyes, followed by a piledrive to his kidneys. Krycek, he remembered on the way to the floor, never took it lying down. Good. Neither did he. There was enough loose hatred floating in the air for both of them to breathe. He lashed out in a blind fury at in Krycek's general vicinity, hands swiping frantically at the acid in his eyes. /Leave it to a Commie to play dirty.../ The kick must have missed, because the next blow came from directly overhead, plowing savagely into his booze-heavy gut. Once, twice, and now he was starting to get mad. His fist rocketed in the direction of the blow, and a definite fleshly thud resulted, along with a mangled Russian expletive. Must have hit his chin. His fingers found something squishy and jabbed. Eye for an eye. Speaking of which, the whiskey-colored blur that had been the world was now just a semi-blur. He could see again, at least enough to dodge the uppercut that would have splintered his jaw. So they were doing faces now. Fine. His knuckles cracked across the bridge of Krycek's nose, the broken skin oozing blood. Unfortunately, he did not notice the sucker punch coming. That is, until his kidneys were screaming and his lungs had suddenly become some sort of vacuum chamber. As he doubled over, clawing the air for !breath!, an elbow caught him smack in the center of the face. His top lip split in two, filling his mouth with a taste of copper that didn't mix well with Jack Daniel's. Mulder fired three rapid fire punches in retaliation, only managing to get one past Krycek's blocks. The little rat was using his Enforcer techniques now. And here he was thinking this was just a good clean bar brawl..... Fine, if that's how it was going to be.... He feinted a jab at Krycek's chin, at the same time bringing his foot up to catch the man in the solar plexus. The blow connected solidly, a nice WHOOSH! escaping the man's lungs along with his air. /Yeah, feels nice, don't it./ To his credit, the man came out of it rather quickly, swinging away at anything within reach. Mulder danced away from a nasty left hook, only to be caught by its even nastier right-handed cousin. It took him by surprise, although he knew Krycek had traded his prosthetic in for a brand-new-and-improved limb, courtesy of the biotech labs. It was an unfair advantage, really. Tensing the muscles in his shoulders, he prepared to dish out what he had taken in, but now his arms were pinned behind him. His first thought was how in the world Krycek had moved around him until then he looked to see his opponent in similar straits. A quick look confirmed the identity of the meddlers. Black uniforms, double lightning insignias......ah, betrayed by their own fellow comrades-in-arms. But since when did Enforcers go around breaking up bar brawls? "Unhand your superior officer." Mulder ordered with righteous indignation, still full of fight and fuller of whiskey. You are interrupting a private matter between gentleman." "Speak for yourself, Mulder!" Krycek called from the middle of the three soldiers who were attempting-- perhaps successfully, perhaps not-- to keep their hold on him as the other three dragged Mulder outside. "You boys better start running when you let me loose...." He muttered, once they were out on the sidewalk. "The Director of Intelligence wants to see you in his office." One of them informed Mulder, handing him a handkerchief. "Wipe your mouth and get in the car." The Director. In his office. Well, he'd have to congratulate the Guardian. The little sucker sure moved fast. What would they do to him this time? Send him to his room? Take his toys? Send him to Neuro..... In the end, he went quietly. But only because they had stun guns. * * * * * * * * * * * * * The warm comfort of his liquor buzz was considerably dampened by the indecent amount of black coffee they pumped into him on the way to Headquarters. /Little boy scouts never seen a man drink./ An insistent voice tugged at the back of his head and asked him why he was proud of it. They were probably just worried that he would pass out before the Smoking Man got a chance to sink his fangs into him. The snake had a more official title now-- Director of Intelligence-- but just because he had shed his skin didn't change the brand of venom underneath. Someday, Mulder knew he was going to kill that man. Today was not that day. He tried not to look at the secretary who led him into the office. It was a Samantha clone, yet another perfect facsimile of the original in every way. This one was a little too perfect, he noticed. Must be new. He could swear the old man kept them around just to screw with his head. Mahogany doors opened into a room that stank of cigarette smoke and corruption. "Commander Mulder, how nice to see you.....sober." Twin dragon tongues of smoke curled from the man's lips. "Consider it an accident." "You seem to have had your share of them this morning. Sit down." The synthetic happiness was just about gone, and right before he obeyed he noticed he was still wearing his bloody uniform. A few splotches were still a bit wet. Maybe some of it would come off on the seat. Ruin the Italian leather upholstery. "Your name has been coming across my desk a lot these days. Along with it are words that don't speak well for your career. Clouded judgment. Emotional instability. Showed up drunk for assignment......which obviously seems to be a hobby for you and Commander Krycek." "We get the job done." "Not well enough. Today's fiasco is only one of twenty incidents I can bring up which prove how drastically your productivity is slipping. Would you like to answer for that or would you prefer I did?" A puff on the cancer stick, a smile. "By all means, enlighten me." "You are losing your focus. Not a terribly uncommon thing in this line of work, but I know you, Mulder. When your mind wanders, it rarely stays on safe ground." Mulder remained silent, waiting for the punch line. Something in the old man's eyes set his nerves on edge. The Smoking Man only wore that particular gleam when he was about to yank someone's strings. Hard. "Our agreement-- you do remember that, don't you?-- stands only as long as you are of use to us. You decide that you're tired of it, that you don't want to play ball anymore, that's fine. We can set you up on the very next train for the Arizona camps. I'm sure they'd love to have you back, and we can find a seat for her as well." A scornful laugh cut the threat short. "Don't you try that crap on me." Mulder told him, shaking his head. "You have no clue where she is and we both know it." "And you are sure, Agent Mulder?" The man's voice softened, his beady eyes crackling with black lightning. "Are you so very, very sure?" You could almost see him coiling, preparing to strike. /He's bluffing./ Mulder forced the thought to every corner of his brain, trying to repel the cold dread that smothered every neuron as he watched the old man reach into a desk drawer and withdraw a plain manila folder. "This is your story I'm about to tell, so correct me if I'm wrong. About a year ago, during your leave, you decided to take a little side trip. Down south, you'll remember. Director Pavlov got nosy but you took care of him. Oh, don't worry, your secret is safe with me. I happen to appreciate his job very much. Sad to say, I doubt any of the members of the Synod would share my enthusiasm. Pavlov was one of their best men...they might take it all the way to the High Command. Whenever the Command gets involved, you take a long time to die. As would your female accomplice." His muscles began to tighten, hardening into steel around his joints. Sweat, cold and clammy, began to mildew on his palms and between his fingers. No, this could not be. He had hidden her well. He had made her safe. Mulder suspected his fear showed in his eyes, for the Smoking Man looked pleased. "You went to see her, didn't you." By now it was a rhetorical question. "Addictions are deadly, and she is yours. All that trouble you went to, concealing her from us so you could have her all to yourself, and then you leave us a roadmap straight to her. What you didn't know was that the device you used to scramble our transmissions was tagged. A sort of homing signal, capable of lingering in the atmosphere for quite a long time. All too easy to follow it anywhere on earth. Even, say, Chile?" /Bluffing!/ Panic broke the cohesion of his mind into fragments. /Trying to get you to hint where she is!/ "You're going to have to try harder than guesswork and innuendo if you're expecting something from me." There. That sounded Mel Gibson enough. "Suit yourself." The old man tossed him the folder. "Some of the photos are a bit grainy, but others are quite good, really. She is a beautiful woman." Mulder's stomach rollercoaster dropped to the base of his spine as he opened the folder. The first photo inside was a black and white satellite picture, of a tiny house on a secluded beach. Of a woman sitting on the front porch, barefoot and freckled from sun, her eyes fixed somewhere far above the sea. There was no denying it was indeed Dana Scully. His eyes latched onto her face as instinctively as a starving man craved bread. She made his veins burn. He remembered standing on that porch, the wind in his hair and her taste on his lips..... "That one is about three days old." The Smoking Man said, clearly enjoying himself. "We'll be getting some newer images tomorrow. She looks healthy, doesn't she? When we first started surveillance, she was a bit thin. But that's life in the camps for you. Never kind to a woman's body.Your old friend Skinner must have put some weight on her-" "What do you want from me?" The words died before they left his mouth. He didn't look at the man, didn't want to, focusing solely on the photographs as he leafed through them. Scully eating. Scully walking on the beach. Scully sleeping. Scully *smiling*. /Ignorance is not always bliss, but sometimes it means everything./ Skinner appeared in most of the pictures as well. Both of them did look well. Happy. Totally oblivious to this danger hanging over their heads. "Only what I know you are capable of." Another deep drag of his cigarette turned his voice to sandpaper as he continued. "Improve your mission productivity; make me believe you're still loyal to your end of the deal......and I won't be forced to take this anywhere but my drawer." "And if I refuse?" It chafed against his soul, but Mulder had to know. If he didn't, the very possibilities would give him nightmares. "Our helicopters can get down there in ten hours. She and Skinner will be taken into custody and immediately transported to one of our processing facilities.....in Texas, most likely. From there, you know what happens." As if s uddenly bored of his smoke, he crushed his cigarette into a small onyx ashtray. Yes, Mulder did know. He had lived through it second by second. So had she, and it nearly killed her. If she were to be thrown back into that sort of hell, without warning....." "How do I know you will leave her alone?" "Have I ever broken a promise I've made to you?" /Have you ever made a promise that didn't demand more?/ Mulder touched, his fingers brushing her skin and nearly feeling it through the paper. /Do you dream of me???/ "Consider me back on the job." He threw the folder down and stood to his feet. "Oh, take it with you." The Smoking Man pushed it toward him. "I have plenty more." He smiled like any other dirty old man, with a kind of leer that implies a thousand lusts but admits to none. When Mulder picked the folder up again, the muscles in his trigger finger were twitching. "You might want to remember one thing."The tone of his voice was soft menace, a danger warning few people recognized. "And what would that be?" "What happened to the last Director of Intelligence." The man's smile grew thinner. "I do hope that wasn't a threat, Commander Mulder." "Why yes, sir, it was." "Bravado is cheap when you have nothing to back it up with." "Funny. Pavlov seemed to think the same thing. Guess he learned, huh?" "I am not Pavlov." "You're right. He was better." "I'm alive." "For now." As Mulder turned to go, The devil's voice hooked him in the back, one last harpoon. "If you want to challenge me, try to do it when you're sober. In the unlikely event that should happen." Mulder walked out like he hadn't heard. As the doors closed behind him, he remembered he hadn't been dismissed. He would have liked to chalk it up to direct insubordination. Truth was, if he had stayed in the snake's den just one more minute, Spender might have seen his hands shaking, might have smelled the fear on his breath, mingling hard and sour with the stench of booze. All of it......for nothing. A year's worth of blood on his hands, in vain. She was unprotected. Exposed. Another, less painful thought struck him in the small distance between the office and his car. If the Enforcer uniform he wore no longer served to keep her safe, then he could at last take it off. Permanently. He had not yet asked himself if he really wanted to see what lay beneath. I remember falling. I remember marching. Like a one man marching army, through the blaze. I remember coughing. I believe in something. I don't want to remember falling for their lies. - One Man Army Our Lady Peace to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (3/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - Without hope, we live in desire. --- "Inferno" Dante Midnight in the city. The glow from a hundred streetlights spilled over him as he stood at the open window and let the slight breeze of evening drive the heat from his skin. One day there would be no city. There would be no Colonists, there would be no humans and there would be no war. Nothing at all but ruins in a field of wild grass. Would it matter, then, who had been on whose side? What lives had been sacrificed for what cause? Certainly there was no one left who cared what he stood for. That was a lie and Mulder knew it. She cared. He glanced back at the spread of photographs covering the bed where he had held them one by one between his fingers. Trying, with all customary desperation of a dying man, to remember what she felt like in his arms. He had his memories, had them hoarded away as a miser's gold, but in moments like these, shadows just didn't suffice. And she was just too far away. His fingers toyed relentlessly with a small golden cross around his neck. She had given it to him when he left her, back when he was so sure he could survive on his own. Even after so many months, he could hear her voice. /Keep it. You need it more than I do anyway./ Right again, Scully. Mulder pinned a silent Hail Mary on the cross, just for her sake. Maybe she did the same for him. Saint Scully, sending prayers to her heaven for a soul already halfway in hell and slipping fast. That part of her had never changed. Not on the streets, not during the beatings, not even in the camps. She still had her faith. her God. All he had was her. He refused to share her with any petty dictatorship, or smoking power-monger. The black and white images on his bed challenged that sentiment. Mulder walked over to the collection of pictures and began stuffing them back in the folder. He'd have to find a place to hide them before Krycek got back, whatever ungodly hour of the night that turned out to be. A thousand fragments of her slid past his vision, cracked and chipped pieces of the whole. Eyes, hair, fingers, lips. At times he wondered if he could even recognize her if he was to see her again. When....he was to see her again. Always "when" and never "if". He crossed the hotel room to his bed and slid the folder between the mattresses. Not much by way of ingenuity, but anywhere was better than plain sight. Eventually he would have to burn most of them, he knew, but not tonight. Tonight he needed her close. It'd been too long since he'd had a drink. There was a bottle of something on the nightstand by Krycek's bed, which meant it was probably vodka. The man couldn't sleep unless he had at least two glasses of the stuff rumbling around inside him. There was only a little bit left in the bottom; certainly he needed it more than his partner did. And what was a little bit of happy juice between comrades? His fingers twitched as he poured the clear liquid into a glass. Suddenly his mouth was cotton dry. Every nerve of his brain screamed for the alcohol, the sanity that let him live without feeling. He raised the glass to his lips. The cool relief of the liquor flowed toward his mouth, so much closer to his brain... Right before he began to drain it, Mulder realized something that stopped him cold in his tracks. His hands were shaking. Just a quiver, as slight as a leaf in a gentle wind, but it was there. His father's hands used to trembled that way when he reached for his Scotch. The Smoking Man's tobacco stained fingers shook like that every time he prepared to light up a new cigarette. The outward sign of the inward need. No, he wasn't that far gone, surely not! Mulder hurled the glass and its contents against the wall. He did not need it to survive. He did not! His nerves writhed beneath his skin, twisting and coiling until he wished to tear them out with his fingernails. When had a simple wish for a drink turned into such craving? His eyes lit on a gleam of moisture of his hand, a stray drop of vodka glistening against his skin. He brought it to his mouth, his tongue greedy and desperate as he attempted to suck every drop of moisture. The taste of liquor in his mouth served only to heighten the frenzy. The bottle, where was the bottle? Empty. No wait, there was a bit clinging to the bottom. He turned it upside down over his mouth, eagerly awaiting the trickle of satisfaction. Not enough. Not enough. His hand released the bottle but he barely heard it hit the floor as his steps took him to the shattered glass. Most of it had sunk into the carpet, but...there was a bit splashed up on the wall... His fingers captured it and there was a two second relief. More, more..... The glow of the streetlights glinted off the broken glass, off the moisture still clinging to the shards. In his haste to wipe the vodka onto his fingers, his thumb snagged a rough edge. A wide line of blood welled up through the torn skin, yet no pain. Breathing a curse at his clumsiness, he reached for a stray piece of paper on the floor and wrapped it around the cut. The grain of the paper rubbed in an odd manner against his fingers; he realized it was one of Scully's pictures. Yes, the first one Spender had shown him of the porch and the beach. It must have fallen from the folder when he put the rest away. Every line of her face stood out with vivid clarity, its tranquility marred by the tiniest wrinkles of worry and concern. Even in paradise, the past haunted her in the corners of her eyes and the slight downward curve of her lips. Now his blood soaked through her. Ruining her. Realization of what had just happened seeped through his pores until he was saturated with it. Every time he had watched his father work up a buzz, he had promised himself it would never happen to him. That he was stronger than that. It seemed he had followed Daddy's footsteps after all, and they had led him to a heap of broken glass and spilled liquor. Gritting his teeth, he clenched his fists until the skin turned white and his hands stopped quivering. Logic, smothered at first, was now beginning to breathe again. With it came disgust at the grown man who sat groveling on the floor like a dog, pawing through debris in search of a stray bone. This wasn't who he was. This weak, pathetic little shell, stitched together like a montage of himself. Modern art, baby. The Walking Dead Man, on twenty-four hour exhibit. Get your tickets now. He could keel over any moment. He wearied of the freak show. Mulder noticed he was bleeding on the carpet. A smattering of it had fallen on the glass to be refracted a thousand different ways as in a child's kaleidoscope. Cradling his thumb carefully to avoid anymore damages to his hotel bill, he made his way to the bathroom. The dirty vanity light shone harsh and yellow in his face after the comforting semi-darkness of the other room. He laid the picture carefully on the toilet seat cover. Yes, he should throw it away, but he couldn't. It was part of her, a little part but the only thing he'd be seeing for quite a while. He couldn't pitch it out any more than he could toss out her finger or her hand. /She waited for him under his bed, shattered into a hundred paper pieces. Come put me together, Frankenstein. You can show me your dreams of smiling little sisters and I'll show you how ugly you really are./ The tap water ran cold under his skin, shocking the nerves into at last registering some degree of pain. From what he could see under the blood, the cut wasn't very deep. A sliced capillary, nothing more. The first-aid it in the dresser drawer would take care of everything. Did they make Band-Aids for ideals too? He would need a big one. Before he turned to go, he raised his eyes to the mirror. A man looked back at him who was in many ways a stranger. Who had done things Mulder couldn't recognize as being in him. Who now wanted out. Not tomorrow, not a week from tomorrow, but tonight. The decision had really been forming in his mind since he'd left Spender's office; now it was cemented. He had just finished bandaging the cut when the door opened and Krycek's voice carried to all corners of the room. "Mulder, hello Mulder, ya here?" Boy, he sounded unusually enthusiastic. Was there some kind of two for one special down in the red light district? "Right here." Mulder stepped from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his hand. "Why are the lights off?" "I was trying to sleep off this hangover." "Oh." Krycek flipped a wall switch and the semi-darkness vanished. "You should take the pill. The guys down at meds promised me it detoxs your entire system in ten minutes. They're in the first aid kit." "No thanks." Mulder glanced over Krycek's shoulder to the outline of a woman in the hall. She had nice curves. Not as nice as Scully, but as a whole, not a bad catch. He just hoped she was over fifteen this time. Something in him still rebelled at the thought of someone that young in that line of work. Krycek seemed undaunted by the ethics of it. In fact, Mulder suspected he rather preferred the girls to the women. /They say everybody looks for innocence somewhere. Some of us want to keep it...../ He looked back at Krycek's face, at the eagerness behind his eyes.. ./Some of us want to take it away./ "How'd the meeting with our smoking buddy go?" "I'm still here, aren't I?" "Missing any important body organs?" Mulder half-smiled. "None whatsoever, small thanks to you and your right hook." "Ah, that reminds me. How's the gut?" "Better looking than that busted lip of yours." A fat cut split Krycek's lower lip down the middle, and the left side had swelled since Mulder had last seen him. (Serves him right, the playboy.) "Good." That ended their exchange of apologies. The insults always stung, but they were part of a frequent game that involved poking each other's tender places and waiting to see who screamed louder. In the process, it kept them both from losing all concept of human emotion. Call it a twisted form of therapy; call it a contest to see who was still alive, but it worked. "So do you mind taking a walk for a while?" Krycek jerked his thumb back toward the woman in the doorway. "We don't want to bother you. I mean, if you want to stay you can but--" "Not my thing." Mulder brushed past him on his way toward the door. "I'll be downtown if you need to reach me." "Wait a sec." Krycek grabbed his arm, the tenor of his voice coming across with something akin to concern. It wasn't quite convincing enough, however, and fell on the ear more like pity. Pity Mulder did not want. Especially not from a man thought you paid for love by the hour and rotated it every night. "Look, why don't you find someone? You've had a hard day. Think of it as relaxation therapy. It's ten times as good as the bottled kind, and you don't have a headache in the morning." His face split into a grin. "Well, not usually. I'm sure she has a friend she can call..." "I'm sure she does." Mulder broke his grip. "Although if I'm ever interested, I'll do my own shopping. But I told you. Not my thing." "Still pretending to be loyal to her, aren't you? She's five thousand miles away, Mulder. In case you haven't noticed, you're stuck here. Just find yourself a red head and close your eyes. She won't care if you call her Scully--" "Shut up and play with your toy." Mulder said, pausing at the door long enough to grab his gun. "We were something you'll never understand. I don't care what you think you and Marita had." "We had just what I wanted." That wasn't defensiveness he heard in the Russian's tone, was it? Regret? No, not Krycek. "Sure you did." "Pretend all you want but I know what you do when you're not in the bars. She came by the Enforcer office once looking for you and complaining you had left too drunk to remember her fee. Dead ringer for the woman whose name I won't mention. Big blue eyes, lots of curly red hair--" "You don't know what you're talking about. I never-" "Right. I paid her to leave before your shortcomings were made public. So you were a little too drunk that night to remember. When I get good and plastered, I wake up in all sorts of strange places. Or are you afraid I'll rat on you to the bosses. That's it...isn't it??" Mulder ignored him, barreling full speed out the door and right into the woman in the hall. She staggered back from his weight, nearly falling until he grabbed her arm. He mumbled an apology that was only half-meant until he actually looked at her. She wasn't his usually Marita-wannabe, but short and petite with short dark hair and wide green eyes flared with some fear the mascara could only partially hide. Underneath the makeup and the silver halter dress, he judged her not a day over seventeen. Maybe even younger. The girl broke his gaze, staring down at the cracked tile of the floor as she collected the items that had spilled from the purse she'd dropped. Her movements were stiff. Awkward. /She must be new to the job/ There wasn't much else for a girl to do in DC these days. He noticed that her fingers lingered a moment longer than necessary on a wallet-sized photo of two twin boys. Too old to be her kids. Brothers, maybe? So someone else knew what compromise meant, after all. "I'm sorry, mister, real sorry." The girl flinched back against the wall like she expected him to backhand her at the slightest breath. Krycek yelled for Mulder to stop flirting with her and let her into the room. Her eyes darted to the doorway and there was that fear again. The dread. "That's ok, don't worry about it." For a strange reason he wanted to reassure her. She was nobody but she could have been Scully and she might have been Samantha. "My friend is a rich man." He said, smiling in a way he hoped was harmless. "Charge him enough to take tomorrow night off. He'll pay it." The palest shadow of a smile broke through her maroon lipstick. "I will. Thanks for the tip." Her face hardened into the mask of fake happiness as she walked into the hotel room, closing the door behind her. He hoped Krycek treated her right. She had looked like she deserved better. But then, so did most everyone else and he couldn't start feeling sorry for them all, now could he. /You did at one time./ The annoying voice had returned. /So much you're afraid of it now. Afraid it'll undo the knots that hold your excuses together./ "Hey, I said I was leaving, didn't I?" He muttered to himself, taking the stairs down into the city street. The night air outside hung heavy with humidity, and he undid the top two buttons of his shirt. A cool glass of Jack Daniel's would feel just great... /Whoa, Mulder, don't go there. No more happy juice for you tonight./ He needed his head on straight. There was strategy to be formed. Contingencies to be planned for. Out of habit, his eyes scoured the night for evidence of any surveillance. Nothing struck him as out of the ordinary, but that guaranteed nothing. It'd be just like His Smokiness to dispatch a shadow team just to make sure he behaved. They'd be dressed as one of the many homeless, invisible right before his eyes. Paranoia was a dear friend. He decided to keep moving, to walk and think and see if anything happened. If it didn't, jolly good. If it did, the clip in his gun was fresh and fully loaded. As he began to move from shadow to streetlight to shadow, his thoughts went back to Krycek's rambling about the prostitute at Headquarters. The little rat thought he knew everything. He had to be mistaken. Unlike the girl in the hallway, Ivy had been in the business a long time. She knew better than to pull that sort of trick. And no matter how much she wanted money, she would never be stupid enough to show up at Headquarters. Any Commander caught associating with a woman of her "profession" was docked one week's pay. The woman would be sent to a labor camp, to make a decent contribution to the new society. She knew all that. They'd met three times, and his instructions had always been the same. /Keep it quiet. If you see me on the street, don't turn your head. If you think you need something, go to someone else. I'll contact you when I need to. Not vice versa. That's how it works and that's how it's gonna stay./ He'd been nothing if not crystal clear. Now it seemed he'd have to make sure she understood things. His eyes roved the streets once more. No one seemed to be paying any special interest to him. Just to be sure, he'd take the long route. It took him five minutes to hail the taxi and pay the driver's fare, plus ten dollars extra for the "detour route." Fifteen minutes later, they reached the downtown area. It had changed very much from the pristine Washington of yesterday. Now the night danced with the sound of a hundred bars, blatantly violating curfew without any fear of retribution. Most of the police were their best customers. A tangled mess of buildings hid between the restaurants and taverns, decaying apartments that made the Bronx ghettos look like Beverly Hills. Most of them belonged to families, but a good portion belonged to DC's newest form of businesswoman. She wore a mini-skirt and pumps, and would smile nicely for you if you had enough money. Ivy said she made five hundred on a good "shift." To look at her, you could tell why. The cabbie dropped him off in a rotted little alley known as Lincoln Street then promptly left. Mulder couldn't blame him. The very air smelled of filth and menace. He passed through the alley quickly, ignoring the homeless man that begged for a credit and the stoned kids that offered part of their dope. She had an apartment on the corner of Lincoln Street and the main road, right over top of a fetid little tavern known as the Alibi Lounge. Although it was pretty good living for a working girl, he knew she could afford upper town housing if she wanted to. But, she'd told him when he'd asked, Uptown was Enforcer territory, and they were harder to buy off than cops. He spotted her as soon as he cleared the alley, her long red hair standing out like a tangle of fire against her black leather dress. As he drew closer, he saw she had just snared a customer, a greasy little Mexican, probably a drug runner judging from his gaudy jewelry and the five-hundred credit booklet he was handing her. She must have been pleased with herself, because the smile painted onto her scarlet lips was wider than normal. "The lady's got a date for the evening." He snatched the booklet from the Mexican's hand, and tossed it in his face. "Buzz off." "Find your own-" Before the man could even get the switchblade out of his pocket, the barrel of Mulder's 9 mm dug into his ribs. "I kill men for a living. Don't make me work overtime." The man turned white around the eyes, all bravado melting as he turned and disappeared into the maze of streets. Ivy watched him go, then flashed Mulder a half-playful, half-scolding smile. "I do certainly hope you're worth ruining my shift. I could have gotten seven hundred from the greaseball." "It'll be worth your while." "Isn't it always?" His stomach twisted into a pretzel as her smile focused totally on him, her eyes smoky blue. It was a lie to say she simply looked a certain way or walked a certain way that just happened to jog his memory and excite his desires. No, it went way beyond that. Ivy was a clone. For all intents and purposes, she *was* Scully, from the skin down to the genes. Never quite the same. No replica could hope to be. Still, it wreaked havoc on his mind. Not as bad now as when he'd seen her for the first time, but enough to make him seriously uncomfortable whenever he was in her presence. "C'mon, lover." She pulled his arm around her waist and led him toward the door of the Alibi. "We can go upstairs and get all comfy while you tell me why you chased away an actual paying customer." Oil lamps lit the inside of the tavern-- electricity was a thing belonging only to the very rich and the very few-- although it was arguable how much good they did between the strong smell and the thick black smoke. Fans rigged on the ceiling attempted to chase the soot out the windows, but inevitably some of it lingered like a second atmosphere. It murdered the lungs. Few of the patrons cared, too deep into their booze or their drugs to notice anything about the outside world. Scantily clad waitresses made sure no one ran out of anything. Well, that's what places like these were for. You want to forget your kid died from starvation? We got a pint of homemade beer with your name on it. Better than Busch. The little wife not treating you well? Have some crack. You'll meet the girl of your dreams inside your head. It repulsed him but Ivy thrived on it. "Hey Mike." She tossed the bartender a nuclear powered smile and a ten-credit mark. "Send us up two beers. One for me and one for the gentlemen you never saw here tonight." "I don't anything, Ivy." The burly Irish grinned. "Nothing at all. You know that. Just make sure he behaves, or I'll have to pretend I didn't see myself beating him into a pulp." "Don't worry, he's got nice manners." She leaned on tiptoe and pressed a warm kiss on Mulder's neck. He stiffened. "Good." Ivy laughed, a light graceful Scully sound, then they were up the stairs and standing at the door to her apartment. "Don't let Mike bother you. It's a scare tactic he pulls on all my customers. Thinks he's my big brother or something." Mulder didn't bother a reply. /Just get in and get business done and then leave./ A runny-nosed toddler wearing a dirty blue nightgown stood in the doorway across the hall and stared at them for a moment before his older sister pulled him back inside. What a place for kids. "You know your face wouldn't crack if you smiled." She turned back to look at him as she unlocked the deadbolt. "It may be against the law for you Enforcer boys to have fun, but relax, baby. No one's gonna catch you here." She walked in first, switching on a small gasoline lamp. Gas cost twice as much as than oil, but it burned a lot cleaner. The furnishings of the room indicated that she could afford a lot of extra things. The place had two rooms, a bedroom and a combined kitchen-living room. Hardly elegant, or even what would have been middle class in the old days, but the little things meant a lot more now. As soon as the door shut behind them, as soon as no one could see, all facades dropped. Mulder disentangled himself from her arm and took a step back, needing the space. No more playing customer. It was hard enough to keep his focus and remember that no matter what his eyes said, this wasn't Scully. His mind believed him. His desire did not. to be continued. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (4/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - /Think cold shower. Think icy, icy, shower. Think of the Smoking Man.../ Eww, that did it. He shuddered in disgust. "Sweep for bugs." The words came out like an order, and she glared at him like Scully used to when he said something rude. "Yes, Commander, *Sir*." That was Scully's sarcasm too. "I was about to anyway." She crossed to the wall and punched in a three digit code into a keypad hidden behind a sliding panel. A metallic humming filled the air for a moment then died into silence. "We're clear. I'm going to go get out of this crap." She headed for the bedroom. "Make yourself comfortable. The beer should be here soon. Then we'll talk." He watched her go, guilty for staring so long. Of all the people the Resistance could have set up as his contact, they had to pick the living breathing doppelganger of Scully. What had they been thinking? That he'd respond better? In a way, the opposite was true. He wanted to respond in certain ways so badly that he tried to keep his distance whenever possible. After a while, he limited their meetings to once a month. It took him that long to rebuild his self control. A knock on the door sent razors along his nerves, and his gun was in his hand immediately, a finger on the trigger and ready to shoot. He glanced through the peephole to see a waitress standing at the door with two bottles of brownish-yellow beer. Mulder lowered the gun but his fingers did not leave the trigger as he took them from her. "Do I get a tip?" He could barely hear the words over the incessant smacking of her gum. "No." Her eyes raked him from head to toe. "How bout after you get done with Ivy?" Mulder pulled a five-credit mark from his wallet and handed it to her. "Stay away from this room and keep everyone else clear. We like our privacy. You think you can do that?" "For you, doll, anything." Her tone let him know that she meant "anything" in the truest sense of the word. "My name's Crystal. I get off at two." He shut the door quickly. This was not the ideal place to carry out Resistance business. The cold bottles began to numb his fingers, and he sat them on the table. It was tempting to go ahead and open one. Just drink a little bit to loosen him up. His fingers played alongside one of the bottles. He picked up the bottle, open the window, and casually tossed it into the street. A homeless man yelled something unintelligible and vile up at him. The finger he was waving translated his words easily enough. "Not thirsty tonight?" Ivy's-Scully's voice caught him by surprise and he turned to see her walking back into the room. The black leather number had disappeared; in its place she wore a pair of faded blue jeans and a gray t-shirt that bared her tiny waist. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail that left a few strands falling free around her face. "No." He closed his eyes for a moment, hoping the breeze would cool his fevered thoughts. Dressed like that, she looked almost exactly like Scully. When he opened them again, she was taking a cigarette out of her pocket and placing it between her lips. A tinge of relief. The real Scully hated smoking. Always had. "Hand me that lighter, darling." She pointed to a small silver lighter on the counter. When Mulder picked it up, he noticed an engraving. Trust No One. It rang familiar notes inside his memory, and on impulse he turned it over. In little block letters were the initials C.G.B.S. CGB Spender. "I see you've made friends in high places." He tossed her the lighter. She laughed as she lit the cigarette and blew a kiss of smoke toward him. "That's what I'm here for. Director Spender is my current assignment. He likes my face. Says I remind him of a woman he used to know." /I'll bet. Between his little picture files and that face, he's got himself a regular charade./ The thought soured in his mouth when he remembered that now the Smoking Man could get the real thing if he wanted it. Which brought him to the point of the meeting. After he cleared a few questions from his mind. "My partner says he saw you at Headquarters last week. That you were looking for me." "I needed to meet with you." "No, you didn't. Not that bad. I told you and your people, I'll work for you but only on my terms. It's not just my life on the line." "Orders are orders. They said to find you, so I tried. When your tasty little Russian friend paid me off, I took the money and figured I'd try again later." "What do they want?" "They were going to alert you about the assassination bombing." Her eyes caught his flinch, and her voice softened. "But I guess you already know." "What's to say I was involved?" Ivy rolled her eyes and took a sip of her beer. "Everyone is talking about the dark lanky man who saved the Chancellors life then went a bit nutty and tried to knock off the Guardian. I figured you'd be stopping by soon to find out why you hadn't been informed." "Did you know it would be a little boy?" "No." His face said he didn't believe her. "Honest. They just told me to keep all my girls clear of the Capitol because there'd be an attempt. I don't like it anymore than you do, but I'm just the errand girl." She slid onto the couch, leaving her beer half-finished on the counter. "Is Krycek all you came here to discuss or do you have something else for me?" She left that comment wide open for his private interpretation. "I have what you asked for last time." He pulled a disk from his pocket and set it on the table. "These are the complete schematics for the weapons facilities. Three of them are biotech, so watch out. I included all the clearance codes so they shouldn't have any trouble getting in." She rolled off the couch to go pick it up when he held out his hand to stop her. "First you do something for me." "So you're asking for payment now." A sardonic twist of her eyebrows. "I wondered how long the free donations would last. How much do you want?" "I don't want money." "Then what?" "Certain...circumstances...have come about that make my position here useless. You are going to get me out. Tonight." She stared at him for a minute, inhaling a deep lungful of smoke from her cigarette. "Baby, it ain't that easy." "We'll make it easy. You pick up the phone and tell them to figure out some way for me to defect. I'll still work for them. But not here." "Just because of some kid that died in front of you? Children die every day in this city. It's sad but you don't let it interfere with the mission-" "It's not just that." The sharp edge of his voice cut her off. "You didn't approach me with this job. I volunteered. And now I want it changed. Can you do that for me?" Ivy shrugged. "I can try." "There's something else. Two friends of mine are currently living in Chile. I need you to bring them back here. They are both members of the Humanity Corps, just like me, and they'll die if they stay there." "I'm not sure if we can do that." "If I shred this disk, you won't be doing anything." "Boy, you don't ask for much. You sure you don't want money like a reasonable person?" "Just tell me if you're willing to cooperate or not." She looked at him, her eyes reading his resolve, then crushed the butt of the cigarette on a ceramic ashtray. "I'll make the calls. Nicolas is going to have to okay this one personally, so it might take a while." Mulder leaned back in his chair. "We have all night." It took three hours of waiting and exasperation, but finally Ivy handed him the phone and told him it was Nicolas. She seemed more than a little surprised they had gotten through. "This line isn't totally secure." she said, handing him the phone. "It's protected by a scrambler code, but it's an older one. You've got five minutes to state your case." "Hello, Commander Mulder." The voice reminded him a little of the Chancellor's. There was that same quiet assertion of power that need not be mentioned, because it was sensed. But yet there was something more, the barely contained electricity of a man who carried his passions at the forefront of his mind, just one breath away from his words. It was not hard to tell that he was speaking to the single most powerful man in the Resistance. Nicolas had united several of the largest undergrounds into one common unit, the Humanity Corps-- priority one on the Enforcer hit list. Rumors said the Corps actually dominated a few of the western states. Revolution waited just around the corner and Mulder refused to sit on the sidelines. "Just Mulder will be fine, thank you." Be polite, be polite. "That's what Ivy told me. You want to seek new employment." "Not new. Just different. I am no longer of any use to the Corps as an Enforcer." "You continue to supply us with valuable information. That is a use." "Things have changed. I...can't do it anymore. I won't." "Those are strong words, Mulder. But I have a feeling you're the kind who wouldn't speak them lightly." Something in Nicolas' voice made Mulder feel like the man understood him. Empathized with him. He decided to press his point. "I took this job to protect certain interests which I can no longer guard where I am at." "By that you mean your two friends in Chile. General Skinner and the woman Scully." "How did you-" "I have my ears and eyes even in the Capitol. What would you have to offer the Corps if you defected ?" "The full military and tactical knowledge of an Enforcer." "We have strategists already. And good ones." "But none that have an inside knowledge of the enemy." (C'mon, buy it. Accept it. Let me out.) "I have spent a year looking at the world through their eyes. That's a view I'm sure you'd like to have in your battle plans." A pause, deep with thoughtfulness. "All you want in return is to fight with us?" "There is one more thing. Scully and Skinner are to be evacuated from Chile immediately if I am to defect. Once I disappear, the Enforcers will go after them. Your people need to get there first." Another pause. "Thank you, Mulder. Please hand the phone back to Ivy now." When he obeyed, he noticed his palms sweated. The man was just a voice on a phone, but that voice had the power to fulfill or deny. Mulder knew he would eventually find a way to Scully no matter what the answer was. But with that came full awareness that if he didn't have the help of the Corps, all that might be left for him to find was skeletons in the sand next to a burned out cabin. Even though it was a distant nightmare, it chilled him. Ivy had walked into the next room, her words too jumbled and quick for him to pick up. How long had she been talking. Seconds, had they become minutes yet? It felt like an hour. The half-full beer bottle on the counter seduced him as he waited. He turned his back to it. /Not now!/ After a few eternities had taken their toll on his sanity, she walked back into the room and sat the phone on the counter. He waited. She picked up her beer. He waited. When she started to finish it without so much as a word to him, Mulder decided enough was enough. "What did he say?" "That you're too impatient." "That's it?" "Of course not." She shook her head, a not-quite smile pulling her lips apart. "You really need to take a vacation." "Just get to the point." He fought the urge to throttle her, no matter what she looked like. "Ok, here's the deal. He's going to help you. But like I said, it's not easy. Especially because you don't exactly have the history of a company boy-" "Will he get Scully?" Mulder couldn't contain the question until she finished. "Take it easy. Yes. And your friend Skinner too. As soon as Nicolas receives the schematics disk, he'll dispatch the helicopters--" "That's not soon enough." Now she glared at him, as if annoyed with his interruptions. There was enough of Scully in her eyes to shut him up. "I'm sorry if we're not up to your timetable, but this is the way it's going to be. You can take it or you can leave it and start walking to Chile." He bit his tongue to keep back his sarcasm. It wasn't nice to anger the people responsible for smuggling you out of Washington. "Go on." "It'll take at least two days for you to reach Freedom City-- the capital of our western territories and location of our base camp. Most of our people live there too. You'll be working in the psych division of Tactical." "Psych." He hadn't expected that one, although he should have seen it coming. Sometimes he suspected that a transcript of his entire life had been handed out in general to the world at large, with his sensitive spots highlighted in red. /Push this button to make him squirm. Use this talent to your advantage./ "Nicolas says you have some sort of knack for it. And a degree, which makes you good as gold." She said it like she wasn't sure whether to take her boss' word for it or not. "But back to our travel plans. You're leaving tomorrow morning." "You people don't waste any time-" "We need the disk as soon as possible. In fact, it will probably be sent ahead of you." This was Ivy's "operative side." She talked fast, thought faster, and expected you to keep up. "Listen quickly and listen well. In three hours, you will leave this building and return to your building. We need Krycek to see you there, even better to talk to you, before you leave again, ostensibly to follow a hunch on the suicide bombing. You will be "captured" by our agents...we'll make sure there are lots of witnesses, of course. One hour after the initial reports have reached Director Spender-- probably through Krycek-- a ransom note will be delivered. I guess we'll ask about a million for you, given that you're a Commander. It ought to screw with their heads quite nicely." "That's not going to work. I know the Director of Intelligence. He will see through it in a moment." Ivy shot him the kind of look his high school calculus teacher used to give him when he said something exceptionally dumb. "The purpose isn't to convince. It will only distract them for a day, if that, but it's is all we need to slip you under their radar." "What about satellite scans? They can pick up our location easily..." "We have dark cover technology. One of your Enforcer buddies sold it to us last year. It will let us move without their knowledge for up to three days. Again, more than necessary." "And what about my friends?" "With any luck they'll get to Freedom City ahead of you." He tossed her the disk. "Tell Nicolas I look forward to working with him." She looked at him for a minute, her eyes changing color from light blue to a burning sapphire. "Don't leave until you absolutely have to. Make a convincing show." "I planned on that." Now she was standing, moving toward him as she pinned him down with the Scully eyes. "Since we're here...." She ran her hand down his chest and he shivered despite himself. Her voice was smooth as caramel syrup and twice as sweet. "You might as well take advantage of my other services." "What, do you want my money as well as the disk?" Scully-- he meant Ivy-- leaned closer until all he could see was her face. The face that wasn't her face. Scully's face. "No charge." For a moment he forgot who was who. Until he smelled the smoke on her breath. It managed to jolt him from the enchantment of living memory. "No. Thank you." Ivy (He was certain now who it was.) leaned back, disappointed. "Baby, it's your loss. Whoever she is that's keeping your heart all locked must be some woman. I remind you of her though." The irony was not lost on him, and he nodded, grinning just a little. "You could say that." "Tell her she's lucky." Ivy smiled again, but this time it seemed genuine. Not a Scully smile, but pretty. "Tell her she's very lucky." From the back of the bedroom, a baby began to cry. It seemed to shake her out of her thoughts, because she turned away. "I'll be right back. He's probably hungry." Mulder's eyebrows shot up. "Yours?" She paused, the self-assurance in her voice cracking for the first time since he'd met her. . "Mine. I usually let him stay with the lady across the hall, but her kid's got a cold and I don't want my baby to get infected. That's why you haven't seen him before." "Why didn't you-" "Why didn't I kill it?" A defensive bite edged her tone. "Remove the inconvenience? The annoyance?" That edge faded into a sigh. "Mulder, I do what I have to do to survive. It turns out I can serve the Corps while I'm at it. I make no claims to be an angel. Nothing like the one who's living inside your head. But you know how we all have one redeeming grace?" The ever-ready smile turned bittersweet. "He's mine." He couldn't think of a fit reply as she walked into the bedroom, his mouth sore from sticking his foot into it and his brain busy digesting her words. One redeeming grace, she'd said. Even for people like her. For people like him. In two days, he'd find out if that grace was strong enough to save him. Even if Scully wasn't, he would gladly burn forever if he could do it at her side. * * * * * * * * * * * * * As dawn began to break, as hope began to breathe, a man picked up his pen to share the news with his angel. Dearest Samantha, I write this to you on the way to rejoin the resistance you so bravely supported, long ago. Would you like it to be your legacy? Say but a word and I shall wear you on my heart into every battle, my shield and my emblem. My armor may be dented, my sword dulled, but your fallen knight loves you still. Soon I will be back where I belong, back with the woman who belongs with me. Do you think I will frighten her, Sam? Her soul has stayed pure while mine rots inside of me. Part of me wants to turn back and let her live with the illusions of the man I was. The rest of me cannot breathe without her, so I go. Escape, at last..... But for how long? Love Always, Fox. to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (5/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow -- The Hollow Men TS Eliot Evening in Paris was always beautiful, especially when the moonlight played off her skin. He had flung all windows open in attempt to coax air into the room, and the slight breeze brought with it a whisper of roses and wine. The luxury of the villa bordered the ridiculous, but she loved to be spoiled and he gladly obliged. Her pleasure meant his, in so many ways. He found the wine and filled his glass, rolling over in bed so he could watch her as he drank. She slept now, the slender curve of her back rising and falling in time with her breathing. Even in sleep, she retained a delicate, almost feline sensuality about her. She wore it like normal women wore Chanel No. 5. Every move of her hand, curve of her lips, did things to him he had thought impossible. The chardonnay by no means replaced good Russian vodka, although she considered that a peasant's drink so he put up with the softer, more sophisticated wine. Yes, he'd had to work quite hard to convince her he was more than uncouth hired muscle, but tonight the success was obvious.. She was beautiful. And deadly. Their affair was two-headed serpent, on one side paradise and the other poison. This night, however, was not a night to think of that. Only to savor, to enjoy. Tomorrow they would kill each other if they had to. Tonight, they were lovers. He bent over to plant a shadow kiss on her lips, and came away tasting her in his next swallow of wine. As the drink passed down his throat, the moonlight flickered then died as if it were a candle that had been snuffed in a flame. The breeze turned into a wind and carried a northern chill that did not belong to Paris in summer. Instead of a hint of roses, the air now stank of decay. "Malish?" He called for her in Russian, using a pet name he had given her once in a fit of whiskey and adoration. His hand groped in the pitch darkness, a strange fear dripping acid into his gut. When his fingers touched where she had been, he found only blood. Nothing else. There was no body, but out of the inky black, her voice began to scream. And scream. And scream...... He staggered from the bed, flailing through the darkness like a mad man but finding nothing. The sound of her terror was sharp and raw against his brain like daggers dragged along a chalkboard. Then someone lit a cigarette, the flame from the lighter as bright as a torch in the ebony room, and began to laugh. "Malish!" His body jerked into a spasm of muscle and bone, arching upward. into a sitting position, beads of stinging sweat rollling down his foreahed and into his eyes. The cold metal of his gun rested in his hand before the rest of his body had fully awakened.Krycek blinked, half to clear his vision and half to convince himself reality was reality. They were in a hotel room, not in France but in Washington DC, and the light of early morning spilled through the blinds to paint the room with a watery shade of gray-blue. There was no rotten-smelling darkness. Marita did not occupy his bed, or even a look-alike of Marita, but a strange girl-woman who sat up suddenly and stared at his gun with wide eyes. It took a moment for him to recognize her as the girl he'd picked up the night before. "What is it?" She clutched the sheets to her chest as if she had some sort of morals left in her, her eyes wide and afraid. Marita had never showed her fear. Not even at the end... "It's nothing." Looking at her caused a sudden disgust that he could not explain, and he stood abruptly to his feet, crossing the room to his vodka. A glass would take too much time, he reasoned, and poured the liquor straight down his throat. /There, let's see if any dreams can survive *that*..../ For the next few seconds, his senses crackled with clear fire, his eyes squeezing shut to lessen the intensity. Instead, he saw her face on his mind, a coldly breathtaking sketch of black and white memory. He hadn't dreamed in colors since she died. Only in black, white, gray-- all the shades befitting a man who could not even remember what color the eyes of the woman he loved had been. Sometimes he imagined they were blue, because he could remember thinking she had Russian eyes. He'd told her that once, meaning to compliment, but she had merely laughed. Sometimes, when the vodka was too strong in his blood for reason, he heard her laugh again. His fingers tightened around the neck of the bottle and he threw down another dose of forgetfulness. Once he felt he had control of his mind, he turned again to the girl in his bed. "Get dressed." He picked up his pants from the floor and pulled a fifty-credit mark from the pocket. "Then get out. I am tired of looking at your face." He threw the money on the bed, wondering why he'd paid the little brat for an all-night session anyway. /Just because you miss waking up beside something other than your gun..../ She obeyed, awkwardly, for his eyes never left her the whole time and he sensed her consciousness of it. Why it would matter to some city slut, he didn't know. It felt like something *Mulder* would care about, Mulder with his one-woman loyalty and devotion..... Krycek could hear the taunt inside his head. /At least the woman I love is still alive..../ He spat a curse into the vodka bottle as he raised it to his lips again. /I can have twenty women./ But he didn't want twenty. He wanted.... A fast swig of vodka cut the mutinous thought short. "A little early to get wasted, isn't it?" His head snapped up in annoyance at the interruption, but he grinned when he saw Mulder walk into the room. "Ah, my friend, back at last. Might I ask what kept you?" "No." "Oh, c'mon. I want to know her name so I can congratulate her on the honor of replacing Dana Scully for a couple hours. Not many women can do that, but of course you would know better than I--" "Save it." Mulder tossed the words over his shoulder as he walked over to his bed. Krycek watched his partner grab a duffel bag and begin to fill it with an odd assortment of books, photographs from a folder, and ammunition.. He took another drink and wiped his mouth with his sleeve before he spoke. "Going somewhere, comrade?" "I have a hunch about the suicide bombing. Gonna meet with an informant of mine down in the bar strip." "And you feel the need to pack?" Mulder's eyes darkened from hazel to green, spinning his words from casual conversation into something entirely different. "Never know what you might need on a mission." "I see." Krycek set the vodka down long enough to pull on his jeans. Mulder was crazy if he was thinking about trying another escape. /You pull a stunt like that once and you survive, it's luck. You pull it twice, it's a death sentence./ "So is this going to be an...extended....mission?" A hesitation. "Quite possibly." He sat down on the edge of the bed, picking up the bottle again as he watched Mulder pack twin Sig Sauer automatics into the bag, concealing them carefully beneath a shirt. "Expecting trouble?" "Enforcer motto #457. If you aren't prepared, they will be." "Since when did you start quoting the rulebook?" "You know me." A grin, double-edged, revealing secrets without words. "Always a company man." "Just don't want to stick around for the retirement plan?" "The competitors have better perks." There it was; official admission of the insanity. Time to end the double-talk and talk some sense into the man. Maybe he didn't go so far as to count Mulder a friend, but after a man saved your life in the field five or six times, you owed his at least a respect. He took another gulp of liquor, letting it wash down his throat and into his stomach before he spoke. "They'll kill you this time, you do know that." Mulder didn't even bother to look up, his attention focused on a black and white picture of a woman he held in his hands. The woman had Scully's face. "Maybe." "And her." "Maybe." "You stopped to think about that?" A longer pause. Mulder's fingers traced the surface of the photograph as if he could touch the skin through the paper. He spoke in an abstract whisper, and Krycek wasn't sure if the man talked to him or to the picture. "I've thought about it. There is no other choice. I can't live this anymore." "Is that what this is all about?" Another drink, another rush of satisfaction at the welcomed burn. "You just woke up and decided you were too good for the rest of us and that you were gonna go back to saving the world?" "Something like that." The photograph disappeared into the duffel. "And you're willing to risk her life just to keep your own hands out of the dirt. Sure, that's love." "She'll be fine." His voice held no concern but a sheet of worry stretched tight over his eyes. "Arrangements have been made." "Arrangements can go wrong too. Just what is so bad about this life? I mean, think about it for a moment if you can clear the delusions of grandeur from your head. The world is ruled by an alien dictatorship but we have power to move freely within that framework. We are the ones wielding the guns to back the threats. We get anything we want. Money. Liquor. Women. Anything." "What about freedom? What about the ability to live with yourselves?" "No one is free, Mulder. You of all people should have learned that by now. And the ability to live with yourself?" He held his vodka bottle out. "That's what they make this stuff for. I know you have a taste for it already. I've seen you in the bars." "All the more reason to leave." "You're a greater fool than I thought if you're going to give all this up on the slim chance it'll make you human again. You and me passed that long ago. Or is it for her? No woman is worth that kind of risk. Believe me." "You would have taken the risk for Marita." "I killed Marita, remember? Two shots to the forehead. Bang. Bang." Ouch, that stung more than he had planned. A quick grab at the bottle. Liquid absolution. Only it was never enough... "You still love her. I can hear it in your scream when you wake up at night---" "Shut-up. She has nothing to do with this." He pushed the conversation forward, away from the memory and something inside him that felt too much like pain. "I should turn you in. Call up security right now and have them haul your butt down to neuropsyche. Because you're insane. Flat out whacked." Mulder zipped up his duffel and slung it over his shoulder. "You could come with me, you know." A casual, off-handed statement. A chance for freedom, simple as walking out the door and out of the city and... What was he thinking? The madness must be contagious. He didn't care what Mulder said, he had exactly what he wanted in this life. Everything he needed for a perfect world. Everything except.... But he refused to think about her. Instead he smiled, the best and brightest denial he could offer. "Thanks but no thanks, comrade. I told you. I like my life just fine the way it is. But here's to your glorious insanity." He lifted the bottle in a toast. "Now get out of here and carry out your 'mission'. You'll be worth more once you've escaped. This little conversation can bring me, oh, about ten thousand dollars if I play it right." "And they say capitalism is dead." He grinned, but his eyes held an odd sobriety as he nodded once. "Goodbye, comrade." "Goodbye." Krycek would always remember the way the silence suddenly grew lead heavy, the way a strange notion filled his head that he had just lost his one and only chance at freedom. He shook himself to rid his bones of the feeling. He had done the right thing. Mulder was the fool, not him. He had everything he wanted. Everything and more. A flash-memory of Marita's voice, a question she had asked him their first night together. /Don't you ever want more than survival? Don't you ever wonder what it would be like just to live?/ He had avoided the question with a kiss. Now there was nothing to hide behind besides her ghost and a bottle of cheap vodka. "I am Alex Krycek." He spoke aloud, the words ringing in the empty room. "I make my own rules and I am as free as I want to be." Silence. "I don't need her. I never needed her." Silence. /I killed Marita./ /You still love her. I can hear it in your scream.../ Silence. Too fast, too fast, the memories came, and there was not enough vodka in the world to stem the flow. /Midnight again, but you're not in the Paris villa this time. This room is damp, cold, the walls rotting with the stench of urine and vomit and fear. You're spitting up blood on the stone floor of an Imperial prison cell, and out of the corner of your eye you see her doing the same thing. Even through the darkness, you can watch her ghost white hands turn scarlet as she tries to wipe it away from her mouth. But it's never gone. There's always more. That's when you hold her hand, fingers laced through fingers. That's when you tell her it will be all right. That's when you know it is a lie./ Fingers twitched. Breathing quickened. His hands dug under his pillow until they came into contact with the hard metal edges of his gun. Metal cold in his palm as he screwed the silencer into place. /The guards come to visit her later--in the "unofficial" capacity-- and they put you in solitary for a month because you kill one of them. When they come in to beat you at night, you remember holding her hand. This is why you do not flinch. When the officially sanctioned torture begins, you have reasons not to break. At first, she's one of them. She's beautiful and someday you might have told her you loved her. At first, you want your freedom more than anything else. For seven days of hell, the will is enough to overcome the body. On the eighth day, the pain is too much. Mind dissolves and instinct takes over./ The scars ridging his back burned as if they were the ghosts of the past coming to life again. Pupils dilated. Memory surged, convulsing into a seizure before the rest of his mind had a chance to catch up. /Your body dangles from a metal hook, hands tied above your head and stretched until the shoulder muscles are strained to the point of tearing in two. That pain is slight compared to the fire that burns the naked flesh of your back....or at least what is left under the blood and torn skin. Between the crack of the whip and your own screaming, you promise you'll come back to the fold. You'll pull triggers and kill humans for them. They tell you to prove it. They bring her in, and she is thrown at your feet, small and trembling beneath the dirt and the blood. They cut you down and put a gun in your hands. One bullet. Prove your loyalty to the cause. Her eyes widen and her lips form your name like a prayer to her only god./ The pressure built to critical mass. He exploded, his fingers pulling the trigger in jerky spasms that he did not initiate and could not stop. Then came the rage, emotions careening through his dried-out veins as the mask over his emotions slipped just enough to break. Then came the hate, no longer merely ethereal but transubstantiated into cold metal and hot lead. One bullet. Two bullets. Stop the memories.....stop...... /And you blow her brains out from three inches away./ By that time the clip had emptied and the floor riddled with bullet holes. His fingers kept working the trigger, mechanically. /This is what you pay for freedom./ With that, the memory died. Not a muscle in his body moved, hands frozen into place around the hard, familiar angles of his weapon as the caustic scent of burnt powder ate away at his senses. His mind, panting from the exertion of restraining darker forces within his soul, whispered to him what had just taken place. A crack in the stone. A lapse in the professionalism. Krycek stared down at the gun, at the floor, disgust pooling in his eyes. With one sudden flick of his wrist, he hurled the weapon across the room and watched it dent the plaster of the far wall. He reached for the vodka bottle, knocking it over upon accident. The clear liquor splashed onto the floor, onto the bed, across his hands. That didn't matter. He could get more. He could always get more. "I am Alex Krycek." He whispered, softer than before. A mere scrape against the smothering wall of silence. "No man owns me." The words bounced off the floor and ceiling and walls and sounded very, very small. He said nothing more as he pulled on his shirt, then his jacket, then his gun. Then Alex Krycek walked out the door to get drunk. * * * A living cloud of rage emanating from the office of Director Spender, and you didn't have to be a empath to tell that heads were going to roll. Intelligence Specialist Brian Midgette ran one hand across his uniform, ensuring every crease was straight. His palms sweated onto the folder he carried in his hand. In it rested all the latest details of the disappearance of Commander Mulder-- including the recent testimony of Commander Krycek, not that the man would be of any use for some time. Midgette could still smell the vodka on the man's breath. It went beyond disgraceful, the way some Enforcers used their status to blatantly disregard every rule for conduct the military had ever created. The interview had, to say the least, not gone well. The boys in Intelligence had drawn straws to determine who would give the report to the Director. He had lost. "He wants you now." He very nearly jumped when the secretary's voice broke into his thoughts. She flicked the words in his direction like someone would flick a bug from a windshield. He straightened his jacket one last time, coughing to clear the cobwebs from his throat, and entered the lion's den. "Mr. Midgette." The Director puffed away on his stick of happiness, but judging from the mound of cigarette butts in the ashtray, it wasn't working. "I do hope you have answers for me." "Commander Krycek was inebriated, sir. My men have him in custody now but it will be sometime before he will be sober enough to answer any questions." "We do not have time. Send him to medical and let them sober him up for us. I want him interrogated as soon as possible." "Do you think he was involved in the kidnapping?" The old man glared at him through a thin veil of smoke and anger. "This is no kidnapping. This is a defection." "At least twenty witnesses attest to a capture by force and the ransom note itself indicates that--" "You Intelligence fools have the brains of two year old children if you are deceived so easily." A momentary pause as Spender blew a cloud of bluish-white smoke into the air and then sucked it back into his lungs. Disgusting. "I know Commander Mulder. The capture and the ransom note were simple tricks to divert our attention-- which it has." "Do you want us to shut down the borders?" "Yes." Midgette could practically see the wheels turning inside the old man's mind. "Dispatch infiltration agents to every known Resistance transportation center. But follow a policy of observation, not interference. I want him to think he's gotten away with it." "Why not arraign him when we have a chance? If he makes it to Freedom City, we will have lost him." "I think not." The Director stabbed the butt of his cigarette into the tray. "Mulder will come to us." "How, sir?" "He has a woman, a Dana Scully. She is quite beautiful, really, and the perfect sort of leverage we need to instigate his surrender." "We considered that option, sir." Midgette said. "She is off board. There has been no sign of her anywhere for some months." "She has been in hiding in Chile. Do not bother to ask me how I know. I do. I dispatched a retrieval team an hour ago. I don't expect it will be too hard to locate her and her guardian, a man you have in your files as well-- Walter Skinner. I want them alive. You will oversee the retrieval and ensure everything goes according to plan." "And then what--" "He'll be sent to the processing center in Texas, naturally." "And Scully?" A thin smile stretched over the old man's teeth, and his eyes turned black with a sort of predatory glimmer. "She will be delivered into my care." "Yes sir." A taint of disgust curled around Midgette's stomach at the implications behind the smile. "Is that all, sir?" "Yes. You may go." Midgette saluted sharply and walked directly from the office to his quarters to change uniforms. The one he wore smelled too much like sweat and smoke and fear. In a way, he pitied the woman. But she was the enemy and therefore the pity did not last long. Who cared what the Director did with his prisoners? All he had to do was bring her in and do his job. He did not want to think what would happen should he stand in that office empty-handed. * * * * * * * * * * * * * TWELVE HOURS LATER A north wind rippled panic through the sand dunes, whispering of menace unforeseen and as of yet, unknown. Something in her soul churned restless and on edge like a storm brewing without the clouds or the thunder, only lightning in her veins. Scully had not wanted to sleep, because when her eyes closed she could no longer keep the dreams from coming. The nightmares were so real she swore at times they were really a secret universe lurking just inside her subconscious. They had plagued her for so long she had come to expect it, but that did not lessen the fear. Nothing could. Except for that one blissful week when Mulder had been with her again; not a demon had crept into her sleep then. He always did have that power about him, to cast out her devils..... But when the cat was away, the mice would play. Post-traumatic stress syndrome, Skinner had told her, with memories of Vietnam in his eyes. It would last long after the scars on her body had faded. She owed sanity to him for everything he had done to ease the healing process. When they had first arrived and she had been physical and mental wreck from the brutality of the alien monster Pavlov, he had been the one to shake her awake when she was screaming, to place an awkward hand on her shoulder when she cried. Those were wretched days. She had been alone, terrified, and haunted by the belief that her soulmate was lost. Skinner respected her grief, although more than once she had seen him sit outside her door when he thought she was asleep, watching her just in case she tried anything rash. Scully wanted Mulder to put her back together, but it had been Skinner who collected the pieces and eased them into place again. But as dear a friend as the man became, he could not help her with the dreams. Only one could, and he was somewhere far away from her side if not from her soul. No, she had not wanted to sleep but her eyes had grown heavy and all too soon she had slipped away, into the clutches of her nightmares. "Scully!" "No! Get out of my head!!!" Panic, fear.....who touched her? Skinner's voice. Skinner was a friend. "Scully, wake up! We have to get out. We have to go, do you hear me?" The hand on her shoulder jerked her into reality, and half-pulled her from the bed before she could even open her eyes. "What?" Sleep hung heavy in her words, in her mind. "Listen!" Scully desperately tried to connect her brain with her ears but all she could hear were screams. Hers, Mulder's. The laugh of a strange and cruel man..... Then she heard it. Helicopter blades, close and moving closer by the heartbeat. Her senses jumped to full alert as if someone had touched a live wire to her bare nerves. /They found us./ "How??" "Get dressed." He pushed a crumpled wad of clothing into her hands. "I'll start the jeep." His voice urged her to hurry There was no time for questions, only for actions, and seconds may cost them their lives. She dropped her nightgown and pulled the dress over her head in one frantic motion. The instincts she built during her time on the run with Mulder served her well. She did not even have to think, only react. On the way out of the room, her hands reached behind the door to snag a sawed-off shotgun and two boxes of cartridges. They prepared for such a danger. No one took either of them without a fight. Out the door, out from her home, into the chaos of the night. The wind died to a mere breeze, its howling beaten by the chopper blades until it was only a terrified murmur. She could see the lights of the helo now, the red and green running lights and the great yellow spotlight that was the eye of the beast. This terror was no dream. It wasn't after her mind. The bullets were real this time. Skinner floored the gas pedal as she leapt into the seat beside him, her fingers fumbling with the shotgun and cursing her clumsiness. The beach rushed by in a blur of sea, sand, and distant mountains. Her whole world unravelled around her again and all she could think of was how to get the stupid cartridge in right. Her sole focus became a readiness to shoot. And kill. She refused to let herself think why the enemy had returned. Mulder had said he had made a deal. Mulder had said he was handling it. Even if he was in trouble, she knew he would never willingly reveal her location. They would have had to torture him.... And even still she knew what it took to break him. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. /What if..../ The voice of the wind in her ears did not sound entirely unlike Pavlov. /What if he died in their dirty torture cells to hide your precious little paradise?/ Scully pumped the shotgun to make sure it was primed and ready to avenge his blood if it indeed had been spilled. It had been a while, but she had not forgotten how to kill a man. Even as the jeep sped toward the sanctuary of the mountains, the bird of prey behind them shortened its distance. One meter, one gunshot, at a time. As it drew near, she could see the black silhouettes of the machine guns and the even deadlier ICBM missiles. Once the battle itself begun, it would as good as be over. "You have been placed under arrest by the Imperial Government of the United States." The voice of the pilot filled the air through a megaphone. "We do not wish to resort to violence. Please stop the vehicle. Please stop the vehicle now." The engine groaned as Skinner pushed the jeep into another gear. "Please stop or we will open fire." She glanced over her shoulder to gauge the distance to the mountains. "Are we going to make it?" He took his eyes off the road long enough to look her in the face and shake his head. The lines of his jaw pulled taut with anger and desperation. "If we stop now, there's a chance they'll let us live. Do you-" Instead of speaking her answer, Scully swung the gun up around and squeezed the trigger. The chopper veered away as one of the high-powered rounds hit the windshield. /That's right. You're not taking me back./ Wind whipped her hair across face but her eyes met Skinner's with a fierce smile that needed no words. He understood. "Just checking." A barrage of machine gun fire ended their conversation, and Skinner shoved her to the bottom of the jeep as he attempted to duck and drive at the same time. The vehicle swerved back and forth as they played a deadly game of tag with the stream of bullets. Winning, for now, but only barely. She stood up again to shoot but his hand closed around her shoulder and yanked her back down so hard her teeth shook. "Stay put." It wasn't a request. Her spine stiffened, her fingers tightening around the gun. "You are not pulling this gung ho crap on me now." His face showed h was insulted. "Save your bullets until they get close. Aim for the pilot." The rumble of the chopper was almost deafening now, nearly loud enough to hide the thunder in her veins. Sweat from her palms was turned into steam by the heated barrel of the shotgun as she quickly reloaded. She placed two extra cartridges in her pocket. No more than that. If all three missed, she would be dead anyway. Only a few more seconds..... There was a loud !pop! as the chopper's machine gun fire cut across the back of the jeep, blowing the two back tires. The resulting jolt sent her body flying hard and fast into the dashboard; for a moment stunning her. As she pulled herself back into position, priming the shotgun for their one chance at survival, something sharp and strong bit into her nostrils. Gasoline. to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (6/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - A glance in the side mirror confirmed her suspicions. One of the bullets had ricocheted off the gas tank. Only the angels had kept the entire jeep from bursting into flames, but now they were leaking their guts all over the beach. They were losing speed fast. Too fast. Her view disappeared as a bullet shattered the mirror. In seconds the helo would be right over head and then it would be too late. /Hail Mary, Mother of God bury me beside Mulder/ The universe slowed to the motion of a finger on a trigger as Scully pushed herself up, her arm bringing the gun toward the cockpit in one fluid motion. Bits of sand were flung into her eyes by the wind until tears came. Her free hand wiped them away as her finger tightened. The pilot realized her intent and the barrels of the machine gun swiveled to cut her down. This was the deciding second. Life or death. Freedom or slavery. She fired.....and missed! The shot went wide as the jeep lurched forward, brakes squealing as they tried to gain traction on the slippery terrain. It pitched her over the seats, slamming her mercilessly into the back of the jeep. She kept rolling until she hit the side. Something felt like it had been dented..... whether it was the metal or her skull, she didn't have time to find out. The first bullet grazed her kneecap and delivered an urgent reminder of her exposure. The second bit a tiny chunk of flesh from her shoulder as the vehicle buckled into a forty-five degree turn. "Skinner, what the-" Her words shriveled inside her mouth as she looked up to see a *second* chopper appear from over the mountains, bearing down twice as fast as the one on their tailpipes. The abrupt turn proved to be the last straw for the struggling vehicle. It tipped to the side, the force of the motion hurling her back into the air to greet the not-so-soft sand face first. Her ribs shrieked and Scully choked on her own breath as it was pounded from her lungs. The acrid scent of burning metal forced motion back into her paralyzed limbs. She nearly snapped her own neck from the speed she jerked it in the direction of the wreck. In the flame-kissed darkness she saw both the man, struggling to drag himself to his feet, and the pool of burning gasoline that soaked through the sand mere inches from his legs. Nightmares of burning flesh and charred bone spurred to her feet, and she ran. There was no time to listen to the pain. In a moment her arms locked under his shoulders, pulling up with a fervor. He groaned, half-rising but collapsing again. "Go...." The words slurred. Concussion, the doctor inside her mind shouted. Might be slight, but he might already be bleeding to death inside his skull. "Move!" She screamed, throat raw and burning from the gas fumes assaulting her face. The breath of the fire pressed heat onto her skin, prelude to the tongues of flame that desired to lick the flesh from their bones. Her ears recognized the sound of the chopper's blades as it hovered above them. Vultures, she thought. Just waiting their pick of bones. /No time. No time. Do you know what it is like to die in a fire, Mulder?/ A spark flash of memory, burning firework bright in her mind and just that quickly. His voice, his words, another moment when death had seemed to be the victor. /You stay alive, you hear me! No matter what occurs! I will find you./ And he had. He was not dead. She felt that much inside her. It set off landmines within her veins, a keen desire for *life*. Scully gritted her teeth and pulled with the combined strength of muscle and resolve. He slid away from the fire what might have been an inch, if she was that lucky. "On your feet, Marine!" Skinner's legs began to dig into the sand, gouging deep ruts into the face of the earth as he attempted to help her. His arms pushed down on her shoulders as he pushed himself up and the weight of his entire body ground mercilessly against her bruised shoulder bones. She pushed back, trying to nudge him to his feet as red oceans of pain threatened to sweep her away. Then he was standing. They ran. It was more like a half-stumbling, half-falling rush of panic, but they escaped from the fire grave that hissed angrily over the sand where they had been moments ago. The distance was not enough to cushion them in any great degree when the gas tank finally exploded. It was enough, however, to save their lives. The shockwave picked them up like the invisible hand of a petty god, and carried them a good twenty feet, bits of metal nipping at their heels, then simply dropped them. Scully winced in advance. Impact. Her world cut to black. After a moment, reality flickered back to life, but it was as if she had been caught in the limbo between consciousness and oblivion. A heavy film seemed to coat her mind, clogging her thoughts and actions alike. Her body was lead heavy; she could not move. A sense of childlike fascination curbed her fear as the first chopper moved directly over them. The still-burning wreckage of the car sent beams of orange light sliding down the smooth black metal belly. Any moment the beast would give birth to its children and they would consume her. No, she would not go. She would not...... But something happened. The helicopter wasn't stopping. It passed over them as if it had lost all interest, the rat-tat of its guns suddenly turned on something to their right. Her head protested even the small movement, but it was worth it. The second chopper. In all the commotion, she had forgotten about it. What was happening? Uncertainty was worse than fear. The second craft was smaller than the Enforcer helo, but it positively bristled with a hodge-podge of weaponry. At first glance, it seemed that someone had merely taken random missiles and guns and stuck them in any available place. /Not professionals. Bounty hunters?/ Who knows what the price on her head was, and Skinner's would probably be double that, from what he had told her about his position with the resistance. Someone might want it bad enough to take on even the mighty Enforcers. After all, Chile was a long way from DC and no one would be coming to ask questions about body count.... From her past experience with bounty hunters, Scully believed she would rather take her chance with the Enforcers.. Her thoughts were distracted as a trail of white smoke shot from underneath the Enforcer helo toward its rival craft. So now they were playing with the big toys. The second helicopter danced out of the way, humming angrily as a disturbed yellow-jacket, but the missile arced up toward the stars then back toward it. A heat seeker. Whoever the second party might be, they were finished. But the little chopper picked up speed, it's forward machine guns roaring as it charged the Enforcers. How oddly brave of a bounty hunter. In the last seconds before it came within range of enemy fire-- and certain death-- the helo banked up sharply. Here was where its lighter weight and superior maneuverability paid off. Before the larger chopper could counter, the second craft was *behind* them and quickly creating a buffer zone of distance. The Enforcers were now in path of their own missile. The irony made a lovely fireball. An explosion lit up the beach in a regular Fourth of July celebration. Although she doubted she'd be able to celebrate her independence for much longer. The victorious helicopter swung around and moved toward them. Scully reached across Skinner and pulled his .45 Magnum from its holster. /You want this bounty, boys, you're gonna have to get your hands dirty./ His eyes met hers, thick and clouded with the drugs of pain and semi-consciousness. Between the livid cut across his forehead and heaven only knew what kind of internal injuries, she was surprised he still clung to reality. His mouth moved to form words but no sound came out. She squeezed a momentary reassurance into his shoulder. /I'm not going anywhere./ A taste of warm blood soured the back of her mouth as she forced her fingers to close around the pistol. Her hands shook and it took nearly all her strength to cock the weapon. The lights from the craft shone burned her irises as she turned her face toward the threat, but she refused to look away. Wind and sand rushed over her, pelting her skin and blowing her hair back from her face. Slowly, and oh so painfully, she began to pull herself up to at least a sitting position. Back ramrod straight, face set in stone. Defy until the end. /Well, Ahab, Starbuck still remembers some of your lessons./ The helo touched down a scant fifty yards from them. Dim black shadows of men began to disembark. Her skin tingled from the cold metal of the gun. Her ears popped from the adrenaline acid in her blood. A voice came out of the light. "General Skinner and Dana Scully-" General? Who were these people? Scully forced herself to pay attention as the speaker continued. "We are not with the Imperial Government or the Bounty Hunter Guild. We have been sent by the Humanity Corps to escort you to safety. Do not shoot." She turned back to Skinner, eyes searching for some sort of confirmation. His head moved in a slight nod. Growing awareness of her injuries began to settle over her, a fog of pain that tugged her down towards unconsciousness. Relief washed the static from her nerves but still she sat frozen in her position and her fingers would not release the gun. Shock, her doctor mind told her. You have to fight it. She couldn't fight it. She was drowning in it. And then the men reached her, soldiers in brown uniforms who carried no guns. The leader wore the insignia of a Healer on his shoulder. "Are you all right?" Scully nodded, a lie of course, because she did not want the man's hands anywhere near her. Strange hands. The medic passed her by to kneel beside Skinner. "Get a stretcher!" he barked over his shoulder. Somewhere inside her, protective instincts flared and she placed a hand possessively on Skinner's shoulder. His hand moved weakly toward her, fingers brushing her leg as the soldiers pulled him onto the stretcher. They tried to help her to her feet. She did not move. She could not. /What if they're lying?/ Her voice hid from her to her, but her thoughts spoke loud as ever. /What if this is a trap?/ The gun, cold in her fingers. A choice to be made. Her own body decided for her. Consciousness went out like a candle into darkness, and Dana Scully did not even feel the strange hands that invaded her space to move her onto another stretcher. The chopper rose into the air and vanished over the mountains as the fire of the abandoned wreckage continued to eat at her home. But she did not know this. Therefore she could not look back to mourn. * * * * * * * * * * * * * Boom-boom. Boom-boom. Boom-boom. The pounding of her heart echoed inside her skull, inside her skull, slow and deep as thunder over the ocean's horizon. She felt as if she was floating in a warm sea, underwater yet breathing while her body drifted with the ebb and flow of the current. Thin shafts of light pierced the surface to color the water with the palest of golds. There was such peace, an entire ocean world of peace that she did not want to leave. Pain existed, but it seemed to grow less and less by the heartbeat. She did not know why. Yet now she moved, pushed by the tide, toward a dark shore, shrouded by mist and fire. That was Awakening. That meant she would have to face reality-- she had been taken from the haven which had sheltered her so many months. She had washed up on the shores of the true world, and that place was cruel and frightening. She remembered that much. With growing awareness of self came awareness of another, a foreign consciousness that surrounded her like the ocean. Wherever it touched, it destroyed the pain. She began to realize that this Consciousness worked inside her mind without her command. That it controlled her mind. Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom. Her heartbeat sped in her ears as an icy undercurrent of fear began to chill the waters. /Just like with Pavlov. Just like in the camps. While you were lying here asleep they could have done anything..../ As her outer senses returned, her skin began to tingle as she realized someone else's hands were wrapped around her head. Someone else existed inside her mind. Touching her thoughts..... She screamed, hands instinctively flying up to fend off the attacker. The Consciousness abruptly vanished, taking its hands with it before she could break them, but she didn't stop swinging until she hit flesh. "Give her some room, you idiots!" Someone grabbed her shoulders, holding them in a gentle yet firm grip as a familiar voice pierced through her hysteria. "Scully. It's me. Open your eyes. It's me." Skinner? His gravelly voice, warm with concern, called her to logic. "They're not trying to hurt you. Just open your eyes and see for yourself." She had to remind herself that this was Skinner. She was not alone. She still had someone she could trust. /He let them inside your mind./ A razor whisper in the back of her head slashed words into her thoughts. /He's trying to save himself. He'll give your mind over to them to save his. This is the real world. No one trusts anyone. All that matters is survival. Remember that if you want to see tomorrow..../ Scully did not want to listen, did not want to believe, so she opened her eyes. She was not afraid. Not of the camps. Not of Pavlov. It had been a year and she was not..... The first thing she saw was Skinner's face, creased with worry yet calm around the eyes. She felt his gaze lock onto hers, slowly draining the paranoia from her body. Her voice was rough from sleep when she tried to speak. "You let them touch my mind." Disbelief. Accusation. She saw him flinch, his eyes dropping away from hers. "They have a healer. You were bleeding internally....we couldn't wait for you to wake up. Something had to be done, so I gave them permission." She swallowed hard, trying to stop the shaking in her bones. Every word he said was firmly grounded in logic and common sense. Every word, she knew, was true. Still, there remained a part deep inside her that logic could not quickly reach. Pavlov had infected this part long ago, and it ate at her even now, as she nodded to acknowledge Skinner. "My apologies, Dana Scully." A strange man spoke to her, and she assumed it to be the healer. "My name is Che. I am sorry if I frightened you. We don't make it a practice to enter minds without consent of the patient." In his words she read a strand of defensiveness, the kind that grew on a person after so many false accusations. After all, the man was a hybrid. Among the colonists he might have been accepted-- to a degree-- but among the rest of the world, his people were openly despised. It said something about the strange reversal of fate when she was no longer surprised to meet one face to face. Or felt any shock to learn of their talents. They were based not in mysticism but in science, abilities fostered by the alien DNA that intertwined with their human genes. Each hybrid manifested a singular "trait"-- empathy, healing, enhanced mental or physical powers. Survival tools, she thought. Nature's "forgive me" gift for turning them loose in a world that wanted them all to die. "You did what you had to do." She forced her lips to turn up into a smile. "I'm just a little unstable when I first wake up from mild concussions." She meant it to sound like a joke, admittedly a lame one. Che nodded in understanding-- of what she wasn't sure, because his eyes had a strange sense of comprehension as if he knew what really made her shake. Well, the man....no, the *thing*....had been inside her head. A fresh surge of nausea washed up from her gut, and she pressed her teeth into a thin line before she further humiliated herself by throwing up Skinner's shirt. Now that she had seen the presence that had been mingled with hers, she could search his eyes for malice, and she found the opposite, a warm sense of compassion. Almost humanity. How odd. But it was still her mind, and they still had not asked, so she refused to relax. Even if she was grateful. "Thank you.....Che." Scully barely remembered to attach his name, and forced herself into awareness. "For healing me." The hybrid smiled. Another sign of almost-humanity. Skinner had retreated a bit to allow her the personal space he knew she would want, but his gaze hovered close to her. He could see through her thin smile, see her fists gripping the edge of the bed with a desperation that didn't quite stop the shaking visible around her wrists and knuckles. "All right, she's awake now." he addressed the room in his don't-make-me-repeat-it tone. "Give her a bit of privacy." The room cleared in moments. A satisfaction warmed his gut that he could still give orders. "You don't have to worry about Che." he said. "I've talked to him and he's on our side." She hadn't moved, still sitting ramrod straight on the bed, her eyes not quite focused on anything. It disturbed him just the tiniest bit. "Are you-" "I'm fine." She cut him off before he'd even finished, not even looking at him as she stirred to her feet. Well what had he been expecting? The truth? It wasn't so easy with her. He didn't regret giving the hybrid permission to heal Scully, but he hadn't expected her to react so violently. /You should have explained to them. You should have told them she had scars in her mind./ He hadn't wanted to betray a confidence. Scully had only spoke of Pavlov to him once, explaining in supreme detachment only the bare facts. He knew the alien had interrogated her and Mulder when they were in the camps. He had learned of Pavlov's reputation early on, as a high-ranking official of the Resistance privy to all intelligence briefings. The creature had preyed on minds. With vicious relish. Skinner had decided long ago that the monster had tried the same trick with her; after that he hadn't wanted details. It was more than enough to know that she woke up screaming, and he had to be the one answer her cries even though he was not the one whose name she called. Now she claimed to be done with her demons, but he sensed them inside her. Maybe Mulder free her from them. If the man's own darkness hadn't consumed him, by now... "They healed you too?" Scully said, more to break a silence than to ask a question. He had been staring at her too long without speaking, and she didn't like it. "Yes. A few hours before you." He omitted the fact that he had been dying at the time. Her eyes turned around the room in a methodical examination of her surroundings. The ceiling and walls were made of adobe brick, and several open windows allowed the morning sun to share its brilliance with the room. Outside, she could see miles upon miles of desert, flung carelessly in every direction under the azure sky. "Where are we?" "Somewhere in Mexico. I'm not sure of the exact location, but we'll be here until we get cleared to move into the States." "And Mulder?" She tried to keep the anxiety out of her tone. "Did you ask them about him?" When Skinner nodded, she felt like she could breathe safely again. "They said he'll meet us. From what I can gather, he's left his former.....employers." The word caused a stagger in the air, several silent moments when each of them were reminded just what that meant. /Employers./ Scully nearly shivered. She knew he had murdered his sister, and that he had done it to earn her freedom. That alone caused her to wonder if she could look him in the eye. But there was more. He never told her how many men he'd killed, but her instinct knew he had done things. Terrible, Colonist things that she wasn't sure she wanted to find out about. Ever. If she did, she might not be able to live with him..... "Where do we meet him?" She didn't really need to know, but the question served as a convenient distraction from her fears. "Freedom City." he told her. "It's the capital of our territories." Her eyes widened. "The Resistance has territories?" He hadn't realized she'd been out of the loop so long, but then again she and Mulder had always preferred to keep to themselves. "Over the past two years, we've acquired substantial holdings in the northwestern quadrants. Freedom City is the central headquarters. Most of our people live there, in between assignments. The territory was still disputed when I left, but from what they tell me, it's been securely ours for quite some time....." She tried to listen to what he was saying, but her mind inevitably slipped back to Mulder. What would she say to him? What would she do? The questions went beyond the initial meeting. She had to decide how much she wanted to pretend. The last time he had visited her, they had avoided the truth. Oh, they touched the surface when he told her about Samantha, but both of them had known it was merely the tip of the iceberg. Something fundamental in both of them had changed. It had been easy to ignore that. After all, they had been apart so long, and the sheer need to be near, to touch, was tremendous. So tremendous they played a weeklong game of make believe. A wonderful, beautiful game in which they were both the idealists they had been once, where she didn't taste the blood of innocent men inside his kiss. Now she stretched her eyes out the window, scouring the desert from corner to corner, knowing that she could not pretend anymore. "You haven't heard a word I said, have you?" Skinner's voice filtered slowly through her thoughts like a dust particle floats through a ray of light. She shook herself out of her mind long enough to smile ruefully. "Is it that obvious?' A cloud passed over the sun, turning the room into a patchwork quilt of shadow and light. A splotch of gold slid across his face as he spoke, slowly and carefully. "You don't have to meet him if you don't want to. If you need more time...." "No." Scully stood to her feet, rubbing her hands up and down her forearm to shake away the chills she told herself were leftover from sleep. "I want to see him again. I just don't know what will happen after that." She turned back to face Skinner. "He isn't one of them." Her tone wavered, unsure even of itself. "He isn't." The core of her eyes raked Skinner's for some affirmation, some agreement. "You'll have to ask him that." /What if I don't want to?/ She whispered the thought softly to her innermost mind. /What if I just want it to be like it was?/ "What do you think?" He didn't answer her immediately, crossing the room and picking up his gun as if he meant to inspect it. She wondered if he ignored her, but soon enough he spoke, slowly and deliberately. "I think he was a good man. I've never seen anyone like him. I think that you two had something remarkable. I've never seen anything like that either. It was not lost on her that he spoke in the past tense. "And?" "We'll meet him in Freedom City. Talk to him. Ask him what you think you have to. If you find that you want to leave, all you have to do is say the word and we'll go." His words settled into the air, and somehow they comforted her in the tiniest of ways. Her face eased into a smile that was pale yet genuine. "Thank you, Skinner." Without warning she picked up her gun and left the room. Skinner watched her leave, noticed the gleam in her eyes that might have been a tear, and in his mind made a promise that if Mulder ever tried to hurt that woman, he would be dead before he laid a finger on her. He said it knowing Mulder had been a friend once. He said it knowing how killing changed a man. to be continued. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - the Muse and I are dying to know what you think, so please send any all comments to clone347@aol.com Feedback is welcomed with small shrines staffed by Mulder and Krycek clones. From: clone347@aol.com Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 23:07:13 EDT Subject: xfc: NEW : Becoming Judas II : Resurrection --- by darkstar (7/32) Source: xfc Title : Becoming Judas II : Resurrection Author : darkstar Email : clone347@aol.com Feedback : adored and craved Website : http://members.tripod.com/darkstar_phile/index.htm Archive : I would be honored, only please let me know. Category : MSR/Angst/Post-Colonization Spoilers : None Rating : PG-13 for war violence Disclaimer : See Introduction Summary: He sold his soul. Now he wants it back. Disgusted with the life he is living and the man he has become, Mulder breaks from the Colonists and risks everything for one last chance at humanity with Scully. But redemption, like betrayal, has its own price. - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (7/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - Evil minds change good to their own nature. - Shelley He lifted the brush from the canvas, leaving behind a smear of reddish-black paint that blended delightfully with the fear in the air. There. Almost complete. Perhaps a greater hint of terror in the eyes, or a more pronounced tremble in the brow..... He glanced from the painting toward the subject, a wisp of a girl shivering in the corner. Wet diamonds of sweat beaded her skin. Her fingers twisted through each other in knots and chains, sometimes breaking free to run in tangles through her matted hair as her dark eyes flared. The soft pink lines of her lips moved rapidly in an incoherent plea of mercy. A few more minutes in her terror and she would have no mind left to break. She made a beautiful subject, he thought. Delicate. Fragile. And she bored him to death. It had taken him a mere ten minutes to reduce her from an alert, rational human into a sniveling waste of utter fear. There had been only one attempt at resistance, a feeble thing that he had overcome without even breaking a sweat. At least the painting kept his mind occupied, yet it was a poor substitute for the mental conquest he so desired. Perhaps it was time to ease up a little. If continued too long, the emotions could grow stale. Now was the time for something fresh, something new... the final brushstroke he needed to give life to his latest creation. He ran his eyes across the painting again, across the mirror image of the girl's face reflected on the canvas, his mind searching for the missing piece. It was in the eyes. The spark of life was missing from them, long since extinguished by his smothering. He wanted to restore it, momentarily, if only to capture it as it died again before his eyes. If he was extraordinarily lucky, it might even provide some mental stimulus in the process. Maybe. Fighting off a yawn, he set his brushes down and began to walk toward the girl. He felt a fresh jolt of terror cross from her mind into his, sharp and bitter like gunpowder. But now was the time for peace. Wonderful, naive, bliss. After all, he had always told his colleagues that you had to give someone the world before you could really take it away. His hand captured hers, felt the bones in her fingers tremble, five tiny butterflies caught in a net. She would not look at him. Not yet. He closed his eyes and began to enter her mind. Slowly, very slowly, he waded through the black sea of her emotions-- trying not to be distracted by the wonderful maelstrom of fear whipping the air into a frenzy-- until he could spot a flicker of gold on the horizon. Ah, hope. Such a human trait. He fastened his energy on the remaining sparks, nurturing and strengthening them as carefully as a mother nurses her newborn child. After all, hope could be very fragile when damaged, and she had never possessed a strong will to begin with. That vaguely annoyed him, giving him the sudden violent urge to rip her mind into pieces. He was forced to hesitate a moment until the craving had subsided. If passion did indeed keep men alive, he had learned that self-control kept them alive and well. It would be so much sweeter to crush her when the time had ripened to fullness. /Don't be afraid./ Now he let his voice fill the cavities of her mind, hidden just under her conscious thoughts. /I'm here to protect you. To shelter you./ A caress, disgustingly soft, across the back of her hand. He had found that slight physical touch often enhanced mental bonding. Already he could feel her beginning to warm to him, in spite of her better judgment. /You wanted to be safe. We all do. You are safe, here. Now. I won't let anyone hurt you./ Time to awaken a little confidence. He touched the emotion gently, stirring it up in a flutter of whispers. The fear began to quiet He could feel it in her mind, in her pulse. A pale shade of blue settled over the center of her mind. /Yes, that's a good girl. Trust me./ He opened his eyes to see her smiling at him. The spark of life he had searched for burned bright in her eyes, without any trace of the fear she had felt moments earlier. Even though the conquest had been easy, he could not help but feel a thrill at the power he held over her every desire. His lips broadened as he returned a smile. His mind reached deep into hers, as deep as emotions lie. It took him seven minutes to finish the painting. It had only taken him five to tear her apart. Her body slumped in the corner where she had ultimately lost consciousness after the anguish became too great for her mind. Large red gouges ran the length of her face, self-inflicted by her fingernails during the chaos of the last few seconds. Blood ran from the tears her teeth made in her lips. She was a member of a large refugee party that had arrived from one of the experimental colonies the Imperials used to test their latest bioweapons. They had walked for over a week, and most were half-dead from exhaustion but there was a joy in their eyes as they looked upon what they thought was to be their home. Wrong. Exposure to the alien viruses was a contamination of the worst sort, one he could never allow inside Freedom City. The whole filthy lot of them had been shot dead in a dusty little valley behind the city. Well, almost all of them. At his request, Domingo had saved a few of the more promising females for him. After all, a week's hard journey through hostile territory was an act of defiance. An act of will. From that, he had hoped the girls would make a fitting challenge, but all had crumbled in moments. This shaking woman-child before him was the only one left. How weak. Pathetic. *Human.* No wonder the aliens were winning the war. The shrill beep of his communications link brought him from his reverie. He picked it up and put it back in his ear before it could annoy him further. "Yes?" The words were cold. Abrupt. He had left specific orders that he was not to be disturbed during his leisure hours. Full-humans were so....protective....of the sanctity of the mind. There might be misunderstandings. "Fox Mulder is here. You wanted me to let you know." He visibly relaxed when he recognized the voice as belonging to his second-in-command Domingo, an old friend who understood his....needs....and who often arranged for a fresh "painting subject" whenever he requested one. Yet at the mention of Mulder's name, little springs of tension gathered at the base of his spine, taut and waiting for release. His voice, however, showed none of this. "Is he now." "He's demanding to know about the woman, Scully. Wants to hear some kind of progress report on her situation." "Have we got a report?" "I put it on your desk an hour ago." "Give me fifteen minutes to review the file. Then I will talk to Mulder." "I don't think he will wait that long." "Then you'll have to make him." "Yes sir." "Oh, and when you get a chance, the little sow you brought me from those Contaminates is in my room. She is no longer of any interest to me. Dispose of her in the usual manner." Without waiting for the reply, he switched off the com-link and headed for his office, stopping once in the bathroom to wash the paint from his hands. After all, the Leader of the Humanity Corps must never appear to be anything less than professional. If you read the propaganda banners, he was the man who represented the finest elements of the human race; the demi-god who acted as political counselor, chief warrior, and brother of all people. And he didn't spare one backward glance for the sobbing woman lying broken on the floor behind him. * * * * * * * * * * * * * Nicolas had been born a full human; now he was less so. It was not visible on his skin, but deeper, etched forever into the grooves of his mind and his thoughts like DNA graffiti drawn by an angry street artist. Once it had not been his choice but now it formed an integral part of his life. He did not know how much the scalpel of his enemies stole from him-- if they fully completed their project or if they had only begun when he escaped. The details did not matter, only the results. At first it had been strange, to see the dreams of others glide through the night with his own, to feel the whisper of their emotions against his, but he had adapted to the change like any good soldier. Adapted and evolved. His mind was his greatest weapon, responsible for the power he held over every man, woman, and child in the resistance. Thousands of cattle, all moving and breathing as he alone dictated. Those who resisted were cut down as straw and sifted into dust. Yet now was not a moment to appreciate this power; rather his focus tangled about a possible threat to it. Two files lay on his desk. One told of the successful extraction of General Skinner and Dana Scully from Chile, reporting that the retrieval had arrived at a substation in Mexico and awaited clearance to proceed to Freedom City. Right on schedule. They could be here in three days if he so wished, but there was good reason to keep the squad and their two guests away. That reason could be found in the other folder, the detailed black-and-white evidence of a man some had only thought was a legend. How unfortunate he was not. Name : Fox William Mulder. Rank : Commander, Level Three. Length of Employment : Fourteen months Most current partner : Alex Krycek, Commander Level Five. Area of field specialty : Neutralization and containment. Mission success rate : 95.4 % Kill rate : 98 % His lips tightened in tacit admiration as he skimmed the details of the folder. "Neutralization and containment" was government language that meant he killed anyone and everyone who became a "threat to the status quo." A gory line of work that took a firm hand and a firmer gut. Not that the man in question would have any problems with either. The Enforcer dossier acted only as confirmation to the many rumors of this Mulder. First man to fight the Colonists, even before the Invasion. Taught humans how to kill them. Led the first organized attack against an Imperial stronghold; it was a victory. After the bounty on his head reached $20,000-- which didn't take long-- he left the organized resistance with his former partner Dana Scully and started his own private war. Neutralization specialty indeed. The peasants whispered that the two of them had killed over a hundred of the enemy, one by one. Some of them quite high-ranking. Like any heroes, their luck eventually ran out and they ended up rotting in one of the infamous Arizona camps. Most thought they died there. Nicolas knew better. He had read the transcripts of the interrogations, which had been conducted by the Director of Intelligence himself, an alien mind-specialist known as Pavlov whose taste for power only barely exceeded his taste for cruelty. If one read between the lines, it wasn't hard to notice that the monster had preferred the woman to the man. Had most likely done quite a few nasty things inside her head. Surprisingly enough, she hadn't been the one to break. The records listed only Mulder's confession, admitting his treason and agreeing to work for the Enforcers as long as he was able. Pardons for him and Scully were issued immediately. In a bit of interesting detail, a Samantha Ann Mulder had been buried the same day. Trusted sources reported Mulder had shot his kid sister to prove his loyalty to his new bosses. Talk about loving wisely but none too well. Scully had disappeared as soon as she was released. Important people tried to find her-- none succeeded. Pavlov might have been close, but he died in a "training accident" at the Mexican border. The official records said nothing more, but then again the big brass never did like to admit when their own people were killed. Especially by one human, working alone. Yes, the rumors said Mulder had killed him. And it was true that he had been on "extended leave" when the tragedy occurred. So what did he, Nicolas have on his hands? A man who knew how to kill but also how to survive politics as well as bullets. You didn't knock off the Director of Intelligence and live unless you were as smart in the head as your were on your feet. A soldier whose loyalty was as of yet unclear, except perhaps in his devotion to the woman he seemed so ready to kill for. Useful as an ally? Even deadlier as an enemy. /Just wait until the masses get wind he's not some ghost. Ninety percent of them haven't even seen him, but they won't care. He's their bloody hero./ A thin film of disgust slid over his eyes. /They scream his name when they charge enemy lines. Just the sort of man Skinner and his friends would love to put up for Leader./ The deciding matter lay in the delicate issue of control. Mulder was a killer, and most of them were just the same as the weapons they used. Simple tools, either for benefit or ruin depending on their controller. If he kept Mulder in his place, he gained an ally. If the man became a threat, well that took care of itself easy enough. Heroes died every day. Nicolas glanced down at the file on Scully, his brain moving bits and pieces of strategy into one coherent form. A passage from The Art of War came into his mind, and he could almost hear Sun Tzu's crusty old voice as the warrior divulged his secrets. /Therefore when you want to do battle, even if the opponent is deeply entrenched in a defensive position, he will be unable to avoid fighting if you attack where he will surely go to the rescue./ Commander Mulder obviously placed a high price on the safety of this Scully woman. Cut her and he bled. Nicolas doubted Mulder would rest until she was safe again by his side. However many weeks.....or even months.....that might take. Depending, of course, on how well the man took orders. Of course, he could use his.....talents.....to speed the process. Men like Mulder lived by their emotions as much as by their logic. It proved very convenient. A slow smile spread his across his lips until the scar of the corner of his mouth twisted into a crescent moon. A challenge. At long last. He picked up his com link and keyed it to outgoing mode. "Show him in." Leaning back in his chair, he slid the file containing the report on the rescue mission into a drawer. That was business and businessbored him. This was time to play. Mulder's mind painted nightmares across the bland white tile of the floor until he was watching his own worst fears play out before his very eyes. He saw Skinner die a hundred different ways-- in fire, in bullets, in the camps-- and it was his fault. He saw Scully lying broken on the ground, her blood anointing her body like myrrh; or even worse, he saw her alive with dead eyes and a strange man's fingerprints on her skin. And it was his fault. There should have been some word by now. Any sort of report would be better than this mind-ripping insanity of not knowing. /Don't worry,/ they told him when he handed them the disk to make the defection official. /Your friends will be fine./ Those had been easy words meant to placate him, and nothing more. The Corps had what they wanted. The disk had been sent ahead of him, a required payment before any rescue parties left for South America. Now they could just as easily decide that it was too much trouble for the lives of a mere two people, and cancel the mission altogether. /We're so sorry, Commander Mulder, but we were too late. She's dead. Now take this gun and go kill for us like a good boy./ He closed his eyes, fingers gripping the cross around his neck until the edges left imprints in his skin. He promised Scully's God a thousand Hail Marys if only she could be safe. Heaven might not listen to people like him, but he had to try. It was not hard to ask the all-powerful for help when your own hands were tied behind your back. Or even better, to confide his deepest woes to a tall glass of vodka.... A woman walked into the hall, her words as short and clipped as the sound of her high-heels on the floor. "He will see you now." She turned and began to walk back where she came from, obviously expecting him to follow. Mulder did, using all his self-control to keep from breaking into a dead run. The answers he needed were simply moments away. Some word, any word at all. The woman left him at a plain door made of smoothly polished oak devoid of marking other than the large red insignia of the Humanity Corps-- a phoenix rising from the ashes of the world with a banner in his mouth proclaiming to all "Long Live the Brotherhood of Humanity". Mulder took a deep breath and knocked. "Come in, it's open." The voice, a warm scarf of offered friendship, floated through the door to wrap his nerves in an oddly soothing warmth as he walked into the room. From what he knew of Nicolas' background as a soldier, Mulder had expected a man much like the military leaders of the old times, with every bit of the cold impersonality. Nicolas' office went in direct contradiction of that assumption. The furniture was sparse enough-- a desk, a few chairs, a bookshelf-- but a surprising air of personality permeated the room. In the left corner, an open window allowed a slight breeze to fan the leaves of a small potted plant growing bravely on the windowsill. Roses, so they appeared to be. He hadn't seen any for years.....were these genetic hybrids? Either way they were lovely and threw a splash of crimson against the grayish-blue walls and carpet. Directly behind Nicolas' desk, a large painting occupied most of the center of the wall. It showed a close portrait of a girl's eyes, large and doe-brown in a sea of reddish black swirls streaked with golden light. The eyes were beautiful, shining brightly with a sense of hope and joy, yet the longer you stared at them, the more you came to notice the hint of fear towards to back of the gaze. It was only a glimmer, so slight he could have imagined it, but it was there. Some of the paint looked like it was still wet. It struck something vaguely unsettling far below his stomach, and Mulder turned his attention away before it could root any further into his mind. "Do you like it?" Mulder turned to face the man sitting behind the desk, knowing he was looking at one who possessed power not simply in name, but in every part of him. /So this is Nicolas...../ The Viking blue of his eyes glowed in striking contrast against his white-blonde hair and pale skin. The eyes were so intense that they seemed to pierce past the face and enter the mind like twin extensions of Nicolas' soul. He was at least a head shorter than Mulder, but built with enough muscle to more than adequately make up for the height. He wore no formal identification-- not that it was needed. An air of power flowed around the man, matched only by the sense of secrecy that rippled in undercurrents throughout the room, tasting every so slightly of danger. /Don't listen to those stupid superstitions now./ He chided himself, knowing it was what Scully would have done had she been here. She would have told him exactly what he was now about to tell himself. /This is a man. One of the most powerful men in the nation, but he lives and breathes just like you do./ The thought gave him what he needed to break away from those eyes; he knew he came close to staring too long. It couldn't be helped. "The painting....do you like it?" Nicolas repeated the question, and Mulder realized he hadn't answered yet. "It is....strange.....but there is appeal to it. The sense of chaos around her plays well against the look in her eyes. Who was the artist?" "I was." In that statement there was the pride of a child showing off his new chrome bike. "It's a way to take my mind off the war and the pressures of running the nation's largest freed city. I guess it's part hobby, part therapy, huh?" He laughed and the sound filtered deep into Mulder's brain. It struck a chord within him, something that warmed to the camaraderie in the laugh. "As a psychologist," Nicolas continued, "I'm sure you understand the benefits of an escape. This one happens to be one of my new creations. Just finished it this morning." He craned his head back over his shoulder to face the picture. It was a long-standing habit of his to display his "trophies" after he had conquered them, but looking at this particular girl brought little pleasure. She had been too quickly beaten, too submissive. Not at all like the real women he desired, the ones who fought and struggled and then broken into a million delicate shards. "She is the younger sister of one of my assistants." The lie was a gauge, a test of Mulder's mental and physical capacity for emotion or control. "Charming girl." Visibly, Mulder's only reaction was a momentary tension in the wrinkles at his eyes, but mentally the probe yielded far greater reward. A spasm of regret burst like a solar flare from the burning wall of Mulder's outer defenses. At the pupil of his mind's eye, Nicolas saw it, felt it run deep and quick like a scalpel blade through the marrow of his bones. Oh, there was deep pain here. The tunnel it left would probably lead him straight to the core of Mulder's subconscious. The defenses were many, but if he could harness even the tiniest piece of emotion, he could use it to influence a great many more. As the "flare" lessened back to normal, Nicolas extended his own mind, watching it reach out like a slender black vine to curl around the regret. He hoped to follow it past the outer wall, but found himself stopped short on the outside. His nostrils flared slightly, although he was not too concerned. He never expected victory to come with ease. All this took place while his voice continued to talk, carrying on the normalcy of conversation to keep Mulder occupied. It was unusual for someone to pick up on subconscious intervention, but the cautious lived longer than the confident. "Why did you come to see me?" he asked, his finger aching for his brushes and paints. This landscape of this mind was unbelievable! Most of the emotions he encountered in the subconscious were unorganized, wisps and muted colors of all the things that made men human. Not so in Mulder's mind. The sum of his emotions coalesced into a great ball of fire, as if it were the heart of a star. It burned predominantly black with remorse and shame and self-loathing, but breaks of color mottled the surface, here and there. White, scarce in most places but growing slowly, for hope. Red....lots of red....that signified his loyalties, his devotion, his love. In fact, most of the red intertwined with the black until it was nearly impossible to tell the two apart. /The woman affects him more than I even imagined. Even in his darkness, she is every part of him./ All this he saw, but could not touch. An invisible wall held him back, pushing with the force of ten angels, and Nicolas was forced to cling tight to what little footing he had. Expansion, at this point was out of the question. "I wanted to know if you had received any reports on Scully." Mulder answered the question, little red-black-white tongues of flame bubbling from the surface of his mind as he spoke. Nicolas allowed his brow to furrow into a frown of concern, attempting to bleed the emotion into Mulder through the tiny gap in defense the regret-flare had left for him. He would need to speak this one, to add the power of words to thoughts. "I received word a few hours ago. I am afraid it was not good." His shoulders sank in a heavy sigh. /Feel it. Feel the urgency./ Mulder shifted uncomfortably in his seat, his fingers tightening on the armrest. Good. That was a good sign. The tension in the man's eyes echoed as a blatant scream in his mind. Nicolas took care not to push so far as to alert Mulder to his presence. No, he merely sat and waited for Mulder's own emotions to rise. All it took were a few well-spun lies, and a mind quick enough to jump through the gap when it opened. And it would open. He honed his words into a razor blade that cut deep into the flesh. "There was Imperial interference." "And?" Oh just listen to that voice. The word positively tore from the man's throat. Delicious. The anguish would be obvious even to a normal human. He wanted to smile, but kept his face in a grave seriousness. "They escaped, but were forced to go underground. The border has been alerted, and it is nearly impossible to get through once the authorities are expecting you." "So what are you telling me? That they have to stay in Mexico?" "Until the pressure is off, yes." "And how long is that?" /Here it comes, here it comes. I'm gonna make you squirm like a little cockroach./ "Indefinitely." Mulder's jaw tightened and his mind shook with all the force of thunder, nearly dislodging Nicolas from his foothold. His eyes crackled flame as he spoke but his voice remained cool, barely kept under control by a glacier of restraint. Very impressive. "That's not good enough." "It will have to be." "No." The ice cracked along the edge, just a seam. Nicolas waited for the mental break but it did not come. Not yet. Mulder's voice remained steady as he continued. "It is not good enough. I was told she would meet me here if I gave you your information. You have what you want. Now keep your end of the deal, or I will have no cause to keep mine." Ah, about time for a threat or two. To give credit where credit was due, he believed Mulder had every intention of carrying out his word to the letter. That could be a nasty problem. A renegade Enforcer with a grudge loose within the Corps......they'd lose half of their best people trying to kill him. Maybe more. Nicolas leaned forward, his voice still aglow with friendship and more than a little patience. In his mind he sent waves of sympathy toward Mulder. The man's defense walls shivered a little. It was a sign the emotion was getting through. "Commander Mulder, there is no need for that. We are giving it our absolute best effort, given our limited resources." "You don't look limited to me." "There is a war going on here, man. We can't call every operative in from the field just to escort a woman across the border. I'm giving all I can spare, but we barely have enough fighting men to keep our heads above water now." "I'm only asking you to send one more team to the border." His voice and mind quivered slightly with pleading. Desperation shone in the corner of his eyes. He would crack soon, and even if it was only for a moment, any big flare of emotion would be enough to open a doorway. "There doesn't have to be a fight...." Mulder said. "Just get them to bribe the necessary people." Nicolas nodded, as if the idea left him deep in thought. Mulder fell into his role perfectly. A few more suggestions, and he'd be more than willing to kill again for the honor and glory of the Corps. Well, at least for the honor and glory of his woman. Killers were always killers. Some tried redemption, but it was always too difficult to erase the blood. Mulder would learn this. Besides, he was much more valuable to the cause behind the trigger of a gun rather than behind a desk. Nicolas tensed his mind as he began to move the final pieces into place. "I have a man who is connected down there," he said. "but he is currently assigned to a patrol team in this sector. I don't have another man to fill that spot." He focused his eyes straight into Mulder's. "Unless you take his place." "No." The answer was immediate. "I came here to get away from killing. Not continue it." These were sensitive moments, Nicolas knew. If he pushed too hard, Mulder would grow angry and storm off to find her on his own. He'd probably succeed too. There had to be just the right balance, the right play between guilt and honor. He decided to incite honor first. "You don't have the stomach for it?" "I will do what I have to when I have to." The words were soft. Words of a man who do not speak idly. "But I came here to change, and that is what I have to do now. No more death. No more murder. I came here to change." "But this is change, don't you see!" Nicolas felt his voice rise and his thoughts along with it. "Your woman remembers the days when you believed in something. She will come looking for that man, not someone hiding behind a desk afraid to get blood on his hands." The guilt was beginning to build.....only a little more. A little more was all he needed. He let his words trail off into silence, hoping it would grind away at Mulder's resolve. When Mulder spoke again, his voice was quiet. Subdued, with a hint of strain. "She knows who I am." "Yes, but will she find you are willing to do what it takes to redeem yourself? Or will she find that you do not love her enough to take that risk." Mulder's eyes closed, his head moving forward as if he was struck by a great pain. For a moment, it seemed he would rush from the room. But then his mind opened, and it did so all at once in a gaping wound of crimson guilt. Even without the knowledge of conscious thought, Nicolas could imagine what was going through his mind. Memories, no doubt. Mental records of the brutality he had committed. He didn't stop to ponder the details, but simply sent the tendril of his mind deep into the wound, probing and searching until he found an entrance. By the time Mulder spoke again, his mind sprang back to full defense, but it had taken him a moment too long. Nicolas had a foot in the door. It was only a matter of time, now, until he was fully inside. Only a matter of time. to be continued. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (8/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - "I will consider it." He said, hating himself for even saying such a thing but seeing no other way. The thought of her ached inside him, a slow nuclear burn that would never cool until he could touch her again. If he could ever prove himself worthy of such an honor. Memories flickered in and out of his mind in chain reaction after chain reaction. Holding dead children in his arms. Shooting a man and wife on their wedding night and not listening when the man had pleaded mercy for the woman he loved. Conducting "interrogations" on teenage kids that used tactics brutal enough to break Marines. The death of his sister, his beautiful innocent sister... To return to that? His soul whimpered at the thought but if that is what it took.... "That is all I ask." Nicolas told him, blue eyes melting with understanding and empathy that might be real and might be crocodile tears. "That you consider. You will have to do what is right in your own eyes, but you might want to do it soon. The longer we wait to act, the slimmer the chance is we will reach the squad before the satellites pick them up. Deep cover technology only hides so much." "Soon." Mulder said, making a conscious effort to keep his answer vague. A deeper-than-gut instinct whispered that he could trust this man, but there was something strange about the feeling, about the voice that whispered it through his mind one layer at a time. It set another chorus of voices rippling throughout his thoughts, that of the finely honed survival instincts he had acquired as first a fugitive and even more so as an Enforcer hunter-killer. They asked him how Nicolas seemed to know so much about him, to possess intimate knowledge of his strengths and weaknesses. He had no idea which voice to listen to, but he knew he had to get away from Nicolas in order to decide. Being near the man caused a sort of cloud to level over his mind, as if he was two thirds into a vodka buzz. Not a pleasant feeling. He left the room and did not look back. Even though he *felt* he should have. So strongly it was almost.....unnatural. He did not pursue the notion, too wrapped up in Scully to see anything else at all. * * * * * * * * * * * * * Five hours later, Mulder had slid to the edge of desperation and climbed back up the slope countless times, only to falter again in the muck and mire of his doubt, and fall. And climb. And fall. And climb again..... "Scully...." The words pressed hot and lonely between his clenched teeth, eyelids squeezed shut as if he could somehow block it all out. He threaded his hands through one another and tried to imagine one of them belonged to her. "Scully......I need you." He could pretend, couldn't he? That talking would make her appear? /I need you to tell me what to do. I am blind without you, and in this place I am afraid of the dark.../ Until now, he had been so sure he knew how to find his way back to the light. You simply avoided the darkness. Now he was being offered another way, one that kept him in the twilight, within view of the light but still using the methods he had left behind forever. The offer tempted him. A much easier path..... /But isn't that supposed to be a danger sign?/ He sighed heavily, his fingers combing through his hair. "You were the one who knew about faith and repentance and redemption. Not me. Is it supposed to be hard?" All he knew was that you were supposed to pay for your crimes. To him, that implied difficulty. Something had to be given up. So how could he possibly use his gun for good after he had used it for so much evil? "I don't know if I should trust him, Scully. We're little more than strangers, but he knew....things....about me. More than intuition. Call me Spooky, but every word he said was like a double-edged knife, outwardly harmless yet pricking me in wounds I take great pain to hide. He is more than what he seems, I suspect. How much more? I can't tell." Manipulation was nothing new to him. First they had used Samantha, and now that she was.....out of the picture...they would try to use Scully. "I won't be led about blindly, but I don't have a choice. Not as long as you're in the open. I need Corps resources to get you back. Where I can protect you, like I should have in the first place. I should have made them take me with them. Forgive me for my fear of you." He paused, teeth grinding atop one another in frustration. "But on the other hand, some of his words fascinate me. He says I can become like I was before...when white was good and black was evil and we were both shining white. Not gray, not this filthy dirty gray and why aren't you here to tell me which way is up and which way is down?" Simple. He stood alone because he was too proud to do what he had to in order to bring her to his side. /Why do you suddenly cling to morals?/ A voice from within bit at his soul, the tone hard and sharp like the click of his trigger when it moved into play. /You never felt a problem trampling on them before./ But he had felt something. That's why he was here. /All they want you to do is lead a patrol team. Just scout work. Probably not even ordered to fight. Who cares what Nicolas thinks he knows about you? All you have to do is behave for a couple of days, a week at the most, and she'll be here. Then you can decide for yourself what your next move will be./ Yet still, he had promised he would leave *all* of that behind. Not some of it. All of it. His footsteps kept tempo with the struggle, wearing against the concrete as he crossed and re-crossed the small distance from wall to wall. The temporary quarters he had given closed in around him to produce an effect of an animal in a cage. Helpless. "I want you so bad I can barely breathe." He whispered, stopping dead in his tracks and listening to the echo of his voice skip to the angels in the silences around him. "I have to have you to breathe. Everything I have done so far has been for that. If I can't have you beside me when I'm human again, then none of it will matter." He knew what he had to do. His fingers touched the cross on his neck as he left the room. The kiss of metal to warm skin served as a soundless benediction or maybe the last dying flutter of a prayer. /They will try to control me. Nicolas, whoever or whatever he may be, will try to use me to fight his war for him. That's fine. I'll be the blind man and I'll act the fool but two can play at puppet strings. They will give me what I want. They will give me you./ "I'll do it." He took no time for pleasantries, stating the reason for his visit as soon as he had set foot in the door. Nicolas looked up from the book he was reading and smiled. "Excellent. I knew the Cause could count on you." "When can your man leave for the border?" "Tonight, of course. You'll take over his patrol immediately.....I've arranged for you to meet with the acting lieutenant in one hour to go over the basics. His name is Dodges.....a fine soldier who's been on the patrol shift a while. He'll show you how things are done until you get used to the routine." It didn't escape Mulder's notice that Nicolas had made the arrangements *before* he himself had agreed. The survival voices hummed angrily. "What makes you think this is any different from the work I did as an Enforcer?" he said, throwing the challenge on Nicolas's desk as if it were a gauntlet. "Your focus is all wrong, Mulder." Nicolas never raised above a soft lilt, although his eyes shone like they harnessed lightening. Mulder felt the "buzz effect" begin to grow in the back of his mind, like a sliver underneath his conscious thought. "The methods are of little consequence. It's all in what you're fighting for. What you believe." Although he was quiet, he spoke with the passion of a man who believed every word he was saying. Men like that were rare in the world today. It didn't always mean you could trust them, but it did call for at least a little admiration. "Do you believe in our cause?" "I don't know what I believe in." There was a moment of silence, and Nicolas' blue eyes shimmered and refracted the colors of the light into ribbons of thought visible around his pupil. "You feel you've lost your reason. You have survived many things, but only now are you're realizing all it took to do that. It's a hard thing to accept. I know because I went through the same thing you are experience now." Mulder stood listening, every word an arrow driving deeper and deeper into his brain. It was like a throbbing under the skin, the way the turmoil in him reached out for someone else who shared the same burden. The emotion raged so strong it surprised him, for he half-wondered if it didn't come from himself. But where? Nicolas continued to speak. "You will always have to live with the regret. We all do. But there are ways of atonement. Fighting for a pure cause. Bringing justice to those who betray it. These are the things the Humanity Corps was formed to preserve......justice, truth, the old ways. Many here are seeking the same things you are, and we give them means to do that. When you fight for something pure, Mulder, it acts as its own absolution for the mistakes you might have made in the past." After the last word had sounded, Mulder took a deep breath, letting the statements filter one by one through his mind. /A pure cause. Absolution./ Things he desperately wanted to believe but surrender to. Not until he could retreat to solitude and hash them out for himself. For now he'd just accept them at face value, play the good soldier and get Scully back as quickly as possible. Nothing else in the world existed. Nothing mattered. "I do hope you're right." He said. "But if I find out you're wrong, I want a transfer immediately. Something away from field work. Understood?" Nicolas nodded, a tiny smile playing the corner of his mouth. "Of course." He pulled a bottle of Jack Daniel's from a drawer beside him and filled two glasses halfway. "I think this deserves a drink. To a pure cause?" Mulder hesitated as the ghost emotions in his mind pushed him toward the glass. He hadn't touched a drop since they'd left DC. Sort of a token to himself of his earnestness. But this was only half a glass and Nicolas couldn't know about his drinking habits. This was the only polite thing to do. "To a pure cause." His fingers closed around the glass and held to it to his lips but his eyes stared straight at Nicolas. "And a safe border." He drained the glass and he quivered slightly, a sort of ecstasy erupting in long waves up and down his body. It was unbelievable the way he had craved this. He had tasted it in everything he drank, and ate and.....it felt ok. Lowering the glass, he noticed Nicolas had been watching him, the odd sort of gleam in his eye that had been present earlier in the day. "Your team assembles for briefing in four hours. Dodges will help you put that time to good use. Don't worry about the mission. It's nothing like the stuff you pulled back in DC. A simple patrol....really nothing more than an exercise." "I'll be ready." Mulder set the glass down on the table and nodded once in Nicolas' direction. "Thank you for the drink, sir...." He paused, deliberating his next words carefully. "And for the advice." /Yeah, you heard me. You'd better believe me too. Believe I'm your little sheep and you can just lead me beside the bloody waters./ "That's why I'm the Leader. My door is always open if you need someone to talk to. After all, I know redeeming one's soul can be a difficult business. It helps sometimes, to share with someone who has been there. I'd like you to come back at least a couple times a week until you've gotten settled in here. I usually refer new recruits to one of our staff psychologists, but I think I would rather you come to me." /I'll bet you would./ Mulder didn't respond aloud immediately, his mind quickly dissecting the possibilities. On the one hand it could be considered a great honor, and while his spirits warmed with the prospect of release, he had no idea why this offer was being extended to him. Certainly he had done nothing to deserve it. For now it would be better to play along, carefully. His instincts had made him the Bureau's top profiler and he wasn't about to abandon them now. In the end he chose honesty as the best policy. "I might just take you up on that, sir." He began to move away, but Nicolas pushed the bottle toward him. "Take it. You might get thirsty between now and patrol." Mulder felt the muscles in his hand quiver, twitching in the direction of the liquor. There were so many easy justifications. No. He was in control. He made the choices. "No thank you, sir. I try to do my work sober." "Very admirable of you." "It keeps me alive." Before he turned to leave, his eyes strayed back to the painting on the wall. The hint of fear that had caught his attention before magnified itself tenfold now, as if she was trying to warn him of something but couldn't quite find the words. The strange cloud-feeling inside his mind almost seemed to hover around the picture as well. Impossible. /Don't go by superstition. Go by logic. That's what Scully would do./ As he walked away, Mulder did exactly that. Nicolas had yet to prove himself a threat to him or Scully. The element of manipulation might be excused as one of the necessary skills of a leader during war. Then again it might be something else entirely. This was not the time to act, but to watch. Right now he needed the man and his organization. For Scully. Maybe a little bit for himself too, the clouds in his mind whispered. He did not disagree. A few minutes after he left the room, he noticed his head was clear again. Funny. Maybe it was something that had been in the air. Later than night, Mulder discovered that very little of "patrol" had to do with observation, and a great deal had to do with "search and destroy". A drunken group of Imperials was found in a local bar and slaughtered quickly enough, along with the two women who had been entertaining them. The soldier responsible had blamed it on cross fire. A poor excuse at best. The three officers among the dead men were decapitated, their heads and rank markings nailed above the door of the bar as a testament to Corps dominance. Mulder thought it spoke more to the townspeople than to any Imperial. He suspected intimidation was the point here. Dodges had explained that such a demonstration was usual after a kill. Just part of war. Mulder agreed, reluctantly, but he made them bury the women. When he returned to his room, clothes splotched with blood and hands smelling of powder, a bottle of whiskey was waiting for him on the table. Jack Daniel's. He knew what it meant but right then the mental games meant nothing. There was blood-- fresh blood-- on his and it took half of the liquor before he could convince himself that this was any different than the place he had left. Of course it was. This was the resistance. These were the good guys. * * * * * * * * * * * * Mexico/US border One month later. Scully's eyes bored a million critical holes into the glass her reflection cowered behind. Half of her mouth twisted down in a scowl of frustration, the other half in plain and simple disgust. This was what she was going to present Mulder with in just two more days? This....little scrap of a woman whose bones showed through her shirt more than her bust did? Whose skin was roughened by scars instead of flowing and soft like silk under the touch? The disgust deepened. Her face remained pale despite all the time she had spent on the beach-- the Scully clan had always burned, not tanned--and the dull Gray of her dress drained all color from her eyes. It had to be one of the ugliest things she owned, that dress, a coarse and shapeless mass that hung off her like a tent. She would have thrown it away long ago, but it had belonged to her during her fugitive days with Mulder. She had not wanted to toss away the memories, but that didn't mean she wanted to wear them. Looking at herself now, she barely felt female. And he had been living in Washington, no doubt in easy reach of women whose skin was still smooth, whose bodies were more than proportionate, whose eyes were not old. Who owned beautiful dresses. He worked for the government, which in these days meant he could have whatever and whoever he wanted.... Frustation brought the tear to the corner of her eye, blurring the mirror and the gray ghost inside. A simple calculation decided that the view had improved so she did not bother to wipe it away. A soft tapping on her door snapped her attention away from the mirror. It was Skinner. Had to be, because she didn't know any other ex-Marine who knocked on a door like he was afraid he would break it. It was a valid concern....she had lost a door like that when they first arrived in Chile. The man didn't always know his own strength. "Come in." She spun from the mirror, as she spoke, hand deftly swiping the moisture from her eye before he could see. /Smile, woman./ Her autopilot voice piped up inside her head. /You look terrible./ One look at his face told her that if he had noticed anything, he was keeping it to himself. But that was a sneaky habit of his, she had learned. He pretended that he didn't have a clue what was wrong with her until she lowered her guard just a hair, and then suddenly he was seeing straight through her. Skinner opened the door but didn't enter in the room, standing in the hall with his legs spread slightly apart and moving side to side just a little bit. She had never seen him fidget before. When it took him a good fifteen seconds to talk, she began to suspect he hadn't dropped by for a simple chat. "We'll be leaving in two hours. I just wanted to see if you needed any help....packing." He stumbled a bit at the end, searching for a word she'd believe and then cursing for his lack of preparation. It was easier to run a combat mission in downtown DC than it was to slip anything past her. His left hand began to sweat onto the brown paper package behind his back; a slight worry took root that the moisture would somehow soak through the wrapping and damage the items inside. A hard swallow cleared the lump from his throat. What if he was making a mistake? No, he couldn't think that way. /Be a man, Walter. You've seen combat time in two wars. Just hand her the package and complete the mission../ That's what this was. A mission. /You're familiar with that, right? Sure you are./ He determined to complete it. Ever since Scully had heard they were leaving to meet Mulder, there had been a strange shift in her attitude. She barely smiled, and even when she did it seemed forced. He had been puzzled at first, chalking it up to nerves before deciding there might be something more. With a Scully-problem, there usually was. Then on his way to breakfast the day before, he had caught her looking in a mirror, shaking her head. She had turned away when she noticed him, but not quick enough to hide the disgust in her eyes. Mulder wouldn't care if she walked up to him in sackcloth and ashes, but right now she would never believe it. In his best military fashion, Skinner had surveyed the problem, formulated a strategy with the help of a few of the other soldiers, and decided on a rational course of action. What Mulder would have done, he had thought to himself proudly. It had looked much easier on paper. "Pack." She echoed his last words in a dangerously non-committal tone. Uh-oh, her left eyebrow was arching into her favorite "yeah right" expression, the one she used to give Mulder on a daily basis. "I don't have anything to pack. Unless you know something that I don't." His right hand began to sweat as well. /Make the drop off and retreat. Retreat./ "Well, um, you do now." He set the package on the nearest table and vanished back into safe territory before she could respond. Scully stood as still as marble in the moments that he left, her brain working steadily to comprehend what had just happen. A healthy dose of surprise slowed the process considerably. Two good minutes had passed by the time she crossed the room to the table and the mysterious package. The brown paper wrapping crinkled as she ran her hand across it, a Christmas morning sound that brought a brief but happy recollection of stockings, wise men, and angels on the top of a tree. Then she tore into it, her breath hitching in her throat as a brilliant blue hit her full in the eye. She dispensed with the rest of the wrapping as quickly as Melissa used to rip open her presents, not sure whether she could believe her eyes. It was a dress. A soft, beautiful thing the color of the desert sky in April, embroidered with the tiniest white flowers around the edges. It was more than a little different from the clothing she would have chosen is days gone by. The material hugged her fingers as she ran them across the dress; she could only imagine what it would do once it was really on her body. Especially when the only thing holding the whole creation were two spaghetti straps of the palest blue lace. Skinner must have suffered his concussion harder than she had thought. Yet she liked it, and that's what brought a slow and guilty smile to her face. As she held it against her, watching the light makes ripples in the fabric, it struck her how utterly different it was from the respect-me-or-else suits she used to wear, or the designer jeans she donned in off-hours. But she was a different person. She didn't want a black pant suit or a faded pair of jeans. She wanted *this* dress, this utterly ridiculous thing that made her feel like a real woman every time she touched it. In this world dresses of any sort were few and far between, much less clothes with actual beauty. The smile grew a bit wider. The left side of her brain felt more than a little foolish for acting like some teenager holding her first prom dress, so she carefully laid it aside to examine the other contents of the package. There was a more practical set of clothing-- a pair of jeans that seemed to be in good condition apart from a few rips in the knees that she could easily mend, and a plain white cotton T-shirt-- but as she took them out for closer study, something else caught her attention. In fact, it screamed for her attention. Something that looked suspiciously like black satin. /Skinner. You didn't./ He had. Hooking the first, uh, *item*, with her forefinger, she held it up for inspection, not knowing whether to smile, laugh, or blush. The brassiere matched perfectly with the panties, staring up at her with a sort of naughty innocence as she tore a few remaining bits of paper away from them. Scully had been meaning to make a subtle request for some new underclothes, but her mind had geared itself more toward cotton than lace. Black lace, of all things. *Now* she blushed. She tried not to look at it as she removed the last items from the package. They consisted of a tiny silver tube of pale rose-colored lipstick, a powder compact, and a container of pink blush. It was unbelievable. She couldn't even remember the last time she had worn makeup. Once, maybe twice even since the Invasion. When you were running for your life, you didn't stop to primp, and in the camps she had gone to great lengths to do just the opposite. The items before her, from the dress to the lipstick to the ridiculous underwear, seemed to say one thing in unison voice. /It's okay to be a woman again. It's okay./ The thought settled into her brain one layer at a time, sparking a relief she had not known she'd needed. Had it been so long? She almost wondered if Skinner had known that. Clothing didn't come cheap these days. And makeup? Even when you could find it, it cost enough so that only the very rich or the very well connected could afford it. Skinner was probably the latter. She hoped so......he shouldn't be spending money on her wardrobe when they needed things like guns and ammunition. Perhaps she should tell him that, just hand it all back and forget her foolishness.... Scully glanced back at the underwear. On the other hand, there was certainly no one else to wear them, and it wasn't like he could take anything back. Therefore, she had to keep them. It was the only honorable thing to do, given the circumstances. The logic worked very well, and by the time she had everything on, there was not a trace of guilt in her. She was too busy remembering how it felt to be a woman. And she loved every minute of it. to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (9/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - "Do you want a drink?". The sound of a metal cap being unscrewed skittered across the room like a pebble along cobblestone. "No. Why would I want a drink?" "You're worse than my little brother did when he was waiting for his wife to give birth to their first son. I'll tell you what I told him. Take a deep breath and relax. This is just one of those woman things we men can never understand." "I don't know what you're talking about. I am as relaxed as I've ever been." "Sure. And you've just cleaned your gun three times in twenty minutes because it's something you enjoy doing?" Skinner looked down at the gun on the table and the rag in his hand. Three? He could have sworn he just finished the first time. Without saying anything, he sat the rag down-- carefully-- and scooted his chair back as he tried to recall his marriage with Sharon. How long did it usually take a woman to try on a new outfit? He discovered he had no clue. /Perhaps that's a hint that you've been the Corps Most Eligible Bachelor for a bit too long.../ Skinner pushed the thought aside. Now was not the time. Maybe she was taking so long because she hadn't liked it. Or maybe she was offended. He sent a stony glare in Che's direction. "Tell me again why I let you talk me into buying that idiotic lingerie?" The things had cost him a good three clips of ammunition, but no, he had to stand there like a gringo sucker while Che and a greasy little Mexican smuggler had banded together to convince him every woman needed some fancy underwear once in a while. /Way to use your head, Marine./ "Because you want her to feel like a lady, right? Believe me, we chose the right thing." "You, chose. Not me." "Hey, you picked the colors." There was a bit of laughter in Che's voice, hidden but not well enough. Skinner contemplated checking the trigger mechanism on his gun and using the hybrid as a target when a small Scully-like cough sounded at the doorway. The cough was soon followed by a distinct choking sound from Che's general direction. Very, very slowly-- after all, he had to try to preserve some shred of dignity throughout this-- he turned around. And was stunned. Instantly. He had worked with her for eight years and lived with her for nearly two, but he had never seen her look quite like she did now. She stood in the doorway, arms hanging loose at her sides and her eyes half-dropped as if she felt everyone staring at her and didn't quite know what to do. The dress flowed over the outlines of her body like honey, slow and soft and warm, the rich blue coloring contrasting against the smooth white of her skin. Not too much skin, though. The v-neckline showed only a bit of her....attributes.....ending in just the perfect place to force the imagination to take over the rest. When she began to walk toward him, it was with the unmistakable glow of a woman who felt as beautiful as she looked. That was incredibly beautiful. She had used the makeup, but discreetly, so that it only enhanced rather than masked. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a few of the soldiers. It looked like he might have to issue a warning or else she would end up breaking someone's hand. Mulder had no idea what was about to hit him. No idea. /You had better tell her just how beautiful she is, Mulder. You tell her or I'll relocate your jaw./ Scully reached him, her eyes making contact with his in an overflow of gratitude. She looked like she was about to say something, right in front of the entire room. Skinner couldn't help feeling a bit uncomfortable at the thought of all the witnesses. Rumors did get started that way... Her hand reached past him to a shotgun lying beside the table, and she picked it up, pumping once to check the action. "I just came in here to borrow this for a while. If we're going to be travelling through Colonist territory, I need to get in a bit of practice." She said this like nothing in the world had changed, but a spark of a smile leapt from her eyes into his. He did not even flinch. "Help yourself." Without further ado, she left the room. Nothing was said, not one word, but her smile spoke clear enough. After she left, he became aware that all gazes still rested on him in what seemed to be expectation. He stood to his feet and slid his gun into the holster on his hips. Steadfastly refusing to grant any of them eye contact, "We're leaving at dawn. By the time the sun hits the horizon, we need to be on the road to the first sub station. I want all vehicles prepped and ready by sundown. That gives you exactly three hours and thiry five minutes." Silence. "Time is moving, boys. Shouldn't you?" A flurry of motion for the door as the men seemed to dislodge from their stupir all at once. Once they had scattered to their respective tasks, Skinner allowed his mouth to relax into a wisp of a smile, and more than a little relief. * * * * * * * * * * * * * Scully felt like Eve must have on the second day of her banishment from paradise, bone weary and soaked to the soul with heat, astonished at the difference between the gardens she had left behind and the wasteland she saw. The metal of the truck bed pressed hard and unforgiving into her back, and a trickle of sweat rolled down her neck to squeeze between her backbone and the wall. Now she knew why she had decided not to wear the dress on the trip. This kind of heat would have melted the fabric from off her skin. Her eyes burned from the glare of the desert, yet she refused to look away. This was her home. Whatever was left of it. The cracked skin of the ground blistered under the unforgiving heat of a nuclear summer, scalded in some places to the point where all that remained was the charred naked bones of the earth's rocky skeleton. Occasionally there was life, but even the vulture and the coyote-- long time natives of the heat and wind-- seemed to be made more of ash and ember than feather and fur. At first glance, it would seem that the land had simply given up. Then you saw the tiny bird's nest hidden in the shade of a cactus, or spotted the tiny clump of purple wildflowers that thrust their chins defiantly at the sun. Then you saw the eyes of the people who carved an existence from the land, gouging enough water from its veins to plant their tiny fields and raise their tiny children. This was still America. Perhaps not on the skin, but on the soul. Her body jolted forward as the ancient brakes of the truck ground to a stop. "I hope it isn't bandits this time," She sighed, her hand moving wearily toward her shotgun. "I'm too tired to shoot anyone." /Not unless it means we can get off this stupid thing and rest a while./ "Not bandits," Che said, leaning against the wall across from her and looking criminally oblivious to the discomfort. "We'd have heard them by now. My guess is it's time to stop." He said it as if it was no great matter. Scully hardly dared hope he was right. She had almost forgotten what the ground felt like when it wasn't being shaken into her bones. The front doors slammed shut and then the leathered face of Commander Gardner appeared outside, crows-feet of weariness crinkling the skin beside his eyes. It had not been an easy trip. "We'll break here for thirty minutes. Get your liquor and get back here as soon as you're done. Three glasses is the limit. If I catch any one of you drunk, I'll have you hog-tied to the bumper and dragged until you swear you'll stay sober for a month." The soldiers, who had just moments ago seemed to be in a sort of waking coma, suddenly reanimated, scrambling over one another as the first four attempted to get out of the truck at the same time. They emerged in a sort of human knot, kicking and punching but miraculously disentangling by the time they hit the ground. Che simply sat back and watched them go, a wry smile on his face as he caught her incredulous look. "Simple people, simple pleasures," He said, winking as he climbed from the truck, offering his hand to help her down. She accepted, too tired for any show of independence. "You should see them on leave." The lines of her mouth turned into a smile for a moment. "I'm not sure if I want to." Once they were outside of the shelter of the truck's canvas cover, she realized just how hot it really was. The air had been stifling in the truck but the canvas had provided at least some shade from the glaring sun. Not anymore. She was almost afraid that if she breathed too deeply, her lungs would shrivel from the heat. "Is it always this hot?" She asked, wiping a sheen of sweat away from her eyes. "During the summer, it's bad," He said. "Freedom City is a good eight hundred miles to the north, so it's a little better than here, but we still get pretty scorched. As you know, the Army nuked most of southern California in a last ditch stand during the invasion. We got the backlash of that. When the Colonists took over, their little scientists cleaned up the land enough to live on, but the weather has been permanently screwed. Even in the dead of winter it only gets down to about seventy-five, eighty degrees." "How do the people grow food?" "Some of them dig wells but most use genetically altered seed. Humanity Corps scientists came up with a corn variant that can live on only 5% the amount of water as the old stuff. It tastes just about the same." "Amazing." "We sell it to the farmers in our territory in return for a share of the crops." "That's all?" For a moment his eyes darkened. "Depends on who is doing the collecting." She was about to ask what he meant when Skinner appeared beside her, mopping the sweat away from his brow with his sleeve. "You look like you could use a drink." "That bad, huh." She gave a sort of half-laugh and nodded. "Well I feel worse, so let's stop talking and lead on to the ice water." "Nothing stronger?" Che asked, a mischievous grin on his face. "I'd like to see what you're like with a bit of tequila in your system...." "You don't want to know." They stopped talking as they reached the front of the bar. Or rather, the dusty pile of boards with a sign attached to the front claiming to be a bar. Crazy Horse Bar and Discount Ammunition Surplus. /Guns and whiskey./ She thought, a dry smile on her face. /How nice./ Judging from the bouncer on the front porch,-- a man the size of a small mountain with enough tattoos to make a Hell's Angel jealous--the owners had taken adequate precautions. A ripe mix of cheap whiskey, tobacco, and unwashed bodies clogged her nostrils and stung her eyes. That was to be expected. Seen one, seen them all. It couldn't possibly be worse than some of the dumps she and Mulder had used to hide out in for a night or two. She braced herself and stepped onto the porch. "Jest a minute there, ma'am." The bouncer spit a mouthful of black tobacco onto an unfortunate spider at his feet and flipped his greasy ponytail over his shoulder before standing up. "You and your friends can't go in jest yet." Scully estimated that if she stood on her tip toes, she might reach just to the I Love Muffy tattoo on his chest. /Don't tell me he's one of those big but cuddly types..../ "Is there a problem?" Skinner moved up to stand beside her, his hands on his hips in a seeming gesture of nonchalant interest that conveniently put him in easy reach of his gun. The bouncer either didn't notice or didn't care. Judging from the size of the knife in his belt, it was probably the latter. "No problem, if yer human." "What?" The man pointed to a board nailed to the wall beside the door. Letters of peeling white paint spelled out HUMANS ONLY. BLOOD CHECK REQUIRED. He held up a hand-sized black machine with a less-than-sterile needle on one side and a cracked computer screen on the other. "If you could jest prick yer finger right there, I'll have it all cleared up in a jiffy." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Che's mouth harden into a firm line, bitter but not surprised. So this wasn't an unusual thing after all. Scully knew she had never seen it before. Well usual or not, there was no way they were getting her to put her finger on that thing, after heaven only knew what kind of filth. Skinner obviously shared her sentiment "What does it matter? Human or not, you still get your money." "We don't want no mutts in here." He spat the word at their feet like it was a mouthful of bad tobacco. "Jest real humans. So either you let me look at yer blood or you and your friends stay outside." "I told you it's not necessary. The lady here doesn't like needles much and neither do I. " In Skinner language, "you are pushing the line." His hand moved almost imperceptibly toward his gun. For a moment, Scully wondered if she'd end up shooting someone after all. If Skinner had to fight the big man, it'd start a brawl at the very least. A small war at the worst. And all she wanted was an ice water.... "Let them in." A new voice cut the tension in the scene, and she recognized it as Commander Gardner. "They are new around here and aren't quite familiar with custom. I'll vouch for them." The bouncer looked back at Gardner, keeping part of his gaze locked on Skinner. "Well they might git themselves familiar soon. Not everyone's as forgiving as I am." He moved aside to let them pass. Scully had almost reached the door when the Commander spoke again. "No, not the Mexican." he said, pointing at Che. "He's a hybrid." Che stopped in his tracks, his eyes obsidian hard as they glared at Gardner but his face a mask of unemotion, not changing even when the bouncer grabbed his shoulder in a none too friendly squeeze. Not the big cuddly type after all, she decided. "Is that right? You some stray mutt looking to drink with the purebreds?" Che's jaw tightened, his fists curling like he wanted to hit the man. Instead he stared at Gardner one more time and simply walk away. Scully wasn't about to stand there and watch in silence. Skinner, however, spoke first. "Commander," he said, using the man's rank as if to remind him who was higher. "Back when I was your age, a soldier looked out for his buddies." Gardner was nonplussed. "Che's a good soldier." He said. "But you have to keep those hybrids in their place. If you let them have too much room, they'll start thinking they're human or something." He shrugged. "C'mon. The bartender's a friend of mine, and he's giving drinks on the house." Skinner looked back in Che's direction. "No, thank you." Without another word, he walked off the porch, the muscles in his back tight and rigid. The Commander turned to Scully, a bit of a smile on his lips. "I think you're friend belongs to the old school. It's a dying breed....won't be around much longer. Can I get you something?" "No, Commander, thank you." She turned away, suddenly not thirsty. "I'm afraid you'll find I'm from the same 'dying breed'." Scully left the porch and hurried to catch up with Skinner, who plowed through the air like he was trying to cut it into pieces. "What just happened back there?" she said. "Something that's probably happened to him at almost every bar in Corps territory. His kind has to drink at places designated for mixed breeds, and those are few and far between." "Why didn't he say something?" "Because he didn't want to get the crap beat out of him by a mob of drunken human supremacists. His 'soldier buddies' would have just sat back and watched. Who knows, they might have even helped." "Why?" "Politics." The word came out almost as a growl. "We're definitely in Corps territory." "People tend to mimic the sentiments of their leaders." "But I thought the official line was one of tolerance. Anyone who wants to fight, does it with a blessing." "That's the old way. Things have changed. You and Mulder never kept close ties with the resistance, but do you remember hearing anything about the power shift? Two years ago, I think it was." She shook her head. "That was right about the time we were captured. Not a time we were interested in politics." "Let's just say the new regime has its own ideas about tolerance-" He cut his words short as they reached the truck to find Che sitting on the tailgate, flipping through a book but not really looking at the pages. The hybrid looked up in genuine surprise when he noticed them. "What are you doing here?" "Not thirsty." Scully said, keeping her tone nonchalant as if she had made the decision on a mere whim. "You don't mind if we wait here with you?" Che shook his head, a half-grin on his face. "You're Catholic, aren't you." "Why?" "Because my mother was too and you're both horrible liars." The grin faded. "Seriously, you two don't have to be here. I am used to this." "We don't have to do anything." She said. "But we're here so be nice." She slid onto the tailgate beside him, grabbing a blanket and putting it under her to spare her tailbone at least a little. "I guess there aren't many like you in the Corps, huh." "More than you might think. Public opinion might be a little rotten, but I expected that when I signed up in the first place. It's better treatment than we get from the Imperials. You'd think that if they created us, they'd be a bit more understanding but I think they hate us even more than the humans." "What do they do?" "We're created to be their servants.....mindless drones they can use for anything from cheap labor to military personnel to guinea pigs for their viruses. If we rebel against that purpose, they kill us." "So you were born in a laboratory?" Scully tried for a moment to imagine that kind of life. She found she couldn't. "Nope." Another grin broke out across his face, wider than the first. "I was born into a colony of free hybrids. So were my two sisters. My mother used to tell us stories of my father; how he saved her from the testing rooms and led the very first escape. He gave his life for our freedom. His memory was great among us." "You must be very proud of your family." "I am." "Do you get to see them much anymore?" "No." He paused, the lapse in his voice pained. "Shortly after I left home, the Imperials discovered our colony. They slaughtered everyone, except for the few they took back to the labs. My sister was one of those survivors. When I heard that the resistance was raiding the experimental facilities, I joined the Corps hoping to look for her. I haven't found her yet, but I will. Soon." "I am sure you will." /So much like Mulder...../ A pain of her own settled deep in her chest as she remembered the passion and devotion that he had poured into the search for Samantha. /Only to waste her life on something as trivial as my freedom...../ She shuddered. Skinner noticed the shadow that had come into her eyes, and took advantage of the momentary silence to change the subject towards less weighty matters. "While we're waiting, we might as well get the truck filled up. Gardner said there was a gas tank on the other side of town." He saw Scully nod in agreement, blue eyes clearing once more as she shook herself from the past. Not for the first time, he wondered if it was a good idea to send her right back to the man responsible for those memories. The Crazy Horse Bar was on the outer fringes of the settlement, which turned out to be larger than the other towns she had seen. Che mentioned that it had become a trade center for the region, but that traffic had been down recently due to attacks made on incoming traffic by a nasty road gang that was trying to expand their territory. The local Corps garrison attempted to control the problem, but like any other rodent, bandits were extremely hard to kill. For every one you shot, three more scurried out from under the ground. Maybe that's why none of the people would meet their eyes as they passed, why a small child took one look at the truck and began to wail, his mother frantically trying to hush him as she hurried into a building. The woman paused at the door to look over her should at them, fear glazing her eyes. Why? Perhaps they had been mistaken for members of the gang or as Imperials. No, that was impossible. Commander Gardner had uncovered the identification marks on the side of the vehicle as soon as they had entered friendly territory. The Corps insignia was plain to see, and should have been a reassurance. Instead it seemed to have the effect of the mark of pestilence, driving the people from the street as men pushed their wives behind them and the pious crossed themselves and looked skyward. Their behavior disturbed her in a way she did not understand. It would have been a simple matter to dismiss them as ignorant peasants, were it not for the all-pervasive feeling of foreboding that hung over the streets like a thunderhead. The same thickness that had clung to the air back in the camps. Something *had* happened here. Logic did not tell her this; instinct spoke. She let the thought rest on the center of her mind as they turned the corner to the filling station, deliberating on what she should believe. Scully had closed her eyes for a moment to relieve the beginning pangs of a headache when the truck came to a screeching halt abrupt for even the decrepit brakes. Instinct screamed now. No matter what, keep your eyes closed. She did not listen. Soon she would wish she had. Her eyes opened and horror sliced across her stomach, sickening as if someone was gutting her with a dull spoon. The roof of her mouth turned dry as Atlanta cotton, tongue swelling as moisture drained away. She wanted to look away but it was too late. She could not. A few hundred yards in front of the truck's dashboard, jutting in sharp relief against the blue horizon, three straight wooden posts pierced the sky, a little taller than the height of a man and roughly the thickness of a telephone pole. Lashed to each one lay what might have been a man once, bodies twisted in a hideous contortion of flesh and bone and agony. From this distance she could not even be sure they were human. Echoes of ghost screams rose and fell in the air, a crescendo of whispers that was just beneath audible hearing. Her fingers crept to her neck to seek by habit the reassurance of her cross even though it wasn't there as a breathless prayer moved across the voice of her mind. /Mother of God and all the saints..../ She could go no further. to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (10/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath, When his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death, And Innocence is closing up his eyes, Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over From death to life though might'st him yet recover. - Michael Drayton Scully took a deep breath and willed the pieces of herself to stay together as a wash of bile rushed to her throat, acid sour in the taste of week-old death. She covered her mouth with one hand, forcing herself to breathe in and out. In and out. Focus on the rhythm, Dana, not on the way the backs are ripped open straight to bone, still leaking blood drip-drop-drip on the shreds and onto the sand. Five quarts of blood and then a man runs empty. Two quarts before the life ebbs away. But don't think about that. Don't look at the flies buzzing around the torn flesh, or at the tiny white piles of eggs visible along the edges of the wounds, some already hatched into gray squirming cannibals. Don't look at the chunks of flesh torn from the bodies by the vultures. In. Out. In. Out. Death is nothing new to you. You walked in and saw it every day for months. Yes, but she had tried so hard to forget....and even back then, killing was a mere function. This was not the cold impersonality of a gunshot to the head. This was ripping life away with one's own hands. Taking satisfaction in it. She'd seen that before, but only like this in the human monsters Mulder used to stalk. In Pfaster... The secret places of her blood between the arteries and the tips of her fingernails tingled with whispers of butchery and madness even though she doubted whoever-- whatever-- did this would care much for the judgment of the sane. When Skinner laid his hand on her shoulder, she thought he trembled until she realized that she was the one who was shaking. She wanted to respond to him, to at least look at him to let him know she was fine, whether she was or wasn't, but her body refused to move. Her eyes couldn't break the hypnosis of the whipping posts and their silent carnage. "It wasn't personal." He said, as if he had read the dual layers of the horror in her eyes. "Purely judicial." Judicial. Beating men until their flesh hung in strips from their bodies then leaving them to die slowly under the fury of the sun was judicial. She believed that, sure. The Resistance condoned torture. If that was so, then how were they different from the butchers with the Imperial logo? "Scully." His voice was a little stronger, as if he reached hand over hand to pull her out of a deep black cenote. "Look away from it. You can look away now." She could? She could. As if an invisible tether had ripped in two, her eyes tumbled to the ground, mind spinning in swirls of reds to match the patterns of blood in the sand. /You will never escape the death. It will follow you until you run and run and fall but it will never let you go./ "Scully, talk to me." Skinner again, pulling her once more to the surface of her thoughts just when she was about to run out of air. "Are you okay?" As if someone whispered it in her ear, she remembered fragments of her past life as a forensic pathologist and a medical doctor. She had seen far worse than this. Now was the time for science and the answers it could provide. Faith might come later, once she was far away from the shadows of broken men. "I'm fine." She exhaled the words in a single breath as she lifted her eyes to meet his in demonstration that she meant it. He scoured her face for a long moment, his eyes filled with weariness and disgust but not one shred of shock. Didn't he feel it too? Did he feel at all? Scully remembered the novocain days, and wondered if she returned to them when she crossed the border into America. Skinner glared back at the three dead men, his jaw working back and forth as if he was in deep thought. Or perhaps deep memory. "It's always hard the first time you see one." he said. "I've fought everything from little yellow Communists with big rifles to alien soldiers who change faces into your best friend, but when I first ran into this it was different from anything I'd seen in my life." Out of the corner of her eye, Scully noticed that Che nodded in agreement with Skinner, but that he seemed to be even less affected. Mild distaste registered on his features; that was all. She wondered if it was because they weren't his kind or because he had seen so many of these "public displays" that he had become numb. How many did that take? Did she really want to know?" "You've seen this before?" Her mind pulled muscles trying to wrap itself around the thought. "Where?" "Pretty much anywhere you go within the boundaries of Corps territory. It's a form of punishment that doubles as population control. Once you've seen a man whipped, it makes for wonderful inspiration to do what you're told and not ask questions." "These men weren't just beaten. They were left here to die." "Most likely because their offense was capital." "So these men are criminals." It comforted little and justified less. You punished crime. You did not butcher men this way. That constituted another thing entirely. "Yes, they are." Skinner moved closer to the posts, his eyes squinting up to a piece of paper tacked above each man's head. "Apparently they were members of a local gang that were caught during a raid on a Corps supply depot. This is a statement execution to the surviving members. Executions of this kind usually are meant to deliver some sort of message." She nodded, a form of grim curiosity picking at the edge of her brain. If she had a scalpel and a table, she might be more than a little tempted to try to find some answers of her own.... Disgusted with herself for even considering that, she shoved the thought aside and tried to concentrate on the information Skinner had given her. "I don't remember seeing anything like this when Mulder and I were here." she said. "We saw just about everything else, but not this." "This didn't start until after you left. I guess you could call it the signature of the Humanity Corps and their great leader Nicolas." "Who's Nicolas?" "The self-proclaimed, widely beloved savior of the human race." He snorted, his eyes flitting up to the crosses as if to connect the irony. "C'mon." he spun on his heels and walked back toward the truck. "The others will have finished by now and they'll be ready to leave." "I want to know about Nicolas." she said, her teeth running across her bottom lip just like they used to when Bill Jr. tried to bully her out of something. "Who he is and what gives him the right to do this." "Later, Scully." The words hit her like a slap in the face. "Don't you 'later' me, Skinner." She hated when he got into his "General Skinner" mode and decided she should know only what he thought she needed it. "If you knew about this, why didn't you say something to me before?" He paused, his face half-turning in her direction as he tossed his words over his shoulder. "Because I spent the last year and a half hoping it would have changed." As she watched him climb into the truck, jerking the door handle as if he was throttling it, Scully realized she misjudged Skinner. This had affected him, in a much deeper and long standing way that she. Why? The thought played on the forefront of her mind as she followed Che into the truck, shutting the door fast against death and evil but unable to resist a last look out the window as they drove back toward the saloon. Three corpses, their thin shadows etched by charcoal and blood onto the skin of the desert in garish rendition of a tattoo. As she watched, a vulture fluttered from behind a building and began to take his lunch from the second man's stomach. It was then she turned away. Skinner was wrong. This was very personal. And she refused to let it go until she knew a reason why. Night had come and Skinner had not spoken to her, taking all necessary means to avoid her as much as possible. Che would not answer her questions either, putting her off with nothing answers and vague words. At length she tired of both of them, and retreated to her corner of the truck to pass the time in a mix of alternating frustration and anger. Now the full moon dipped a finger of silver across every feature of the earth and drawing shadows from everything that moved and breathed. Everyone else slept. She did not. In her mind, every one of those shadows was in the shape of those posts, stark and profane in the desert sand. Every moan of the wind across the tailgate of the truck was the anguish of men, slow and horrible in the night. The heat had not lessened much with the darkness, but she could not help but shiver, to close her eyes and try not to look at their faces. It only did so much good; she saw them inside her head. /A dried up ocean filled with matchstick death poles each bearing a paper-doll man, his edges singed to a crisp from the sun. Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani. God has forsaken everyone./ She closed her eyes and prayed for rain that did not come. "He controls it all, you know." Her left eye cracked open just enough to see a familiar mass of shade and shadow ease into a sitting position beside her, his voice low and rumbling like distant thunder in summer. Skinner. So now he decided to talk to her. She cracked open her other eye to scan the truck. If anyone else was awake, they weren't paying attention. Maybe now was the only time he could talk. "Nicolas does." "Yes." "Why?" "Four years ago, the Humanity Corps did not exist. You remember how it used to be. We were just a bunch of little units, loosely connected by our common enemy but lacking any kind of central leadership. That was before Nicolas. He was the leader of one of the larger, more powerful substations, comprised most of ex-military boys he'd served with before the Invasion and a collection of civilians with guns almost as big as their grudges against anything alien. Nice people, you can imagine. The group had a sort of dual reputation, both commended for their efficiency and criticized for their excessive violence against non-hostiles." "They killed innocent people." "They killed just about everyone who wasn't a part of the resistance. It was Nicolas' idea to merge the single stations into one big organization. More power, more freedom was their slogan. A lot of people bought into it too." Here he paused for a moment, his eyes taking on the look of a man watching the past unfold inside his brain and not enjoying what he saw. "Nicolas is a brilliant man. As a soldier, you won't find many that are better. He has studied many of the old generals.....Caesar, Napoleon, Sun Tzu.....and consistently finds ways to apply their tactics to our modern warfare. No one can fault him for that. But there is another side to him as well. He has an uncanny ability to convert people to his line of thinking that reminds me of the old videos of Hitler." The comparison was not lost on either of them. Scully sat in silence, the skin between her eyes wrinkled in thought as she concentrated on his story. "He convinced most of the leaders to sign an alliance treaty that formed what is now the Humanity Corps, promising of course to hold elections for a board of joint leaders as soon as possible." A shard of moonlight scraped across his face as it hardened into a grimace. "After a few sweeping victories-- fought his style with heavy casualties on both sides, although his people doctored the numbers--they were screaming for his leadership. Some of us disagreed with so much bloodshed and so little regard for human life. We were branded as cowards and traitors to the cause. When the "election" came, the vote was closer than Nicolas had expected, but a win is a win. Everyone knew he'd get into office one way or another. He appointed his buddies as the rest of the board members, and has run things every since. Sure, the victories have increased, but we're only different from the Imperials in name now. We use the same methods and kill the same ways. "Nicolas considers anyone not a member of the Corps to be on the side of the enemy. Even the non-hostiles who are just trying to survive....." His voice paled to absent-minded frustration and she noticed his fist had clenched. Suddenly she was very glad she and Mulder had left the organized resistance when they did. That brought another, more frightening thought to her mind. "And Mulder is working with these people?" "He probably doesn't know what he's gotten into. At least not yet anyway. I hope for his sake he catches on soon.....Freedom City can be about as dangerous as Washington DC if the wrong people get after you." "They would hurt him?" Her breath drew into a hitch in the back of her throat. If they had done anything to him, a beating would be merciful compared to the death she would personally deliver to each one. "Maybe not. But you have to realize the kind of people we're talking about here. They know their power lives off their corruption, and use of force, and that makes them very jumpy. I don't know if you two realize it, but you've got a good bit of a reputation from your free-style days. People remember what you stood for. Some of them might consider Mulder a potential candidate for Leader." "He'd never accept." He had told her once that he never wanted to lead, only to fight. He said he didn't mind risking his own life but he couldn't take responsibility for so many others. Of course, he was a different man now. She wasn't sure how much weight he placed on things like casualties and human life. "That doesn't matter." Skinner was talking again, and she She forced herself to listen, to concentrate. "Nicolas will see him as a threat. He will either seek to control him or eliminate him." A taste of chalk and medicine powder sprang into the back of her throat. "Which do you think it will be?" "I've been wondering that myself. Control first, most likely. He will seek to use him if he can." "Doesn't everyone?" There was a tinge of bitterness to her voice before she fell silent. Her eyes met his. "I'm not going to let that happen again." There was a fine edge to her promise, subtle yet hard as Toledo steel. "Be careful, Scully," he leaned closer to her, worried at the resolve he saw in her. If she thought Nicolas was harming Mulder in any way, he knew she wouldn't hesitate to charge in, guns blazing until they cut her down. But guns and brute force could not win this battle. Not when Nicolas had the love and adoration of half a million starving peasants who called him savior. "There are ways of fighting, but you're going to have to trust me when I tell you to follow my lead. You have no idea what you are up against." "He is just one man-" "So was Stalin. So was Castro. You know as well as I do that men like that don't stand alone. They are the first head of a greater dragon. Elements of the Corps have been working very carefully during the past twelve months to subvert his regime. I instigated the movement back before we left for Chile. Che has informed me of its current status. We've made substantial progress, but a rash move on the part of any one person..." His eyes latched onto her to make sure she understood. "....could jeopardize everything." She hated to admit he was right, that she must stand by and watch instead of act, but she nodded her assent. /This was why Mulder and I shunned the regulars. Too much politics and deceptions and it's so much easier when you can just point and shoot./ Those days of clarity were gone forever. When she looked back at Skinner, the moon carved hollows in his face, sunk deep shadows under his eyes and outlined the way his shoulders bent as if a heavy weight had been placed back upon his shoulders. He looked like a man who had fought a costly battle and lost, and now paid for it, day by day. "I think you would have made a good Leader, sir." She lapsed into the formal title out of habit, her hand brushing momentarily against his before leaning against the floor to sleep. His eyes widened in ivory-silver moonbeam surprise. "How did you know I was the one who ran against him?" "Call it a hunch." "Now you're talking like Mulder." "He's rubbed off on me." As she closed her eyes, her mind crackled with a mix of fear, anticipation and joy. In the morning, she would meet Mulder. Twelve hours to go. Seven hundred and twenty minutes. Forty three thousand and two hundred seconds. How many heartbeats, again? She fell into sleep as she counted them. * * * * * * * * * * * * * Mulder had returned from the patrol well over an hour ago, and though his bones ached with the weariness of violent peacekeeping, he had not slept, nor would he for a good while. He sat alone; his roommate had gone out for a mission two weeks ago and never came back. As the commander of sector's first ranking patrol unit and personal tactical advisor to the Leader, he was entitled to keep the extra space. This suited him well, for his thoughts spoke loud enough for any six people. The dim glow of a bedside lamp did its best to dispel the shadows from the room, and created instead a landscape of gold and darkness, both of which played on his features as he sat motionless at a small table. His uniform still smelled of blood-- he hadn't bothered to change yet-- and the shot glass beside his hand was filled to the brim but untouched. He barely seemed to be aware of its existence, barely seemed to be aware of any thing at all, save one. His right hand clutched a piece of paper as if it were all he had left in the world, knuckles showing veins through his taut skin. It was a simple typed note, short enough, that he had found sitting on the table when he had entered the room. He had read it and reread it twenty times since then. This was twenty-one. Commander Mulder, I have some pleasant news for you. All border complications have been overcome, and your friends Dana Scully and General Walter Skinner will arrive in Freedom City sometime tomorrow. The General, of course, is well known to us and greatly held in our honor, but I look forward to meeting Miss Scully for the first time. From the way you speak of her, I am sure she is enchanting. Good hunting on tonight's patrol, my friend. I will await your full personal report tomorrow morning. Nicolas. Mulder didn't know exactly what to think. He had heard many promises concerning Scully in the past month, with little change. But he'd never had a personal note from Nicolas before. /What if she really is coming?/ A fluster of panic rushed across his stomach like a quail flushed from a bush. Certain he'd have to think of something to say, make arrangements for her quarters-- although there was a rooming shortage-- find a gift for her, perhaps.....to welcome her...... /Can out the whiskey cabinet.../ So much to do! So little time. Yet something froze him where he sat, keeping him from carrying out his preparation. Something inside his mind, dark and heavy as a typhoon, that sent a cloud over his joy. He had to clear his chest to someone. The one person who always listened to him, that he could trust completely. Flipping over the memo, he snatched up a pen and began to write. Dearest Sam, I know it has been a long time since my last letter.....sorry about that. The past month has been strange in many ways, but all of them have been time-consuming. I made it out of DC in one piece, and managed to join the resistance as a field operative and personal tactical advisor to the Leader. Your old brother's moving up in the world, I know. Instead of killing people for the aliens, I do it for the good of humanity. What's the difference? To be honest I'm not sure. Sometimes I'm convinced it's for a good cause, as they tell me; other's I just think that blood is blood and I want to quit. Just go somewhere peaceful and live like any other man. I've seen those "other men", plowing their fields or mending their houses. They are almost poorer than the dirt they work, but they've got a wife and family and peace when they close their eyes. I wonder if that's enough for a man. Guess I'll never know. Killing seems to be my destiny, whether I asked for it or not. I suppose I did ask for it....I signed the papers and drew the guns-- but I'll never like it. No matter whom it's for. I pretend to be using them as they use me, yet I wonder if I am not slipping deeper into the rut I came here to escape. Yes, I'm rambling now. I didn't write to bore you with my inadequacies, so I'll go straight to the point. Scully's arriving tomorrow. We'll be together again-- for better or for worse, you might say-- and I don't know if I'm ready. Do I want to see her? Only badly enough to drive me insane. But can I face her? Can I look her in the eye, each of us knowing what I've done, and then what will I see? I wanted to clean myself up before she came, and I've tried everything I can. Accepted the missions, even the ones I disagreed with. Executed them well. My team is the first ranked unit in the patrol division. Nicolas says I have come a long way; most of the time I believe him. I didn't trust him at first, but I have come to believe that he is at the least an ally and perhaps even a friend. Each time I visit him, the guilt I normally feel isn't the same. Instead there is this incredible sense of honor, loyalty, and pride. Those are as foreign to me as a smile. Nicolas has given me a way to restore my honor without taking away who I was, and for that I thank him. Yet, I do not trust him fully, for there are times, like these, when I wonder if it's enough. Something feels wrong, something I can't put my finger on......I sense it in my head at times when I'm with Nicolas. A cloud settles over me, almost like it rises from the subconscious part of my brain itself...... Like a second instinct is growing within me, tainting the normal perceptions I have used to survive this long.... She doesn't know I drink. She doesn't know many things. Tell me I'm recovering, Sam. Tell me I'm on my way back up. I've been down so long I can't tell directions. But I do love her. I do. Love, Fox. His pen swiped the last word across the paper but then he noticed his fingers were shaking. Just like any other spineless weakling who needed his bedtime alcohol fix. Did he ever mention that he hated being a drunk? He wasn't even sure if he ever had liked vodka to begin with. Another of Krycek's tastes he'd picked up.....remind him to thank the little rat if they ever met again. His eyes strayed from the letter to the whiskey. He wouldn't do it. He wouldn't. He would...not... His arm nearly tore itself from the socket when it shot out toward the shot glass, sloshing a bit of moisture onto his hand and onto the letter as he dumped the entire contents of the glass into the sink. The golden brown tequila swirled in a tiny whirlpool around the drain, disappearing.... He flinched. /This is for you, Scully. I am going to be everything you deserve. Even if it kills me first./ The overwhelming smell of spilled drink. The craving. The door slammed behind him as he ran from the room, out into the night, not caring where as long as he could not hear his addiction inside his head. On the table, in the now-empty room, discarded letter, the spilled drink soaked through the ink and into the paper, causing the words to weep in tiny puddles of blue-black tinted liquor down onto the table. * * * * * * * * * * * * * Prison bars of white light blocked the darkness from her, but its claws could slip through the gaps and slash at her until she could barely stand, skin ripped and bleeding through shredded clothes and torn thoughts. Little remained to hid her innermost soul from the man-beast whose eyes raked in vicious stabs across her......seeing more than her body, deeper....than that.....her mind.... Hell black eyes. Hell black eyes. Run, Dana, run. Can't run. Can't move. The voice of a demon inside her head, reading her mind like a pulp fiction comic book. Invisible hands pawed her hidden memories with sticky, greedy, fingers. Satan's own caress. /Get out of my head./ A demand. A plea. /You can't ask me to leave when I'm so deep inside you...deep inside you....deep inside you..../ Echoes of black laughter and hell eyes. Hell eyes. Not human. Worse than human. Now would come the part when he would tear her mind, his invasive thoughts, sharp and brutal daggers that slashed at her in her last temple. /Please, don't let him inside my mind./ The birth place of her dreams, now the bed of nightmares. The air stank of his greed and her cracked sanity. She tasted it in tiny grains beneath her teeth. The fear. A woman screamed and she recognized the voice as her own. A woman screamed and begged for mercy. It would not come. The bars would shatter, her protection gone, and he would pull her mind into the darkness, and pin it underneath his thoughts. Then he would possess her. But he was turning! Towards a circle of light, a chair in the center with a man handcuffed to it, his eyes wide with pain as the demon sank talons into his mind. A scream raked fingernails across the chalkboard silence. /Scuully!/ Mulder! No! No! Anger. Hatred. Blood-boiling passion. /Leave him alone!/ The monster ignored her and began to feast. A man was screaming. A man was screaming her name and begging for mercy. /Take me!/ The thought burst from her mind so hard her brain itself began to rupture at the seams. She watched it hurtle through the air, a silver lance straight to the heart of the creature. The alien paused, still facing Mulder as his jaws dripped thought-blood. Then he turned toward her and her heart stopped not from fear but shock. This was not the creature from her every nightmare. This was not Pavlov. This was a.....man. A cold, cruel man she had never seen before but knew instinctively to fear. Shadows hid his face, but his eyes burned through the darkness, a hungry shade of intense blue as they clung to her. Seizures of trembling swept over her body in waves as he advanced; her arms covered her head in effort to ward him away. His shadow blocked Mulder from her view. A low hiss slithered out from the darkness. /I'm looking forward to getting to know you./ The eyes closed in around her and she could not breathe..... to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (11/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - Her body jolted from sleep, pupils dilated and hands swathed in a delicate filigree of sweat. The tremor of her ribs shook through the thin cotton of her T-shirt, a ragged in-out-in-out that matched the uneven pace of her breath. Sleep, these past many days, had rested her eyes but certainly not her brain. She would almost rather stay awake than face the monsters inside. The muscles of her throat constricted in a dry swallow. She would not think of the dreams now. Not of the alien-man-beast with strange eyes that seemed to have taken Pavlov's place in her night terrors. Scully turned her eyes outside, wanting the fire of the sun to purge the images from her brain only to discover that a spiderweb gray mist hid the morning light behind a veil of shadow. If you stared at it long enough, she noted, it crept into your every sense and slowly began to smother you. A muted smell of electricity danced along the edges of the air, the acrid odor blending with a whisper of static that was felt more than heard, pulling at the hairs of her arms and neck until they stood straight at attention. "Why have we stopped?" she directed the question at Che, uncurling her body from sleep and suppressing a groan as her stiff joints protested the change. "And where is Skinner?" "We are at the main gate to the city." He said it as if she was supposed to know what it was, but continued when he caught the question in her eyes. "Electric fences. They have to check our clearance before they'll turn them off to let us through." "And then what?" "You and Skinner will go to processing. I'll debrief with the rest of the men and then head over to the infirmary." "You're a doctor?" . "No." His voice never changed tone but his lips pressed together in a small white line. A sliver of her attention was diverted to the other soldiers in the truck and she realized that they were all listening to what he had to say with every bit the attention she was. They feigned disinterest, yet it was clear they were just waiting for him to say something "anti-human" as Skinner had called it. He had warned her of spies. If she saw them, Che certainly had, but the flow of his voice remained the same, as if he was in a room alone with her. "Under Corps law, hybrids may serve only in the rank of private. We are not permitted to treat humans, although we may assist the medical staff as long as we are under close supervision of our commanding officers. This does not include use of our traits. That is forbidden unless specific written permission is obtained." She saw the anger in his eyes, not heated but cold and hardened. Tiny teeth of indignation nipped at the back of her mind as well; she quieted them and kept her voice carefully neutral as she phrased her next question. "How long has the law been in effect?" "Since Nicolas opened the city to hybrids." His eyes darted momentarily to hers to press silent emphasis on the word "Nicolas." The stiffness in his spine betrayed the casual shrug of his shoulders. "Our laws are made for the 'good of all people'." The barest hint of sarcasm slipped under his detachment as he quoted part of the Corp's founding creed. Perhaps the others had noticed; perhaps they had not. She nodded in a non-committal way that would be perfectly impossible to turn against her. /Politics./ Her teeth ground the word into powder and her next breath expunged it from her body for good. She hated the games. Voices in the mist turned her attention to the two men walking back toward the truck. Skinner's broad shoulders and distinct stride were easy to distinguish despite the gray, but her eyes fell more heavily on the shotgun in his hand, on the way his fingers gripped the barrel as if he suspected to use it soon. A slender tentacle of uneasiness snaked around her nerves as they passed by. Why couldn't it have been sunny? Sunny and pleasant and nice instead of gray and foggy and...sinister. She hadn't believed in monsters since she was four, but this would be the kind of place they lived. In fog, in clouds that hid their fangs and claws until they close enough to strike. Scully flicked the thought from her head, a derisive smile playing across her lips. That was a Mulder-thought. She knew perfectly well that weather was nothing more remarkable than a by-product of the earth and sky. This was certainly no time to let her emotions spill from their neatly arranged boxes and cloud her judgment. Too late. She'd just have to work with what sanity she had and hope for the best. Worry at this point produced nothing useful. There were too many miles behind her now for any change of mind, even if she wanted it. Her gaze drifted back into the fog as the vehicle rumbled forward, and the clouds seemed to whisper to her, planting seeds of discouragement into her mind. /Run away./ t hey said, soft and primal like the breath of ancient souls. /Run away and we will hide you and you will never have to stop./ No. She had never run from him. Not since the first time she'd stepped into that office and into the considerable charm of Spooky Mulder. Granted, the quest had not always held her belief, but she had never doubted the man behind it. At least as long as she thought she knew that man..... Those doubts were not from the mist, but from herself. They were very real in her spirit, but much stronger ached the desire in pit of her stomach that demanded to see him. To be near him. /Moths to a candle, baby. The brighter he burns, the more I am consumed./ As they passed through what must have been a gate-- although there was no physical structure save a small guardhouse manned by two identical clones who stared at her blankly as the truck rolled by-- she felt her insides hum with a sensation like she was inside an electric current but encased in a protective bubble. The energy was all around her yet not touching her directly. Che hadn't said anything about waste radiation, but she felt a wash of relief as the humming faded the further they drew away from the Shield. Seconds, minutes at the most, passed before they stopped again, the brakes screeching like a wounded animal as the vehicle lurched to a stop. One of the front doors slammed shut then Skinner appeared at the tailgate. "They are going straight to post-op," he told her, lowering the gate as he spoke. "There's a jeep waiting to take us to processing and command central." His fingers still kept close communion with his gun. She didn't know why but this was his turf. He had his reasons. If he kept his weapon, so would she. She grabbed her pack and slid her gun from its holster, the cool metal turned warm and moist by her palm. Che moved aside to let her pass, his eyes unreadable as ever but the wrinkles beside his mouth turning up in the fringes of a smile. "Take care, Dana Scully." Quiet words, the wrapping to a quiet offering of friendship that she sensed he did not give away easily. His voice was hesitant, as if he was not sure of her response and was tensing himself for the customary rebuke. To their left, one of the other soldiers gave a sudden "cough" that sounded very much like a laugh. She didn't need the trait of mind reading to guess their thoughts. /Hybrids don't associate with humans. They aren't good enough./ They were watching again, waiting for her to "put him in his place." They'd see something all right. She let her face soften into the warm-as-sunlight smile she used to give Mulder on special occasion. /Hope you're paying attention, boys. You wouldn't get this smile out of me if you walked up and handed me a dozen roses./ "You too." she said, her hand lingering for a moment on his shoulder. "I hope we meet again." He merely nodded in reply, but as she climbed down from the truck, the corner of her eye caught the smile that had spread across his lips. A small smile, yes, but it flashed in the eyes of his comrades and asked them who was laughing in the end. Scully would have smiled herself if she hadn't suddenly remembered where they were going. Command central. Mulder. No more waiting. No more pretend. She pulled her head up a little higher, determined not to allow her eyes to bleed any of the weakness in her knees as she joined Skinner in the jeep. She could do this. Wasn't it what she always wanted? The reply that came to her mind was simply a wish that she had gotten a chance to put on the dress and maybe even those ridiculous undies. Anything to reawaken the confidence that lay weak and listless at the bottom of her veins. The jeep puttered to life and began to move toward a red brick wall topped with coils of razor wire that captured the growing sunlight and flashed it back to the mist. Guard posts of dark metal stood five hundred feet apart like robot sentinels with white searchlight eyes and machine gun arms. She could barely make out the smaller forms of the guards inside, whom stood at constant attention, little toy soldiers complete with toy rifles that shot real life bullets. The road led directly to a cast iron gate guarded by two men who had the build of linebackers but the wariness of Marines. This wasn't exactly the confidence booster she had hoped for. It felt more like she was being led back to the prison camps than arriving of her own free will at the greatest human city left on earth. "Friendly place you have here." she said to Skinner. "It pays to be careful." "I see." She glanced back at the wall. "Funny. From the way that wire is slanted, it would almost do a better job of keeping people in than out." "You catch on fast." "So this is the price of freedom?" "If you listen to Nicolas." His jaw set into silence as they slowed to a stop at the gate. The two guards stared at them for a long moment then lumbered back to open the gate, their movements slow and ponderous. It reminded her of the male gorillas she had seen when she last took her nephew to the zoo. She mentally tagged the men Ape Number One and Ape Number Two. Then they were forgotten because she saw the City. It sprawled before her like some terrible dragon that slept but yet lived, a mass of solid shadows that stood in charcoal contrast to the silvery mist. Golden spears of sunlight pierced through the gray to slide along the corners of the buildings and spin drunkenly into darker alleys, thin spider legs that branched from the main road into the bowels of the city. The sudden immensity of it all stole her breath from her lungs, and her eyes stretched from south to north to east to west, searching for an end but finding none. It fascinated and terrified, a paradox that fitted very well the nature of man, if this was indeed man's sancturay. "It's huge," she said, when she could speak. "I know." Skinner said, his own eyes scanning the buildings as if acquainting himself with a long lost friend. "We founded this long before the Corps started, as a sort of haven for refugees and for our own people between assignments. No one thought it would grow like this. People heard there was a place to go and be safe, and they flocked here by the thousands. If they didn't settle around us, they settled within fifty miles. We were starting to feel like a people again." He looked back at the razor wire and grunted. "Guess it didn't last as long as I thought it would." The jeep rattled along the cobblestone road, the gate whining in metallic protest of the effort as it swung shut. Now that her eyes had adapted to the change of landscape, the transition from clear sky to cement walls, they picked up on other things about the scenery as they passed. People materialized in the field of her vision, pale as incarnations of the mist itself and all but dead around the eyes. Scully found herself watching them, or rather they demanded to be seen, their faces screaming the injustice their mouths never challenged. She had seen starvation before, and here it was again, protruding from their ribs and the stark angles of other bones through thin clothing. She had seen futility before, and here it looked back at her from the eyes of man, woman, and child as they passed. Color did not exist. There was black, and gray, and brown, but nothing bright. Nothing alive, save one tiny blue flower that winked at her from a little girl's hair. A smile of hope began to creep toward her lips until she noticed the child's hands. They moved with skillful purpose, cleaning out and polishing empty ammunition casings for reuse. A bit of rag and straw that might have been her doll lay beside her, forlorn and forgotten in a patch of mud. She couldn't have been more than four years old. /The price of freedom./ She forced herself to look away, ghosts of dead little girls with blonde hair and green blood haunting her mind. Her gaze hovered on the buildings for a moment, seeing for the faces behind the cracked windows and inside the doorways. There was the blank stare of a fourteen-year-old girl balancing a toddler on the curve of her pregnancy-swollen belly. The wet cough of an old woman whose bones shook as she covered her mouth with a bloody rag. The hard mouth and lead eyes of a young man leaning against the door post, one leg firm and strong and the other cut off at the knee. His bittnerness hung around him like the cloud of smoke from his cigarette, the sharp and deadly disillusionment that only belonged to ex-idealists. Part of her mind wondered that if the Corps could spend who knows what in money and human life to obtain their new war technologies, why they couldn't find the time to retrieve the new gene therapy formulas that repaired and even recreated human tissue. Somehow she didn't think that ranked very high priority here. War came first, and war's business. Life had to crowd into whatever small space was left over. This was not the exception, but the rule. The rest of the journey proved that to be true. Guns and weapons and the "official" complexes were in fine working order, yet the brick and stone of the residences crumbled into powder before their very eyes. Soldiers filled their bellies with bowls of hot soup and thick chunks of white bread on one side of the street while on the other a two-block long line of civilians waited for rationing tickets. "Seems a little uneven, doesn't it," she said, looking at him so she wouldn't see the faces of the children. "Even if we are at war." "Not all injustices can be traced back to a government, or a man." he told her, his eyes peering over her shoulder, unafraid to look at each of the people in the crowd. "If the soldiers are too weak to fight, the civilians will die anyway. This is a simple truth of war, and it will not change until the fighting is over. People understand that." Well, that sounded selfless enough. A tightness had settled deep in his chest at returning to find the society he helped create in ruins. Knowing he should never have left. But Scully and Mulder were friends....he couldn't have abandoned them. /Yeah, you tell yourself that, big guy. You can tell her that too. Spout your "righteous indignation" crap all day but you know why you left. The time was coming when you couldn't walk the middle line anymore. You were going to have to stand up and be counted for your beliefs....and you wanted a way out. Mulder just gave you an excuse. You really think that saving her will give you an excuse for turning your back on them all?/ He had never planned on returning. Having to look his men in the face and hope they believed his reason for leaving. Even if they did, they'd expect him to be their fearless leader. The man who'd bleed for them, die for them. Yes, he was willing to bleed, to die, but only if necessary. Not before. The middle man approach had saved his life a hundred times before, yet he'd always known he'd have to give it up someday. Perhaps that day was today. Skinner wasn't sure how much longer he could watch and still pretend to swear loyalty to Nicolas' regime. It was getting harder and harder to ignore the little girls with swollen bellies that he had once taken an oath to "protect and serve." /It was never supposed to be like this. Never. Then I blinked and everything we'd worked for was gone./ Ten silent minutes later the vehicle stopped in front of a large cement building which stood on the outer rim of what he remembered as the nexus of the city, the center of the military and political life that determined all other aspects of existence. Curt black lettering told them that they had reached Naturalization and Processing. He had almost forgotten that Scully was still officially an outsider. The line outside the building was almost as long as the ration lines, and he hoped that arrangements had been made in advance. It turned out he was right. Somehow it didn't ease the metal band around his lungs, or quell the rebellious longing to grab his rifle and blast his way back out into open territory. He ignored both as he followed Scully and a duo of escort guards into the building. Three cheers for home, sweet, home. If she hadn't seen the sign outside, Scully could have sworn she was back at Enforcer Headquarters, marching through the door with Mulder as the prisoner of the illustrious Commander Krycek. That had been the first day of a nightmare she had yet to forget. /Just let that little rat cross my path again once. It wouldn't be murder. It'd be extermination./ An extremely nice mental image followed of a huge metal mousetrap and a wriggling Krycek sandwiched inside. She almost laughed, then wondered just how nervous she really had to be in order to even find it funny. /Easy, Starbuck. Show some of that steel./ The escort took them away from the main room and its never-ending lines of tired naturalization applicants and bored registrative secretaries, into a private office with a sign on the door reading Director of Naturalization Peter Burwell. The Director, a short man with mustard stains on his tie and stringy yellow hair hanging down over his collar, rose to his feet as soon as he saw them. His pudgy fingers shoved his glasses back on his equally pudgy nose while his eyes flicked from the guards to Skinner. The Adam's apple in his throat bobbed in a hard swallow. "Ahhh, General Skinner, uh, sir. We've been expecting you." As he spoke, his hands fumbled through the disarray of papers on his desk in vain attempt to restore order. "And Miss....uhhh...." his eyes fell on a sticky-note attached to his phone. "Scully." He seemed pleased with the small victory, the corner of his mouth twitching into a brief half-smile. "Please sit down and we'll get this over with as quickly as possible." He motioned to a chair covered in some kind of synthetic orange leather that crinkled when she moved into it. The sound seemed to put the poor Director on pins and needles, and she wondered whom he was more afraid of, Skinner or herself. Skinner remained standing and the guards melted out the door to blend into the woodwork until needed again.. Director Burwell didn't push his glasses up quite so often after he noticed they were gone, instead dividing his attention between her and a very official looking form, full of blanks and boxes and places for signatures. She noticed that all of those had been filled in, and a large red APPROVED had been stamped at the bottom of the paper. Mulder's handiwork? He must be farther up the food chain that she first imagined. That might be a good thing, but the opposite was just as easily true. "Full name?" Burwell's voice was more confidant now that he was back among his papers and his forms. "Dana Katherine Scully." "Background with the resistance?" "None." He coughed and seemed a bit uneasy until she added, "No organized resistance. My...partner....and I preferred to work alone." At this, he visibly relaxed and checked off the appropriate box. "Do you have any special skills?" "I am a medical doctor and a forensic scientist." "What about family?' She traced a circle on the hideous orange upholstery before she answered. "None living." "Marital status?" His eyes inevitably trailed back to Skinner, but she caught the gaze and sent it whimpering back to the forms. "Single." she said. "Children or dependents?" "None. " The word scraped like a useless needle across an area of her emotions that was more a callous now than a wound. "Any outstanding medical conditions or diseases?" "No." There was the chip in her neck, but that might not go over big with a bunch of human purists. The phrase "witch burning" came to mind. "Preferred area of service?" "Medical if at all possible." He scribbled the appropriate notes to the side of the page and then set his pen down, and pushed his glasses up with a gesture of finality. "We're all, uhh, finished here, Ms...uh, Dr... Scully. Here is your Citizen Identification card. Keep it with you at all times." Um, Just step outside and your escort will take you to medical for your, ahh, entrance physical. Welcome to our, ah, city." That said, he slumped back in his chair, the tension draining from his body and leaving him looking for all the world like a partially deflated balloon. Despite the pretentious title, the "entrance physical" turned out to be little more than a formality. Again her papers had been approved in advance, all the necessary signatures and stamps in place. It took little more than five minutes for the doctor to make what he thought was a convincing show of checking her eyes, throat, ears and blood pressure then drawing a small sample of her DNA for analysis. Needles sank into her flesh but the doctor assured her it was only a routine antibiotic cocktail given to all immigrants upon arrival. He could have filled her full of black oil and she wouldn't have noticed. Mulder was a matter of minutes away. Only a matter of steps, tiny questions beat into the earth with her feet and smothered by the pavement until no one heard. Scully counted time on her fingers, tapping them against the hard black surface of the examination table while pretending nothing else existed. Like any mechanical doll, her lips formed automatic responses to the doctor's questions, although his words faded in and out of her mind like static TV reception. Her ears heard but her mind was occupied elsewhere. "Are you allergic....." "No." /Does he still eat sunflower seeds and leave the husks on his desk so that I have to be the one to throw them away?/ "Have you been exposed to any...." "No." /Will he still tease me about my height and drop those corny jokes of his into everything he says?/ "Do you plan on having any children?" "No, I'm infertile." /Would he want children, someday?/ "We have a variety of fertility programs..." "No, thank you." /He would be like me. He would never be responsible for bringing an innocent into this kind of world./ "Do you have medical....." "Yes." /Will he say hello or will he say nothing and try to kiss me again?/ "How long..." More static. "....as a doctor." "Since Before." /Will I let him?/ "....that just about wraps it up. Thank you for your time, Dr. Scully..." "Thank you." Her mind hadn't moved but her body stood up, mumbling some formality of courtesy and shaking his hand as she moved toward the door. Skinner was outside, talking words that made no sense inside her upside down mind. /How many men has he killed?/ The thought dropped like a fallen angel straight into the pit of her stomach. /You promised not to think of that just yet./ She began to follow the escort back outside, walking faster to shake the pictures from her mind. /I remember too much./ For five minutes, they traced the coils of the street through identically boring cement buildings, most connected to its neighbor by a covered hallway or sidewalk like links in a chain. The only break in the monotony came in the form of a reddish brick building, set off a distance from the road. Its immaculate courtyard boasted real grass, she noticed. A crimson flag stirred lazily in the breeze, emblazoned with the phoenix insignia she had seen on most cars and buildings. Underneath the emblem, the Corps motto unfolded in thick black letters. Long live the brotherhood of humanity. Glowing in the first rays of real sunlight, the words might have seemed convincing. Until you walked the streets. Scully did not think about this long. She felt her emotions swell more and more with each step into the building, a giant balloon that any minute could burst and leave pieces of her all over the steps. Between the red dots flashing back and forth in her vision, she read the sign by the door. Barrack Station 1 : Officers Only. Four hallways and one flight of stairs later, she found herself on the second floor, standing in front of Room 428. Now Necessity forced her to listen to the escort guards as they explained her rooming assignment. "Commander Mulder is in a tactical advisory meeting at the moment. He instructed us to show you to your quarters and tell you that he will be out as quickly as possible." The first guard, a tall dark man with an accent as deep as Georgia summers, held her duffel bag for her and gestured toward the room. More waiting. She had to bite her tongue to try and keep the frustration from coming across acid strong. "When do you think that will be?" "Any minute now, ma'am." "And what of the General?" "The Leader has requested that General Skinner join the meeting. As a senior officer he is sorely needed." A quick eye telegraph with Skinner confirmed that he was already aware of this and had considered ulterior motives in advance. "Then I will not keep him." She remembered the graceful smile and the too-warm voice her mother had used when dealing with the Navy. It wasn't hard to mimic. "If you will please hand me my bag, I will be excusing myself." The effect was pleasing, all stars and stripes and no questions asked. /See, Skinner, I know how to play the game./ She glanced back at him, her eyes flashing a last warning for caution before turning to leave. The doorknob turned under her sweaty guidance and she entered the room to begin the last wait. The longest wait. A million tomorrows had come and died and aged her to be an old woman before the door closed behind. She was left alone. to be to continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (12/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - Her duffel bag dropped to the floor beside her as she began to acquaint herself with the lay of the room. It was a more pleasant place than she had come expecting. At the far wall, a large window gave her a view of the yard behind the building, which boasted a garden of small yet vibrant red roses and two identical black stone benches that lent a Victorian flavor to the scene. A wall made from the same brick as the building hid the outside streets from view, but from the second story room she could see enough to remind her where she was. Scully's interest diverted from the window to the interior as her eyes traveled slowly from corner to ceiling. The furnishings bore great resemblance to a double-occupancy hotel room. Two twin beds, both fitted with austere black blankets folded in military precision, sat near the eastern wall. The space in between was enough to accommodate a nightstand, and the wall above each had been fitted with a small bookshelf. Two doors were built into the western wall, and after some exploration she discovered that one was a bathroom-- with a working shower, luxury of luxuries-- and the other a closet. A small ceramic sink sat beside the window, three cabinets built above and below. Back beside the door, she saw for the first time the dresser and the note taped to a bag of sunflower seeds. The writing was unmistakably Mulder's; it had taken her a good two years to learn how to decipher it so she wasn't likely to forget. The message was brief, yet it brought a lump halfway from her heart to her throat. Welcome home. He didn't have to say any more. It was a promise they had made to each other long ago, when they first became nomads and began wandering the desert only steps ahead of the law. They were to keep going because one day they would find a place that would be safe. A place that would be home. Some nights, she recalled, they would lie awake on the ground with only the stars for a roof and only each other for warmth and he would tell her what home would be like. Each detail was there, from the color of the wallpaper to the type of flowers in the garden. Grown-up fairytales, she used to call it, but that didn't stop her from listening. And hoping. Now he welcomed her to the place he had described. The offer didn't need any more explanation. They could settle here, like real people who wanted to share a real life. They could forget the ugliness of the world and live forever off memories of better times and the better people they once were. They could be happy... Or they could tell the truth. And face whatever consequences it held in store for them. Scully folded the note carefully, fingers sliding along the edges like a caress before she tucked it into her pocket. Perhaps he had not changed, so very much, after all. This she wanted to believe with all the faith that he had ever spent on his theories and his "extreme possibilities." A doubt, treacherous and cunning, coiled at the base of her mind like a snake dropping around an egg, and she began to unpack with a single-minded purpose that could not quell the ever-faster beating of her heart. If he did not come soon, she might as well go mad as continue in this shadowland between want and fear. Her only clothes-- the beautiful dress she had not yet worn and the underwear she was saving for just the right moment-- went into one of the empty dresser drawers in a sigh of silk and lace as if they were wondering what they had done to be rejected. Jeans and a T-shirt were much more practical for traveling across deserts, she had told herself. Mulder would expect her to be nothing else but what she was. /And what does he think that is? The woman he knows or some idealization that has crept into his head?/ She put her handgun on top of the dresser, checking the ammo rounds by force of habit before she was content to step away. The rigid, unbending metal had always been a strange reassurance to her. A constant in a universe suddenly turned volatile. Now her hands lingered on it a moment longer than necessary, seeking the same comfort that part of her never changed. /You know you've idealized him too. Admit it. When have you ever said what he really was? A killer. Maybe you both are, but he's different. He's played both sides./ No. Stubborn wrinkles formed at the edges of her lips. He was Mulder. That was all she needed to admit. All she needed to know. /For now./ The mirror above the dresser reminded her that there was still grime on her face and tangles in her hair from the trips, that it made the circles under her eyes stand out even more than usual. This was something she *could* change. A short hunt through the bathroom produced the necessary items-- washcloth, brush, and a bar of white soap-- and she went about her business with a focus perhaps more intense than needed, but one that at least filled the time. The everlasting time that dragged by in the slow shuffle of an old man out for a walk. Cool water rinsed the dirt from her face; she imagined it cleansed her mind as well, washing out the sledge of worry from the hollows and corners of thought. She fought and won the battle to regain control of her hair, but it was much harder to stem the rising tide of anticipation. Any second. Any minute. Those idiots had to make her wait, didn't they? She needed a magic word, something she could mutter three times under her breath to conjure him before her. The pale lipstick smoothed her lips like icing, and the powder erased the hollows from her eyes until they were less than shadows. A touch of blush, dabbed in the right places, feigned the youth and innocence she had outgrown at twenty-one but now knew she missed. Life should be as easy as makeup. A swipe here, a blot here, and everything was as it should be. Like she and Mulder deserved it to be. They had done their time on the front lines, even in the years before the battle when no one but "fools" believed. They had earned the right to peace. When all was complete, she stood in front of the mirror and determined to smile just to prove her trembling fingers wrong. /Please like me, Mulder. Please want me./ There was nothing left to do, but wait and see. Tactical meetings never had kept his interest like a good Knicks-Bulls playoff, but they had never bored him either. There was an element of challenge, the process of outwitting the enemy intriguing him enough to warrant his attention. Not today. Not when she was coming any minute. Today the minutes were hours. The coffee was only half as stale as the arguments of his colleagues over the merits of Plan A as opposed to the reactionary impact of Plan B and yada yada yada. It was supposed to be a military meeting not high school debate club. Due to his experience in the many bore-sessions of the FBI, Mulder knew how to keep the cocklebur annoyance under his skin from his face. Talk about things you never know you'll appreciate. But everything had a limit and it had began to stretch. Especially in the last fifteen minutes or so since the Special Advisory Windbag or whatever his real name was had taken it upon himself to point out all the "blatant deficiencies" of the attack strategy Mulder had spent all of last week developing. In a thin reedy tone ill suited for his fleshy red face, he spoke of the need for a "higher concentration of troops" and "an exponential increase in ammunition density." The idiot didn't even deserve the courtesy of a dirty look. This mission had to succeed. In the past month, the western fringe of the Corps territory had been menaced by a garrison of Imperials who operated from a cluster of heavily armed bioweapons fortresses. Two previous attempts to storm the facilities had been disastrous. A third would be nearly fatal for the thinly spread Corps forces. After analyzing the data streams from the failed missions, Mulder had discovered the problem. Even with a larger force, outside attack would be costly given the nature of the facilities and the lethal viruses protecting them. The focus should be within-- two man specialty units sent to infiltrate each facility and set explosives in reactors that powered the buildings. Loss of life, if any, would be slight. Potential impact would be tremendous. It wasn't just theory-- he and Krycek had run several identical missions and all had proven successful. Nicolas was impressed. Therefore Windbag, the other tactical advisor, obviously felt the need to demonstrate his superiority. Mulder didn't have the patience to argue with him. If they wanted to slaughter their own troops trying to claw their way in through Level Five pathogens, more power to them. He wanted to see Scully and he wanted to see her now. What would she look like? Beautiful, of course. That went without saying. But the only memories he had in his mind were those of her in a time when he could feel her ribs through her clothes when he reached to hold her. When her skin was cold and her eyes dark with heavy memories. His visit to Chile had come months after her release from prison. Too late to put his arms around her when she needed it the most, but right in time to see the scars left by the struggle. He knew Skinner had done his part. It was both a relief and a source of envy, that his place should have been filled even partially by another man. /Not anymore. Once I have you back I am never leaving you again. We'll be home. At last./ If she wanted him. If..... /Please.....want me/ A knock at the door cut Windbag off mid-sentence, but Mulder paid little attention until he heard the voice. "General Skinner is here." His head snapped up as if yanked, not fully believing until sight proved hearing to be truthful. Skinner stood just inside the doorway, shoulders straight and hands resting loosely at his side. One look convinced Mulder that this was his element, that this had always been and that every man in the room knew it. Even Nicolas. "I salute the Leader and my brothers in the Cause." He gave a traditional greeting, his hand touching his forehead in a razor sharp salute. No one moved. Some seemed shocked that he was a man and not a ghost, but others hid smiles inside their eyes and exchanged knowing glances. Windbag's ruddy face blanched to wax along the edges, his mouth open and gaping like a dead fish. "We thought you were dead..." he stammered. The fat rolls along the sides of his jaw quivered with every word. "Of course the General isn't dead." Nicolas smiled, the congenial tone in his voice not quite reaching his eyes. "He's merely returning from a slight....leave of absence. Isn't that right, General." "Yes." The voice and the face behind it were granite, professional and unreadable. Mulder knew it was a normal expression on the man, but suspected it was intentional here, for whatever reason. Skinner turned his gaze from Nicolas to include the entire party. "I took a leave of absence to tend to personal matters in South America." His eyes met Mulder's for a long moment before he continued. "They are resolved now and I have returned to carry on my duty with the Corps." "The Cause is grateful, you can be sure." There it was, right underneath Nicolas' words. Sarcasm. Just a hint. Mulder couldn't be sure, however. His mind was far too preoccupied with Her. She was here....now....waiting for him.... Skinner spoke as if he hadn't even heard the comment. His words were nothing but polite. Each one exactly chosen. "If the assembly would like me to sit in on this session, I will be honored. If not, then I ask the Leader's leave to return to my quarters, as it has been a long trip." "Stay, stay." Nicolas swept his hand toward an empty chair. "The opinions of a respected leader such as yourself are always welcomed." He smiled again, using his lips and not his eyes. Whatever those two had between them could stay that way. Between them. Mulder would think about that later. In these seconds, one thing filled his mind to overflowing, pushing away all else. /She's here. She's here. She's here./ It scared him to death but it felt so good. "Sir." He stood to his feet and addressed Nicolas directly, breaking protocol and caring about it as much as a dead ant under his shoe. They could try to stop him if they liked. "My part in this meeting is completed. I have explained the mechanics of the attack strategy and provided a plan for carrying it out. The committee will make up its mind with or without me. I request permission to return to my quarters." There was a hesitation, but he didn't wait, pushing his chair into the table and gathering his folders into a neat pile. "Permission granted." The word "permission" grated against the air a bit harder than normal. A reminder even though it would be ignored. "Thank you for your analysis." Mulder was already to the door and disappearing from the room by the time Nicolas finished. This was why he never saw a thin blue fire enter the Leader's eyes and flicker there for a moment before dying away. He would never feel the tentacles withdrawing from the belly of his mind. By this time, they were deeper than thought. He ran the block and half from the Command Central to the Officer's Quarters in the heat of a sprint, each step bringing him nearer to Her and increasing in the fire under his skin by powers of ten. Time stretched long and slow down the street and between the buildings, but in an instant it snapped back to an acceleration and he realized he was standing outside her door. Paralyzed. /What if this is a mistake?/ To walk into the room was to be with her again. To hold her and to kiss her, but also to be unveiled before her. The murders, the guilt, the scarlet sins. If he walked away, they at least had their memories. If he continued, would even those end in ruin? His head rested against the cold plaster of the wall, eyes closed against the tearing in his chest. Liquid drums beat a wild war dance louder and louder in his ears and between the walls of his veins. Chaos. Insanity. Hope. can't. can't. can't. How much do you love her? want. want. want. Enough. Can't. Can't. Can't. Enough to open the door? Want. Want. Want. His hand clutched the doorknob. Can't. Want. Mulder stepped into the room. A woman stood in front of a mirror, her hands frozen in her hair, as a reflection of her face bounced back at him in disbelief. The hair was redder than in his memories, the color no longer smothered in dye meant to kill an identity. But the eyes were just as blue as ever. He was just as lost. All he could manage was one word, half-caught between a whisper and a question. "Scully...." The woman turned around to steal his breath but he would have gladly surrendered it. She was not a memory anymore. She was real. Perfect from lips to fingers. His hands were already tingling with memories of softness, holding those fingers in the dark and feeling each butterfly bone beneath the skin. (It had always amazed him how something so delicate could be so strong.) "Mulder." Her voice. Now he couldn't be dreaming. She had spoken to him. Those lips had moved, and he wanted to make her talk so they would move again. Slowly, against his. /Think of something. Don't stand there staring./ "Hello." The longer he looked at her the more she threatened to sweep him away. Words were not enough. He could use them, yes, to tell her how much he had missed her, how she was the only beautiful thing he had ever called his own. He could tell her or he could show her. "Hello." Two conversations took place underneath one another. Her words echoed his, but their eyes tangled through one another and spoke a different language entirely. Questions. Invitations. Desires. He was mesmerized to the core, and resisted none of it. Their voices died entirely as he walked toward her, never breaking away from the eyes that widened in uncertainty yet pulled him closer at the same moment. His hands touched hers, fingertips working gently to uncurl hers and press them length to length against his owns. A tremor slid down her arm and into him, up his body and deep into his brain. He did not stop to think what he was doing, or why, as he brought her hand up to his lips. Five tiny kisses, soft and barely dusted on each of her fingertips. The tremor came again. She did not advance but she did not pull away. Waiting. Mulder searched her face for some sign of rejection. There was none. No fear. Not a line of condemnation. His lips touched her shoulder next, pressing soft benediction through the thin cloth of the T-shirt. One hand remained intertwined with hers and the other encircled her waist, and her free hand reached up to meet him, running up his spine to the back of his neck. Her eyes were so close now. So close. He leaned forward and kissed her hello. Sweet and soft but building, slowly. They could live like this forever. Forget the past and the demons. Forget the pain it cost to save your own soul. They could live off kisses alone and be happy. Then the dream ended. Her body stiffened mid-kiss, pulling back sharply. Confused, he moved with her, still caught up in the burn, until her hand moved from his neck to press firmly against his chest. Mulder realized what she was doing. The pain hit him right before she pushed him away. to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: clone347@aol.com Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 18:04:47 EDT Subject: xfc: NEW : Becoming Judas II : Resurrection ---- by darkstar (13/32) Source: xfc Title : Becoming Judas II : Resurrection Author : darkstar Email : clone347@aol.com Feedback : adored and craved Website : http://members.tripod.com/darkstar_phile/index.htm Archive : I would be honored, only please let me know. Category : MSR/Angst/Post-Colonization Spoilers : None Rating : PG-13 for war violence Disclaimer : See Introduction Summary: He sold his soul. Now he wants it back. Disgusted with the life he is living and the man he has become, Mulder breaks from the Colonists and risks everything for one last chance at humanity with Scully. But redemption, like betrayal, has its own price. - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (13/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - I am moved by fancies that are curled Around these images, and cling: The notion of some infinitely gentle infinitely suffering thing. - From "Preludes" by TS Eliot For three minutes and twenty-five seconds, she dreamed she was tumbling head over heels off the edge of the earth, and his eyes were the spin of the nebulas and the iridescence of the stars. There was no defense against the seduction; she never felt the ground shift until it fell away beneath her feet. All the promises of strength, all vows of detachment were forgotten, consumed by the force of his hunger. Even from across the room, waves of energy pulsed from him into her until she could not have moved away. Hands met and flesh bonded to flesh. The gentle sensation of his fingers against hers, after so long, turned her dizzy at the temples. He alone existed. Nothing else...nothing.... The final kiss woke the dreamer. She simply remembered that she loved him, but that love was nothing if not honest. There was no room for lies, not even in the small space between their lips. Even if the lie tasted sweet, promising to give them each other without any price of questioning or searching. No painful prodding of wounds. There were truths to be uncovered; issues to be discussed that held sway over entire futures. She wanted to know what he was kissing. A woman or a memory. Or did she want to play blind? To continue the deception? Her body gasped yes, but her mind seized control, pulling her mouth away from his and forcing words out she did not wish to speak. "No." "What?" He choked on the word. He did not understand. "No." She couldn't bring herself to say anymore. His entire body stiffened, chest tightening under her hand. For a handful of seconds, she held his heart underneath her palm, and felt it throbbing under the skin. Then she felt it break. He stumbled back, tripping over his own feet in haste to put distance between them and nearly falling to the ground. Scully's hand twitched with thoughts of reaching for him, steadying him, if only the gesture would be imagined as love rather than pity. The pain on his voice twisted her inside. /You have done this? You have done this?/ Broken words tumbled from his lips to crawl toward her on half-formed legs, but he would not look at her. His eyes were bleeding his soul all over the carpet, but still he would not meet her gaze. That stung. "I.....am sorry. You have every right to be offended....I never should have presumed that I had the liberty....or you wanted me to-" "Mulder." Her voice pulled his face up as a gentle yet firm touch. /Look at me, Mulder. You look me straight in these eyes and you believe these words I say to you./ "It's not a question of what I want or don't want. It's a question of what's best." "Best." The word struck a slightly sour note in her ear as he lifted his face, the right half of his lip skewed into a sardonic smile. "Are you waiting to see if I'll get blood on you? If I'll hurt you?" "Don't you talk like that." She sharpened her tone, using it as a slap across the face to bring him back to his senses. "You and I both know I don't have to be afraid of that." A patch of silenced softened the effect of the words, and she took a step closer to him to prove she meant it. Her hand covered his and his skin tightened, the muscles flinching, but he did not pull away. /Please understand, Mulder. Please know I'm doing this for us./ She spoke in little more than a murmur, just as much to herself as to him. "There is a time for everything, and everything for a time. I can barely remember a life when fighting and death wasn't my full time occupation, when I didn't have to sleep with a gun or wake up in the morning to face what is left of Earth. The killing time has lasted so long for both of us. I want peace just as badly as you do. I want to forget, Mulder, and pretend that none of it ever happened.......but that won't heal the wounds. We tried that before." She remembered Chile well, but the memories were all flutter but no real substance. "We weren't supposed to be scarred like this." His finger ran over the rough black callus of the identification brand on her wrist, a souvenir of the prison that nearly killed both of them. He bore the same stain upon his wrist as well, she knew, but now she noticed fresh marks on his hands. Nicks, cuts, scars, a map of his recent darkness etched in thin white lines along the skin. Not for the first time, the tears slid back and forth behind her eyes, seeking a way out. She denied them their very presence and forbid them to soak her voice as she spoke. "No one is, Mulder. No one. We don't even have to wonder about fairness. Just what we intend to do about it." "I am not the man who left you a year ago," he said, his hands tightening ever so slightly on her wrist. "I won't give them any more of me." Those eyes burned so bright, Scully noticed. Beautiful, even now. She tried to smile and suggested he show her where she would be working. They would both do well to step away from the room for a while, into the fresh air where the scent of desire did not so strongly linger. It would feel good to breathe again. Together they walked out the back entrance, through the beautiful garden where no birds sang, onto sidewalks that changed from pristine white cement near the government buildings to muddy slabs of broken stone almost as filthy as the streets of the "real" city. Together they stepped through the door of the Medical Center, his hand hovering like a ghost of yesterday above the base of her spine in a gesture she knew was by now instinctive. As was her body's natural suppression of the electricity it produced. If she closed her eyes and listened only to the click-clack of her shoes on the white (it was always white) tile, they were back in the real United States of America, in their real lives, investigating yet another monster sighting. This was the local morgue where she would do an autopsy and he would spit sunflower seeds on the floor of her "sanitary medical area" while he told her of his brilliant theory. Of course, she would offer her explanation. Her *logical* explanation. If the dice rolled right, the friendly duel would be followed by hamburgers at a greasy spoon restaurant then a backrub in those cockroach motels she'd trade the Ritz for now. But her eyes were not closed. They were opened and they noticed the cold sterility of the interior, as if the cleaning crew had been instructed to bleach away any kind of warmth or cheer along with all other infectious diseases. They remembered that Mulder was not wearing his favorite gray suit, the one he paired with a tie loud enough to announce his arrival from three miles out of town. His military uniform was the same drab brown as every other soldier. His eyes held the same bland stare, no longer dancing with the laughter of an inside joke the two of them shared against the world. /And you, Special Agent Dana Scully of the FBI, what have you changed into?/ /So many things, so many things./ The wall to her left suddenly sprang into color as a full length poster showed her the Technicolor bright smile of a mother balancing a cooing toddler on the swell of her gracefully pregnant belly. Sunshine yellow letters splashed across the top of the sign encouraging mothers to engage in "Family Planning-- Hope for tomorrow lies in the children of today." She might have asked questions but their tour guide had arrived. Beyond the poster, a pair of metal doors swung open in the wake of a lean black man who had the gray hair of a sixty-year old but the determined stride of someone who believed age was something you only felt if you wanted to. The lines of his doctor's coat were perfectly smoothed, the ID attached to his pocket in clear sight. Dr. Elias Field, Director of Facilities. Level Five Clearance. The doctor seemed to recognized Mulder at once, extending his arm into a handshake when they reached each other. "Commander Mulder, welcome. I trust your arm hasn't been giving you any trouble?" There was only a professional friendship between the two, she decided. Most likely the only friendship the good doctor allowed with anyone. "Not at all. Your boys always do good work." Mulder's smile came easy enough with everyone, when he wanted it to. "Mission injury ?" Scully sent him a "remember I was your doctor first" glance, disliking Field for taking her place, even for a while. She chided herself for the feeling, knowing full well that it was her own fault. "Nope." He grinned with the exact degree of boyish mischief he used to use when he reported the loss of yet another cell phone or gun. "Training accident...." "Maybe it's good I came back now, before you killed yourself." she murmured, a smile of her own sitting on her lips before shifting into courtesy as she held her hand out toward the doctor. "My name is Dr. Scully." She let the *Dr.* fall with a bit more weight than the rest of the greeting. "I am pleased to meet you. My name is Dana Scully. I'm pleased to meet you." She shook his hand with the firm, no-nonsense grip she remembered using on her instructors at medical school. "My formal degree is in forensic pathology, but I have gone through medical school as part of that, and have plenty of field experience in general medicine, especially since the invasion." There, that was a tidy little resume. Just enough to dispel any notions that she some first-day intern hoping for an easy job. She was here to work. "The pleasure is mine, Dr. Scully. You come highly recommended-" here his gaze flashed to Mulder for a split second. "and I can assure you there is no lack of work to be done. The heart of the war effort *and* the relief projects lies within these walls." "I believe that, sir." He led them toward the door, already beginning instruction as they walked. It reminded her of her first day as a resident, and that day seemed too far away from comfort, so she listened instead as he told her the responsibilities she carried as a doctor. "We've only got a limited number of full time medical personnel, so the Center works on a system of rotations. We've got a few specialists who stay in their areas of expertise, but most of our staff spends two to three months in one wing before moving to another. It ensures that each area is adequately covered, and also keeps our people from getting too bogged down. Right ahead is the maternity wing....where you've been assigned this rotation, I believe. Our family planning clinic is here as well. " She nodded, pleased with the sense of efficiency she got from Dr. Field. Perhaps this would be a return to normalcy, if only in this tiny part of her life. Medicine didn't change. It was science and it was logic and worlds may pass away but it would always remain. Then the metal doors opened. "Maternity wing" had always meant, in her mind, airy rooms with pastel walls and the sweet intimacy of a mother's first moments with her child. This proved the complete opposite. She had expected to find a series of small, individual rooms, but here was one immense space, packed with row after row of white metal beds. Less than half had any concession to privacy at all by way of drab green curtains that did little to soften the glow of the fluorescent light. Life was not born here. It was mass produced. Her gaze swept to the left wall, which was made partly of glass that gave a glimpse of three large delivery rooms, and she became even more certain of the fact. Dr. Field must have followed her eyes, because he began to guide her toward the rooms. "This is our maternity wing. Here is the main recovery area, and to your left are the delivery rooms. As you can see, they are usually full." They paused a moment at the window, her eyes falling on the women caught in various stages of the agony of new life. The sedation didn't seem to be very heavy at all....in fact, the force that kept them on the table belonged more to the thick leather straps about their arms and ankles. "Are those really necessary?" Dr. Field nodded. "Unfortunately, medical supplies are exceedingly hard to obtain. Most are locked up in high-security biotech labs that cost a devil's price of men to capture. What we do have is prioritized, and naturally the precedence goes to the military bays. We use the straps here to keep the women from hurting themselves." Scully nodded in half-disbelief, and her hand crept to her stomach of its own accord, reassuring herself that it was flat. Lifeless. Ever since Emily, she had felt a primal envy for those gifted with the ability to recreate a part of themselves. Not here. "What is your mortality rate?" "Three in ten." Field rattled off the statistic as if he were doing nothing more than announcing the scores at a pee-wee baseball game. "Infection is usually the killer here. Again, antibiotics are limited." "First come, first serve basis?" She found it startlingly easy to pretend she understood as her eyes strayed to Mulder's, searching for an echo of her disbelief. She might have had an easier time searching for tears in stone. Repulsion, cold and clammy like the belly of a toad, flickered across the inside of her skin and forced her to look away from him. Scully swallowed the feeling whole, refusing to cringe away from any part of him. /Those are not his eyes./ The whisper echoed so loudly inside her mind she feared she had spoken it. /Those are the calluses he has built up over his eyes to allow himself to survive. I will make him cry again. And laugh. "If you're ready, Dr. Scully, we can proceed to the family planning center." Field's words offered her a polite hand out of her reverie as he gestured toward a second set of metal doors. "This program was instigated by Nicolas as a method of controlling our population increase and guiding it in the most productive course possible." There were too many babies around her for a place designated as "population control". The back of her mind told her that she was about to learn a new definition of the word. The second doors swung open and she was greeted by a larger version of the poster she had seen earlier, along with several other variations on the theme. Whoever ran the propaganda department at this freak show had obviously spent some time on this. Everywhere she turned there was light, color-- quite different from the Spartan atmosphere of the maternity wing next door-- and bold, inspirational slogans concerning motherhood's role in patriotism. The sons of today are the soldiers of tomorrow. Give birth and give freedom a chance. Donate a life to the future. The bright colors and cheery words did not seem to cheer the collection of approximately twenty-five women and girls sitting or standing in the waiting area. The ages, she estimated, were anywhere from twelve to forty-two. Some of them paced back and forth restlessly, fingers wringing through fingers and faces bathed in shades of gray. Others-- mostly the older women-- sat with a rock solid sense of calm....or was it resignation, Scully wondered. To the right of the waiting area, a receptionist took care of paperwork for the small line of women in front of her, smiling in syrupy reassurance in response to their questioning. To the left, a series of doors lay dark and brooding. Five or six, she counted. They must do a brisk business....whatever business that was. If it was indeed a birth control clinic, why were none of the women showing signs of pregnancy? Dr. Field began to explain before she even had a chance to ask. "This is where we create tomorrow," he said, his eyes taking on a new sheen as he swept his hand across the room in a gesture that reminded her of a sales executive showing off his latest growth chart. "War is a terribly hungry monster, Dr. Scully. It takes its fill of our men. Here we combat that, while at the same time ensuring the purity of the human race in the future. Contaminated breeding-- the crossing of the human gene with the filth of inhuman DNA-- is strictly prohibited, and this is our way of regulating the quality of the births here. All female citizens are registered, and when their first two ovulation cycles have passed, we admit them to the clinic. If their DNA is clean, they are given their first child." "Given?" "Yes. That is the main purpose of the clinic. Sometimes we have to purge a womb if it contains an Impure fetus that has resulted from union with a contaminate, but that is rare. The women know the law, and most abide by it. We tailor the production rates to the individual capacity of the mother, of course, but the normal rate is two successful births every three years." "Is this a voluntary procedure?" His smile stretched. "Of course. We offer each participant extra ration or trade credits as an incentive." "I see." She was beginning to. Now for the million dollar question. "Where do I work? I don't have experience in genetics..." "You are assigned to delivery and post-natal care for this rotation. We are short-handed there as it is, and Commander Mulder tells us you have a special gift with children..." Her eyes flitted in surprise to Mulder, finding his face had shifted again to press the warmth of shared secrets into her mind. She hadn't realized the gift he was giving her until she remembered her past experiences in post-mission field hospitals and the screams of those who were dying or those who wished they were. She remembered telling him she never wanted to go through that, far back in a time when death still touched her emotions in a far closer way. It had been eternity plus two years but he hadn't forgotten. Perhaps the calluses did not run as deep as she had feared. That tiny hope nursed the wan flame of a smile into her eyes. "I do what I can." she said. "You will be expected to do no more or no less." Dr. Field glanced at his watch. "Now if you will excuse me, I have rounds to make. Your shift will start tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM. Please try to be on time." With another courtesy-smile, he turned on his heels and left the room. Scully didn't wait to see him go, intent on leaving the subtle darkness of the impregnation rooms to the lighter weight of the maternity wing. It didn't have to be as sterile as it looked. Maybe that was just the covering, the outer layer that existed because of the business of the place. Her eyes floated from bed to bed, mother to child to mother, and every part of her reached out to feel the pulse of life in the air. The echo of humanity. She wanted to capture it, to wrap it in the folds of her soul and then believe she could make a difference here. She knew she had failed to save her own child. She had failed to save her family, her world....had failed the man she loved. Time for a little penance, Dana. "You okay, Scully?" Mulder shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he spoke, and she wondered what happened to the days when they read each other's minds and felt at home beside one another. They were coming back, she promised herself. "Just a little tired. It was a long trip." Gold flecks of concern surfaced in the black marble stare that she had feared would never melt from his eyes. A sign of hope.... "I can take you back to our room if you'd like to rest." "I'll rest at night. I came here to see you...." "And I'm not going anywhere--" He didn't even get a chance to finish talking before the com link at his waist interrupted him, as if to act in self-important contradiction to his words. It was at his ear before it could ring again, and she noticed his shoulders stiffen as if he had been called to attention. "I was told I had leave for the day...." His lip twitched down in a scowl. "Yes, I know it was my plan. Yes, the other Adviser disagrees. How am I supposed to help that?" Whoever was pulling the strings on the other end talked for a moment, and Scully waited for Mulder to tell him where to put his timetable, but instead all she saw was a nod of assent. "I'll be there in five minutes." He punched the OFF button with a vigor that belied his true frustrations, then seemed to remember that she was waiting for his explanation. When he turned in her direction, his face was all apology. She didn't want apology. She wanted to sit with him and talk and regain memories. "One of those bureaucratic types I used to get along with so well is complaining about one of my mission profiles. He's taken it to Nicolas, so I'd better make an appearance as well. It won't take long, I hope." She smiled though she knew it was coming across synthetic even as she did it. Could she help it? After God only knew how many hours of travel through the desert and the heat she wanted more than a five minute tour with him. /Selfishness is not becoming....you knew he had a job to do. So let him do it. / "That's alright. I think I can find my way back." "I can get an escort for you-" His hand moved in quick eagerness to his com link. "No...thank you. I'm still a big girl and directions are easy enough to ask." "Are you sure?" "You're going to be late, Mulder." He flashed her an old-life smile. "I'll just tell them I was detained by a beautiful woman." This time her smile was pure, warming her from lips to feet. "And get in trouble for lying?" "Only by understatement." A flash of his fingers brushed his knuckles against the inside of her palm, and then he was gone. Not for the first time, she wondered what she was supposed to do with a man that dragged her from darkness to light and back again with the ease of sunlight weaving in and out of clouds. She'd decide after she had a bit of rest. A night of attempted sleep in the back of a truck full of soldiers was not conducive to rest in any way at all. There was a bed waiting for her back in the barracks, and a shower with *hot* water.... "I see you found your soldier." A naggingly familiar voice tugged her around to see Che seated on the edge of one of the beds. His hand rested on the shoulder of a freckled thirteen year old girl who slept with an hours-old baby at her side. "He looks to be a good man." She nodded. "So you work here as a nurse?" "No. I applied for the job, but it was denied for fear I might contaminate someone." He pointed from his blue-gray jump-suit to the mop and bucket that sat beside him on the floor. "I just clean up." "Oh." /Way to put your foot in your mouth, Scully./ "You say that like you're ashamed of it. I'm not." His eyes fell back to the sleeping children. "I can be close to them here. To help when the other doctors won't." "They told me there were shortages." "More like intentional omission. Individual patient care takes too much time. Think of it like an assembly line. They go for quantity, not quality. The doctors see these women as numbers, nothing more. They barely take the time to clean them up before they ship them off the table and make room for the next one." "And you do what they won't?" "My gift is healing." he said simply. "I try to cure the infections, stop the bleeding..." His words tightened as he continued, giving her the impression of a tightly wound spring. "Relieve the pain." She took a moment to watch the young mother sleep and to digest his words. "What's her name?" "Deborah." His fingers moved from the shoulder to brush a strand of damp blonde hair from the girl's face. "Her mother and father were refugees from the north, but the black oil got them during the trip to our city. She came alone. According to our law, she must prove herself a valuable member of society if she wants to stay. This is what she is forced to do....bear children for strangers... even though they will be taken away from her by the time they can walk." There it was, again, in his eyes. Hatred kept back only by the power of restraint held by one who has a vital reason to silence his honor. "Taken where?" "Nicolas wants to make sure his future soldiers get off to the right start. Once a child reaches the age of two they are sent to a converted Colonist base up in the Rocky Mountains. Of course they're taught the Corps philosophies from day one. When they're old enough to hold a gun, they're sent back here to fight beside the rest of us." "How old is that?" "Twelve, thirteen. Sometimes younger." "Children have no business in war." "And they don't belong here either. That's where I come in. Trying to keep them alive long enough to give them a future. This is Deborah's first time...she's actually one of the lucky ones. The doctor actually bothered to check the stitches this time." "Oh God." Her throat tightened in disgust. /No more. If they want to butcher cattle, they'll have to do it in someone else's rotation. Tomorrow, I'll show them what medicine is. If they don't like that, they can try and cross me./ "How is she now?" "Resting. The healing process was successful, but it always takes energy out of both the healer and the patient." "This isn't legal, is it." She knew the answer, but wanted to hear his reasons. "Scully, law does one of two things. It sets men free or it crushes them. I can't stand by and watch it crush innocent children." She looked at Deborah's face, pale and drawn when it should be crinkled by laughter and colored by early experimentation with makeup. "Neither can I." The silence dropped against her heart like a tiny rainfall of lead. Penance. No one said it would be easy. "Go now. You need to sleep," he told her, flashing her a smile again. "You can save the world tomorrow." "What if you're caught?" She couldn't drop the thought as easily as he seemed to. "Depends on what mood they're in. Minor infractions are punished by public flogging. If they consider it to be an "anti-human insubordination", I would receive the full extent of the law." "And you're not afraid to die." "Let's just say I make sure I'm not caught." Again, there was that flicker behind his pupils, emotion, mingled with restraint. Scully That paradox intrigued her. "Be careful." Then she left him, each step driving the weariness another layer deeper into her mind and body. She needed to sleep so she could dream. She needed to dream so she could escape. Yet she would inevitably wake up and it would all be waiting for her. Che's words spun lazy circles through the placid surface of her thoughts. /You can save the world tomorrow./ Could she? She slept willingly, but it was not long after her eyes closed before she found herself tumbling from the edge of sanity into a familiar abyss. to be to continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (14/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - White light dropped like acid rain on her skin from the powerful bulb of the lamp above her head. The paper thin film of her eyelids crackled and itched like it would incinerate any moment and leave her pupils bare and naked before the fire. Oh, but the darkness was there as well. It was a thick, viscous presence that oozed decay and fear into her mind. Corroding her. Breaking her down. Leather straps pressed yellow-blue bruises into her wrists. /Mulder, where are you now, I am bound for the sacrifice and I cannot move..../ Her mind prayed it. Her voice whispered it. "Mulder...." "Scully?" So far away, that voice. So far away, but yet drawing nearer. "I'm here! I'm here!" Her voice was snuffed by a sudden sense of movement within the darkness. Evil stirred from its haunches to stand behind her, his hands covering the skin of her neck above the chip that marked her as the devil's plaything. She knew the hands and she knew the devil. Pavlov's voice taunted her even within silence. With infinite slowness the creature slid his fingers up the contour of her neck to her temples, his touch mockingly delicate, a whisper of black lace across a dagger. /Your mind belongs to me./ She trembled. /Mulder, where are you now, the devil stands over me and I can't save myself.../ "Mulder...." "Scully!" Closer, now. Even closer. "I'm here...." A second stirring of shadows, a new set of fingers splayed against her skull and a new consciousness thrust into her mind. She did not know the touch, but the voice.....had it called to her before? This demon did not know the restraint of Pavlov. His mind pushed ruthlessly into her thoughts until blood seeped from the cracks in her skin to run down like tears on her face. He twisted her emotions until they lay broken and trampled like chaff after threshing. /At last I, have found one worthy./ Hissing words. Satan's words. /Mulder, where are you now, evil smothers me and it hurts/ "Mulder...." "Scully!" In the room! Close to her! Salvation...deliverance.... "I'm here...." Bone splintered and popped as the straps did their work of restraint despite her attempts to break free. But why wasn't he coming? Why? Pavlov and the Stranger began to talk inside her mind, conversing with one another. Arguing. /She is mine; I found her first. I broke her in./ /She is mine; I own her now. I will possess her./ /She is mine; I will walk her mind and drink her soul./ /She is mine; I will take from her what I desire./ She squeezed her eyes shut as if she was pressing a lemon peel between her thumbs until the pulp ran out. Her mind was torn. She cried it in her tears. Bloody tears. /Mulder, where are you now, they divide me up to spoil and you do nothing?/ "Mulder!" "Scully!" She could see him now....groping his way through the darkness, stumbling and falling as he searched his way toward her voice. Yet he did not find her. He came close, tantalizingly close, but he no longer seemed to hear her voice or see her bleed. His face turned toward her for an instant, and she saw his eyes were gone. Stolen. All that remained were the blackened scars where sight once lived. She screamed, the sound tearing from her throat to flutter with broken bat wings against the darkness. The Stranger's voice dominated Pavlov's to hammer against every crevice of her mind. She saw its eyes now, electric blue and burning against her. /The blind cannot save you. You will see I own him too./ She awoke to find blood seeping from cuts her fingernails had made in the palms of her hands. There was a small consolation that Mulder was not in the room and therefore could not ask her what was wrong. You're blind, she would have said. You're blind and I'm torn. The shower washed the stains from her skin but even though she let the water scald her, it couldn't cleanse her mind. * * * * * * * * * * * * * When Mulder opened the door, thirty minutes later, he prayed she'd still be there. It was too easy to fear that this all had been some sort of dream, that any minute he'd wake up on his bed with a tequila bottle in one hand and a bloody gun in the other. When he saw her, he knew he never wanted to wake up like that again. Only, always, with her. "Hey." She turned her head in his direction and raised her voice to speak over the whining of his hairdryer. "Is it alright if I use this?" "Help yourself." He unbuttoned the stiff buttons of his collar so he could breathe. The uniform was the singular most uncomfortable suit of clothes ever foisted on humanity, but it was only partly responsible for the sudden lack of air. His eyes hadn't fully adjusted tothe phenomenon of seeing the "real" Scully again, not some faded, finger-worn photo but real, flesh-blood-skin beauty. He pretended to pour himself a glass of water so he could stare again. Update his memory files. Yeah, that justified it. Her hair was a bit longer than in the photographs, reaching just to the curve where her neck blended into shoulders. She'd changed into a dress, he noticed. Did it mean she preferred them now? Or did she just wear it because she wanted to see how close she could drive him to insanity? If that was her motive, it was working all too well. The material flowed around her in a seamless ocean of brilliant blue, clinging with toying innocence to her skin. The only thing holding it on her shoulders were two straps of pale blue lace, and he watched the light swim in a few stray drops of water her shower had left on her skin. The drops began to slide as she lifted her hand to move the hairdryer, and his eyes followed them down the curve of her back until the fabric of her dress had swallowed them. This was getting dangerous. He set the glass down with firm resolve to keep control of his senses, and walked very slowly, very discreetly, toward the bathroom. A little cold water to the face was enough to cool his brain and cleanse his thoughts. /Have you already forgotten? You can't touch her. You don't even deserve to look at her. Not until you get the blood off your fingers, and cold water isn't going to wash it away./ Mulder raised his head to meet his reflection in the mirror, closing his eyes and imagining the past away. How had the world turned so ugly so fast? Why hadn't he been able to stop it, at least for her? Then, maybe it wasn't so much that the world had changed. Evil was not something brand new the Imperials had brought in their spaceships. Maybe the only difference was that for the first time, he'd let the world change *him*. He reached for a towel, wiping the water from his face, the memory from his mind. Everything would be fine now. Scully was here. She was all he needed to become human. If that process required space, he could give it to her. Besides, how hard could it be for two responsible, disciplined adults to co-exist in the same apartment? As he hung the towel back on the wall, he noticed a certain, uh... article of clothing.....she must have forgotten when she changed for her shower. Something black and satin and.... Think responsible. Think disciplined. Oh yeah, this was going to be real easy......if he practically lived in a cold shower. It'd probably come to that before all was said and done. Cold showers and sleeping in the hall. A tiny smile glinted off the corners of his mouth. Bring it on. There were a million things in the world he could trade this for, but he didn't want one of them. Not one. Scully had just set the hair dryer down when Mulder appeared behind her, wearing his patented James Bond grin, the one he used to pull on the secretaries back at the Bureau when he wanted to get out of doing paperwork. Even worse, most of the time it'd worked. Of course, she'd never been totally resistant to the effects of Muldercharm herself.... "You only give me that smile when you want to drive," she said,combing her fingers through her hair one last time to smooth out a tangle. "And since I doubt we're taking any road trips, what else do you want?" "Can't a guy just smile?" She wasn't blind to the way his eyes followed her movement as if it were his fingers moving softly through each strand. He stood close enough to her to violate her personal space oh-so-slightly, enough to generate sparks between them but not flame. The muscles of her throat tightened as she swallowed the desire to lean back until she rested against his chest, inside the circle of his arms. She had been the one to ask for distance. Now all she had to do was live up to her own demands. He could, however, try to make it just a little easier on her. He knew exactly what he was doing. /But so do you, don't you? You're not about to say you put on this dress just because you happened to feel like it./ For seventeen seconds it felt like magnetism alone would pull them together. His hand brushed the skin of her shoulder ever so slightly, then abruptly pulled away as he stepped back, nearly stumbling in his haste. Relief came hand in hand with regret. "Actually I was going to ask you if you were hungry. Believe it or not, I can make a mean chicken pasta when the occasion calls for it. Of course, we don't have real chicken here but I've got the next best thing-" "Stop." Scully held up her hand. "I don't want to know. Just cook it and I'll eat it." She felt the residue of their brief closeness in the smile easing the wrinkles around her mouth. Had it always felt this good to smile at him? "Ignorance is a form of bliss, you know." "I can think of other forms." His eyes deepened to a richer shade of jade and fastened on her lips. She had to look away before steam started rising from her skin. /C'mon, say something. Change the subject. Something nice. Benign./ "Do you have any coffee?" She blurted the question out as soon as it popped into her head. "Coffee...." "Uh, yeah." She scrambled to piece together a reason. "It's been a long day. Maybe we could have some with dinner, if you have any that is-" "I want to know everything about you." The simple statement cut off her rambling and her eyes snapped back to his to see that the intensity of his gaze had only deepened. "What?" The sincerity of it blindsided her, knocking her common sense back even farther from the forefront of her brain. "You said we need to talk. So start talking. I want to know every minute of every day that I missed. What you did, what you thought...." He paused, his voice dropping to a slow, honey-over-gravel crawl. "...what you want from me...." /Breathe, Dana./ "What do you think I want?" "I want to hear it from you." He moved forward in another calculated invasion of her space, the borders of their existence overlapping so that she could touch him if she extended her fingers a matter of inches. "Tell me everything because we are together now and we have all the time in the world-" At that moment his phone rang. He ignored it. It rang again, the sound scraping against the air with all the grace of cat's claws running down a tin roof. "You'd better answer it." She said, softly, her shoulders rising and falling in a sigh. "It might be important." He hesitated a moment, then picked it up by the third ring. "Mulder." Something at the center of her began to sink as she watched him listen dutifully to his latest set of instructions. She knew what he'd say even before he hung up. The Almighty Cause required his services. Again. He turned the phone over in his hand, staring at the black plastic casing rather than at her as he spoke. Scully already missed the bridge between their eyes. "They, um, need my patrol to go out early tonight." "I see." Another small space of silence. "You couldn't tell them to send someone else?" "It's my job." His tone left no room for further argument. She briefly considered trying anyway, but decided it wiser to pick the battles she could win. There would be other nights, other chances to talk. Or so she hoped. "Do you know when you'll be getting in?" "We have the late shift tonight. Maybe 1:30, if we're lucky." "I'll wait up." "You don't have to." Mulder crossed the room to the door, taking his gun and holster off its peg and strapping it around his shoulders. A second gun slid into a holster on his leg, followed by a pair of smooth silver knives, both tucked into sheaths beneath his sleeves. "We're supposed to talk." They had been so close....it was difficult now to let go. He paused, hand frozen around his weapon. "We will soon. I promise." Then he said goodbye and the door shut behind him. She leaned her head against the wood and listened to his footsteps fade down the hall. Away from her. If she pressed her hands on the door, she imagined it was still warm from the remnants of his presence, his aura. What was it he had said? /Tell me everything because we are together now and we have all the time in the world./ /Sure, Mulder. Sure, we do./ They were together but somehow she had ended up alone. And she was still alone four hours later, after the curfew s irens had sounded and the city lights dimmed, when a knock at the door stirred her from light sleep. She opened it to see two soldiers standing on her doorstep. "Come with us." The tone was polite enough, but they didn't have to show her their guns to let her know that it was not a request. to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (15/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - Where do we go from here? This isn't where we intended to be. We had it all; you believed in me. I believed in you.... Why are you at my side? How can I be any use to you now? Give me a chance and I'll let you see how nothing has changed.... You must love me. - "You Must Love Me." Evita In the two minutes they allowed her to dress, Scully ran through the mental calisthenics of possible escape scenarios. The gun was in the dresser, but her "visitors" were blocking both that and the door. If it had only been one man, she would have risked a physical attack. But this time there were two, and though their backs were momentarily turned in concession to her privacy, it would have been foolish on her part to think they were not ready for any tricks. No, it would be best to go along for now, at least until she was out of the building and could work with a wider range of options. Then again, she had no idea what they wanted with her. They had made no threats, yet there was a silent pressure in their eyes that pushed against her as if the men were trying to crowd her into an invisible corner. Stranger still was her perception that they expected her to know what was happening. /Sorry, boys./ She buttoned the top of her jeans and slid her T-shirt over her head quickly, just in case they had grown tired of playing nice. /I don't have a clue whose game this is./ The thought crossed her mind that Skinner might somehow be involved...perhaps he had voiced his political ideals to the wrong person and her name had surfaced as a possible witness. Maybe these men were here to convince her to make accusations. Yeah, she'd like to see them try. At the same time, she harbored serious doubts that Skinner would have given her name to Nicolas or anyone else. Loyalty had never been in question between the two of them, and even more, her old boss was a dyed in the wool Marine. All he knew to give was name, rank, and serial number. Her eyes flicked to the backs of the men waiting for her. If they hurt him, they would die soon enough. Blood for blood. Then, this could be something entirely different. There was only one way to find out. "So, you boys want to tell me where we're going?" Now they'd left the officer's quarters, taking a back route through an alley that stank of urine and garbage. The avoidance of main roads indicated that the purpose tonight was not official, and her mind raced to realign her plans with this new information. It also interested her that they had yet to draw their guns or impose any sort of physical threat on her. Did they think her incapable? If so, now would be the time to make her move. Before they changed their minds and started guarding her closely.... "It's not safe to talk on the street." The boy beside her-- and he couldn't have been more than nineteen, now that she saw his face-- answered her question with a terseness that made her think he expected some kind of ambush any moment. "The city police might pick it up." Ok, that just about proved she was not out here for any government business. The knowledge provided a form of relief, doubled with new uncertainty. Here she was, without a weapon, standing in the middle of an alley in between two armed strangers. For some reason she felt no fear, nor any reason for it. The slight whisper of her intuition, velvet soft in the back of her mind, told her to follow. To trust. They turned into a side street, crossing it hurriedly before fading back into the shadows of another alleyway. The nineteen-year old that had told her not to talk walked slightly ahead of them, as if he were watching for someone or something. City police, he'd said? Well, they were out past curfew. In this place, she suspected that was worth at least a beating. Three alleys and two streets later, there was a van waiting. The taller of the two climbed into the driver's seat while the nineteen-year-old held the door open for her. "Get in, please. Stay out of sight until I tell you otherwise." Now it was time to lay it on the line. "Tell me why I should go with you." Her muscles tightened as she spoke, winding around into a tautly coiled spring that would release at the slightest threat. The boy's throat was white and exposed in the streetlights. Skinner had taught her a defense maneuver that could crush the windpipe with one blow. Two at the most. She could grab his gun and disappear within thirty seconds. Thirty seconds.... "Skinner said you were for our Cause." His eyes were frank. Honest. "He said to bring you to him." "Why doesn't he come see me himself?" "He is at a meeting now. A meeting which could cost him his life if the wrong people knew he attended." "And I'm just supposed to take your word for it." "You can take whatever your want. We will escort you back to your room if you wish, or we will take you to meet the General. But either way we have to hurry. The longer we are out here, the greater chance we will be caught." She hesitated, staring at the boy's face as she searched her instincts for the gut reaction. It said to follow. And if instinct was mistaken, what chance did she have of finding her way back through the streets at this hour of night even if she escaped? "Let's go." She took the boy's hand and climbed into the van. "But if you're lying to me, remember that Commander Mulder and I used to kill little boys like you. I don't think I'd have a problem doing it again." The boy grinned. "I don't think you would, Ma'am." Ten minutes later, the vehicle stopped and they allowed her to sit up. She stepped onto the street, for the first time gaining a glance at her surroundings. It was not a pleasant place. In the building across the street, a child began to screech, the sound harsh and loud as a cat pinned beneath a lawnmower. The sound grated against the underbelly of the night, and rubbed rough as blown sand against her nerves. "You'll have to excuse him." The younger of her escorts said, his eyes lifting to the other building as his companion knocked on the door before them. "He's only two. Doesn't understand what starvation is.." "So you're the good guys here. Help him." "Once you've been here longer than a night, you'll realize it's never that simple. But we try." The door opened, smearing yellow lamplight thick as paint across the charcoal street and faded buildings. A familiar shadow fell across her face, and she looked up to see Skinner looming in the doorway, hand extended to hers to hurry her inside. "Quickly...they don't usually patrol here, but when they surprise us, it's never pleasant." He waited for her and the two soldiers to enter before shutting the door behind them. As soon as he moved away, a sentry fell back into place, the metal of his gun only half as cold as the stone of his face. Such a young face. Much too young to be so hard. Once the deadbolts were locked again and double-checked, Skinner allowed a few of his muscles to relax, turning back to her with the slightest of cat smiles. "Welcome to the Quarter, the politically correct dumping ground for hybrids, clones, and any other form of human refuse-- which includes us, by the way." That elicited a skitter of laughter from the small crowd that, Scully began to notice, pressed into all corners of the tiny room. There were twenty of them, mostly men with the exception of one or two women. All stared straight at her. It was a meeting, obviously, no doubt political. Scully wondered how he had convinced them to let her join in. Zealots did not usually welcome visitors. "How was the trip?" Skinner's eyes flicked a double meaning into the question. Were you followed? "It was...uneventful." "Excellent." He glanced back at the two soldiers, a tacit nod of approval from him sparking them to stand up even straighter. "Good thing your trip was quiet. It was a risk bringing you here tonight-" "Indeed it was, General." A short man with bone white hair and hawk's eyes stood up from the table, advancing until his gaze pressed against the invisible borders of her personal space. She resented the intrusion, but she made no protest or attempt to move. A blind man could see that a trial was taking place. Judgments were being made, dice rolled. Everyone was watching her. The man continued. "We only have your promise to assure us that she can be trusted. What proof has she shown-" "Proof. " Skinner interrupted, the skin of his jaw tightening at the seams. A bad sign. "Don't remember your history, Strauss? This isn't some rookie I pulled off the streets and slapped in this meeting. She is Dana Scully. She and Mulder were killing aliens back when the rest of us were still running around like headless chickens, squawking about a world that was already dead. They saved us." "And where is Mulder now?" The man called Strauss made only a token attempt to cover the contempt lacing his words. "Does he still fight? Does he still save us? No, he betrayed us long ago to the Enforcers. Killed more than one of our men, not to mention their families. Now he fights for Nicolas. Tell me which evil is worse, if you can. He's out there leading patrol as we speak, no doubt up to his elbows in blood-" "Strauss!" Skinner hurled across the room to cut the man off before he could continue. He saw the barely suppressed shudder that shook Scully's body, the half-stricken gleam in her eye. "That will be quite enough." He hardened his voice until it wrapped like iron cords around Strauss' throat and kept him silent. Caution he could empathize with, paranoia he could understand, but no one talked like that in front of her. Not while he was in the room. All eyes rested expectantly on him, and he stepped back to expand his gaze until he met every one of them, heartbeat for heartbeat. They waited, silent as any spider, for him to allay the suspicions raised by Strauss and his insinuations. Something more than Scully's reputation was at stake. The more subtle challenge had been placed against his leadership itself. It was expected. He took a deep breath. /Time to see if the magic is still there, old boy./ "I don't blame you for caution. It's what keeps us alive." He sought out each of them, one by one. Demanded, not requested, their attention. "But it could also kill us, and it will, the moment we turn it against our own." He could read the scars in their eyes. For these past many months, he had somewhat forgotten what it was like within these walls. They had not had that luxury. He'd left them alone and now could he honestly blame them for their misgivings? They could judge him but they had better keep the gavel away from Scully. This thought urged him to forge ahead, answering the silence pregnant with question. "The woman beside me has been through more hell for the Cause than any of you will ever imagine, much less survive. I trust her with my life, and with every dream I have for freedom. I ask you to do the same. She is our last chance to get through to Commander Mulder. All of you-- even you, Strauss--have admitted to me that Mulder is the only one who can stand against Nicolas and win. The people will follow him in a way they won't follow any of us. If we don't use that, Nicolas will. And right now, he is using that against us. Rest assured of that." He strained through the lamplight to read their faces, though it was not enough to tell whether the shadows he saw were doubt or mere contemplation. Then someone spoke, a voice soft yet firm from the back of the room. "I will speak for her as well." Che rose to his feet, and like a magnet, drew the attention of the entire room. The light flickered across his dark skin and across the barely visible scars etched across his face. "She is to be trusted. Those who know me know that I wouldn't say it if I didn't believe it one-hundred percent. But we're asking all the wrong people here. It doesn't matter what the General says, or what I say. You want to hear the truth? Ask her." Suddenly the eyes were back upon Scully, pricking with needlepoint delicacy at her skin in attempts to punch through to her soul. She stared back and refused to be intimidated. Strauss stood again. "Miss....Scully, don't think that we're here to accuse you of anything. We are desperate men in a desperate world, trying as best we can to survive, and to help our families do the same. General Skinner's word is more than enough,--and Che's only adds to that weight-- but he's right when he says we need to hear it from you. What assurance can you give us that you share our goals?" The eyes waited, hungry for answers. Skinner waited, nodding slight assurance in her direction. She took a step away from him, closer toward the crowd, and pulled up her sleeve until her bare wrist was revealed, chalk white tinged with a dusting of yellow from the light. She lifted it high enough to capture that dusting, and show them all the black smudge of numbers burned into her skin. Trust was not earned by a thrilling speech or a confirmation from great men. It was worn in scars upon the hands and feet and soul. "Three. Seven. Eight. Four. One. Nine." She made all of them see it. Especially Strauss. "This was given to me on my arrest two years ago. I was sent, with Mulder, to a concentration camp where the enemy did all in their power to break me. It went beyond my body. They invaded my mind itself." Here she fought to keep her voice from breaking at the memories of slashed thoughts and more recent nightmares. "Some of you know what that's like. Then you will also know that resistance is possible. But not alone. It takes faith and stubbornness and most of all it takes trust. That's all I'm asking for here. This was my fight, and Mulder's fight, before there even was a war. It will continue to be my fight, and all I want is for you to give me the chance to prove it. If we lose the distinction between friend and enemy, we are no different than Nicolas and certainly no more human. It's that easy." Her eyes swept each of their faces, and again she felt Strauss pushing against her eyes, probing her for falsehood. She pushed back for one moment before dropping her gaze and moving back beside Skinner, the breath coming in ragged jolts through her lungs. This *was* her battle. If she had forgotten it before-- and she had, at least a little-- then she remembered it now, with every part of her. This was the dream she had shared with Mulder a thousand days of struggling and nights of running. Resist, but never serve. Never! She had told herself that before, but tonight she believed it for the first time since the gates of the camp had closed behind her. There was something here so much greater than survival. The call of it intertwined with her soul and with her destiny. It was sewn into Mulder's too, whether he accepted it now or not. She would make him accept it. Skinner spared her a brief glance before turning to the crowd, and he didn't even have to smile. His eyes said it all. "You've heard the truth." he said. "I move we accept Dana Scully into the confidence of this body. Now make your decision." Che, she noticed, was halfway to his feet when Strauss stood, his eyes never moving from her, yet somehow softer now, and kinder in intent. "I second the motion." "All in favor let it be known by saying aye." Twenty voices-- her judges and jurors-- responded in a unison "Aye." She was acquitted of all charges, all imagined crimes. "Any opposed?" Skinner asked it out of formality's sake, his voice half-daring anyone to contradict. No one so much as peeped. "It's unanimous." he turned back to her, offering her hand in official friendship. "On behalf of the membership represented here tonight, I welcome you to First Strike. You already know our aims-- the restoration of the resistance to its original cause-- and here are the leaders who will make that happen. Colonel Strauss is ranking officer and acting leader in my absence. The others you will meet later, but now we've got business. Please, sit." Scully took the chair offered, here eyes wondering until she caught sight of Che, who flashed her a toothy grin from his corner. His arm rested in gentle protection around a woman whose head rested on his shoulder. She was a delicate beauty, feathery black hair brushing her chin to accent bones tiny enough to break under a harsh glance. Just this morning, Scully had wondered why he accepted the abuse of the other soldiers, why he never struck back at their mockery or challenged their rules. Now she knew. That girl was his world; even across the room, you could read it in his eyes. Mulder used to look at her that way, his arms wrapped around her just so and his lips soft in her hair.... Now his eyes were changed. The "look" was still there, but different on some fundamental level. Either way, she envied the couple their innocent affection. Naivete in love could make up for so many other, more harsh awakenings, and both were so young. She judged Che at about twenty-one, but the girl couldn't have been much over eighteen. A rose-pink blush still lit up her face every time Che leaned forward to whisper in her ear or press kisses onto her skin. Eighteen, Scully decided, or nineteen at the very most. "I need a status report. Tell me where we are." Scully became aware that Skinner was speaking again and turned her attention to him as a dutiful schoolgirl back to her books. One eye, however, she kept on Che and the girl. It was easy, achingly so, to picture her and Mulder in that corner, oblivious to all but each other. "Each day is worse." Strauss answered first, his voice showing strain to match the dark furrows of his eyebrows. "After you left," Nicolas began to take open action against the rest of us." There might have been a hint of accusation in that question, just enough to leave shadows of implications lurking in the corners of everyone's mind. That was a bit below the belt, she thought. Strauss continued. "Rations were cut and our families starved until we signed oaths of complete loyalty. We each had to turn over a son or daughter to his army to prove our 'sincerity'. Even then, we were barely allowed to breathe." Another voice. "Tell him about the raids. And don't forget all those 'spontaneous' street beatings by 'indignant citizens' who couldn't contain their rage to us 'traitors'." More joined in, until the room buzzed with the fever pitch of angry men. "My daughter was fourteen when they forced a child into her in the clinics. She nearly died giving it birth only to have i taken!" "Yeah, and we all know sometimes Nicolas likes to do the job himself. We're afraid to let our women even set foot in the street. Especially those of us who are 'Impures'. He's given his soliders special liberty....after all, you have to keep the butchers busy between missions." Che, she noticed, flinched as if the last part of the man's comment had flown under his skin and stung his nerves, his arms tightening around the girl's shoulders. His hand slid down to her stomach, and for the first time, Scully saw the swell of late-term pregnancy-- seven or eight months, it looked like, though the darkness of the room made it hard to tell. No wonder the glint in his eyes shone so fierce, half-determined and half-afraid. Voices and passions continued to rise and fall as the hours slid by. The conversation eventually lapsed from complaints and political ranting to more practical matters. Tonight's agenda dealt with the need to secure a steady source of food rations for the Quarter, and who to bribe or threaten to get it done. Opinions were declared, opposed, then argued and on and on and on the cycle spun. She'd been out of the loop a long time, but even she recognized that they were going nowhere. Poor Skinner looked like he was about to loose the rest of his hair. After a while, cramps in her legs and a prelude to a headache demanded she stand; she took the opportunity to slip into the next room. The debate had again grown heated, faces flushing fists beating the air to a pulp over the correct choice of contacts. No one would even know she was missing... to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (16/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - The throbbing in her legs moved up to her head as she walked, pounding behind her eyes in balls of tiny white fire that flashed in time to the pace of the voices that bled through the wall, even after she shut the door. "They aren't always like this." Scully turned to see the girl standing behind her, a shy smile creasing her lips as she entered the room. "It's been hard for all of us, lately, and they're getting tired of standing by and watching." "Who wouldn't?" Scully returned the smile, drawn to the unfeigned open nature of the girl's eyes. They reminded her of her eyes, back when the term "X-File" was not a word she recognized, and when aliens lived only in cheesy Friday night horror flicks. She extended her hand. "My name is Dana." "I know." Her smile crinkled as if she were about to laugh. "Che's told me all about you. He thinks you're a good woman. I'm pleased to finally meet you in person. My name is Aida." "I don't think he ever mentioned you to me before." "Please don't be offended. He's just trying to protect us." Her hand patted her womb. "I=E2=80=99m not registered. General Skinner helped Che smuggle me here right before he left." "Are immigration laws that strict?" "For hybrids, always. But Che had a different reason. He....didn't want to share me with any officer." She said all this matter-of-factly, brushing a lock of hair from her face. She regarded Scully for a moment. "You are wondering why the risk?" The angles of her chin tilted upward with a determination that seemed out of place in her tiny frame. "Everything in life is a risk when you are what we are. No one's going to keep us from facing those risks together." "Don't justify it to me." Scully said. "I understand." /Believe me, I understand. More than you think./ "I believe you do." The girl's eyes took on an odd sheen, soft as the sun reflected in ebony. That light passed right through Scully, effortlessly sliding from one end of her bones to the other. "You have this kind of love inside you. It's wounded now, at least on the outside, but still strong. Don't hold it back. Let it heal with him....not apart." For a full twenty seconds, Scully could not speak, surprise and emotion choking all words. "How...do you-" "Empathy." She said.. "It's my trait. Che's is healing, as you know. Mine is an extreme sensitivity to emotions. I guess you could call it healing too, only a different kind." "I see." The words were of necessity brief, for there was still a fight to keep the tears back. Scully was half-angry at the girl for brushing uninvited against wounds still raw, but at the same time, something on a deeper level told her that the words were true. More so than she would like to admit. /But how do you find the balance? If I open myself totally to him, what is to keep me from being swept away?/ A second, harsher voice inside her mind answered her own doubts. /Is it really that? Or do you just want to make sure he's good enough for your love?/ Ouch. That hurt. "I've upset you." Aida frowned, her hands fluttering about her mouth in butterfly concern. "I=E2=80=99m sorry." "Don't apologize." /When in doubt, change the subject./ "Tell me how long you've known Che." The question had a calming effect on the girl, restoring tiny slivers of the smile that seemed to come and go across her face with the carelessness of spring breezes. Either Che really had succeeded in sheltering her from the outside, or she had met the dangers and chose to ignore them all. No one smiled like that in this world. No one who knew what was going on. "Two years, ten months, and twenty-seven days." She laughed. "Crazy, but I still remember every detail of the first time I saw him. I never lived in a laboratory, you see, although I was created in one. The scientist who created me got tired of doing dirty work for the Colonists, so he split and took me with him. We had a little store about fifteen miles from the Rio Grande. He made great coffee...." She must have realized she was wandering, because she shook the far-away look from her eyes and continued. "To make the story short, I caught Che trying to steal food one evening. He was bleeding from his side-- that's how I knew he was one of us-- and looked three steps away from total exhaustion. He'll laugh if you told him this, but I fell in love with him right then. We took care of him, and found out what the Colonists had done to his village. Has he told you?" "Yes." "Horrible." A brief shudder skipped across her shoulders but she seemed to put it quickly from her mind. "Anyway, he stayed on to help us at the store. Two months later we were married. I know, it sounds like we rushed in, but we just knew, right?" "You two are married?" She couldn't help the surprise. There certainly wasn't much of that going on now. Maybe it was the uncertainty of life that made people hesitate to commit to anything so binding as "=E2=80=98til death do us part." "Yes." Aida blushed again, a deep rose glow underneath her skin. "We're both Catholic, and even if we weren't....it was still important to us. I can't explain why exactly. We just knew that we would be together forever and we wanted everyone to know. It certainly wasn't anything fancy.... The only priest we could find was half-drunk during the ceremony, and the "chapel" was the back room of a bar. It smelled of cigarettes and stale tequila but none of that mattered. It was perfect for us. I wore a pink sundress and-" She stopped, as if it had just hit her that she was talking to another person. "I'm boring you to death, aren't I?" "Not at all." Actually, Scully found herself the slightest bit envious. When she was eight, she had a secret box under her dresser filled with cutouts of wedding dresses and handsome men from magazines. Even when she was old enough to pretend she was independent, there had always been that bit of a dream. Then came Mulder, and the X-files, and the end of the world... But maybe that wasn't the reason he'd never asked her to take that final step. She had thought of it before, briefly; only now she wondered if he had wanted to leave himself an out. An escape from her. "Is this your first child?" Another subject change; now was not the time to deal with her doubts or her fears. "Two years ago, our first was born. A baby girl." The laughter in her eyes ebbed away for a scattering of moments. "She was two weeks old when we woke to find she had died in the night. We still don't know why. Poor Che....he never forgave himself for not being able to save her. As if he could have known." "I'm sorry." The words sounded trite, but Scully hoped the girl felt her sincerity. She had her own sort of empathy towards the death of a child, the kind that came from the core of sacred memory. "She was not a healthy child to begin with, I think. My link to her was weak. Not strong, like this one here." Her gaze dropped to her womb with a warmth Scully could only imagine. "He's a fighter. Already he tells me he wants to be just like his father--" "He communicates with you?" "Telepathy isn't uncommon among those like us. Che and I share it to some degree, but not like I do with my little one. I think it's because of my empathy. I don't question too much, though. A gift from God is not made to be questioned." She might not have believed it three years ago, but now she found the concept not so far beyond thought. "What does Che think?" "Oh, he's a regular skeptic. He laughed, at first, until he felt it too, when we were sharing thoughts. He hasn't said a word about it since. I think it scares him." /Can't imagine why./ "Because he's not used to it?" "He's never let go of our daughter's death. I can feel the fear inside him, a constant thorn, that it will happen again. I don't think it will. Our son has a strong soul. He'll have a strong body too, thanks to his father. In between missions, Che volunteers in the maternity wing so he'll have access to vitamins and other things like that." There was a tremolo of pride in her voice, not in herself but in her husband. She believed so readily that he could keep her safe. Scully hoped that faith would be enough. "You are lucky to have someone like that." Aida responded with a sideways glance and an elfin smile. "You're lucky too, Dana Scully, and don't you forget." The words had no sooner left her mouth when she gave a start, her hand flying to her forehead. "Oh, dear!" "What???" Scully sprang forward, searching the girl's face for any indication of pain that might reveal a complication with the pregnancy. "Is it the baby?" "Yes and no." She said, the wrinkles in her forehead easing back into placidity. "Nothing's wrong with him....he just reminded me we haven't said our prayers yet today. We burn a candle every evening, just to make sure heaven knows we're here....tonight the meeting distracted me. Would you excuse me, a moment?" "Actually, I'd like to come with you, if that's all right." In Chile, she had resumed her old habits under the shadow of the small crucifix Skinner had salvaged from an old mission. Since she had entered the city, she had fallen away. It was as if a hideous monster sat upon her shoulders, his leathery wings blinding her eyes and his weight pressing his talons deep into her soul until it bent. Evil-- she knew that's what it was-- lived in this town, and it haunted her dreams. "I have a few prayers to catch up on myself." "Of course." There was that smile again, the flash of sunlight that stirred up dust mites of emotion in places Scully had considered sealed for years. Apart from Skinner and Mulder, she couldn't remember the last time she had called anyone friend, even before the Invasion. Too long, that was certain. "It's this way." Aida walked across the room to a small enclave in the wall, where a small statue of the Virgin Mary sat in front of an intricately carved crucifix. A rosary was draped around it, the beads golden brown in the soft light. "Che's father made them for his mother. When the Imperials came, they were all he could save." She kissed her fingers and placed them reverently on the head of Christ as she dropped to her knees, her voice fading to a whisper of satin. "He gave them to me on our wedding night." Scully followed suite, kissing a blessing onto the Christ and then kneeling in rituals as familiar as communion yet alien in a way that should not have been. The girl began to pray, her lips moving in recitation that reminded Scully of Melissa at Easter Mass. It had always been Missy's favorite prayer.... "Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we come, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning, and weeping in this valley of tears...." Scully echoed the words; they throbbed through her veins with resonance deeper than blood and more ancient than pulse. Fragility was not a crime, here. It was beauty, breaking out from her fingers. She knew that sometimes even a tiny beam could pierce darkness. The prayer continued. "Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy towards us. And after this our exile, show unto us The Blessed Fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary. Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God. That we made be made worthy. Amen." "Amen." Scully's eyes closed, and for the first time in weeks, she opened her soul. /Beatus Maria, forgive me for I have sinned. Speak to the Father and to your Holy Son on my behalf tonight. I know I have strayed from the path many times. Moments come now, when I am barely sure of who I am, of what I believe. May I never lose faith in You. May I never forget. Beatus Maria, forgive him for he has sinned. Speak to the Father and to your Holy Son on behalf of the man I love. He has spilled blood for me, but do not judge him alone. It is my sin as well. He did it because of me. (He shall come to judge the living and the dead.) Tell the Father, Maria, that I would walk to Jerusalem on my hands and knees if it would but serve as just penance for us both. But that wouldn't be enough. He must forgive himself. Oh, make me his reason to forgive...not his condemnation. May I never lose faith in him. May I never forget. Speak to my daughter, and tell her not a day goes by when I do not ache to see her. Tell her it will be soon, but not yet. Not with so much left to do. Kyrie, elison God have mercy on us. Amen./ When her soul returned to her body, and her mind glided on reluctant wings back into its cage, Scully opened her eyes too see Aida looking back at her. "You pray with all your soul, like I have never seen before." That was all the girl said before standing again and walking back to the main room. Scully remained still, the paralysis of the moment not quite yet wearing off her bones, her gaze resting on the statue of Mary, at the serene peace in the woman's face. A rare thing, peace. She prayed with all her soul? Simple....it was the only way she knew how. Would it be blasphemy, though, if she asked God for one sign--just one-- that he was listening? The meeting had dissipated by the time she rejoined Skinner in the main room. It was nearly two-thirty, but Scully suspected that the lateness of the hour was not the only reason for the hollows smudging his eyes. "How'd it go?" "I don't blame you for leaving." He said. "We argued for three hours over the correct methods and procedures of bribery. Like children." He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "I've been away too long. That's all there is to it." "You're still their leader." Scully told him, her hand brushing his arm. "When you spoke, they listened. Even Strauss." "Maybe they did listen, but how can I know I am still able to tell them what they need to hear?" "You will tell them the truth. What else is there?" A breath of silence preceded his next words. "It's time you left. It's too late at night for you to stick around listening to the problems of a tired old man." "Tired, maybe." She bounced a smile toward him. "But never old." He barely grunted a response as he turned away, though somewhere underneath it she suspected she saw a bit of a grin mixed with the worry-wrinkles. It was no easy matter to pick up leadership of a group after so long an absence. If anyone could, it was this man. He had his work cut out for him, however, and faster and faster the days seemed to fall. Time was of an essence. Scully exchanged farewells with Che and Aida, promising to visit again as soon as she had the chance, then followed her escort back through the cement and the darkness to the officer's barracks. They left her at the gate. Once she was alone, the chill in the air bit at the back of her neck with sharper teeth, and the walls around her cast uglier grimaces in her direction. Already she missed the warmth of the place she had left only moments ago. Already she wished to return. /You've been standing here too long, Dana./ Her mind-voice gently shoved her away from the wistfulness. /Go inside, where you belong./ Or did she belong anywhere? The stairs and hallways were deserted, save for a loose dream or two that chilled her skin as she passed by doorways. She remained alert, one eye trained over her shoulder for any sign of a more corporeal observer. Caution cost nothing, and it had saved her life on more than one occasion. A quick survey of the apartment from bed to bathroom ensured that it too was empty; by chance or a small miracle, Mulder had not yet returned. Just how long did a "simple patrol" take? Strauss' comments reverberated in the silence of her mind, hollow and cold. /No doubt, up to his elbows in blood./ She shivered, and this time it was not from the night air. With mild hurry, in case he should return and catch her off-guard, Scully slid out of her clothes and into the over-sized flannel shirt she wore as pajamas. The fabric lay downy soft against her skin, warming quickly from the heat of her body. If only it warmed souls as well. She carefully folded her clothes back in their proper places, and began to tuck her gun into the folds of cloth but impulse-- or instinct, depending on which view you chose-- changed her mind. Desperate men, Strauss had said, in a desperate world. No one had followed her that she could see....although there was much, in the middle of the night in a strange city, that might slip between vision's cracks. Tonight she would sleep with the hardness of her gun cutting into her skull from underneath her pillow, and with the sharp corners of an extra clip jutting through the mattress. Just like all those old nights. Just like the nights that Mulder promised her were over forever. The sheets had barely grown warm over her body when the door opened, and the sound of his breathing, as native to her by now as her own, encroached upon the silence. The cadence of breath had a ragged quality to it that she had never heard before. It mixed with a sudden bile of liquor in the air to form a disconcerting cloud of suspicion from the loose vapors of her thoughts. Was he.... No. Impossible. In all of her time with him, only once had she seen him even close to drunkenness. After the Invasion, he had not so much as touched a drop of anything harder than a soft drink for fear it would ruin their survival odds. No, he could not be drunk. Maybe his patrol had stopped by a bar after shift, and he had carried the scent back with him. It explained his late return as well. A nice, satisfying, logical explanation. It crossed her mind to ask him, but instead Scully decided to watch. And wait. to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (17/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - He unbuckled his gun and his ammunition belt, dropping both on the floor with an unceremonious clunk. The noise of it must have surprised him, for his eyes darted toward her as if fearing he had disturbed her "sleep". She closed her eyes in an instant, and counted a long fifteen seconds before chancing to open them again.By that time, he'd turned on a small lamp that divided him and the kitchen area between tawny light and shadow. Mulder knelt on the floor before the sink, reaching far back into the cabinet until he withdrew two items-- a shot glass, and a tall bottle of something that glowed dark amber in the lamp light. Tequila, she thought, with horseradish bitterness. His brand of choice. Again he seemed concerned, nearly afraid, that she was awake. His eyes turned back to her, glazed over with a guilty man's sheen. Scully eased her eyes shut again, thankful her half of the room was still swathed in darkness. A moment passed, then she heard the tinkling of the bottle against the glass, loud as the shattering of windows in her ears. The soft slash of the liquor in the bottle rippled in waves across her ears, chilling her to the bone. Should she interrupt ? Intervene? No, not tonight. Not tonight. No matter how much she wanted to stop him, it would be more beneficial to both of them if she held her tongue and waited out the silent storm. The demons within him must be strong, if they drove him to this. She had to know what she was up against. And beyond all that, she knew from experience the impossibility of reasoning with a man while liquor possessed him. Bill Jr. had come home more than once in that state, and her attempts to calm him inevitably resulted in a screaming match as temper vied with temper. /But Mulder would never act that way to you..../ Then, she did not know that. She had never had the chance to find out. Now she watched him again, her gaze creeping around him with cat feet that avoided even passing contact with his eyes. The magnetism between them was too strong-- even when dulled on his end by his forget-the-world juice-- and she was afraid he would find her staring. He was writing something, between drinks, and it was no small surprise his hands did not shake more than they did. He was either one of those men who naturally held their booze well, or he had been at it a lot longer than she had thought. That thought quickly dampened hope, and her fingers moved just enough to pull the covers closer to her chin. Now, exactly at this moment, it would be easy to be repulsed. To condemn. Instead she ached. Deeper than bones she ached, because she saw through the haze clouding his features to recognize the pain in the tightness of his jaw and the quivering of his lips. She was the monster here. She had turned him into this; she had been weak and he had killed because of it. Scully wanted to tell him this, to pour it out as water to heal the thirst between them, but she could not. First she must find a way to heal herself; broken vessels made poor gifts. The thoughts had spun her into their web so completely that she only now realized he was staring at her again. Purposefully. And now moving, in her direction.... She pressed her eyes shut as if she could squeeze a prayer from them as his breathing neared her. The pungent odor of the tequila stung her nostrils until she held her breath for fear of coughing and betraying the charade. The floor creaked as he fell rather clumsily to his knees beside her bed. She could sense the electricity of him through the rice-paper thin barrier of her eyelids. She could feel the heat. He sat perfectly still at first, and she could sense his eyes dancing a slow waltz across her face. Searching for something she wished she knew how to help him find. Then his fingers touched her skin, a light homage against her hair and trailed down to her cheekbones. Across her lips. He burned her alive, and it took all the ice she had inside her to remain motionless. She hardly dared allow her heart to beat, for the slightest release might send all walls tumbling to the earth. She would rise, Sleeping Beauty awakened to claim her kiss, and pull him to her and they would forget everything.... When he leaned forward, the fairytale soured from the liquor on his breath, a taint so strong she could taste it. Taste the guilt. For a brief tug-of-war between fear and desire, she thought he would kiss her anyway. Instead he pulled back abruptly, leaving only a breath mark in her ear. "Forgive me...." Then he fell into his bed, and into the lullaby of a drunken man's oblivion. Sleep did not come so easily for her. The tears that had hardened under the pressure of her self-control melted now, soaking her cheekbones and her lips where he had touched but not kissed. The skin remained moist until exhaustion, the savior of all troubled minds and beleaguered souls, came to tuck her gently into slumber. Morning smiled over the east with the slow warmth of dawn, and in the first minutes after she opened her eyes, Scully swore she had dreamed the night. The windows of the apartment were open to the morning sunlight and a soft breeze. The same breeze diffused the fragrance of fresh coffee through every fiber of her sleepy muscles. "I see someone finally decided to rejoin the living." Mulder's voice-- firm and strong and clean of even the hint of alcohol-- greeted her and she looked up to see him standing already dressed in the kitchen. His hands were steady as he poured coffee into two black mugs, not a sign of a hangover about him. No circles darkened his eyes. No headache sharpened his words. Well, they did have drugs for that now. They had drugs for everything. "I made breakfast." he said, his smiling as warm upon her face as the morning sun and in its own way just as blinding. "To make up for skipping dinner last night. Let's see if I can still get it right...Coffee, medium black, with exactly two teaspoons of sugar, and toast, lightly browned, with butter?" "Impressive, Mulder." She returned the smile. "Of course, you have an unfair advantage. Photographic memory and all." She slid out of bed, legs tingling in adjustment to the lingering remnants of night's chill as she headed for the dresser. Mulder tried not to choke on his next breath as he watched her cross the room, bare legs white and satin soft against the huge shirt she had worn to bed. Her hair framed her face in lazy curls and sleep-tangles, giving her the same girl-child innocence she had last night.... His grip tightened on the coffeepot, and he dropped his eyes to hide the disgust on his face. Fourteen days he had been sober. Fourteen days, he'd told himself it was over. That he no longer wanted the poison to eat his brain because Scully was here and she was enough. Only now that she was close enough to touch-- close enough to break-- he could not find the courage to confess. Last night's patrol had thrown him right back into the gutter. What else can you do when you carry back from the desert the screams of the woman and children you killed? A mother and two innocent little boys, humans that bled as she did and as Sam did. Their crime? The father had been caught selling weapons to Imperials in exchange for food rations to ensure his family didn't starve when winter hit. The law demanded that the entire family die, innocents with the guilty. Arms dealing was a capital crime. But he might havefound a way to save the children....if only he'd had the chance.... /"You said to burn the house," his men had told him as flames roared over the screams. "So we did. We figured it'd be easier to torch them along with it....save the bullets."/ He had cursed them and he cursed himself but it was too late. The dry wood burned quickly; he could not even get the door open. The burns on his hands proved only that he had tried.... Mulder realized the cup was about to overflow, and set the coffeepot down, forcing himself to relax. In thirty minutes, he had a post-mission briefing with Nicolas. Nicolas knew how to take the pain away. Between now and then, he would smile for Scully and laugh for Scully and enjoy her beauty. It was the oxygen in his world, the life. At least she had not seen him last night. "How was patrol?" she called over her shoulder as she finished buttoning the jeans she had pulled on under the shirt. He swallowed back the lump in his throat. "Uneventful." It was a necessary lie. This would be over soon. Soon. "Just a few stray skirmishes here and there. Routine rodent-hunting." He laughed, knowing it would sound real, thanks to the hangover pills he had swallowed when he woke up. They were not normally his first choice--he figured that if he was man enough to drink, he was man enough to pay for it-- but things were not "normal" anymore. He had to make her happy. At any cost. She was walking in his direction. He reminded himself for the third time to smile. "Is that how you did this? Rodent-hunting?" Scully took the coffee he handed her, but set it down immediately, reaching for his hands. The palms were wrapped in white gauze, and the skin around the edges of the bandage red and puffy. Burns? Why hadn't she seen this last night? It was dark....but.... She should never have pretended to sleep. He must have been in pain, and she should have been there to soothe and to heal. But why, then, hadn't he woken her? "Yeah...umm....one of my flash grenades went off early." He flinched at her contact, even though she hadn't touched the wounds. "Fortunately I dropped it in time to save my arms, but as you can see I got a bit of a souvenir for my carelessness." He forced nonchalance into the words. As if it happened every day. /Oh, but doesn't it?/ His demons hissed the words throughout his mind. /Go ahead, tell her how you set the children on fire./ "Mmm-hmm. I've heard that before. You'd better just be glad you've got a lucky streak to match." Scully smiled, even though the story she had just heard in no way explained last night. For now she had to let him believe she believed it did. "And that I keep you out of trouble." "Always." His fingers encircled her wrists, capturing her hands against his just a second longer than accident. She knew it had to irritate the burn, but his eyes showed no pain. They rarely did, anymore. Once she could have looked at him and in one glance read his entire soul. Now the view was...clouded. She pulled away, back to her seat to test her coffee. The liquid heat seared the tastebuds on the tip of her tongue, but the flavor was full and deep. Pleasure and pain at the same time. Her fingers traced idle circles around the lip of the cup. /Time to fish for an answer or two./ "Why didn't you have them healed?" "A bit much for a mere surface burn, don't you think?" He took a sip of coffee, and his face curled in a mock grimace. "Now I know why you always made the coffee.." "Be serious, Mulder." "Seriously, Scully, it's not that bad. Healers are reserved for critical cases, anyway. Their talent is too dangerous for liberal use." "Don't tell me you believe that too." "What?" "Never mind." Mulder's little diversions could be cute-- sometimes-- but here there were annoying. It meant he was trying to distract her from the real issue, not a good sign at all. "Why didn't you wake me?" "You were in deep sleep, and I didn't have the heart." /And you had other business./ "I wouldn't have cared. I'm your doctor, remember? I bandage all scraped knees and bruised elbows." Scully abandoned the information gathering as a lost cause, tuning the cadence of her voice to match the lightness of his tone.If he wanted to play games, let him. There were always two solutions to every problem. If he kept the front door locked, she would climb through a window. "Better hurry and finish your toast." he said, the smile never wavering. Crocodiles smiled like that. "Trying to get rid of me, Mulder?" /So you can toss back your coffee with a little drink?/ "Never, but your first shift starts in one hour. Dr Field gets a bit crabby if new doctors show up late." "One hour??" "More like forty-seven minutes, but I rounded up..." Scully did not wait to hear anymore, scooting back from the table and moving with light speed to the dresser. /Now I remember why I hated med school./ She yanked the drawer open, grabbing underwear and a towel in one motion. /He did this on purpose, just to see me run around like a chicken on LSD./ "What do I wear?" she called out of the bathroom, kicking the door shut with one foot and reaching for the shower with her free hand. "Your uniform." "I don't *have* a uniform." "It's in the closet." He was laughing. She could hear it. "I picked it up yesterday." She might have laughed too, but from where she stood, the sound struck a different chord than it had only moments ago. Something strange and in a minor key.... Maybe it was just the water in her ears. She knew better than that. Just as she knew last night was no dream. She was gone. A heavy breath deflated his lungs as his shoulders slumped, and the spandex-taut lines of his smile snapped back into mere creases around his mouth. He had always hated charades. Why didn't he just tell her everything, every detail, and hope she would understand? /Yeah, that's great, G-man./ The same imp inside his brain chuckled, refusing to leave him even a moment's peace. /While she finishes her toast you can tell her what the air smelled like after the fire died away, how the bone ash felt between your fingers. Tell her about your drinking habits too. You can talk about it when you walk her to her first day of work./ Mulder slammed his hand palm-down against the table, sending the toast jumping and creating miniature waterspouts in the middle of his coffee. Yes, it hurt. The pain swarmed like a hoard of fire ants throughout his arm and shoulder until he closed his eyes to hide sudden tears. He embraced it. /Tell her the truth./ This time his soul spoke, a still small voice in the middle of a whirlwind. /When has she turned you away?/ Never. But that was...before... /Love doesn't change just because the rest of the universe does./ He had no qualms about telling her everything. Everything except these secret sins, the leper spots on his conscience. Would she purify it or be infected by it? The fear burned icy cold that the latter would triumph. That he would....decay....her and disfigure that tiny portion of her that remained untouched by evil. There was another place he had failed, but that was a different penance reserved for a different time. Despite the fear, or perhaps because of it, he wanted to reach out to her. She would never imagine how brightly she shone in his eyes. Yet his doubt persisted, an eclipse over that sun. Mulder lifted his coffee to his lips, savoring the bitterness against his tongue. He would take the matter to Nicolas. Nicolas had the answers, and if not, the man kept enough whiskey under his desk to more than make up for the lack. /Is that really the kind of escape you want? Don't you want to be free of it all?/ Free. Hah. That word didn't apply to him. He had killed for the Colonists to keep Scully alive. He had killed for Nicolas to bring her back to his side. Now what good reason did he have? What justification was left him? Atonement, Nicolas said. You buy your salvation in the blood of the enemy. But that blood wasn't supposed to be from children, now was it? Guess he'd find out. * * * * * * * * * * * * * Before any words broke the silence, a star birthed inside his mind, a great glowing ball of red and black fire that blossomed from his subconscious the moment he heard the footsteps outside the door. The raw emotion of it chafed along the inside of his veins, rubbing the tissue until it tingled with the heat of pleasure. He knew these emotions, and he knew well the images they brought to his mindscape. Only one man possessed such passion kept under such bare restraint. The door opened. "I can't do this anymore." Nicolas looked up, a smile already on his face, as Mulder burst into the room, his brow crinkled in the usual frustration. What was it this time, he wondered. More complaints about undue mission risk? Perhaps another petty quibble over the unnecessary violence. If Mulder was so concerned now, he must have been a real boy scout back in his idealistic days. It was sickening. Yet, the death of that idealism, disgusting as it was, had left wounds on the man's emotional skin that were simply delicious. He had seen them, with his inner eyes, and he had painted them. Long jagged scars, and short but deep gashes, some partly healed but most open and exposed to any prying finger. How they throbbed today! Nicolas could feel the guilt, warm and sticky across his mind as freshly squeezed blood. Blood was a beautiful thing. He shifted in his chair to calm the raging heat in his veins. "Is something wrong?" Nicolas leaned forward, molding his face into a perfect mask of concern. If he did not keep control, his enjoyment might very well bleed into Mulder's emotions. The man was a tricky subject, harder to control than most due to the fiery and volatile nature of his subconscious. The key, Nicolas had learned, was to use that heat against the mind itself. To cultivate it, temper it until it burned just hot enough to keep the torment in place. If he released too much sympathy, the guilt would dissipate. If he allowed the pain to scorch the mind too much, the entire consciousness would melt. A broken tool was not useful. One day, there would be a time for breaking. He would relish that day. Today, it was time to be a friend. "Look at this." Mulder held out his hands, bandages stark white against the leathered skin. The ball of his emotions boiled with red-black geysers of lava that shot high against the blackness then fell back into the heart of the sun. Ah, anger flares. These were only mild, but they never failed to impress. Nicolas decided to wait before moving into manipulation, allowing the connection he had so carefully built into the man's mind to strengthen before testing it again. "You're injured? How? I'll call my personal healer right away and he'll take care of it immediate-" "You don't understand!" The man interrupted him, taking a step forward until he stood directly before the desk. His voice raised a half-step in pitch, but Mulder was doing an admirable job of keeping his outward restraint. Then again, that was expected of an Enforcer. Rumors whispered they were more kin to stone than men. Or, in Mulder's case, stone outside and black hole suns underneath. "I don't want a healer and I don't want sympathy. These are burns. Burns I got from a house where two little boys and their mother died because your men were too quick to kill." Not this argument again. They had been over it all before, but not since the very earliest days of their agreement. He had hoped to build within Mulder a tolerance for violence. Obviously, things had not developed as he had hoped. Nicolas took a moment before answering, pretending to contemplate Mulder's words as he decided which emotion to press to his advantage. Some sort of calming effect would be desired. He focused his energy over that emotion, watching the blue-white waves of peace flow from his mind into Mulder. The burning mass of pain and guilt absorbed the first few rays without so much as a flicker of change, but slowly Nicolas began to see a tinge of blue to the very tip of the flames. Not as much as he had hoped for, but that would do for now. "You would have spared the life of weapons dealers." "I would have killed the man responsible for the weapons. I would have saved the woman and the children. The Corps has a reputation for vigilance, but isn't there some call for a reputation as well for mercy?" "Mercy." An iron cord of anger tightened his jaw into a strained smile. /Oh, but who does that little Boy Scout think he is? He sits there with blood on his hands and he dares to talk of *mercy* ? And even more, it is to be extended to the traitors who refuse to support the Cause! To the apathetic!/ This time he had to apply the calming trick to his own mind. Rage would ruin the facade of empathetic mentor that he had worked so carefully to erect. So Mulder wanted to know about mercy, did he? Then he would learn of it until he was sick. to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (18/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - "Let me tell you a story, Mulder. It's about mercy. About those poor innocent bystanders who you seem to place such a high value on." Yes, this proved a most fortunate opportunity indeed. He felt the eagerness in Mulder, the desire for some sort of answer to assuage his torment, and would use that hunger as a portal for his next manipulation. As he began to talk, he opened up every channel of his own mind. He knew what sort of emotions the past brought spinning to the surface of his blood. He wanted Mulder to feel it, pulse for pulse. "Once upon a time, as all good stories start, a man and woman wanted a baby girl. They had been married for four years without children, and now it was time to bring one into the world that they could call their very own. They would give her the very best of everything, of course. It back in the days when America was the land of the best. So they waited and hoped and in the spring, a child was born. She had golden hair, just like a little angel, and eyes so much like her mother that to look into them was to see her mother's soul. And the man loved her, just as he loved his wife. Maybe even more. She was his bright cherub. His firstborn." Nicolas paused a moment, trying to cut through the storms of his own emotions to gain some sense of Mulder's. There was still that eagerness, mixing now with an anticipation of sorts. Morbid curiosity, perhaps? He wouldn't want to be a disappointment. He continued. "She was three when the aliens came. The man knew he had to protect her and her mother from the monsters. That he had to fight for them and for his country. Some of his friends felt the same way about their wives, about their nation. They began to organize a resistance, ready to fight until the death. But t hey never got that chance. Do you know why? The rest of the townspeople were afraid. They were bystanders, Mulder. Just like the woman and children you wish you could have saved. They had no notions of honor, or of love, or of courage. All they knew was the stench of their own fear and it poisoned them." Nicolas watched Mulder flinch as the black shockwave of anger slammed full force into him. He made no attempt to soften the emotion. It was time for Mulder to hate....as he himself hated. Time for it to hurt. "They told the man and his friends that they would fight, but in secret they surrendered to the Imperials. Just like sheep. As a token of their good faith, they turned over the names of each of the 'dissidents'. Early one morning, the man found himself pulled from his bed by a group of Imperial soldiers. His wife and daughter were torn from his arms, still in their nightgowns, and dragged into the street. The whole town was there. All of them, staring like vultures waiting for their breakfast. The man looked around and saw his friends there as well, with their wives and their children and their lovers. He thought he was going to die." The next words were difficult, even after so many years. Nicolas blinked twice to hide the sheen of tears that would have been embarrassing to the exalted position of The Leader. "He didn't die. None of his men did. Instead, the soldiers tied their hands behind their backs and placed guns against their heads and made them watch as their wives and children were nailed to the walls of their houses. It was a demonstration of power, you see. Just in case anyone else tried to rebel. Mercy? The man begged for it. He had never begged for anything before, but he pleaded with the soldiers to put him on the wall and let his daughter live. They laughed at him when they set the houses on fire." His jaw tightened but he forced the words out between clenched teeth. "And my wife and daughter burned to death while I sat and watched. Tell me, Mulder, how innocent those bystanders are now. They claim to have no interest in the war, but they are ready to betray any who stand up for the truth. I was taken by the Imperials, to the experimentation camps. I watched helplessly as my men were tortured day after day in the labs, and I was just as powerless to save myself. You can't imagine how much pain a man can stand before he dies. Believe me, it lasts a lot longer than your will to live. They meant to break me but instead they taught me that the only way to win is to match evil for evil. Blow for blow, no matter how extreme. We must control them as they would control us, or else we will be defeated. I carried this knowledge with me once I escaped. I swore to defend Humanity from the alien monsters and from the spineless weaklings who submit to them. All of them are guilty, Commander. Even their women. Even their children. They are taught the same treachery as their men. You must realize this. Look at the people you claim were so innocent-- the man was a weapons dealer. He sold guns to the creatures who kill our brothers. His entire family knew, yet they did nothing to oppose him. You say he only wanted to survive. That is the excuse they gave me when they nailed my wife and daughter to the walls. They are all the same, Mulder. They appear innocent, but they scheme and they lie and I will not allow them to kill any of our children, anymore." "But to burn alive-" "Judgment meet for their crimes. A painful realization, I know, but one that is true nonetheless." Nicolas pressed his words deep into Mulder's mind, slashing the emotions across the man's subconscious with the quickness of a razor blade. He pried apart the wounds with his fingers and forced his hate into the blood that welled up. /Hate them, Mulder. Hate them as I hate them. Become what I know you can become./ It was so close..... He could feel the tremble of Mulder's mind, the delicate balance on the verge of collapse into submission. The man's eyes shook. His fingers quivered. Any moment he would surrender and fall into the beautiful abyss. Any minute now.... Wait. Something was wrong. Something resisted him, a golden shaft of light that sprung from the core of Mulder's mind. It pushed the hate back, not entirely, but with enough force to keep it from overwhelming as it should have done. When he reached out to draw it into his own mind, hoping to identify it, he could not believe his senses. It was love. Love that was weakened yet just strong enough to preserve hope and prevent the sway of total darkness. Repulsive, yes, but potentially deadly. The woman....Scully....she was responsible for this. The light had never appeared before her arrival. Now it took all of his concentration to smother it before it completely drove him from Mulder's mind. At least a little of the hate had seeped through the defenses, and Nicolas pushed against those seeds of darkness until he felt his temples swell to bursting point. /Feel the guilt. Feel your pain. Feel your anguish. If you will not hate, then you will suffer. You will suffer and you will bleed for me before you leave today./ Mulder's eyes already showed that blood as he faced Nicolas again. "I am sorry for your loss, Nicolas. Truly, I am, but....there has to be some other way." He sounded uncertain....it was about time. At last, Nicolas saw the light waning, burning low in fear when faced by the all-powerful black hole of the man's self-hatred. Nicolas wiped away the sweat on his face with a firm and confident swipe of his hand. He was again the master of Mulder's emotions. The connection was restored. "If we do not protect our own people, who will?" Now that the pain began to bite, it was time to play savior. He would, as always, take all the nasty burdens of reality from Mulder's shoulders and tell him what a good man he really was. "But I see your point of view." He began to wrap tiny silken threads of sympathy around Mulder's emotions, spinning them lightly as a spider across a windowsill. "If you would prefer not to take part on missions that deal with civilians, it can be arranged. The Corps is not blind to the needs of her soldiers. All I have to do is sign a paper and you will be transferred to an anti-Enforcer unit." Nicolas dangled hope before Mulder's eyes and watched him devour it whole. "You can do that?" "I'm the Leader." Nicolas smiled warmly. "I know you, Mulder. You came to me searching for a way to atone for your past crimes, and when have I turned you away? I gave you one method of redemption and if that is not good enough, I have many more. But you have to keep the faith. The Cause will demand a sacrifice of her sons and of her daughters. Sometimes it is our blood. Sometimes it is the blood of others." Mulder seemed to digest the words before speaking again, his question an abrupt change of subject that Nicolas didn't even feel coming. "I want to tell her that. Should I?" Here was a new danger. When Mulder was alone, he had been easy enough to manipulate. Nicolas could keep the man coming back to him because he was simply the only one available to listen. But now there was the matter of this woman Scully. She was the light inside his mind, the force that could heal his every wound. Even if Mulder didn't realize it yet, if he regained his relationship with her, he would see it soon enough. The web of emotional control that had taken so long to weave would be broken. Although Nicolas had already determined he would not allow that to happen. Mulder was his tool. His reluctant, yet deadly weapon. No mere woman would steal that away. "That depends." He said. "How do you think she would accept it?" "I wish I knew." "Men like you and I have to be careful with our secrets, Mulder. We are often forced to do things that would shock someone who is less devoted to the Cause. Your Scully is new here. She hasn't had time yet to adjust herself to our way of life. I think that if you reveal yourself too soon, you risk driving her away. Wait, instead, for a month. Maybe two. Let her become one of us, and then you can tell her anything and be unafraid." Mulder said nothing at first, but his eyes agreed. It had been a simple persuasion, really. Mulder had known before he ever walked through the door that he wasn't going to tell his woman the truth. He had simply wanted a validation of it. And validation, Nicolas thought warmly, was always easy enough to provide. "A month." "Maybe less, maybe more. You will know yourself when you are ready to talk. Until that time comes, forget about your doubts. We all experience them. I think that the change to anti-Enforcer work will be good for you. There is no better reminder of the complete evil we are battling. I do warn you, though, the workload will be more demanding. You will run difficult missions, and often they will be in enemy territory. This means prolonged time in the field as well. Just be aware of that before you decide." Nicolas ran his finger along the edge of the desk. Mulder's absence would give him an opportunity to investigate Scully. If she influenced Mulder's mind with such power, one could only imagine the strength of her own mind. Perhaps she was the one he waited for. The perfect painting. Would she be sweet, he wondered, when he broke her down or would it be more fire and spice? He could taste it on his lips, on the sides of his tongue. What a blow it would be to the people's beloved Hero when he returned from a field mission to find his woman belonged to another man. That her love lived in another's mind. In the time it took him to indulge in the fantasies, Mulder seemed to have come to a decision. "Tell me when I start." "Tomorrow." Nicolas smiled, the flush of victory warm under his skin. "You'll receive mission details at the normal briefing time. I wish you the best of luck in your new field." "Thank you, sir." Mulder rose to his feet, his eyes a little less wounded. "Don't mention it." Nicolas was glad some of the man's spirit was back. After all, a field operative needed all his wits if he was going to survive. Mulder had those wits. He made a fine killer, and had proven it time and time again. "Take the rest of the day off. Sleep. Relax. Take your woman to the officer's club and buy her a beer. That's an order." He grinned, all laughter and good ol' boy humor. "I'll keep it in mind." "You're dismissed." As Mulder walked away, Nicolas slowly withdrew himself from the connection between their minds, leaning back in his chair as a deep satisfaction warmed his gut like expensive wine. He would spend the rest of the morning painting. He would capture Mulder's mind, a burning red star in an empty universe and he would steal from it the strange and beautiful light. He would possess that light. And watch it bleed from his brushes to drip slowly down the canvas. He would watch it die. Mulder's steps took him at a brisk march down the hallway, past offices and desks and secretaries to someplace where the air was clear and the sun shone and there was no fog inside his mind. He barely knew if he had breathed from the time that he set foot inside the office to the moment when the doors to H eadquarters shut behind him. He sucked the pure air into his lungs, letting it drift through his mind and blow away all cobwebs. Something was not right. Nicolas did not hand out such favors to just anyone. The man wanted something; if it wasn't clear before, it was crystalline now. All that remained was the five million dollar question of "what". A thousand suspicions itched at his mind like burrs stuck under a saddle. The answers seemed so close, yet shrouded in a mist. Something whispered to him that the mist would always cloud his judgment when he was around Nicolas. That the air would never be pure when he was near the man. The only question remained how did he proceed? From the start he had accepted the fact that Nicolas would try to use him. He had planned to use the Corps right back. And wasn't he? He knew how to walk the line, when to listen to Nicolas and when to only pretend to listen. And now he had been given exactly what he had longed for. No more civilian life would be taken in front of him. Instead he would get the chance to strike back at the very enemy who had taken his dignity and his pride from him. It would seem he was winning the game. But there was that glint in Nicolas' eye, the rattle snake smile on his lips whenever they talked. It made Mulder wonder exactly what price Nicolas would demand in return for his generosity. Every snake had a lair. He would discover the Leader's secret soon enough. In the mean time, he would do nothing to arouse suspicion. He would be every bit the son of Humanity he had been before; maybe even better. It would be enjoyable duty, if he got to kill Enforcers. They were like rats. The more of them that died, the less chance of disease. It would be just like in the old days, when he used to hunt Imperials with Scully and kill them in their sleep. That thought brought a smile to his lips as he walked down the street. The fresh air indeed had cleared his mind, and in place of the mist, there was a clarity of purpose he welcomed. Though Nicolas had been right about one thing, at least. Scully was not to hear any murderer's confession. Not yet. Not until he was worthy enough to confess. If that was the requirement, then he would push for that atonement, more and more every day. He would dream of it at night and bask in the hope of it when morning came. One day, perhaps he would wake up to find himself ready. And then it would be beautiful again. * * * * * * * * * * * * * From eight o'clock to noon, Scully's world was consumed by a relentless flurry of charts, patients, and babies, babies, everywhere. Morning was spent in post-natal care, checking the littlest members of the Corps for sickness or deformity, as well as ensuring the health of their mothers. Che assisted her in this, via her special request, applying his talents as needed under her watchful eye. She knew Mulder would shield her from the penalties if they were caught healing without authorization, but Che had no such cushion. It did not take the two of them long to work out a system. He would note the girls in need of special care, and she would make sure to take a moment or two longer in her "check up". Just enough time to allow Che to work his magic. When Mulder had dropped her off at the door of the infirmary, Scully had promised herself before she entered that she would maintain her detachment at all times. That she would be kind, but always professional. It was a resolution broken the first time she held a new baby in her arms, and watched the mother smile. After lunch would come the real test : her first shift in the delivery rooms. The very sight of the straps and the tables brought such a rush of memories as to make her queasy. Che seemed to understand though he did not ask her to explain. "You'll go in there for two reasons, Dana. To bring new life into the world and to protect existing life. Focus on that, and nothing else, and you will be fine. You will be more than fine. I'll light a candle for you when I go home for lunch. " He had placed his hand on her shoulder long enough to complete the reassurance, then left to finish teaching a group of giggling thirteen year-olds how to change a diaper. These thoughts preoccupied her until she had nearly forgotten the unfinished business between her and Mulder. Now, sitting alone at the kitchen table before a half-eaten sandwich, that preoccupation melted away. He was keeping something from her,that was obvious. The drinking was only a part of it. The exact identity of this demon remained an enigma So she would go to the last place she had seen it manifest itself. Scully pushed her plate away and knelt before the sink, opening the cabinet as she had seen him. At first, all that met her eyes was a clutter of pots, pans, and miscellaneous detergents. After her eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness, her attention lit on a telltale gleam of glass in the farthest shadows of the back corner. There'd better not be anything living back there. She tried not to think about that possibility as she reached into the bowels of the cabinet. Her fingers tripped over a thick pile of folded papers, which she placed carefully on the floor beside her. After that encounter, she met the coolness of the glass quickly, and withdrew a half-full bottle of tequila. A little exploring led her to discover quite a few other bottles. Temptation itched in her finger to pour the contents of all of them down the sink. Before the urge could strengthen, she placed the bottle carefully back into place, eyes drawn to the papers before her. The front of each was marked with a date, the time indicated spanning what seemed to be at least six months. Whatever they were, Mulder had started writing them when he was still an Enforcer.... The dates led right up to last night. Her hand smoothed the surface of the most recent paper; for some reason the act felt almost profane, as if she were the violator of some holy secret. She could pray for forgiveness later. This was the only way she could hope to find out how to help him. The only way... The sensation of intrusion remained, cloying to her senses as she opened the paper. It was his handwriting, all right. A bit messy, but still legible. /Dear Sam,/ It was a wrench in the cogs of the world, the hitch that froze the universe for a moment before it continued to plod on its way, leaving her running to catch up. She read on, entranced. It wasn't hard to hear his voice in the words, as real as if he was beside her. /Sorry if my writing is a little harder to read tonight. No, I'm not any more drunk than...usual. I burned my hands tonight during patrol, but only the outer skin. Not nearly deep enough. We killed four more tonight. Would you believe I tried to save them? I didn't want them to die, especially the two children. Innocent children. I told the men to burn the house, but I forgot to tell them to let the family go. I thought they knew, or maybe I didn't even think at all. I left to report our "victory" and five minutes later, I heard the screams..../ Her eyes jerked away from the paper, flying up to the ceiling in attempt to escape the words, but inevitably, they were called back to face the awful truth. She had asked for it, and she had received a double portion. /The family burned with their house. I tried to get the door open. As you can see, all I got for my trouble was smoke in my lungs and burns on my hands. Have you ever listened to a child scream? It wasn't the first time I'd heard it, but let me assure you it never gets easier. Never. And did it have to be fire? My old enemy, laughing in my face at my helplessness./ Her hands shook, and the paper with them, forcing her to strain to make out the words. She did not want to continue. She wanted to throw the letters back into their crypt and run. It did not matter where.....just away. But she read on. /They called me their savior, once. I pretended not to hear it, but I did. I honestly tried, Sam, to live up to the name. I hear what they call me now. Deserter. Traitor. Judas. I can't even protect their children. The irony of it is, we were upholding the Corps idea of law and justice. That was how they justified the skeletons smoking behind us when we left. The men accepted it easily enough. I don't know if I can anymore. The answers can't be that simple....that brutal.... They drank to celebrate, I drank to forget. I hold my liquor too well. I can still see the flames./ "Oh Mulder....no...." Scully closed her eyes, gathering the will and the strength to finish the letter through the blur of tears. /But I can see something else, too. She is sleeping in her bed, no more than six feet from me. Sam, she is beautiful. None of this has defiled her, yet. I won't allow it. Not even if the corruption is mine. Tomorrow I have to give my mission report to Nicolas. It is strange how my doubts concerning the man and the Corps diminish with every meeting. He says it's because I'm freeing my mind, although I only allow my belief of that to go so far. Sometimes the urge to trust is so overpowering that it awakens other suspicions. Time will prove or deny those. For now, he is the only one, besides you, that I can talk to of these things. I have to tell someone... I know, you'd say to talk to her. But how can I give her the truth when it stinks of soot and charred flesh? She knows what uniform I wore, and she thinks she knows all that it meant, but she can't imagine the evil of it. Should I confess? Throw it all before her and wait for judgment? There is more than one kind of fire, you know. I fear hers most of all. Perhaps, though, perhaps she won't push me away. I look into her face, and love still lingers. At least for now. At least for now. Love always, Fox Mulder./ Time streamed around her in velvet ribbons, all about her but not touching her. Her heart packed too full for speech or even for tears. Her fingers still quivered as she folded the letter back and laid it back with the others into their darkened shrine. The words tumbled over one another in her mind, the off-kilter picture of a broken kaleidoscope. Burnt children and burnt hands and love still lingering. /I will always love you, Mulder. As long as you will let me./ to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (19/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - Love without truth is hypocrisy. Truth without love is brutality. - Anonymous Three weeks later: This day the sky caught fire, this day the clouds burned to ash and blanketed the ground as charred snow. A thousand tiny flecks of black ash stung her lungs with each breath. It seared her eyes to tears which ran as blood under the light of the scarlet sun. The wind whipped her hair about her face, cutting into her skin with the invisible sting of the most delicate razor blades. The voices rode the wind into her mind, a sea of whispers without form or body. Only fear. /Help us Dana.Youweresupposedtoprotect usbutnow we are torntorntorntorn torn.../ This day the earth froze, this day the ground turned to ice and the sea hardened into crystal. The numbing cold cut through her bare feet straight to her bones. No, it cut deeper. She felt the chill as an icicle impaling her heart and lungs. Daring her to breathe. She couldn't breathe. She was fire and she was ice and she would be consumed. Again the voices swelled from the silence to skitter across the edges of her thoughts. Again, the whispers, and again the terror. /Help usDana.You said wewouldbe safe butwearetaken away takenaway pleasedana help Find us.../ "Where are you?" She screamed, stumbling forward, arms wrapped around her body to shield herself from the razor wind and dagger cold. She saw herself lying slashed and cut to pieces against the surface of frozen oceans, her blood trickling between cracks in the ice to harden into rubies. Before she had time to blink, the image was gone. /Find us,please save us, wearehurting heishurtingus/ "I can't see you!" The wind forced her eyelids together until all she could see was the ash and the sanguine horizon stretching before her without beginning or ending or relief from the pain. "Tell me where you are!" The earth beneath her feet trembled, and a second vision welled up from the depths of her mind. A metal chair in an empty room. Straps biting into her skin, pinning her to a nightmare that was neither dream nor reality but stretching over both. Red-hot pain exploding through every corner of her mind as sanity ripped in two... Pavlov's voice, thick with delight. Intangible hands pressing against her forehead until the skin blistered. /You want to save them, Dana? You want to take them from me? Are you willing to give yourself to me in their place.../ Pain... "Mulder!" /The dead cannot save the living.../ She opened her mouth to scream and the vision shattered into ash and wind. The whisper returned, louder than before. More desperate. /Hewilldestroy us, theywill killus, pleaseDana. Help us, help us./ Frustration, boiling her veins. "You have to tell me where you are! I can't help you if you don't tell me where you--" The words died in her throat as the clouds of ash formed the shape of a man. A man with no face, no body, only Eyes. Electric blue, full of hate and lust and evil. A voice, not Pavlov's, but just as twisted as it lashed toward her mind. /You want to see them?/ The ash wreathed into a devil's smile that brushed deeper than her skin, burrowing into her mind with dirty fingers that reached to her thoughts and scraped the innocence until it bled. /I will reveal them to you. I will reveal anything you want if you will open yourself to me./ She blinked and the eyes disappeared. The wind fell silent and the ash drifted more slowly through the air. The voices whimpered, or did the sound come from her? When she looked up, she stood at the edge of the petrified sea, and she was not alone. A body at her feet....a girl, with black hair frozen against her skull and dark eyes filled with terror as her hands clutched her swollen stomach. /Aida.../ /Dana...run...he's coming back..../ The voice of the whispers. The voice of the fear. Out over the ocean, the breeze began to pick up, the ash swirl and come together in the form of a man. The Eyes opened slowly, and Aida screamed. His voice, again, inside her mind. /See, Dana, she belongs to me too./ /No! I won't let you hurt her!/ A demon caress against her mind. /Jealous, my pet?/ /Mulder will-/ /Mulder is beaten. Look into his eyes and you will believe that./ /Look into his eyes and you will see me. You will have to destroy me before you conquer him./ The Eyes flashed white anger and a blast of wind screamed toward her, knocking her back against the rocks. Bones shattering, ribs screaming. Aida's body, lifted by the wind and pinned between the white earth and bloody sky as she was dragged toward the Eyes. /No!/ She forced herself up, gritting her teeth and driving against the wind even as it increased in fury and intensity. She reached the edge of the ocean, the ice chafing the skin of her feet until it was red and cracked. The razor blade edge increased and whipped the blood from her veins. Until she collapsed, too weak to save even herself, against the ice. She had been warned of this in a vision, a dream within a dream, and she had not listened. Now it was too late. Aida screamed again, the sound tiny and helpless against the laughter of the wind. /Leave her! Please....she's just a girl.../ Begging now. Fingers outstretched, pleading. His voice. /And would you be the one to save her, Dana? Would you be the one to bleed?/ Her body, jerked up by invisible force and flung against metal. Leather straps trapping her arms into helplessness, just as before. And the voice, ever louder. /Would you give me your mind..../ Burning inside her mind....bleeding.... A scream. /Would you give me your soul..../ Hands reaching out for her forehead. The skin would blister and burn and peel and she would be lost. He would be inside her mind, just as Pavlov before him. He would own her..... Fear, paralyzing her lungs. Numbing her mind. /No....leave me....leave me! Take her! Take her! Please....don't hurt me anymore..../ Her body dropped back to the ice. The Eyes disappeared and she was alone. Guilt. Shame. Tears. And in the distance, behind the back of the wind, laughter... /I didn't mean it....come back...take me....I didn't..../ Darkness. "No!" Her body jolted as if a live wire was pressed again her spine, arching up into a spasm that pulled her back into reality. Her eyes flew open, greeted not by burning skies and frozen worlds, but by the watercolor blue of pre-dawn light. Scully fell back against the bed, her fingernails digging into her blankets as she gasped for air, half-expecting it to taste of ash. It did not. /You're awake./ She still felt...it...inside her mind. /You're okay./ Her eyes traveled to Mulder's bed in search of mute reassurance, but landed on nothing more than air and shadows. The remembrance came that he was gone, called away on a week long reconnaissance assignment, and that he was not here to calm her fears. He could not hold her, soothe her, put his fingers on her forehead to heal imaginary burns.... Who was she fooling? He hadn't held her that way since he left her in Chile, a year ago. Maybe he would have, but now he was never around long enough for her to find out. It had been exactly twenty-two days-- she had kept count-- since he had come to her with news of his reassignment to some big-shot field unit. His chance to make a difference, he'd said. Well, he'd made so much of a difference that they were more strangers now than when she'd arrived. At least he hadn't felt the need to drink since the reassignment. For that, she could almost put up with his almost continual absence in the name of "duty". She could be strong. Except for moments, like these, when she woke with sweat dripping from her skin and demon voices inside her brain... Perhaps if she asked him to stay, he would, but then he would know her weakness and he would know how stained she really was, and then where would they be? Scully rolled out of bed, half-disgusted at her weakness for even considering such an admission of fear. Skinner had told her, time and time again, to expect the dreams as part of her mind's natural healing process. He'd told her of the nightmares he'd had after coming back from Vietnam, how they faded in time, and she clung to belief that these demon visions would do the same. /But if they are dreams.../ A tiny doubt inside her mind whispered to her as she wiped the sweat from her forehead, /if they are just dreams why do you still feel him inside your mind when you wake up? If they are mere fancy, why do you run to the shower and hold your head under the water until you can barely breathe, hoping to cleanse your soul?/ "Victims of psychological interrogation often undergo severe post-traumatic stress for long periods of time. This may include dreams, visions, and even physical sensations they remember from their captivity. In your case, your encounters with Pavlov. These feelings are normal and will fade given time." She had recited Skinner's logic perfectly, almost word for word. A tiny smile of triumph broke out across her lips. She had survived the end of the world and the beginning of the new regime and she would *not* be cowed by something so simple as a nightmare. Regardless of that assurance, it took her thirty minutes of scrubbing before she could convince herself she was clean, and even then she could not reconcile her finest logic with one cold question, eating at the inside her mind like a tumor. If it was her nightmare, then why had Aida been the one to scream? * * * * * * * * * * * * * The underbelly of the rose petal flowed beneath his fingers, softer than his wife's skin on their honeymoon and perfumed with subtle incense no less as powerful than the candles that had burned that night. Nicolas closed his eyes as he traced the outline of the flower, inhaling the sweetness it left in the air until his lungs were filled with the savor. He'd given her roses on their wedding night, fifty of them to cover their bed and her silver gown and her rosewood hair. They had always been her favorite flower. Two days after he escaped the scalpels and the straps and the bleeding, he had stumbled across a wild rose in the desert and had carried it three hundred miles in his pocket until he reached the mass grave where her bones lay tangled with so many others. By then the petals were brown and dead, and he did not feel it worthy of her. It was then that he realized that he must make it worthy of her. Not just the flowers, but the world. He must purge out the weak, the corrupted, and leave only those who were as pure and loyal as she had been. Already he had perfect roses, thanks to the creative genius of the genetics department. Soon the rest of the world would be cleansed as well. He would see to that. He pulled the petal from the rose, watching it flutter down to the windowsill in a silent scream. An unblemished flower was one of the few true beauties left to life, he believed. Of course, all of the flowers he kept in his office were perfect, thanks to the creative genius of Corps scientists. They offered him whatever he desired-- lilacs, tiny and glowing as if washed by the first spring rain; sunflowers, warm and full as the August sun; roses softer than Korean silk. His fancy strayed from flower to flower but inevitably the artist in his soul was drawn back to the scarlet beauty of the rose. It was, perhaps, the embodiment of innocence in its most natural form, stripped of all but the inner softness and fragility. His fingers tore a second petal from the rose, half-imagining it shivered in pain at the loss of another limb. He smiled at the thought, then reached for a third petal. The beeping of the com link on his desk momentarily halted his hand. "This is Nicolas." He inserted the listening piece into his ear and continued his game with the petals as he spoke. "The Quarter raid was successful. We apprehended twenty unregistered Impures." A small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. That was Domingo's voice. He'd know it anywhere. The man was one of the oldest friends he had, and also one of the only to understand his particular....needs. Domingo headed all raids on the Impure population, with special instruction to bring any "interesting" subjects in for a little painting session. Perhaps his old friend had a little treat for him today... The fourth petal tore away between his fingers. Then the fifth. Nicolas flicked his tongue across his lips in anticipation. It had been nearly five days since the last girl died-- amid quite a pathetic show of whimpering for mercy. The hunger rode strong and thick in his blood. There was always Mulder's woman-- who would no doubt make a splendid feast once tamed-- but the time was not yet right for that conquest. For now, he needed something more readily accessible. Something he could feed upon. "I trust disposal was not a problem?" "Not at all. We cremated the bodies in the western furnaces, so that the wind would not carry the ash back into the city." "Excellent. Do you have anything else to report?" The strands of alien DNA within his brain tingled in ready delight at the very thought of a new, untouched mind to bend. "I think I have something you'll be interested in." Nicolas could hear the smile in Domingo's voice. "We caught her in the market, and would have killed her with the others if I hadn't noticed her reaction to their deaths. I think we got us a real, live empath here." "An empath?" He shivered. It was rare to find such a creature, and even more to capture it alive. He had only experienced one such delicacy, but it was a pleasure that had kept him warm through many nights after. Now to find another specimen....it was incredible. Six petals. Seven petals. Eight petals on the ground, deep red like tiny tears of blood. "You heard me. She's a real prize. Her talent is stronger than any I've seen, and she's got a sweet little body to match. She's kinda young, but I think you will be pleased. She grows on you. In fact, once you're finished sponging her out, send whatever's left to me for a while. You can play with her mind all you want, but there's no use letting the rest of her go to waste." They both laughed at that. "You've done well, as always." He spoke quickly, though he tried to keep his voice from sharpening too much in excitement. "Take her to my quarters immediately. I'll meet you there." He shut down the com link, pocketing it quickly, and headed for the door. The stalk of the rose stood naked against the window, the thorns bare and ugly in the sunlight that shone also upon the torn petals littering the ground. Five minutes later, Nicolas stood in his private studio, a room linked to his bedchamber by doors to which he alone had a key. It was a pleasant little room, lit by a skylight panel in the ceiling and brightened by more of those exquisite roses. After all, every artist had to have a little atmosphere to get him in the mood.... He lined up his brushes one by one. Each had a special use, a special significance. The large, thick brushes would be used to produce loud, screaming emotions such as fear or hate or passion. Tiny feather-thin brushes could trace the filigree of love, hope, and tenderness. His paints had every color for every thought that ever passed through a woman's mind, and he, Nicolas, could capture those thoughts as he saw them. He could bend them into whatever he desired. He could lift a soul into bliss and just as easily cast it down into despair. He could enter the mind with gentle caresses of love or he could rip it apart with every violence of hate. The choice was always his. They were merely vessels to fill his hunger with their minds and fill his canvas with their souls. Last, but not least, he set a fresh canvas on the easel, running his fingers against the rough surface. How exactly would he recreate the world of this empath? Large brushes or small? Soft strokes or hard ridges and lines? A knock on the door to his quarters brought electric goosebumps to the surface of his skin. She was here. He could sense her even from this distance, and she was beautiful. The scent of innocence clung to her mind, a perfume not unlike that of his roses. Oh, she was perfect. He knew this before he even saw her. He wiped the sweat of his hands on his pants as he walked into the main room, his ears ringing with the dull roar of anticipated pleasure. "Come in." The door opened and she stumbled into the room. to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: clone347@aol.com Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 22:28:19 EDT Subject: xfc: NEW : Becoming Judas II : Resurrection ----- by darkstar (20/32) Source: xfc Title : Becoming Judas II : Resurrection Author : darkstar Email : clone347@aol.com Feedback : adored and craved Website : http://members.tripod.com/darkstar_phile/index.htm Archive : I would be honored, only please let me know. Category : MSR/Angst/Post-Colonization Spoilers : None Rating : PG-13 for war violence Disclaimer : See Introduction Summary: He sold his soul. Now he wants it back. Disgusted with the life he is living and the man he has become, Mulder breaks from the Colonists and risks everything for one last chance at humanity with Scully. But redemption, like betrayal, has its own price. - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (20/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - Domingo was right....this one was young. Eighteen, nineteen at the most. Her eyes betrayed her age if nothing else did, wide and childlike in their fear as they looked at him. Her lips parted slightly with the rapid breathing of terror, a sound, Nicolas had come to discover, not so very different from passion. He found it hard to decide which was more intoxicating. He withdrew his eyes lazily from hers, his gaze wandering over the rest of her features. It was a pleasant journey. The smooth tanned lines of her skin cut pleasing contrast against soft raven hair that brushed her chin but not enough to hide an vicious bruise across her jaw. There was a cut across her left cheekbone, still bleeding and spilling the crimson down her face. Anger burned through him, sharp and hot as magnesium powder kissed by a match. "Who bruised her?" The right to mar perfection was his alone. How dare anyone else so much as touch what belonged to him... "I don't know, sir." The soldier nearest him saluted sharply, his voice betraying his nervousness. "We received custody of her after the arrest, but I was told she resisted." "I see." Resistance? Could it be that between those delicate bones flowed real spirit? This would be sweet....he could taste it now like honey wine across his lips. "And does she have a name?" Nicolas stepped closer to her, until he could almost smell her fear. As the heat of his gaze swept over her eyes again, she shivered, dropping her head so that her eyes met the floor. The gesture was not quick enough to hide the burn on her cheeks. She picked up on his desire already....this was a most promising sign. He pressed the emotion against her, rubbing it against her skin until the heat of it seeped through her pores. He wanted to be inside her blood. "Her first name is Aida, if she's telling the truth. She wouldn't give us a last name and we couldn't get it from any of the others." "Aida." He repeated the name to himself, and smiled at its simplicity. "How lovely." He trailed his fingers down one strand of her hair, following it to the contour of her face. She flinched away. He took the opportunity to sweep his gaze over the rest of her body. It was then that he noticed, for the first time, the swell of her stomach. Pregnant. His stomach tightened in disgust. The little whore... "And what of this?" He gestured to her stomach. "I was not told that she was with offspring." "Do you want us to exterminate her, sir?" The soldier reached for his sidearm, and it was then that the girl's head snapped up, eyes flaring and voice pleading . "Please....let me live....I have a child....I haven't done anything wrong." Her lower lip trembled and tears shone in her eyes. "I haven't done anything....let us live..." The words died away into silence. "You are a member of an animal race, corrupting our city without permission or cause." The words were almost a snarl. "For this you should die. But I am merciful.." His eyes flicked back to the soldiers. "Wait outside. I will call you when I am finished for the day." They left without question, saluting sharply as they went. Nicolas locked the door behind them, then turned back to the girl. She stood with her head bowed, her hands clasped together in their shackles as if praying. When he looked at her again, he noticed her lips indeed were moving, a steady mumble of words he could barely hear. "So," He said, his voice twisting into a mocking smile as he walked back toward her. "She prays to God." He stopped directly behind her, placing his mouth against her ear. "He can't save you. If he even existed, he wouldn't care about filth like you. I am your god now." His hand slid up her back to rest on her shoulders. "Please me, and I might allow you and that little worm inside you to live." "There is a God." She stiffened, and he sensed the pulsing defiance inside her mind. Her eyes stared straight ahead as she spoke, never looking back at him. "And he will punish evil." "Is that what you think I am? Evil? " His sneer turned sharp and his hand tightened on her shoulder until she winced. "I don't see any angels here to stop me." She did not reply. He stepped away from her enough to look at her again, easing back into a chair. "So tell me, Aida, how you came into my city. Be a good girl and answer all my questions. I am still deciding whether or not to kill you." He extended his mind toward hers, reaching out for the first contact. There was no obstacle to overcome. The empathy trait within her did all that for him. She would sense all his emotions. All he had to do was provide a little extra push here and there, and she would be his. How to begin.... Ah yes. Desire. He wanted the tiny lips to move in the whisper she had prayed with, but this time calling his name.... The muscles of her throat worked in a slow swallow, as if she knew exactly what he was doing. The silence stretched one more long heartbeat before her answer snapped it like a taut rubber band. "I bribed a trader to smuggle me into the city." "How terribly ingenious of you." She certainly must have suspected, for Nicolas felt the push of her mind against his. Brave child. In his mind's eye he could see her consciousness tuning itself to his emotions by instinct, yet she resisted. What did she think she could win? "And were you alone?" "Yes." The word was a bare whisper. "Aida, dear, look at me when I'm talking to you. You have such pretty eyes." She did not move. "Look at me!" He leaped from his chair, grabbing her chin and jerking her face back toward him. "You will do as I say, you gutter whore, or I will have your child torn from your womb this very hour! Do you understand?!?" She nodded, a tear at last overflowing her eyes to slide down to his finger. He captured it unbroken on his skin and held it to his lips. It was the taste of her pain. He wanted to taste more of it. All of it. When he thought she'd had enough-- for the moment-- he let her go. So much for soft emotions and desires. Now it was time to make her fear. That emotion intensified whenever he approached her, flaring up inside her mind with images of screaming angels and serpents in gardens. To sharpen the image, he began to circle her, his body close enough to hers to ensure she picked up on the want emanating from him. In a moment he would touch. Just the shoulder, or the hair, or the face, or the curve of the back. Just enough to make her cringe. "So where were we? Ah yes. Did you come alone?" "Yes." "Where did you get that?" He pointed again to her stomach. "I was raped by a soldier." "Lying is still a sin, even for little girls." He knew she was hiding something. Her consciousness reeked of it. She was protecting someone and he determined to find out who. "Do you want to know what I think? I think you're a little slut who attached herself to one of my soldiers and convinced him to bring you here so you could live off our society like some parasite." With every word he moved closer to her until he was face to face with her, so close his breath disturbed her hair. She quivered, the tears running down her face, but her voice remained steady. "I am not a slut." "Tell me his name." "I told you the truth." "Do you want to know why I know that's still a lie?" He placed his hands at her temples, stretching his mind until it filled hers as a storm cloud moving over the sun of the landscape of her emotions. Now he would take her. Her stubbornness wearied him and now she would pay. He would tear her mind to shreds and throw what was left of her to Domingo and his boys. Stupid little sow. "Because you're not the only one with a gift. You feel me, don't you? Inside your head?" He pushed harder, shoving against the feeble defenses she tried hastily to erect. "It's deeper than thought. It's pure consciousness, the kind you sense in others. Well I can feel it too, my dear." His fingers tightened on her forehead. "And I can control it." "You won't control me." The girl impressed him with her relentless cling to hope even as her body shook with increasing pain. "I will feel nothing for you." Rage bubbled from his soul, a caustic acid that washed over his senses, eating away at his restraint. It turned the world to red, the color of blood. Her blood, and he wanted to see more of it. "You will feel what I want you to feel!" His backhand would have knocked her to the floor if he hadn't grabbed a handful of her hair, twining it around his hand. "If not in your mind, then through that beast inside you!" He jerked her body against his, pinning her against him as he wrapped his hands around her womb. He could sense the child's mind, a whisper of a scream so far in the distant it was barely audible, yet growing louder each time he pushed himself further into the mother's mind. He would reach the child. He would destroy the son for the mother's defiance. She was screaming, fighting, pushing against him with every fiber of resistance in both body and mind. It would not matter. He would triumph. He pushed pain throughout her subconscious, as blinding hot and vicious as nuclear fire, again and again until blood began to drip in tangible drops of crimson from her ears. Yet still she resisted. It was as if she were shutting down one part of her brain at a time, focusing all her energy as a shield around her child. It was a shield he could not break. He hammered against it with every trick of mind and emotion he knew, but she stood firm. Defying him. How dare a mere girl, a *hybrid* deny him his pleasure? Soon enough the fury erupted through his fists. He threw her down on the floor, stunning her with a kick to the base of her spine, and drove the next kick straight into her womb. She curled up in agony, arms folded in desperate attempt to shield her unborn, begging him to stop. /Don't hurt him! Please! Tell me what you want me to feel and I'll feel it. I'll feel it....Please!/ But he did not listen. He did not stop, until her screaming changed in pitch and her body began to shake in contractions. Blood began to flow, but it was not red but an inhuman green. How utterly disgusting. The slut was going to give birth right there in his floor... At least the fumes wouldn't effect him. He saw the shock in her eyes at that, the slight sense of disappointment. His lips curled in contempt that she, a tiny woman-child, would think she could hurt him. "Your blood doesn't sting me, little one." He smiled. "Your alien brothers decided it wouldn't be helpful if their servants went around passing out every time we breathed their blood. They gave us immunity." She groaned as another contraction hit her. "Help...me.." "Let your God help you, if he can." He snarled, slamming his boot into her side one last time before joining his men in the hall. They stiffened to attention immediately, discomfort at her screaming lurking around their eyes, but Nicolas knew they would ask no questions. Only obey orders. "Call a medic and send that filth to the infirmary. She's a hybrid...take the usual precautions. Make sure the offspring is disposed of and then send someone up here to clean up this mess. She is to be kept alive until I give further instruction." He wasn't finished with this one....no, not yet. Not by a long shot. He needed his brushes. They called to him, cajoling him to release his passions while they still roared in his mind. Yes, he would answer them. He would paint her as he desired her to be, as he saw her in his mind. He painted fervently, the colors flowing from his fingers as if they were cut from his own blood. Two hours later, the painting dried in the sunlight. An image of the Virgin with child-eyes and raven hair just to her chin. Our Lady of the Crucifix. She hung and she bled from her hands, from her feet, and from the gash across her abdomen. Across her womb. * * * * * * * * * * * * * Scully closed her eyes as the warm water flowed over her skin, as the soapsuds cleansed her hands of another birth. Six hours of sweat and screaming and bloody latex up to her elbows as she tried to coax another life into a world that would never appreciate it for its innocence and beauty. It was only a baby to her and to the wide-eyed twelve year old who had given life to it. To the other doctors, to the Corps, it was a future soldier. A killer. A nameless, faceless boy that would take his first life by the time he was thirteen, and grow up into a good little devotee to the Cause, except for perhaps his dreams when he imagined life without bloodstains. They all dreamed of that life. She looked down at her hands, at the reddish-pink water dripping from her fingers down the drain. Dreams or not, there would always be blood. A soft knock on the door disrupted her thoughts. "Scully..." It was Che's voice, low and tense with something that sent a chill through her spine even before she turned to see his face. The man was terrified. He was doing a good job of hiding it, every place but in his eyes. They screamed at her. "What is it?" She dried her hands quickly on a towel, ignoring the smudges of red still left behind, her throat tightening. In the back of her mind, she already knew the answer. She knew it but she would not accept it. After all, it had just been a dream. Nothing more; it couldn't be. Che shut the door behind him, looking over his shoulder to make sure they were alone. "On my way home for lunch, they told me there had been a raid on the Quarter. Nicolas orders them from time to time....searching for unregistereds." He swallowed and his voice trembled when he spoke again. Whether from fear or hatred or both, she could not tell. "They told me Aida was stopped in the market. The others were killed, but she....was taken...." "Taken." The inside of her mouth shriveled into sun-baked dust. "Where?" His hands tightened into fists, the fear in his eyes partly overshadowed by obsidian hatred. When he spoke, his words dripped disgust. "Our glorious leader sometimes chooses to amuse himself with his prisoners before he executes them." He turned his eyes back toward her and Scully cringed at the pain. Now his voice was back to a whisper, a plea for denial. "She was pregnant....what could he want..." Scully's stomach tightened as if someone had shot a staple into it, anger and disgust flaring through her, but she forced herself to think. To remain calm and rational and all those other things she knew she was supposed to be. "Does Skinner know?" "He left this morning to settle a land dispute in the western territories. He won't be back until tonight. By then it may be too late...but even if he was here, what could he do?" A dangerous hint of desperation wrinkled around his eyes when he said it. As if he was only a moment away from charging Nicolas' quarters himself. She knew he would fight bravely. And die quickly. No, she had to think. Had to calm him down. Had to figure out what to do. The voices from the dream hissed through the back of her mind, not helping at all. /Find us please, save us. He is hurting us./ She pressed her fingers against her forehead to silence the demons. "I will go to Nicolas and barter for her release." she said. "Perhaps he will allow me to buy her from him." "Buy her?!?" Che spit the word out like it was a piece of dead meat clogged in his throat. "She is not a slave to be bought and sold like-" "I know that." Scully cut him off, her voice rising momentarily as she tried desperately to keep him thinking rationally. Love was blind, but when mixed with rage it became a blinded bull. She had to keep him from giving into the hate. It was hard, she knew. In the camps, when they tortured Mulder, she had thirsted for the spilling of their blood. Che's muscles shook with that same lust for vengeance. "I know that." she repeated herself. "But it doesn't matter how we get her back, does it? As long as we get her and the baby safe again." He nodded. "I have money. I've been saving it to buy land in the northern territories. We were going to be safe...." She ached for him, but it was not a new pain. How many times had Mulder promised her the same thing? How many times since had they been torn? "Keep your money," She said. "Buy your land. I can take care of the expense myself. Don't worry." She tried to smile but she had never been a very good liar. "We'll get her back." Her hand moved toward his shoulder but froze in the air when the sound of shouting filtered through the door into the room. "Get her into the delivery room! Quick! Watch her blood....call the doctor. We have a termination order and it's going to have to be fast. He wants the woman back alive." She felt her breath die in her lungs, saw Che's eyes kick up the heat until they seared her face when he looked at her, and then she saw him move, faster than she'd imagined anyone could. He spun, jerking the door open, moving forward as a predator gliding in for the attack, but then his body jerked to a stop. His fingers dug into the doorpost until they turned white; his knees shook like he would collapse. "Oh God..." His voice shook like a man living his worst nightmare. She knew he'd seen Aida. Or whatever was left of her. And Scully did not want to look, but she did. Three orderlies wheeled the girl into the delivery room, her body convulsing with labor pains and a feeble attempt to free her wrists from the straps binding her in place. Not that she could run even if she was free, even if she wasn't giving birth. If the bruises covering her face spread to the rest of her body, it would be a miracle if she could even walk. She screamed, begging them not to hurt her baby, the words were distorted by pain until it was more an animal wail than a human voice. Her face twisted with each new contraction, but Scully sensed that it ran deeper than purely physical agony. Innocence was dying. You could smell it in the air. Scully caught the tension of Che's muscles right before he began to move forward, and for this reason she was able to stop him. Her hands lashed out and closed around his shoulders, jerking with every bit of weight in her until she turned him to look at her. His eyes were hollow, wild. They were the kind of eyes Mulder had the night the both of them were captured. Like the world was ending and for the first time you knew you couldn't do anything to save the one you loved. "Che." She spoke firmly, her hands keeping tight grasp on his shoulders. His muscles quivered under her fingers, rage and hatred and pain all rolled into one. She was the only thing holding him together, the only force keeping him from flying into his passions. She would not let him fall apart. Not like Mulder. This time she was not the victim. She could save them both....she had to save them both.... His eyes stared straight at her but focused on nothing. "Che, listen to me." She drove her eyes into him until he had no choice but to look at her. "You can't save her if you get yourself killed. And they will kill you, if you rush out there like some kind of animal. She needs you to be strong, right now. She needs you to wait." "I can't stay here and let them-" "I'm going in there. I'm not going to let them hurt her or your baby. I'm a doctor, remember? I can protect them, and I'm asking you to let me do that now. Are you hearing me?" He nodded and she continued. "You need to leave. If they even suspect you're with her, you'll be arrested too. Don't go to the Quarter...they might be watching your house. Go to my apartment." She fumbled in her pocket until found her keycard and pressed it into his hand. "I'll call you as soon as it's safe for you to come." He hesitated, an agonizing pause, and then his fingers closed around the keycard. His shoulders moved up and down in a sigh that held all the pain of a helpless man. "Go. Save them. I will do as you say." Scully tried to smile for him again, her hand squeezing one last reassurance into his shoulder as she rushed toward the delivery room, promising to burn incense to every saint she could remember if only she would not be too late. Three steps away from the door, an orderly stepped in front of her, blocking her path. "Authorized personnel only. This one is an Impure." Aida screamed again, the sound cutting through Scully's soul. If her gaze had been fire, it would have burnt him to a crisp within minutes. "My name is Doctor Dana Scully and I am one of the delivery doctors this shift. Get out of my way or I'll have you arrested for obstruction of treatment." "There is already a doctor in attendance. I have my orders." "Get out of my way, son." Her lips thinned into two steel lines. "I don't care what your orders are, and I don't think Commander Mulder would either once I told him you threatened me." Their eyes locked for one moment longer, for two. He moved. Scully grabbed a breathing filter and yanked open the door, just in time to see the doctor pick up a syringe filled with a pale yellow solution. She had seen them use it before. It was an neurotoxin genetically designed for use on fetal tissue. And that monster was going to use it on Aida's baby boy, the one who talked to his mother inside her head and told her he loved her even though he had never seen her face... "Wait!" The word ripped from her throat in a half-strangled cry as she held her hand out toward the doctor. She advanced toward him, trying to appear professional and detached while burning inside. "Dr. Scully," The man looked up in mild surprise. "Is there a problem?" "A termination, doctor? Doesn't that seem a bit hasty?" "The order came down from the Leader himself. Besides, it's the law. All Impure fetuses must be terminated to prevent contamination of society." What a boy scout, she thought. He says it just like it's coming out of the Corps manual. "I am aware of the law. My only concern here is the health of the mother. She is in no condition for the strain of an toxin-induced termination." It was no lie. Neurotxoin treatment was often as dangerous to the mother as it was to the child. It was only used as a last resort. A punishment for those who dared to give life without an official stamp of approval. "We will have to take that risk." "I do believe your orders were to keep her alive, weren't they doctor?" She was growing desperate, and now she became afraid that they would sense it in her voice. He eyed her a moment, then nodded slowly. "You're right." For a moment, Scully dared to breathe. Then he spoke again. "Give her 10 ccs of neural stimulus. It should neutralize the toxin's effects on her mind long enough to prevent any serious damage. We can address any minor injuries after the birth. But we have to inject the fetus now, before it leaves the womb." He smiled back at Scully, as if he had done her a wonderful favor. "How's that sound, Dr. Scully? Does it satisfy your conscience?" No, she wanted to scream. You murderer! She might have resisted. She might have fought them. She might have, if it was not already too late and the needle was not already inside Aida's womb. But there was something she could do. She could hold the girl's hand. She could whisper words of comfort that meant nothing because there was no comfort she could give. She could stay beside her until the birth was finished, and the baby's body wrapped in plastic for disposal. Aida had lost consciousness somewhere in the final labor pangs, and she did not have to watch. Scully watched. Then when it was all over, after she slid her hand away from Aida's limp fingers to let the orderlies move her to a bed, she walked into the cleansing room. The water hissed from the faucets when she turned them on, hissing like Pavlov's voice inside her dreams. /You want to save them, Dana? You want to take them from me? Are you willing to give yourself to me in their place.../ If she had said yes, would it have made a difference? Even if it was in a dream? Although she wasn't sure that's all it was, not anymore. She didn't know what she was sure of. Not of herself, she knew that. Not of humanity, that was certain. Faith? Truth? Love? Where were they when the girl screamed? She held her hands under the water until it burned, scrubbing until the skin turned pink. What was it about this place that she could never feel clean? Save them, Che had said. He had been in pain and he had been afraid and he had trusted her. It was then that the tears came, spilling from the corners of eyes that had been dry far too long, streaking down skin that had not even felt rain in months She cried for the pain in Che's eyes, and the broken innocence in Aida's, and the emptiness in her own. Mulder would have understood. Mulder could have intervened. Mulder was not there. to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (21/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - Four hours he waited. He paced until he feared he would wear a path into her floor, and then he found the liquor under the cabinet. Tequila. Not his brand. He didn't drink the hard stuff. He filled his glass anyway, tossing it down his throat in one putrid wash of fire that he hoped would burn away the fear inside him. He was a soldier, and soldiers were never supposed to be afraid. But he couldn't feel her mind and there was the terror. The telepathy between them had not been strong, surfacing mostly in images of thoughts and dreams rather than words, but it had been a constant warmth inside him from the first time he kissed her. He remembered every detail of that kiss-- the tremble of her lips, the burn of the blush on her cheeks, the tears in her eyes. /Why are you crying?/ He had been afraid he had hurt her. She was so fragile. Stardust and sunlight, sewn together with the softest skin... /Because someday we'll wake up from this dream./ He had known this day would come. Every few nights he would wake up in sweat and terror with nightmares of it. But he had always counted on being able to feel her through whatever happened. To be able to close his eyes and find her in the back of his mind, tucked up safe and warm and happy. Now the nightmares were real, all around him, and when he stretched out for her mind, he felt nothing. Only darkness. Not the soft, natural darkness that filled her as she slept, but a cold and cruel black. Underneath it, he almost thought he sensed another presence. A stranger's fingerprints inside her mind. If he admitted it, that's what really twisted his gut. The thought that someone had forced themselves inside her mind, a place where he alone walked and he alone touched, and that they had hurt her using her own gift. Who would take pleasure in something like that? He suspected he knew the name, but he dared not speak it aloud. It was treason to speak against the Beloved Leader. But if Nicolas was responsible-- there, he'd said it-- and if Aida died then he would kill the man. He was considered a healer because he could restore life energy. Repair souls. They feared those like him because if he could build up, he could also tear down. Che glanced down at his hands. It is a strange life when your touch is your greatest weapon. A strange life he had not asked for, so why did they hate him? Even then, he could bear the abuse, but not Aida. Everyone was jaded in the world, everyone but her. He'd loved her for it. He'd love her even when that innocence was gone but oh, it hurt. A knock on the door. He knew, when he opened it to see Scully's swollen eyes and the stain of tears on her cheeks, that something terrible had happened. Something had been lost. "I'm sorry." she whispered. Her eyes clouded over with a distant pain. How could she know what he felt? Had she felt it before, herself? But then there was Mulder....perhaps she really had known pain. It eased his mind but not the burning within his chest. "Which one?" He feared the question. He feared the answer even before it left her throat. But he had to know. Was his a father without a son or a husband without a wife? Or both... "Your son." She walked into the room, dropping her coat on the floor beside her and not bothering to pick it up. He shut the door behind her, leaning his forehead against the wood as the grief hit him. Another child, lost. He was supposed to have been able to protect this one. He had promised. Scully was still talking, not meeting his eyes. "I tried to stop them....but there was nothing I could do." Her lips twisted into a bitter sneer. "Nothing." Speaking was difficult but he tried anyway. "You tried." Strange, this pain inside him. The news of the death had not boiled his blood as he had expected, but rather froze it. He could feel it hardening, drop by drop within his veins. Hate did that to a man. "You did all anyone could do." He felt his mind slipping out from under him and struggled to retain control. There was yet a reason for sanity. A reason to live. "How is Aida?" His voice trembled but did not break. He must not break. "How much do you want to know?" She looked up at him now, that same delicate almost-pain in her eyes. And such weariness.... He sensed she had poured her soul out in the delivery room, and in the tears that had followed. Why, he could not imagine. No other humans cried over the death of a hybrid child. Che suspected Dana Scully would mourn the death of any child, human or otherwise. And what was it she was asking him? How much did he want to know? In other words, how much truth can you stomach today? Can you stand here and hear what they did to your wife or do you want to take another drink first? He dared not indulge in another. He had enjoyed the first too much. "All of it." He battened down the hatches of his soul, ready to hear every detail of it no matter how much it hurt. Aida was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. Soul of his soul. He would not turn away from her pain any more than would her kiss. "Tell me everything they did to her." "The good news is they want her alive. That means she will be given any medical treatment that is needed to ensure her survival. But she's going to need every bit of it. He really did a piece of work on her." He saw her jaw tighten as she spoke of it, heard the coldness in her voice that sounded like the metallic click of a gun against a man's head. He imagined she spoke like that when she killed. "What are her injuries?" "Extensive bruising to her face and lower back. Three of her ribs are broken and two of them are bruised. I wasn't able to find out the extent of the internal damage. The....termination procedure....only weakened her further She has yet to regain consciousness." He closed his eyes. Breathe, he ordered. You remember how to do that? In-out. In-out. You can heal her, remember? You can take all the pain away. "I need to get to her." He said. "I need to heal her." More than that he needed to be near her again. To touch, to hold, to protect. He had tried so hard, how could he have failed so miserably? "They have her in a separate room to prevent injuries if she starts to bleed again. She's under constant guard. They barely let me through and I'm a doctor." Yes, well he wasn't exactly planning on asking. "Do you know what they're going to do with her?" Her eyes wavered, as if she was debating whether or not she could tell him. "He wants her back. Whatever it is he's trying to do, he's not finished. I think the birth got in the way." All this she said without breaking the glassy calm to her voice. What was the facade for, he wondered, his fears or hers? "He's not going to touch her again." The words came out in a growl. His hands itched around the fingers as he imagined the look on the Leader's face as his life drained from his body. One touch was all it would take. "We have to get out of the city." Scully nodded. "I've thought about that. Tomorrow I'm going to go to Nicolas with money to buy Aida from him. Skinner and his people can help you get out of the city once she is freed." Tomorrow. So much could happen in a night... "You think he will actually listen to you?" He tasted the bitterness of his own words, sour and rotten on his tongue, but it was not something he could help. Scully was a friend, and a caring human being, but she could not understand what was happening because she was not a hybrid. She accepted him as a total equal and therefore was blind in some ways to the fact that others would never do the same. Nicolas would take her money and keep Aida for his fancies. There was only one option here....yet he dare not speak it aloud. "If I pay him enough, yes." "He is not interested in money, Dana. He has as much of it as he needs. He hates us because we are different, and he wants to wipe our people out because of that. He won't listen to your logic." "What do you recommend? There is no other way." For two, maybe three, seconds, Che thought about telling her everything he had planned during the past four hours. About escape, about freedom, about not having any choice but to run and, if necessary, fight. But he couldn't involve her in it, just like he couldn't involve Skinner or any of the others. Their lives were far too valuable to the Cause to be risked over something as insignificant as the lives of two hybrids. "You are right." He lied, hating the sound of it, but knowing it would save her life. Maybe Aida's life too, if he got there in time. "I'm sorry for my difficulty...I can't think..." He sighed, and his shoulders sank with the weight of it. "Don't apologize, Che." She half-smiled at him, her eyes a warm shade of blue like the ocean in summer. He had never seen eyes like that in a human. All others were twisted, clouded with hate or fear. "I understand what you're feeling. You probably don't believe that, but I do. I've seen those I love in pain, too many times, and it never gets easier. You would do anything in the world to save them, to keep them safe. Sometimes you succeed." She looked down at her hands and the smile faded. "Sometimes all you can do is pick up the pieces." Mulder's eyes were broken, he remembered. They were scarred. How many times had she picked up those pieces, and had they cut her skin as much as this cut him? A tiny space of silence followed her words, then she stood to her feet and headed for the table. She cleared away the liquor and the shot glass without a word, then abruptly turned back toward him. "You might as well stay here until Skinner gets back. You need rest, and I need someone to talk to." She tried to smile like it was a joke, but he saw the loneliness behind the laugh. Mulder, he thought, you are a fool. This woman deserved to be held, to be told she was beautiful, to be loved. She shouldn't have to sit alone in a small apartment in a strange city. She shouldn't have to wake up alone. And she shouldn't risk a life for a cause that wasn't even her business. He then knew what had to be done. "You are a good woman, Dana Scully." He walked toward her as he spoke, smiling even though he didn't know how he could. "And I'm sorry." He placed his hand on her arm. "For what-" Her words died away as he entered her consciousness, pulling her mind into darkness. For one horrid moment, her eyes flared wide with shock and betrayal, and then she collapsed, totally unconscious. Che caught her as she fell, trying to ignore the heavy guilt pressing against his own mind. After all, she wasn't hurt. She would only sleep, and the rest would probably do her good. It was the only way he could keep her from being hurt, and didn't she deserve to be protected? If Mulder wasn't around to do the job, then someone had to. All this he told himself as he carried her to her bed, draping a blanket over her in case the air grew chilly. He tried to believe it. Maybe it wasn't the right thing to do, but it was the only thing. He had already lost a child; he might yet lose a wife; and he would not lose a friend. Besides, there were battles a man must fight alone. It was time, now, for such a battle. Already he could see the sun sinking into the west, a brilliant tapestry of gold tinged with the darker shades of night. There was beauty in the twilight. Peace. They would not be expecting an attack now. They would expect it to come late at night, when the air was dead and spoke of secrets and hidden daggers. Che took Scully's clearance card from her pocket, knowing he would need it to breach the security doors. She could honestly tell them he stole it... He searched her drawers until he found the gun, and tucked it in the band of his pants. He did not want to kill any of them. They were blind, they were ignorant, and until this day he had almost pitied them. In a way, that feeling increased now. They did not even see the violence that was twisting them, consuming them until they were little more than animals. For that he allowed himself to pity. But if they tried to stop him, he didn't know how much he could hold back the hate. Or if he would even try. * * * * * * * * * * * * * "Scully..." The vapors of the man's voice coalesced from every corner of her darkened mind, calling her from sleep back to the cold hard plain of reality. She did not think she wanted to answer. She had not slept this well in months. There was no Pavlov. No strange eyes. No dreams of anything at all, only soft, warm, sleep. "Scully...." More urgent now. Afraid? She felt hands on her face, large and callused at the fingertips but gentle, like the voice. A tinge of guilt slithered across her soul despite her resolve to remain in oblivious bliss. After all, she didn't want him to be afraid. She opened her eyes. Skinner's face floated above hers, blurry at the edges but unmistakably him and undeniably worried. She was a part of that worry, but there was something else. Something... Then she remembered the blood and the dead baby and Che's hands on her arm, his mind behind her soul. Suddenly the sleep was not so innocent; it turned ugly with betrayal. He had touched her mind without permission. Again. It had not burned, and it would cause no nightmares, but for a brief moment she hated him anyway. No one touched her like that. Not even Mulder. But no sooner had the hate swelled did it disappear, calmed by a whisper of pity. She had felt his desperation. She knew he believed there was no other way. "Did he make it?" The words came out all in a breath, rushed yet hesitant. Truth was hard to swallow in its raw form, and she had already choked on enough of it to sour her on the taste. Skinner shook his head, helping her up into a sitting position. "He used your card to break into the infirmary. Killed three guards doing it. Security found him unconscious on the floor beside Aida's bed. It took a lot for him to heal her. More than he planned, I think. It's a mercy he wasn't awake when they got there. He'll get it bad enough as it is." Scully twisted the edge of the blanket around her fingers in silent resistance to the implications of the thought. "Why couldn't he have waited?" It was a useless question. She could have easily found the answer without his help but she did not want to find her own answers right now. She wanted someone to give her a reason why, and it had better be a good one. "He knew Nicolas would never accept a bounty for her. So he did what he had to do." "We could have helped them." "No, Scully. We couldn't have. We would have tried but in the end we would have lost her. It's happened before." His eyes were very old, now. So very sad. "And now we're going to loose them both." No, that was unacceptable. She searched his face for hope, any hope at all. He was the leader of the true resistance....he should have an answer, or a reason, or a plan. Anything but defeat. "We can go to Nicolas with double the bounty for them both," She said, feeling very much like a four-year old child refusing to give up a favorite toy to a grownup. Just that small. "He'll have to accept..." "Obviously you don't know our beloved Leader," Skinner snorted. "It's not about money, it's about vengeance. Che's broken his rules, defied his authority, and for that blood must be shed." "There has to be something you can do. Object. Call the generals together and protest. Anything but stand by and watch." The anger inside her was quiet now, but she felt it grow with each moment. "I'm sorry. Our hands are tied-" "He'd die for you, sir!" She cut him off, not even noticing she had used his formal title until she saw the surprise in his eyes. Well, let him be surprised. She was. This felt like the old days. Back when he'd refused to choose a side, refused to intervene until it was absolutely necessary. Before he became her ally, her friend. What was wrong with him? "He'd die for the Cause. All he did was try to protect his wife and his child. Are you going to let them kill him for that? Just so you won't have to risk your own neck?" Her lips curled into a snarl. "And I thought you said you cared for them." Skinner let her words strike him full force, making no attempt to reply until she had spent her energy and waited in burning silence for his reply. Scully spoke like this when she was afraid. She was terrified now that she was without control and helpless, that she'd have to watch two more people she cared about die before her eyes. He'd tell her it got easier the more it happened, but that would be a lie. "I'd die for Che just as easily as he for me. That's what being a soldier is all about. Loyalty. But that loyalty can't just go to one man and one woman, no matter how important they are to you or me or anyone else. There are other lives at stake that deserve equal protection." He chose his words one at a time, justifying himself to the judges in his head as well as the woman standing before him. "Every man in our movement would risk his life and his family's life if I asked him to. It's my responsibility to know when to ask and when to keep quiet. I can't involve them in this. It wouldn't be fair. Che has killed, Scully. We might have had a chance at convincing the generals to let Aida go before, but now the full force of the law is against both of them. If we speak out, it will be just the opportunity Nicolas has been waiting for. He'd call us onto the carpet for conspiracy and then execute us right along with Che." He paused for a moment, watching the understanding spread from her eyes to the rest of her face. It twisted him to watch the realization break her. She was not made for decisions like this, where lives must be sacrificed to save other lives. Her world had always been black and white, good and evil, light and dark. Even now, fragments of that remained. That's why she and Mulder had never joined the organized resistance. Both had a knack for the business of war but not the politics of it. He had thought he could handle the weight of leadership, even welcomed it at one point in time, but now his shoulders were beginning to weary. Too many good people had died. Her eyes eased shut, squeezing the pain back into her mind before it showed too much, and he searched his brain for something he could say to soften the blow. "I did try, Scully." He spoke in low, please-believe-me tones, wanting to wrap his arms around her until she stopped aching but afraid she would break. Sometimes even iron needed to be reassured she was strong. Even beauty needed to reminded it was loved, to be reminded that it was safe. Did Mulder tell her that, anymore? Did he hold her? Or was he too busy killing Imperials and anyone else Nicolas told him to.... "I went to Nicolas as soon as I heard, and I offered him five thousand for each of them." He saw her eyes widen; it was a huge sum these days. "When that failed, I tried to barter for a lighter sentence, at least for Aida. I did everything I could. I did take the risk, Scully." "I know you did," She said, arms wrapped around herself as if she was trying to keep warm. "I'm sorry for what I said... it's just..." She shook her head, her voice fading in and out like a bad radio connection. "They're so young. They remind me of..." The words faded away again, but she didn't have to finish it. She and Mulder had been just like that once. Young, idealistic, blind to the fact that evil was sometimes stronger than love. He had hoped to shelter them from that truth, even though sometimes they had resented him for the precautions he took. Yet now he walked no more fences and in turn their eyes had been torn wide open. Wasn't that what they'd always wanted? To see it all? /No,/ he thought, /that's what they thought they wanted. Now they're all grown up and they've seen their truth, and look where it's gotten them. She wakes up every other night screaming because the demons who tore her mind still walk her dreams, and he's killed his sister./ He realized the room had grown silent around them, and that the morning air was cold. "You want some breakfast?" he asked. He tried to smile because one of them had to. It should be her. She was the most beautiful woman in the world when she smiled. "I could make those cheesy eggs you used to say would give us both heart attacks before lunch. Or if you want to live until dinner, I could put on some coffee." He really thought she was going to smile-- her lips began to turn up into a grin and her eyes began to lighten-- but then she shook her head. "Thanks, but I'll pass. I want to go see Che and Aida....while I can." Skinner nodded, pretending to agree. She was going to beat herself into a pulp over this one, wasn't she? He'd seen it happen once before, after she was released from the camps and had believed Mulder died to buy her life. If she slipped into that kind of hole now, there was no nice secluded beach cabin to hide in, and no peaceful ocean to wash away the world. /Mulder, get your sorry carcass back here and heal her before she falls apart. You're the only one she'll even let close. Don't you remember that?/ "When is it?" "Is what?" Her question caught him in the middle of his thoughts, and for a moment he didn't understand. "The execution." "Noon." he said, glancing down at his watch in appreciation for any excuse not to look at her as he gave the news. "The town square. Expect a mob. Nicolas wants to make a point, and he wants plenty of people to see him do it." She slid on her shoes in silence, walking toward the door. Her hand closed on the knob as her head turned very slowly back toward him. "Promise me you'll kill that man someday." She did not wait for his answer, but walked out into the hall and left him alone. He stared after her for a moment, like he had meant to say something but forgotten it, but the words never came to his mind. Instead he picked up his com link and began to compose a message for Mulder, one that would be delivered immediately over his own private channel. It was time for someone to stop playing soldier and come home to the woman who needed him. If Mulder didn't have the sense to see that, then they'd have a little chat and if he still denied it.... Skinner would break the man's jaw. He'd do it with nothing but a friendly spirit, but at the same time he would make sure Mulder learned a few things that would not be forgotten, at least not until the bruises healed. to be continued. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (22/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - Despair cloaked every inch of the confinement quarters, a slimy mix of blood-scent and urine stench and fear-sweat that saturated the very air until you felt your lungs decay from just breathing it. Faith lay clasped in the hollow of her hand, a tiny wooden rosary, the beads satin soft from the warmth of her fingertips, slicked from the sweat of her plams. She had stopped by Che's apartment-- or what was left of it after the security teams swept it for "evidence"-- and found the rosary buried under the ruins of Aida's shrine. She wouldn't have seen it at all if it wasn't for a tiny ray of sunlight that happened to catch the mahogany wood at exactly the right moment and bounced into the corner of her eye So many things in life were like that. Thirty-second glimmers in sunlight that vanished if you tried to look at them directly. She tried to repair the broken icons, but the damage was too great, so she merely whispered a prayer over the ruins and left before anyone saw her. Yes, she still prayed. Call it habit, or call it desperation, or call it a search for hope. Either way, it was all she knew to do, right now. Cell 1172. Block C. The section reserved for violent offenders. It was death row, the last stop for murderers, rapists, Colonists, and eighteen-year old girls whose only crimes were the color of their blood and the strength of their soul. Scully gripped the rosary tighter. If God was still in the humanity business, he'd better be working on some almighty terror of a judgment for the men who would sit by and let this happen. She flashed her recovered identification card to the guards at the entrance to the cell block, stopping long enough to show them Skinner's written permission for visitation. No one asked questions. She wouldn't have trusted herself to give answers for them if they did. Not without landing herself in Block C right along with Che for treason. She ignored the whistles and the lewd remarks as she walked down the row of cells, not caring what the perverts said or thought or did just as long as they kept their hands inside the bars. It would be a dreadful thing to have to break fingers this early in the morning. Cell 1172 was at the end of the hall, on the l eft. Just a few more paces and she'd be there. The fluorescent lights bounced off the glossy white tiles of the floor, burning her eyes. She could only imagine what it must be like for the prisoners who were subjected to it constantly. It must be maddening. But then, that would be the point, wouldn't it? When she reached the cell, for a moment she couldn't even tell if anyone was there. Then she saw them, huddled together in the far back corner as if they could escape the glare of the lights or the hissing of the other prisoners who seemed to hate hybrids as much as Nicolas did. He leaned against the wall, the sallow light turning his skin a strange pale color while at the same time scooping out great shadows under his eyes. Livid yellow and blue bruises covered the entire left side of his face, continuing down his neck, and his lower lip was swollen to twice its normal size, a bit of dried green blood caked across a cut in the center. Looks like they'd given him a proper welcoming. One of his arms cradled his ribs like something was broken, while the other held Aida's body in his lap, pulling her to his chest in a heartbreakingly futile gesture of protection. She had no bruises, Scully noticed. Did they really leave her alone or did Che come behind them and pick up the pieces again? His eyes stared intently into something he alone could see, until he realized she was watching him. A slow smile broke out across his face, shadowed by a grimace as the effort stretched the broken skin of his lips. With infinite care, he slid Aida from his lap to the floor, his hand smoothing her cheek as he stood to his feet and walked over to the bars. "You're still speaking to me? Even after last night?" Something warmed her face like a smile even though this was not the place for such things. "It was a foolish thing to do, Che." She said, taking care to keep her voice soft and without any trace of condemnation. He would face enough of that at noon. "I would have helped you." "I know. That's why I had to do it. You need to live, Dana. There aren't enough people like you left in the world as it is. You believe in something." Her shoulders jerked in a half-laugh. "You sound so certain of that. I'm not even certain of that, anymore." "You believe in truth and you believe in Mulder. Between the two of them, I'd say you have a pretty good chance of making a difference somewhere." "And what about you, Che?" She set her hands on the bars. "You were making a difference. I saw it every day in the infirmary. What did you believe in to give it all up?" "I always knew I'd have to fight someday," he told her. "I just count myself lucky that it took this long to get here." "How is Aida?" Scully looked over his shoulder to the still form of the girl. "I put her to sleep." Che said, glancing back to look at her, his eyes softening as soon as they brushed her face. "I thought it would be easier than making her wait...." "I brought this for her." She held up the rosary. "I found it in your apartment, and thought she might like to have it." He took it from her fingers, his hands running lovingly over the well-worn wooden surface of the beads as his eyes traveled back to another time. "When my father gave this to my mother, he told her he had made it so every time she prayed, part of him prayed with her. I said the same thing to Aida when I gave it to her. Thank you for bringing it....thank you." Silence, for moments. "Don't give up yet, Che. I'm going to Nicolas myself. That's what I wanted to come here to tell you. I'm not going to stop trying." "Skinner already went-" "I know. But I have to try, and maybe he'll listen to me, who knows? He won't be expecting it from a woman-" "Stay away from him, Dana." Che's eyes moved to hers and this time they were not so soft. "He is evil." "I have faced evil before." "Not like this." He took a deep breath then began to talk more rapidly than before. "When I went to Aida, I healed her. Everything I could heal. There was something deeper than the bruises, Dana, something inside her mind that ate at her soul. It tried to shut me out like it had intelligence, like it knew what I was and wanted to stop me from healing her. When I pulled it out of her, it was cold and burning all at the same time. It was pure darkness. I've never felt anything like it. It drained all of my energy away. Nearly killed me. I didn't know what it was, until Aida regained consciousness and I asked her about it. She was afraid to tell me, at first. She's never been afraid to tell me anything...." "What was it ?" Scully leaned in closer, her eyes darkening in concern mingled with the first glimmerings of suspicion, and yes, fear. What he described sounded exactly like Pavlov's mind had felt inside hers. Pure darkness, that's what he'd said. Evil. But Pavlov was dead and his darkness with him. So what....oh, she trembled to even think it. "She told me Nicolas did...things...to her mind. That she didn't know how, but he was inside her head, not in her thoughts, but deeper. That's all she could say before she started crying. I don't know what he did to her, Dana, but I don't want to take the risk of it happening to you." Too late, she would have told him, if she had the nerve to bare her soul. I'm already scarred. Nicolas had the ability to enter minds? Deeper...than thoughts? And little Aida had been victim to that... Her bones quivered with the very idea of it. This was supposed to be behind her, as far away from the present as Pavlov's grave. Yet she had to walk into Nicolas' office and beg for mercy for her friends. And she had to do it without fear, or else he would sense it and then she would be undone. "I'll be careful." she said, pasting her best I'm-fine-Mulder smile on her face. "I always am." "He won't listen." "He'll have to." Che shook his head, a bemused smile in his eyes. "Do you ever stop trying?" "Once," she said. "After they let me out of the camps, I gave up on Mulder and lived for months under the belief he was dead. It nearly killed me. I decided then that I never wanted to live that way again." "Does he know you love him?" "He barely sees me enough to remember my name." That cameout more bitter than she had intended, but it was too late now. "I think you should tell him. It might give him a reason to hang around." She could never say that to Mulder. She hadn't even been able to say it before, when they were comfortable enough to touch and to even co-exist. What made Che think she could say it now, after so many months of separation and the awkwardness that brought? "I'll consider it." How did one refuse a dying man? "I'd... better go. My time allotment is almost up." Yet she hated to leave, hated to walk away and never see his smile again or hear Aida's laugh as they shared dinner. She must have worn that thought in her eyes, because he brushed his fingers across hers through the bars in a touch meant to give hope even though he should be hoarding what little he had for himself. "We'll be all right. They can only kill our bodies. It's always been deeper than that between Aida and I." She pulled her hand away from the bars, nodding slowly. "I think I know what you mean." /I think I lived that once, and I want to live it again. Mulder's soul cannot be so very far from mine if I feel it calling with my every breath./ "Goodbye." "Goodbye." Scully dreaded the word, because after she said it she would began to walk away, and the steps would take her to Nicolas, soul to soul against the same breed of serpent she had faced once before. She cringed at the memory of the venom in her veins, but there was no choice. She had to try this one last resort. She would be brave and she would be strong and she would show no fear. /No fear. No feeling at all. Lock up your mind and throw away the key. He can't get in this time. You know how to play the game./ And she walked back down the hall and did not look back. * * * * * * * * * * * * Click-clack. Click-clack. Her shoes beat a nervous tattoo across the floor tiles as she walked down the hall, the staccato rhythm no where close to matching the speed of her heart. Traitor, she whispered to the racing of her pulse. You've survived hell thirty different ways since the first night the stars began to fall, and now you're sweating over a simple conversation with a man? A man who tore the minds of innocent women even though they were little more than girls...just like the monster in her dreams... A man who murdered babies....just like the men who took her Emily... A man who held the life of her friends in his hand. Maybe if she thought about that long enough, the hate would supersede the fear. It would be welcome release, but she could not afford the danger of allowing her emotions to her face. Already she felt her skin stretch taut with the strain of holding them back. "I need to speak to the Leader." Scully stopped at the secretary's desk, matching the girl's annoyed frown with the same icicle glare she used to give Kersh's secretary when the little slut flirted with Mulder. "It's urgent." "I'm sorry." A fake smile on neon pink lips. "You'll need an appointment." She reached for a calendar, her dime store acrylic nails tapping her impatience against her pen. Scully glanced from the girl to Nicolas' door. There was only one security guard near enough to the door to actually pose a complication, and she could get around him easy enough. She started walking toward the door. "I might can get you in next week if you--hey wait! You can't go in there!" Her cry alerted the security guard, but by then Scully was already through the door. When the door broke open, his head snapped up from the intelligence reports he had been reading and his hand flew to the gun under his desk, whipping it up to kill level before the woman was even halfway into the room. She held her hands up to show she was unarmed. Her blue eyes asked him not to shoot, asked him what threat could a tiny helpless redhead pose to a big strong soldier? His fingers paused around the trigger. "I need to speak with you Si-" Her words were cut off as one of his security guards barreled into her from behind, knocking her to her knees. Instead of pain, her eyes merely flickered with annoyance as she rolled out from the punch, then sprang back to her feet, using the momentum to drive her knee into the man's groin. The guard gasped, doubling over in pain. Nicolas felt the beginnings of a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. Her eyes had lied. She was small-- he could probably splinter every bone in her wrist with one twist-- but she was most certainly not helpless. She finished the job with a blow to the back of the man's neck that dropped him as neatly as a sack of flour. Nicolas searched her eyes for any sign of pleasure at the kill or triumph, but found only a cold disdain. Yet her emotions betrayed her. Beyond her thoughts there was a deep satisfaction that her skills had proved worthy one more time. That she could kill if she wanted to. Yet she did not. So the woman had restraint.... excellent. She would be so busy trying to bury her own emotions that she would not notice his prodding until it would be too late, until he was already inside her mind. Three more guards appeared at the door, alerted by the sounds of struggle, and he watched the muscles of her back tighten in preparation for further combat. As much as he would enjoy watching her in that capacity, the curiosity pricked him as to what she had to say that could be so important for her to fight her way into his office. "It's all right." he held out his hand to stop the guards. They paused, obediently, though their guns remained drawn and her eyes remained on the weapons. Taut, flashing fire. A cat, he thought. Beautiful and soft but watch the claws. "There was just a little misunderstanding. Take your friend to the infirmary then leave us." They scuttled to obey, and then the door shut. Leaving her alone with him. He couldn't contain the smile now; it broke out across his face like wildfire. "So." He said, his eyes trailing over her face down to her shoulders, down to the chest that heaved slightly with exertion. "You must be Dana Scully." "I am." She smoothed her hair back into place as she talked. Such tiny fingers, so white and pale against the fire-gold strands. Almost like they were made of porcelain, which was, he knew, so easy to break. "I apologize for my...unorthodox...entry, but there is a matter of great important that needs your attention." "The Leader's ear is always open to the needs of his people." He said, gesturing toward a chair. "Please, sit." "Thank you, but I'd rather stand." Her eyes hardened stone now, betraying nothing, but that mask revealed more than she knew. The barest hint of uneasiness clung about her, a vapor of emotion that vanished before he got close enough to decide if it was real or imagined. Once he entered her mind, he would know for sure. But it would have to be done delicately. She could not suspect, not yet. He settled back into his chair and began to lazily stretch his mind toward hers. "What can I do for you?" She was silent for a moment, then her eyes met his with such clarity that he feared she was staring him through to the soul. No wonder Mulder was afraid that she would discover everything about him. Those eyes burned through lies like fire through mist. "I have come to ask you to reconsider General Skinner's offer for the lives of the two hybrids." His left eyebrow quirked in surprise. "And why would you concern yourself with the affairs of Impure murderers?" "They are young, sir. Impetuous. I know that crime must be punished but judgment can often be tempered with mercy." "Mercy?" He laughed. "You and Mulder both seem to have such idealistic concepts of what that means. The hybrid Che smuggled his unregistered female into our city, then murdered several of our brothers in arms when he discovered she had been captured. You would release him to kill again?" He rested at the border of her consciousness now, face to face with a massive stone wall of defense instincts that stopped him cold in surprise. These were far thicker than even Mulder's. Seemingly impenetrable. Yet there were cracks, tiny spider web cracks and flaws and chinks, as if once, the walls had tumbled. If they fell once, they could fall again. "I do not think he would kill again, sir." He began to sense anger-- even from outside her walls he could feel its heat seeping through the stone. If he could feel at the fringe of her subconscious, what would it be like at the core? A furnace. Yet none of it showed in her eyes. "That is for me to decide. As the Leader I have more than one or two lives to take into consideration. Thousands look to me for protection and leadership. If I allow one Impure to defy us, tomorrow there will be two more wishing to follow in his footsteps. The next day there will be three, then four, then they might even start thinking of us as our equals." Her eyes were steel now, her voice a blade. "And you are so sure that they are not?" "For someone who has fought as long as you have, Dana, I would have expected a little less naivete." Her lips turned up into a mockingly sweet smile. "For someone who has fought as long as you have, Nicolas, I would have expected a little more ability to tell who the enemy really was." Fury engulfed his veins, but at the same time a sense of wonder swelled within him. This....woman...had criticized him to his face and she had smiled even though he could have her shot for it. The passion in her burned against his mind like a white sparkler held close to bare fingertips. He grew dizzy with the heat of it, with the heat of his own desire to control such spirit. Suddenly he remembered to speak. "The enemy is anyone who does not support our Cause." He kept his voice even, matching hers steel for steel. He moved his mind around the walls in hers as he spoke, searching for some kind of gate, some kind of portal. "You may not understand it but you will accept it and in time you may even come to agree with it." He baited her with the last remark, wanting her anger to swell again he could find the source of it. "Agree with the murder of two people just because of their genes? Because it's not politically convenient to give them a fair trial and keep them alive? I'm sorry, sir, but I don't see how that's any different than the beings we claim to fight." Her voice rose a little there, and as her emotions crested, he picked up on a strange...presence...inside her subconscious. A humming, soft and metallic like the humming that used to fill his own brain when the Colonists had put their implants in him... Implants. The realization hit him and he almost screamed with delight. She wore an implant. It would open her mind to his just like a flower to the sun. "It's war." He said, following the humming to try and find the source. "The Cause must be preserved from all threats, no matter how we have to do it." Her consciousness burned now, and Nicolas resisted the urge to check his face for scorch marks. Her voice shook slightly, whether from emotion or withheld anger, he wasn't sure. "They are barely more than teenagers. They don't deserve to die." "They will pay for their crimes, today at noon in the city square. If you don't like it, close your eyes." Almost there....almost... "You'd like that, wouldn't you? No witnesses." She turned and walked toward the door, stopping as her hand touched the doorknob. Her head snapped back toward him, her voice sharp and cutting. "And stay out of my head. I know what you're trying to do and it won't work." And just that easily, he found himself cut off from the siren call of the implant, from even the fringes of her consciousness. The door slammed behind her and she was gone. He found himself staring after her, not quite believing what just occurred. She knew counter-offensive. Impossible. Had she picked it up while fighting off the alien Pavlov, or was it something instinctive that she had yet to consciously control? It fascinated him, intoxicated him. When she broke, it would be as diamond shattering, with a thousand fragments of brilliance that would tumble from his fingers. He would break her; of this he had no doubt. The implant would allow him into her subconscious just as soon as he found its channel, and this he could do without even being near her. After all, he'd visited her dreams before. Such a lovely thing, to watch her nightmares. Soon enough, he would create them. to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (23/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - Scully bit back the urge to run as she left Nicolas' office, traversing the long hallway back to the sun and the air and the safety. She wiped the sweat of her palms on her pants, trying to still the shaking that had gripped her hands as soon as the door had shut behind her. It was not so much the way he had groped her body with his eyes, as if she was one of his women. That she had expected. It was not so much the fact that she had felt his mind brushing hers, leaving smears of bloody fingerprints at the fringes of her consciousness. That she had been warned of. It his was eyes. The same, electric blue eyes that mocked her in her nightmares. And it was the way those eyes sang to the metal in her neck, until it hummed and throbbed throughout her mind. Whispering. Murmuring. Calling her to him. * * * * * * * * * * * * * Noon. The sun stood dead still in the center of the cloudless sky, bleeding fire down to the earth and blistering the town square until even the shade turned to scorch marks rather than relief. A hot breeze stirred the sand and the withered grass, spreading the collective stench of sweat and dirt and anticipation throughout the restless crowd. Scully could hear the sea of whispers that rode behind the wind, echoing throughout her mind as she pushed her way through the seemingly endless clog of people. /What are we here fer anyways? I got twenty casings of ammo t' put away before I can go to lunch./ /Didn't you hear? Some piece of hybrid scum is gonna get wasted./ /So what'd he do?/ /Dunno./ /Murder probably. Or rape. Those pigs don't know how to control their own instincts./ /I heard he killed three of our boys trying to break into the infirmary. He and the little sow who helped him are gonna get what they deserve. Frickin' animals./ And the man spit into the dirt near her feet. She wanted to break his jaw. She wanted to fight, to let out the rage burning her veins with more fury than the sun, until her gun was smoking in her hands and blood covered her fingertips and there was no more hate in her. That was the thing about battle. You started out hating, but after the first five minutes, you felt nothing. Violence was the universal novocaine. No wonder Mulder was so addicted to the missions he ran. You could fight an alien and you could fight a man, but bullets did nothing against a state of mind. Or guilt. She was supposed to have saved them, because isn't that what she and Mulder were meant to do? Protect the weak. Save the innocent. /Take a look at him and take a look at yourself and then tell me if you still believe that./ Pavlov's voice, again. She could always count on him to surface in her darker demons. Yes, she realized, she still believed it. Despite the blood and the scars, she had always clung to the hope that somehow everything would fall back into the way it was. That's why it hurt so much to see it all crumble. Mulder would hurt too, if he was here. Or would he? Maybe he would agree with Nicolas, agree with the mob. Those suspicions were also her fears, and he wasn't here to allay them. /Mulder!/ She wanted to throw her head back and scream until it echoed off the sun down to whatever god-forsaken battlefield he was on. /Mulder, I need your help! I can't save them alone! I never could./ She should be out there, fighting with him, rather than swimming through this sea of flesh and ignorance, pushing her way to the front of the crush to watch her friends die. Just when she had found out again what "friend" meant... /Mulder is your friend./ No, Mulder was her soulmate. There was a difference. She'd die for him but it was so hard for them to sit down and just...talk. That's what she'd had with Che and Aida. Somewhere to go and laugh and just talk. Close your eyes, Nicolas had said. You don't have to see them die. Tempting, but no. When this was all over, and Nicolas and his boys were on trial like the Nazis they were, someone had to point the fingers. She'd be right there on the witness stand. Let Nicolas smile at her then. Scully reached the fringe of the crowd, and stopped to catch her breath. A barricade and a healthy detachment of soldiers kept the spectators back from the execution scaffolding-- a wooden platform rising ten feet above the crowd, with two posts standing in the center, ugly and naked in the sun. A memory blossomed from the depths of her mind, momentary blurring reality until she found stared instead at the past. /The desert, outside a cheap whiskey joint, en route to this hell. Three posts, three men, backs ripped open like butchered cattle. Echoes of screams in their eyes. Echoes of whips across their skin. Criminals. Left to die in the sun. Skinner's voice. (It wasn't personal. Purely judicial.)/ She doubted he would say the same, were he beside her now. Was he even here, today, or did he use his rank to hide in an air-conditioned office far away from the memories and the screams? Or had he just seen this too many times to care? That wasn't fair; she knew he'd tried, but he should have tried harder, right? Someone should have tried. She blinked and Che and Aida hung on scaffolding, stripped and torn. She shivered and the image disappeared in waves of shimmering heat. "Clear a path! Clear a path!" The soldiers ringing the square begin to herd people away from the road as the grumble of a truck motor drew nearer and nearer. She heard the roar of the crowd, beginning at the far end of the square then spreading until the entire mass of people roared as one hungry beast. "Murderers!" "Filth!" "Die!" Scully cursed her lack of height, shoving and elbowing until she reached an open view. Her eyes squinted against the sun and the sting of sweat in her eyes, and she brought her hand up to shield her vision. Her heart quivered within her chest, a deep shuddering ache. The truck moved slowly down the road-- too slowly-- giving the crowd plenty of time to hurl insults or more tangible evidences of hatred at the two prisoners huddling in the open truck bed. She could see it all so clearly, even from this distance. Pain was always crystal clear. Che stood, or tried to, until the guards around him toppled him with a blow to the back of his knees. His arms were bound behind his back at an angle that must have been agony to his shoulder muscles, but his face never let on. He seemed totally oblivious to the profanity of the crowd, to the spit of the guards, to the debris peppering his skin. He knelt near Aida, shielding her from the rocks and rotten vegetables as best he could, and his eyes never left her face. His lips were moving, whispering something meant for only her ears and the angels. Scully could imagine his words, for they would be very much like those Mulder said to her the night they both had been captured and dragged through a mob not so different than this to face what they thought would be a similar death. /Be strong. Be strong. Only a little while and they won't hurt us anymore. Don't look at them. Look at me. At me and nothing else./ Aida leaned into her husband as if she was trying to disappear, her tiny body shivering despite the oppressive heat. There were fresh bruises on her skin-- the guards must have given them a farewell party before loading them onto the truck-- and the streaks of sun-dried tears stained her face. But when he kissed her, a soft and gentle press of his lips to hers, she smiled. Just for that long. Then a rock hurled through the air, catching her in the mouth, knocking her away from Che and out of sight, momentarily. Che's eyes locked on the crowd as if he saw who was responsible, his face twisted into something dark and inhuman as he spit a curse toward the man. A billy club across the shoulders silenced him. He barely hit the floor before the guards hauled him back to his feet. Aida was jerked back up to eye-level, pulled by the hair until she whimpered. The crowds must not be deprived of their spectacle. His body shook now, but Scully knew it was not fear. Even from this distance, she felt the rage. She shared the rage. She blinked, quickly, to hide something that couldn't be tears. She could not permit tears or trembling, or any signal of weakness whatsoever. Nicolas would be waiting for it. If there was ever a time that she needed her infamous control, it would be now. Especially because the truck was passing her section of the crowd, almost to the platform and its whipping posts. The shadow of the vehicle fell across her, the dust from the treads billowing up to choke her lungs and burn her eyes, but she paid it no heed. Che's eyes passed over hers, so very young but older than even Mulder's now. They reached to her very soul, calming her. Forgiving her, because he knew that even if he didn't need it, she did. His gaze carried hers to Aida's neck, to the rosary which hung around it, guarding her soul. He smiled, flashing his teeth to her just like when she had first met him. /Thank you.../ For a long moment, she held onto those eyes, because no one was really dead if you remembered them. Then the truck passed her and he looked away. Thirty seconds later, the vehicle ground to a stop and the guards dragged the prisoners up the steps to the platform. She saw Nicolas now, standing in full military dress at the other side of the platform, flanked by several of his higher-ranking goons. Hitler himself would have been jealous at the evil in the man's smile as he watched the guards untie Che's hands then lash them to the post above his head. The same procedure was repeated for Aida, only then his smile darkened into a sneer, his eyes dripping lust. Che noticed this, and shoved his angry stare between Nicolas' gaze and his wife's trembling eyes. This amused the Leader. After the prisoners had been secured, Nicolas moved to the forefront of the platform, raising his hands to silence the crowd. The roaring vanished instantly, replaced by the silence of devoted subjects. Scully felt her lips curl into disgust. She contemplated screaming again just to cause a distraction. "My brothers and sisters," His voice carried well, as any tyrant's did, full of warmth and camaraderie and just enough sadness to make him appear human. "We have here today two Impures who have defiled the sanctity of our land. The woman is an Unregistered, a leech who crawled out of the gutters of the Outside world to eat our food and enjoy without merit the precious freedom that you all work so hard to preserve. When she was arrested, the man murdered three of your brothers out of anger for our justice. They are here to face that justice now, and you all are witnesses to it." The roar begin to rise again, but it dimmed to a murmur after one wave of his hand. Scully had to give the man credit for one thing; he had the common rabble eating right out of his palm. Or at least, too scared to do anything else. "Some of you might believe these methods harsh," His eyes searched her out and fastened her gaze to him like she was a butterfly and he the pin. "but I assure you, we do only what is necessary for the preservation of our law, the law you yourselves have created. Without law we are no better than these Impures, than their Colonist masters. This law has seen fit to punish these creatures for their crimes against us all. Each will receive eighteen lashes, then will be put to death in the manner normal for their kind. Is this the will of the people?" A hundred voices swelled to answer him in a mangled roar for blood and death. Nicolas seemed to drink in their voices for a moment before quieting them. "Then so be it." He turned back to the soldiers, speaking to the two brutes holding the whips. "Begin." The men saluted, walked over to the prisoners. Nicolas' eyes shot back to her, his smile returning just for her benefit, a smooth curve of lip and flash of teeth quicker than the flick on a snake's tongue across the blood of a mouse. Two mice, to be exact. The soldiers tore Che's shirt from his body, then moved to Aida and ripped her dress open down the back. Her skin was pale, the bones of her spine easily seen. Scully could see them tense, quivering. /Go on,/ Nicolas challenged. /Close your eyes. Run away./ The soldiers adjusted their breathing masks, meant to shield them from the blood of their victims. She knew that the toxins would dissipate into the heat. long before they reached the crowd, but it would form a beautiful irony if just this one time, they did not. The whips floated through the dead air as the soldiers drew them back above their heads. Scully set her jaw in defiance, her eyes burning holes in whatever soul Nicolas had left. /I'll show you a witness./ For a heartbeat, no one breathed. The whips sailed toward their victims in a viper hiss that ended in a girl's strangled scream as leather cut flesh. Aida's shriek filled the universe, a slap across the face of the conscience of every man and woman in the square. If they were alive enough to feel it, Scully didn't know. Che held his pain in silence. The soldiers paused long enough to let the pain sink its teeth into their prey. Then the whips hissed again. And again. Scully ground her teeth together until her skull ached, trying to keep silence when her bones roared within her. Trying to keep her eyes clear even as the tears stung them as acid. She counted each time the whip sailed through the air, each time it tore her inside. And she watched it all. Memorized it. Someday, she would tell everything just as it happened. How Aida mercifully lost consciousness between the seventh and eighth lashes, but that Che had the misfortune of strength, and was still clinging to the last threads of awareness after the whips were laid aside, exchanged for two small cylinders of metal. She would describe the stilettos in detail, in case any of the jury members were, for some reason, not familiar with the device which killed aliens and hybrids and innocent lovers. She would blink back tears, as she did now, but her voice would not shake as she told them how they moved to Aida first. They probed her neck with her fingers until they found the exact spot that would allow the metal to pierce her spinal cord and enter her brain. She would mention that Che was still facing his beloved, how his head had never moved from the girl's face throughout the entire beating. This was the first time, however, he had cried. Only one tear, tracing its way through the dirt and the blood on his face. She would tell them how it carved a gash down her own soul. Then the stiletto fell. The kill came quickly compared to the torture before. Aida's body jolted as if it had been thrown onto an electric fence, stiffening then disintegrating into a pile of green blood. Scully decided she would not tell them how close she came to vomiting. Some things were meant to be kept secret. The soldiers moved to Che next, and she did not think he would struggle even if he had the strength. His soul was dead; he had watched them kill it before his eyes . She saw no fear on his face, only resignation. It is finished. Relief. One soldier held his head still, and the other raised the stiletto toward the sky. She prayed for his soul, for Aida's soul, that they would find the happiness they deserved in a better world. The stiletto plunged into the back of his neck. Five minuts later, he was dead and the crowd was gone. Skinner's words floated through her empty, aching mind. The same thing he had said before. /Look away from it. You can look away now./ She was among the last to go. * * * * * * * * * * * * * Scully did not return home immediately, preferring the organized chaos of the infirmary over the grave silence of the apartment in hopes that the clamor of new life would push from her mind the lingering echoes of death. If the other doctors noticed the sudden sharpening in her focus, or her abrupt desire to work three straight shifts, they would only nod in approval at her devotion to the Cause. They would not notice the way her hands trembled when she held the newborns, or how the sheen across her eyes was a little too bright to be caused by a simple reflection of light. She worked until her head began to pound from the wailing of the children and the screaming of the birthing rooms. Even then she refused to let up, not until the smell of antiseptic and blood and baby formula overwhelmed her all at once, in waves of dizziness and nausea. At first they told her to "sit down", but when they saw the pallor of her face and the fever shine to her eyes, the order changed to "go home." Home. An empty apartment and an empty bed and an empty soul. How lovely. She did as she was told, too weary to do anything but obey. The moonlight startled her, for within the infirmary there was no such thing as time, and she had forgotten that it was not true for the outside world. What time was it, anyway? Three shifts....four hours apiece.... Midnight. Somehow it did not seem quite fair that the world should have kept moving with so little notice for what had been lost under the noon sun. She contemplated this injustice as the night wind blew the smells of the hospital from her mind, attempting to coax her from her morbidity with hints of jasmine flowers and far away roses. The stars seemed to push their brilliance deeper into her eyes, as if they were whispering to her that they were still beautiful, and they could prove it. /Then bring them back./ She told them. /Then I'll believe you're beautiful./ They shook their heads at her bitterness, and the moon pulled a cloud over his face to hide him from her pain. She doubted they would ever know how close she was to letting go. If they did, then would they please relay the message to Mulder, if he wasn't too busy killing.... The walk back to her apartment should have taken five minutes but it stretched into fifteen. She did not know where the time went, only that it passed her by, as if she was no longer a part of earth. Maybe she had died too, somewhere in between the fire of the sun and the lash of the whips, and just forgotten to let her body know. Scully closed her eyes, resting her head against the frame of her apartment door. This would not do. She was a doctor and a soldier. Blood was her occupation. She had seen her entire family fall prey to the virus, and had murdered the monsters that used to be them with her own two hands. So why was she so affected by two more deaths, mere grains of sand in the endless shore of human suffering? People died every day. The difference was, this time she had chosen to care. Why, she had no idea. Maybe it was Che's smile or Aida's laugh. Maybe she had been trying to prove that she could care for her fellow humans again, just like in the days when saving the world was something good and noble and beautiful. Maybe she had just wanted to prove she could feel at all. She would not make that mistake again. This she vowed in the silence of the hallway, in the silence of her heart. She froze the pain, inch by inch, until her soul tingled with freezer burn but not with sadness. She would feel no sadness. She would feel no anger. She would accept what was lost and move on. It's what she had learned to do to survive, and she could do it again. But then she opened the door and saw the roses on the table. There were a half-dozen of them, perfect in every way, their perfume thick as velvet in the night air, arranged in a elegant glass vase. A small card sat beside them on the table. Scully turned it over. Deepest sympathy for the loss of your friends. Kindest regards, Nicolas. In the low light, she could almost see the smile. /It doesn't matter. You don't care. You don't feel.../ Her fingers trembled. /Ice, Scully. Remember ice. Remember all those days on the run when they were dying by the millions and you didn't care. Feel that again. Feel nothing. Mulder's learned to do it, so why don't you?/ Within her soul there was a tinkling, a groaning as the ice began to crack. To bend. All at once it shattered, and the sound of it was the sound of a perfect vase and six hideously perfect roses crashing into the far wall. Breaking into a thousand pieces. Just as she was breaking. She grabbed the roses from the floor and began to rip them apart, one by one, every fiber of her body shaking with the need to scream. The desire grew like a volcano building inside her. Building... A second crash startled her before the eruption hit her throat. She spun to see a man running into the room, his gun drawn and fear in his eyes. He saw the blood on her fingers, from where the thorns had cut her flesh, and she swore he screamed even though he didn't make a sound other than her name. "Scully?" He moved toward her, but it couldn't be him. He was out on a battlefield, fighting and killing and feeling nothing. But here he was, holding his hand out to her while his eyes burned with pain for her pain. "Mulder...." "What happened?" "They're dead..." "Who?" "They're...." Her voice trailed away into silence Something in her was breaking, something she had not known was even alive anymore, but she was not alone. Not alone. Her pride told her to remain still. Her soul screamed for relief. And before she knew she had moved, she had wrapped her arms around him, her tears eating through his shirt and into his skin, but he didn't flinch. He didn't pull away. "Scully, what is it?" He sounded afraid. She should say something to reassure him, but she couldn't speak. Her fingers dug into his back, leaving smears of blood on his uniform. "Scully..." The fear sharpened until his eyes pressed as daggers into hers through the low lamplight. Probing, so gently, her soul. "Tell me. Please." "He killed them...." she whispered, the words broken by the tears. "And I was alone..." "You're not alone anymore." He breathed the words into her ear, warm and soft and begging for forgiveness, while his arms tightened around her shoulders. And she clung to him because she needed him in order to breathe. to be continued. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (24/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - Speak to me baby In the middle of the night Pull your mouth close to mine. I can see the wind coming down like the black night... Hear the rain fall. See the wind come to my eyes. See the storm broken... Speak to me Hold your mouth to mine 'cause the sky is breaking It's deeper than love. I know the way you feel. - The Sky is Broken Moby The world did not end-- as he had feared when he first heard the crash-- but rather it turned upside down. South was north; sky became earth, and Scully was in the middle of it all, the center of this newly inverted universe, her fingers clutching him as if he was her last rosary. She kept her eyelids stretched shut as canvas pulled taut over a waterdrum, but the edges leaked tiny streams of something he would have easily called tears had she been anyone else. For her, he could find no words, though fragments of description drifted through his brain. /Sacrilege. Profanity. Something that should not be. Something I could have prevented.../ He did not know what to do, so he held her. His face pressed against her hair, inhaling a scent he once remembered as lilacs and spring rain. Now she smelled of strange things, of hospital corridors and antiseptic and too many hours spent under fluorescent lights. Of weariness. These foreign sensations mingled with an even wilder aroma of blood and roses that thickened the semi-darkness around them until he realized that she was the center of that as well. And the blood belonged to her.... /She's hurting....you can feel it in the quiver of her skin, skin torn open at the seams and bleeding onto your nice, pristine uniform. Don't just stand there. Ask her why she hurts...ask her who dared..../ He swallowed whole the lump of cotton silence drying out his mouth and forced his words to hold steady. "Scully, I need to see your hands." "Why?" "You're bleeding." "It's nothing." That was the usual denial, although he noticed the slight differences-- how she did not resist as he withdrew from the embrace, how she winced as he caught her wrists and turned them palms up to him. He was possessed for a blink of a heartbeat by an unusually persistent demon that made him afraid, so afraid, of what he would see. But he could not turn away, now. She was waiting, palms up and eyes dark behind the veil of tears. Stigmata, his first impulse whispered. She has finally become a saint. He did not know-- could not know-- that the wounds were not of faith but of sacrilege. The vague similarities to miracle faded as his gaze lingered. He saw the tiny cuts, the jagged tears in the skin, noting they were not severe, only bloody. Something like a stain of crushed flower petals soiled her fingertips, as a child who had dipped her fingers in wine. The fear subsided. Instead he merely ached. Her blood always made him ache. "How?" She freed her wrist from his, holding her hands at awkward angles from her body, an expression on her face like she wanted to hide but wasn't sure where. "I was tired... a vase slipped...." "You said someone died." She blinked, as if she was only now remembering she had spoken aloud. Her eyes were too transparent, pouring her emotions over him in a cold bath he was not prepared to face. "Yes." Nothing more. This was not the Scully he knew. This was another woman, a Scully with bleeding fingers and torn hands, trembling from emotions and so easily broken. He could handle the ice. He could handle the denial. But to see her stripped down to the bare skin of her emotions, without a trace of her usual walls or logic....now this was something different. Strange. Fearful. He could not account for its sudden emergence. /Like you were around to figure out why, soldier-boy. You were off trying to be a hero in someone else's war./ Guilt could be afforded later. Now, at this moment, he must proceed with caution, pushing hard enough to learn the mystery but not hard enough to shatter. First things first. "The cuts don't look serious." He glanced down at her hands again. "Let me help you clean them." It was a sure danger sign when she made no protest, merely following him into the bathroom and sitting down on the toilet seat. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as he searched the medicine cabinet for the necessary items. His imagination kept replaying a cruel scenario in which he turned back to her and saw only a pile of broken glass. She stared at her hands, watching the blood drip from the tips of her fingers to leave dark ugly spots on her clothing. Then again, perhaps she did not see the blood. Her eyes were so far away... The silence lay close against his spine, a string of tiny leaden weights slowly deadening his nerves. "They aren't deep." He heard his own voice bounce back to him off the tile, a thin hollow sound. "You were lucky." "Aren't we all? All us true humans....lucky. We're alive." Mulder nearly winced at her tone as he reached for the peroxide. She wasn't supposed to be bitter. He had always been the one with enough lost faith to go around for the both of them. Whatever poison infected her now, he wished he could draw it out through her wounds into him. Let it rot his veins, but never hers. Her eyes squeezed shut as he passed the cotton swab over her hand, dabbing each cut in turn. The wounds fizzed with tiny white bubbles as the disinfectant began to work. Perhaps there was still time to prevent infection.... He tried again to unlock her words. "Who died, Scully?" "Everyone dies, Mulder. You know that by now. Even the innocent ones..." A tear slid down the corner of her eye, tracing the curve of her cheekbone then rolling down her jawbone. For one minute, he thought she was going to cry out loud. But she did not....perhaps her instincts kept a portion of her defense intact, even now. He finished with her right hand and began work on the left, each movement born from infinite care. Her skin was not marble, tonight, but flesh that felt pain and reacted to it. He could tell this by the tiny spasms in the nerves of her hand each time the antiseptic touched her wounds. Sometimes she would visibly wince. The same woman had undergone torture, suffered beatings without breaking. This was not that woman. Realization hit him of how easy it would be to hurt her this night, to bruise parts of her soul that normally were rock hard to the touch. A new fear dawned in him that somehow, by mischance or accident, he would leave such bruises. /C'mon, Scully, snap out of it. Jerk your hands out of mine and tell me that you don't need my help, thank you very much. Tell me who died, and use that angry tone of voice where your eyes flash and your skin flushes red. Strike me across the face for leaving you alone. Do something, anything. Eurydice, awake./ By now he was finished with the cleaning, and reached for a role of cloth bandages-- a rare commodity, even for Commanders, one to be used only in emergency, but he didn't care about the rules. He only wanted the soft things against her skin. Only the gentle things. "They are broken." she whispered, breaking silence without warning. Her eyes could not meet his, still focused on her nothingness. "What is broken?" He spoke slowly, carefully, waiting to prod her along ever so gently yet not wanting to scare her into silence again. "The vase....the flowers....it was a beautiful vase but it shattered and it was my fault and I couldn't put it back together. I couldn't save them." "We can get another vase. More flowers." "No. We can't." She shook her head, grave sadness etched in the worry lines of her forehead. "These flowers were different from all the rest. There were only two of them, you see, and all they had was one another. But the vase slipped, through my hands, they slipped, through my hands, onto the floor, and everyone watched and laughed as the pieces shattered...." /Disassociation through metaphor.../ The dormant profiler inside his brain stirred to life again. At the same time he cursed Skinner for not bothering to include details in the message he had sent urging a prompt return home. As it was, he could only play the game and hope to coax her back to reality. "Why did they laugh? Why didn't they try to help you?" "They wanted it to break." Her eyebrows knit together in a thin dark line. "They were jealous, of the flowers, afraid. And he wanted her....like the shards of glass on the floor...he wanted her to be in pieces....I didn't know, though, I didn't know until I lost my grip...But I tried to put them back together....but I was alone and I didn't know how..." Two fat tears, dripping off her chin and sliding down the bridge of her nose. He brushed them away with his fingertips, begging her through his skin to come back. She didn't have to talk; he wouldn't ask anymore questions; he just wanted to look into her eyes and have something look back. "Scully, look at me." he spoke with very real doubt that she heard him. /Please.../ She did not move. He half-imagined she had turned back into stone again, a beautiful Madonna of white marble and the coldest blue eyes. "You aren't alone now. Do you feel me, here? You're in there, Scully. I can feel you. It's safe to come back out now. We don't have to talk. Not tonight." He spoke all in a rush, not really sure of what he was saying but desperate to make some sort of connection. "We don't have to even whisper. We will sit in silence and I will hold you so close, without a word." Silence. "Please..." He raised her bandaged hands to his lips and kissed the center of the palm. Once. Twice. Three times. The bandage was rough against his lips, tasting faintly of blood and antiseptic, but he imagined she could feel him through the cloth. He needed her to feel him. After the fourth kiss, her fingers animated, running stiffly along the sides of his cheeks. He lifted his face toward hers, seeing recognition once more inside her eyes, but at the same time such an ache. As if her soul were bleeding, inside, where no one was supposed to see. Where only he could see. "I'm tired." she said. "So tired I can barely sit up." "Then we'll go to sleep." She struggled to rise, wavering. He stopped her. "Let me." /Let me do this for you. Let me bear all the weight tonight./ "I can make it, Mulder. I can walk alone." "But you don't have to." She closed her eyes and nodded. He slid his arms around her, his fingers running lightly up the skin of her arms to encircle her back, and lifted her against his chest. Her head rolled back against his shoulder as she opened her eyes. Weariness glazed her pupils, a thick sluggish exhaustion seeping from her into him, draining his energy as well. The distance across the room seemed measured in miles rather than feet. At last they were at the beside, and he supported her with one arm as he pulled back the blankets from the bed and eased her onto the sheets. A single curl tumbled from her hair to dangle over her eyes. He reached to brush it back into place, when her fingers caught his arm with a grip near desperation. "Don't leave me alone. He'll come back for the pieces, in the dark he'll come back..." "Shhh." He leaned forward, kissing reassurance onto her forehead. "No one is coming in here tonight. I promise." /Let them try, whoever they are. Just let them try./ It was not by accident that he slid his gun under his pillow when he climbed onto the bed beside her. Caution never hurt anyone. She shivered, even though she was wrapped up in the blanket, and he pulled her against him, trying to urge his warmth into her. It did not take her long to drift towards oblivion. But the tremor never left her, not even in sleep, always a faint quiver in her bones that sometimes reached her lips in a moan or feverish half-speech. Her hands clung to him with such force he feared it would press fresh blood from the wounds. He wondered how long it had been since she slept. Mulder himself did not indulge in slumber, choosing instead to lie awake with hopes of piecing together the mysteries she had spoken of. Two things he was sure of-- someone had died and it had been brutal enough to shock her. That said much and nothing all at once. In the morning, perhaps, answers could be found, if not from her lips then from Skinner. That could wait until the coming of the daylight, an intrusion that was yet far away. And so for the rest of the night, he kept his promise and held her in silence, without words. He suspected that with the morning light her walls would stand tall yet again, and who knew when she would let him close, allow him to comfort? Allow him to hold, to touch? /God, Scully, if you'll just let me hold you, I promise I'll never leave again. I'll never fight again. Just say you'll forgive me for leaving you alone./ Perhaps that was the real reason he fought sleep. He was too busy re-mapping the landscape of her fingers, re-memorizing the way he could feel her heartbeat through the bird thin bones of her back as it adjusted to match his beat for beat. It was that same rhythm which eventually called him into oblivion after her, and led him to wander in search of her through all his dreams. Mulder woke from visions of broken glass and Pavlov's eyes--his nightmares or hers, he didn't know-- expecting to find her in her own bed, a rigid independence to her spine and a stone wall three miles high behind her eyes. He expected it with such intensity that he was very nearly shocked to find her still in bed with him, her arms wrapped around him and her face buried in his chest. Her breathing rose and fell with the beating of his heart, but it was not the lullaby cadence of sleep. No, she was awake. Yet she remained. /If I am dreaming, never let me wake up./ Her fingers tightened along his shoulder blades as she felt him stir, and still she did not pull away. /If I am awake, never let me sleep again./ Did he dare to speak, or would the spell break with the silence and turn them both back into the man and woman they were during the daylight? Oh, he feared the magic between them, yes, but he wanted it more. So much more. "Scully." A breath. An incantation. A prayer. The silence stretched between them for three very long heartbeats before he heard her whisper tiptoeing across the darkness back to him. "I was wondering when you'd wake up." It sounded like she was smiling. Not a big smile, but a very small flip of her lips into a glimmer of light and hope. Her smiles were so rare, these days. As was hope. Why are you here, he wanted to ask her. It was more than a question of why she had not reverted back to her internal fortresses; he wanted to know why she had returned to him, why she still opened her arms to him if she knew what he was. /But then she doesn't know, does she? Not all of it. Even now, you lie./ His mind reverted momentarily to the bloody row of corpses that marked the truth, and he decided that if this moment was a lie, then he would embrace it. Although he could not accept totally the belief that it was untrue. How could this love be false? How would their breath and heartbeat move in tandem if it was anything but the truth, the only truth he had not compromised? He would never compromise her. Only *for* her. She pulled away from him, and for a moment a flash flood of fear washed over him. She was leaving, she was pulling away now that he was awake and why, why had he spoken and shattered the charm.... But she did not leave him. She moved onto her back, folding her hands above her stomach and staring up at the ceiling like she was going to read her next words from the darkness. How many of their secrets, he wondered, were indeed written in darkness, unknown to even each other? It was not a matter he wished to dwell on at this moment. Not when she was so close, and so very beautiful. Mulder waited for her to speak, sensing she needed to be the one to open any conversation. Unusual behavior or not, Scully was still Scully and she would feel a need to justify her moment of weakness. He would let her. "About last night," she began, her voice soft but firm with its customary control. "I think I owe you an explanation." "You owe me nothing." he said. "But I know you won't let me convince you of that, so tell me whatever you need to so you can convince yourself." "I broke down." she said, and through the darkness he could see her fingers wrap around one another, clenched so tight the skin showed flashes of bone white around the joints. He feared she would bleed again. "I have been under a great deal of....stress....lately, and I was tired, and I allowed myself to lose touch with reality. That was a failure on my part. For that I apologize. It will not happen again." He reached out and disentangled her fingers from each other so he could hold her hand in his, brushing his thumb across her knuckles. "Scully, you don't have to be in control all the time. Not around me. Once, you knew that, or at least I thought you did. Have you forgotten? Have I been gone that long?" "One day was too long." "I would have come back if I could have." "I know." A bit of silence. "I told myself that every night, before I went to sleep. That you were alive and safe and someday you'd come back to me. I never quite imagined it would turn out this way, in this city, but here we are again and even though it has been a very long time, no....I have not forgotten. But that doesn't mean I will accept my failures blindly, no matter what you say." "You certainly haven't changed much." "I wish I could tell you that was true." "To be honest, I am a little surprised that you're letting me talk about this with you. You usually make me work for it more." "I guess I do, don't I." She half-laughed before growing sober again. "We've lost enough time playing games like that. I realized that a long time ago and promised myself that when I saw you again some things would change" Her fingers laced through his until they were palm to palm. She wanted nothing more than to continue, but the words came so hard. So slow, like each time she had to fight to just get them past her throat and her fear. What was she doing? What was she saying? "This is one of them." Aida's words echoed in her mind. /You have that kind of love inside of you. It's wounded now....on the outside...but still strong. Don't hold it back. Let it heal with him, not apart./ She felt the tears sting at her eyelids again. /This is for you, Aida. I know you see this, somehow./ She had not realized she had fallen silent until the sound of his voice startled her from her memories. "I like the change. I only wish I had been here to discover it sooner." "You did what you had to. The fighting can't wait-" "The whole world's falling apart, Scully. There will always be a battle somewhere. But I don't have to fight all of them at once." Certainly her ears deceived her. He was going to stay with her? She wouldn't have to come home alone and eat alone and wake up alone? No, this was too fast. Too good to be true. She held her breath and let him continue, praying that the miracle was real. "I should never have left you alone for so long. That isn't why I came here. I came here to be with you, and that's what I need to do." She leaned closer to him, drawn by the warmth of his hands and voice. "I'm right here. I've been here the whole time." "I know." He just wished it had taken something less than bloody hands and tear stains on skin to open his eyes to it. He had failed, but would not fail this time. Nothing would hurt her....he would not allow it.... "I have to tell you a story." she said. "It's beautiful, at least part of it is, but it is not always beautiful. There is sadness, and there is ugliness--" her voice trembled here, but she fought to keep it under control. "but there is love. I owe it to them to tell it to you. I owe them so much." The pain in her voice cut him skin to soul, and he placed a finger over her lips. "If it hurts, Scully, don't. It can wait." "If it hurts," she said. "that means it will heal." To this he had no reply. to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (25/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - "His name was Che." she said. "Hers was Aida." And so for the next thirty minutes, she told him of the beauty. She told of a healer with warm eyes and ideals of a better world who saved her life once but saved her humanity a good many more times, reminded her that not everyone had sold out. Not everyone had given up. She whispered of a girl who absorbed emotions, who radiated innocence in a day when no one was innocent, and then her voice dropped to a hushed awe as she described the child that spoke from within the womb to its mother. Scully felt the tears eating away at her restraints, but she smiled anyway as she remembered details of a back room wedding and a pink sun dress, and all the other nuances of color and life that filled in her memories of them. She wanted to speak of them now, while they burned vibrant and fresh in her mind. She did not want them to fade away into just another stack of yellowed photographs in her albums of dead memories and nearly forgotten lives. Then she wiped away the tears that had escaped, pressed her fingers against her palms to remind herself who she was fighting, and told him about the ugliness. She heard her voice turn to acid as she recounted the arrest and the beating and the forced abortion she had been unable to prevent. It felt like steel had replaced the blood in her veins when she told Mulder of a husband's last, desperate attempt to save his wife. She relied on clinical detachment to sustain her through descriptions of the execution. Even without details, she still recalled the horror, still tasted it like bile in her throat. (Mulder, she noticed, did not look shocked. She resented it until she realized that he had seen much worse. She did not allow herself to think that he had been responsible for much worse.) Then, suddenly, she was at the end of the story. Could two lives be summed up so briefly? She wondered how long it would take to retell the story of her own life, and of Mulder's. If anyone would even remember the battles and the quest and the heroes they used to be. "He killed them." she said. "Nicolas did. He stood there and watched while she screamed and I swear he smiled through it, right from the beginning to the last drop of the stilettos. He enjoyed it." Mulder let her finish, taking a moment to sort through the jumble of emotions and facts he had just heard. Obviously the two hybrids had effected her deeply, even though she had only known them for a while. He was, in a way that he regretted but could not help, jealous that she had so easily given them the trust and friendship that it had taken him years to cultivate. But the bottom line was, they were dead now and she was out for blood. Scully was not one to leave a friend's death unavenged. She'd proven that time and time before in the field. If he supported her claim that Nicolas had acted unjustly, it would only add to her resolve to act against the man. And that was dangerous. She had no idea what she was up against. No idea at all. There was something about Nicolas even more chilling than Pavlov had been. He wasn't about to let her expose herself to that sort of darkness. And besides, a strange and stubborn emotion in the back of his mind that refused to believe the Leader would act so unjustly. After all, the hybrids had broken the law. Execution was the price. Perhaps Scully's ready closeness to the couple had impaired her judgment..... Either way, she could not be allowed to follow their footesteps. It was for this reason he chose his words carefully to persuade her not to fight. "Nicolas is a hard man." he said. "He may even be a cruel man, in some aspects. But I do not see him as a cold-blooded murderer. A soldier, yes. But not murder for sake of sheer pettiness." He did not realize that the voice whispering the words into his mind was very much like Nicolas himself. By now, the voice had been inside him for too long. "You defend him." Her hand stiffened in his and she very nearly pulled away. He closed his hands tighter around hers to prevent it. He could not lose touch with her, not now. Not when the doors were just beginning to open. "You defend him and yet you did not see his eyes when he looked at them. It was murder. And the blood was colder than any I have seen." "He is responsible for the protection of thousands, for hundreds of thousands, of lives. I don't defend his methods or the unnecessary brutality of the execution, but I can at least empathize with his reasoning. The rule of law is the only thing that prevents us from turning into a bunch of animals with guns. Sometimes that law is something we can support. Other times it's something a little harder to accept. I know they were your friends, and I'm sorry that it had to happen to them, but Nicolas is not the man to gun for. He's just doing his job. Maybe he does it too eagerly sometimes. No one's perfect and right now he's the one in charge." This time she did pull away. "Congratulations, Mulder. You sound like quite the company man." It stung, in a way far worse than the cuts on her skin, to hear him defend Nicolas. What could he possibly see in the man? She had heard how quickly he had been taken into Nicolas' confidence, even that the two men were considered friends, but she had not believed it until now. Could Mulder not see the evil in the creature's very eyes? Just like Pavlov. The thought sent her mind spiraling back to the dreams and the eyes and the blood red flowers. /Deepest sympathy for the loss of your friends./ Monster. She would tell Mulder what kind of monster he defended. "It's not just the execution." She spoke calmly, attempting to keep the rage to a simmer so he could not fault her logic. "He had personal interest. Why do you think Aida was arrested? He wanted her for the same reasons those fat Colonist generals buy their pretty young slaves. She caught his fancy. When he found out she wouldn't give him what he wanted, he beat her. Then he killed her for it, and her husband for trying to stop it. If Che hadn't tried to escape with her, she would have gone right back to Nicolas' bedroom and I don't think you can tell me that that would be in the best interest of the state." "You are certain he was the one to beat her. You can prove it." "She told Che that Nicolas did...things....to her mind." She shivered on instinct, resisting the urge to grab Mulder's hand again. She imagined Nicolas had looked at Aida the same way the man looked at her. An intrusion deeper than flesh. For a long space he did not say anything. "He's not Pavlov, Scully. Pavlov is dead. I killed him for you, and he's not coming back." /Yes, but would you kill the man you think saved your soul if I told you he wants to do the same things to my mind? And Pavlov is alive, for as long as Nicolas' eyes burn in my dreams./ For a fleeting moment she contemplated telling him this. The words were on her lips. But she could not bring herself to speak them. Pavlov was her demon, not his. The nightmares, the memories.....she must fight them alone. She would not throw herself weak and cowering into Mulder's arms and beg him to save her from the monsters under her bed. She could drag them into the light herself, sooner or later. No matter what he said, he counted on her being strong. One of them had to be made of steel and it certainly wasn't him, no matter how hard he thought he'd become. They had broken him because of her once and she would never, never see it happen again. So she smiled, and reached for his hand again, and because she craved the warmth more than the truth, she agreed with Mulder. "He's not coming back. I know." He must have felt her tremble, revealing the secrets without words, but she knew he would not understand the tremor. He would think it was the cold, or perhaps the grief, or perhaps a distant memory of Pavlov and the camps. For any of these reasons or maybe all of them, he pulled her close to him again, wrapping his arms around her like he wanted to keep out the world. It was strange, how even after falling stars and dead planets, she had never stopped believing she was safe every time he held her. "Do you ever wonder why they say ignorance is bliss?" she whispered, tracing circles on the back of his palm as she spoke. The scars on his hands were rough to touch. She tried to pretend they were not there, but her fingertips betrayed the illusion every time. "Why?" "Because whenever there is a moment of happiness...I mean true, complete happiness...it is spoiled by the knowledge that something will inevitably spoil it. Flowers wither in the winter. Sunsets melt into black. But sometimes I think the knowledge is a choice. Some people live their whole lives without it. They just go from day to day in the ignorance that they can perfectly happy...that they can be in love...and not have it hurt." /Does it hurt so much to love me?/ He wanted to ask, but he dared not push so far. He did not want to hurt her. Only hold her, like this, forever and ever. Without winter or blackness. He spoke to remind himself that it was temptation he could not indulge. Someone had to fight. He was that someone. "Reality hits everyone sooner or later. Even the ignorant." "Sometimes," she stared intently into the waning darkness. "I envy them. Just because they smile. Do you know, Mulder, that every touch between us is like it's the last? We wait for disaster to strike because we think we have to have an excuse to be close. But sometimes don't you just want closeness for the sheer sake of it? The world doesn't have to fall apart in order for you to put your arms around me. I don't have to be crying or bleeding for you to hold my hand. We can laugh and smile and be ignorantly happy too, sometimes. Right? Haven't we earned that? We tell each other we'd die for each other, but we're so scared to live." "We live." "Think back and tell me if you remember the last time we've spent a day together doing anything besides running or fighting or killing?" There was a time when he could have remembered, when he could have told her exactly what she wanted to hear. But that time was gone. All that filled his mind were images of blood on hands and dust on skin and never sleeping the whole night for fear of being caught. Of hands and fingers and arms tangled around each other but always in desperation. Always in fear. They held onto each other until the skin bore fingerprints because they were afraid it would the last time. Yet never because it simply felt right. He had no answer to give her. No answer for himself, other than a fierce resolve that it would change. He had wasted enough time in fear, in darkness. She deserved some light and he would find a way to give it to her. Even if he could not find it in himself. He'd shine her own reflection back at her so she could see how pure and beautiful she really was. /Scully, you're the sunrise./ His mind reached out for hers, imagining she could hear. /All lit up like heaven and soft as butterfly wings but don't you tell the secret. Don't you tell a soul./ These were not his spoken words. They ran too deep for that. He found other words, less close to the heart, to share with her. "And what would you do if you were ignorant? If the world was ours for a day, and there was no war or death or broken flowers to worry about? What would you do?" She could ask the moon from him now, and he'd give it to her. She could ask for his heart, and he'd smile while he cut it out because the wound would never hurt. She'd sweeten it to pleasure with just one kiss. For several moments he was afraid he had said the wrong thing. Perhaps the wish was too intimate, too private to be shared with him. He began to fear he had pushed her into a place where all she saw was the burnt out world and could not look up to see the stars that remained in the sky. But no, Scully would never lose hope. She was stronger than he ever would be. He knew it to be true when she spoke. Slowly. Carefully. As if she was unveiling something precious to him, peeling back the covering layer by layer. This is my dream, she was telling him. Please don't hurt it. Never, he would say. "I think I would dance." "Dance?" Funny, he never thought of her that way. He knew her grace, her quickness, but ever since the invasion, he had viewed those attributes in terms of skill in defense maneuvers and quickness on the battle field. Now Mulder felt he had missed some integral part of her personality, the part that had wings and flew over even the tallest barbed wire. Her spirit. "When you dance, you're free. No one's holding you back from anything. No one's stopping you. There's just the music, flowing through you from every part of you, and there's the warmth of the song, and you just fly. We danced once and it felt like that. It was so long ago but I'll never forget. And if I was ignorant, and if I did not care, that is what I would do." He remembered the dance she spoke of, every detail from way the light of the disco ball glittered in her eyes to the softness of her body in his arms. It was intoxicating. He could become drunk off the memory. "What would you do?" She waited for him to reply, to open up his soul as she had revealed hers. "I would make it like it was." Then neither of them could speak. Three days passed, then a week. The cuts on her hands healed quickly, as did the pain in her eyes. Mulder knew her skin was used to the blood and her soul was used to death. It was as simple as survival, yet there were still mornings when he woke up bitter with the hatred of it. But then she had never been one to wear her grief on her shoulder like so much sackcloth and ashes. She preferred to combat death by living life, so he stood aside and let her heal herself in her own way. She worked long hours in the delivery rooms, as if each baby born was her private victory. She would come home late, her eyes crinkled with weariness, but always she smiled for him and laughed at his lame jokes and thanked him for waiting to eat dinner with her, even if it was cold. Always she did everything in her power to hide the glimmers of sadness in the corners of her eyes. He let her believe he did not see, even though he noticed every time. Something had to give. Something had to change or else they would rush right back into life and the war and forget all that had once been whispered in darkness. On the morning on the seventh day since she let him hold her and told him her dream, he decided he couldn't let that happen. He couldn't let it slip away. "Do you still want to dance?" She put down her paperwork and stared at him, her eyes sliding into a deeper shade of blue. "What?" "You told me you'd dance if you had a day of ignorance. Did you mean it? Is it really what you want?" "I suppose so, but it's not like we can just-" "Be ready in an hour." "Doesn't leave have to be approved at least a month in advance?" "Don't worry about that. Just pull that dress of yours out of the closet and be ready in an hour." Her voice caught him at the door, and he turned to see her smiling. He knew it was real because it was so very pale, as if it were something that had not seen the sun in years and was just now stepping forth into the light. "Mulder, why?" "You said it, not me. Everyone deserves a day of happiness, right? Even us." "Especially us." He grinned and the colors of her smile grew deeper. Already it was something like happiness. It was something like love. This was going to be a beautiful day. * * * * * * * * * * * * * Ten hours later-- after the sticky heat of a three hour car ride, the contained chaos of the city streets, the cool revival of dusty skin in a hotel shower, and the waiting for dark to fall and the magic to be right-- they arrived at the gateway to what seemed an entirely different world. The Nebula, the biggest of the local underground nightclubs, advertised a taste of the Old World and delivered on all accounts. The other guarantee of business was the club was the only of its kind with two hundred miles of Freedom City. That was the reason people paid a hundred dollars hard currency a head at the door and didn't complain. One hundred dollars was nothing. He'd pay five hundred to give her tonight. She was going to dance and she was going to do it in the best place he could give her, and the Nebula was it. Mulder had heard the other men in his patrol talking about it, how there was something about it that sucked you in like a time warp and threw you back to a place without dried out land and empty seas. How you could forget, there. Tonight, that was what he wanted. Ignorance. Bliss. They stepped through the door, and despite himself, his breath caught in his lungs. The darkness hit him first, thick and smelling of margaritas and rosewood incense, a potent combination that dulled the mind and awakened the deeper senses. For a moment, it was so dark he could barely see. Then a thousand stars exploded above their heads, the sparks falling down to their faces in a thunderstorm of silver light as the disco ball rotated toward them. The light dripped from her hair, down across her skin like rain, and he imagined he saw it turn to steam by the heat of her bare shoulders. She was always beautiful, but tonight she was beyond that. The dress flowed around her like it had been fused into one with her skin by some act of magic. Yes, there must be magic here tonight.... He did not remember the color being so bright of a blue before, or her skin being kissed by so soft a blush as it was tonight. He felt a need to have her close, her warmth clinging to him like the incense in the air, thick and sweet and blood-boiling. He had been cold far too long without her, but not for tonight. Tonight they would dance and nothing else in the world mattered. Mulder kept one hand around her arm, just above her elbow, to ensure they were not separated in the crush. His other hand hovered at the curve of her back, the tips of fingers barely touching her. The material of her dress was thinner than the light itself, and she burned his fingertips through the cloth. It made him feel alive. It made him want to press his lips against hers and absorb the heat until his soul was consumed and born again like a ghost of the phoenix. He would transform back into the man with the soul of a child. The warrior with the eyes of a prophet. A human. She made him all of these things. The darkness washed over them again, ebbing and flowing like the tide upon some otherworldly shore, and he became increasingly aware of the strange universe around them. The room was packed with flesh, a sea of faces most of whom were under twenty-five, the majority paired into couples moving on the dance floor or hovering at the bar. One minute he would see them, the next minute the darkness returned and they disappeared. It was as if a constant battle was being waged between darkness and light. Inherent darkness pierced the air but every minute a new variation of color and brilliance tore through the blackness. Strobe lights passed over the crowd on the dance floor, racing fast as firework explosions inside the brain. Colored spotlights hollowed out islands of crimson or violet or tangerine radiance in the sea of black. The patches of light drifted across the crowd in time to no rhythm but their own. Lasers cut through the air in daggers of deepest green. Above all, the disco ball hung like a false moon, the silver patterns of light changing shape and definition to fit the melancholy sweetness of the song that filled every corner of the room. *I dream of rain. I dream of gardens in the desert sand.* The others were right. It was a place not of earth. Nebula, the name said. The burning soul of a dead star. He believed it. *I wake in pain. I dream of love as time runs through my hand.* But he was not the one who needed to be swept away. She had not yet spoken. Not yet given affirmation or condemnation to this dream. *I dream of fire. These dreams are tied to a horse that will never tire.* "If you don't like it," he whispered, his lips close to her ear so she could hear him under the pulse of the music. "We can leave." What if he had been mistaken? What if this could not make her happy, make her forget? *And in the flames, her shadows play in the shape of a man's desire.* She turned around, just as another burst of the strobe lights sent trickles of light running down her arms and skimming the surface of her dress. Her eyes stared straight into him, darker than the shadows between the spotlights but burning with some strange passion he could not name. She leaned forward until her cheek rested against his, her words breathing into his ear. Close. Intimate. Words for only him to hear. *No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this.* "Shhhh," she whispered. That voice did things to a man. "Don't talk, Mulder. Don't talk. Let's pretend that we know nothing. Nothing but music and flying and dreams. Dance with me. Just dance." *And as she turns, this way she moves in the logic of all my dreams. This fear burns. I realize that nothing's as it seems.* "And what if my feet are too heavy?" He murmured back. What if he had born the burdens too long and had lost the wings? "Then I'll carry you." *I dream of rain....I lift my gaze to empty skies above.* But the skies were not empty. It poured, rained stars, and he felt it soak him to the soul as she pulled him onto the dance floor, a hunger in her fingers as they wrapped around his. Palm to palm. Skin to skin. Pulse to pulse. /Let us pretend, you and I. But don't you talk. Don't you say a word. It will shatter the secret. Break the spell./ Oh, but he was afraid to break the spell. *I close my eyes, this rare perfume is the sweet intoxication of her love.* He eased his eyes shut and let the moment carry him away, away from reality and the still vivid memories of broken flowers and torn hands. Of her torn eyes. When the moment passed, another came, then another, and yet another still. They were in an ocean of moments, warm and calm and shoreless. Swimming together, hand in hand. Passion to passion. No one else existed. No other world existed outside this stolen sweetness. *Sweet desert rose, the memory of Eden haunts us all...* An electric violin took over when the voice died away, leaving a lingering sense of yearning in the air and in the back of his mind. He moved closer to her, fingers hovering inches above the slope of her shoulders as she swam the ocean with him. She flowed around him like liquid, one moment a fingertip out of reach and the next close enough to press a kiss upon his eyelids. Her eyes were wide open, but sightless, staring up into the explosions of light as if they spoke to her soul. When you dance, you're free, she had said. She was finding her way back to freedom, and her every move was desperate with the search for it. She danced like she was afraid she'd lost the way. Like she was afraid to slow for a moment because if she did, the dream might leave her. His hands moved around her waist, capturing her so that her head rested on his chest as her arms wrapped around his neck. "Slow down," he whispered, feeling the butterfly race of her heart above his. "It's not going anywhere." Her voice, breathless and half-trembling. "Promise me." He bent forward to press shadow kisses on the back of both her hands, then on the side of her jaw. "I promise." Her arms tightened around him and they spun to meet the next wave of silver together. Minutes passed, or maybe it was hours, but he didn't know, and didn't care. There was only the ocean, the invisible sea surrounding them and carrying them toward something beautiful. They raced from light to light, laughing as they captured a speck of crimson here, then an emerald shower of lasers there. Always in the light, always one step ahead of the darkness. A half-forgotten passage of Eliot floated to the surface of his mind. /We have lingered in the chambers of the sea, by sea-girls wreathed with sea-weed red and brown. Till human voices wake us and we drown./ But he would not let them drown. He would not listen to the voices. He would cover her ears with his hands. They would swim forever. The only question in his mind was whether she was human, an intruder on paradise as he was, or if she really was one of the sea-girls, a thing as beautiful and alien as the ocean itself. Her eyes flashed up at him again, wild and breathless and free. No, she was not human, he decided. She was light. Three hours passed before they paused, breaking from the current of the dance floor to a nearby table. He was slightly out of breath, not so much from the exertion as from the dizzying closeness of her, and he noticed her breath was just as shallow. He called a waiter and let Scully choose the drinks. Margaritas, she said. Make them sweet. Perhaps now it would not be deadly to speak. "How long as it been since you danced?" he said, his hands tracing circles into the table. Eternity, etched into the dark mahogany wood. He wanted this to last forever. "Too long." Her chest still heaved in leftover exertion as she spoke. Her eyes remained fixed on the dance floor for a moment, tracing the path of a stray spotlight before moving back to him. "I had forgotten how it feels. I had forgotten to feel anything at all." "You're not the only one." "I was afraid. Of what it would take. Afraid to be with you again because you demand me to feel." "Are you still afraid?" That made him ache, made him fear her next words. "At times, yes. But I've found I"m more afraid not to." His fingers found hers in the darkness. Relief. "I'll never let you go. You know that." He saw her smile light up the darkness, brighter than the color around them, purer than the silver. "I know." to be continued. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: clone347@aol.com Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:54:06 EDT Subject: xfc: NEW : Becoming Judas II : Resurrection ---- by darkstar (26/32) Source: xfc Title : Becoming Judas II : Resurrection Author : darkstar Email : clone347@aol.com Feedback : adored and craved Website : http://members.tripod.com/darkstar_phile/index.htm Archive : I would be honored, only please let me know. Category : MSR/Angst/Post-Colonization Spoilers : None Rating : PG-13 for war violence Disclaimer : See Introduction Summary: He sold his soul. Now he wants it back. Disgusted with the life he is living and the man he has become, Mulder breaks from the Colonists and risks everything for one last chance at humanity with Scully. But redemption, like betrayal, has its own price. - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (26/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - The rest of the evening flew by in heartbeats until the realization struck him that by now the midnight would be fading into the twilight of morning. They had danced away the darkness, and now there would be no more time to forget. Now they must go back. They must return to the knowledge, and the distance between them, and the self-imposed restraint necessary for survival. But they would not go yet. There were a few moments left in the dance, a few, and he would not give them up quickly. She was no longer desperate in her search for wings. The music itself no longer pushed itself frantically through the mind, but floated around them as a slow, soft blanket. Her forehead rested against his, so close he fancied he could absorb her thoughts through her skin. He felt her warmth. Her peace. That was all he wanted right now-- the simplicity of her breathing, thick with the half-drowsiness of spent passion, the softness of her fingers against his backbone, the beautiful illusion that ignorance and bliss could last forever, and no one needed fear the dawn. It took so much to push the world from the mind, and in these moments he knew they had succeeded. /She does not care what I am. Not here. She doesn't have to know anything. See, it isn't hurting anyone. In fact, she's happy. I've finally made her happy..../ The thought closed off his doubts, and he allowed himself to totally relax for the first time since they entered the world of light and music. He did not think of morning or sustained illusions or anything other than her touch. He surrendered, as she had done hours before, to the dance. It was so easy to feel the music, so easy to be swept away. *Waltz with me, my love. Tell me what you're dreaming of.* "You want to know what I'm dreaming of?" He whispered. She smiled, and he felt the glow melt the icecaps over his soul. "What?" "Nothing. I've got it all right here." "You dream of nightclubs?" The smile turned teasing. "Who knew?" "I dream of this--" And he kissed her then. It was neither fire nor ice nor burning light, but something sweet and gentle and perfect, like violets after rain or moonlight spread over lace. He would never forget the taste, a mix of margaritas and strawberry lip gloss and the softest skin. He could not get enough of it. *Hold me now, we can share our love.* No, they were parting too soon. Much too soon. Had he done something wrong? Had he rushed the moment? But she wasn't moving away after all. She followed him into the next spin of the music, her eyes capturing the light and refracting it into glittering desire. "Show me the dream again." Her lips against his temples, across his eyelids. Begging. Demanding. Seducing. Breathe, a little voice inside his head reminded him. What if he didn't want to breathe? Not unless it was with her.... He spun her out to arms length then caught her to him again, backwards, so that his hands splayed across her stomach. Another kiss, touching the curve of her neck at the base of her hair. *Waltz with me, my love.* "Do you dream too?" he asked her. She turned to face him again. He could barely hear her underneath the music, but he heard enough. "Oh, believe me, I dream." Now she kissed him and this time it was fire. This time the heat scalded him inside out, leaving him seared and breathless but alive. So alive. "This is real, isn't it?" she said, after the kiss was over and her head rested on his shoulder. "This is real. No secrets. Nothing held back." He knew, on one level, that it was a lie, but on every other level he could not bear for her to slip away once she was this close. I am not going to lose you, he had said. He'd meant every word. "I am afraid, sometimes, that what I see and what I feel are shadows. Hallucinations, or myths or...." "Did it feel like a shadow?" "No." "You have your answer." "Then promise me something, Mulder." "Anything." "Promise me this will never change." *Tell me something...will we be broken down? Tell me something...will we be broken down?* "I promise." And he sealed it with a kiss. * * * * * * * * * * * * * Freedom City One hour later Nicolas sensed the brewing storm before the call ever came over his com link. He felt it the air, an electric buzz across his skin like the tension of lightning right before it struck. He heard it rumble in the distant corners of his mind like thunder over a desert horizon. Whispers of anger. Passion. Pain. Fear. All the dark things, all the thunderstorm emotions, and this was how he painted it. Black paint splattered across white canvas, a fury of yellow and silver, a sky without stars or moon only roars of thunder and dagger-slashes of lightning. Where was it coming from? Certainly not the whimpering girl-child he had brought in for the evening. Only one probe of her emotions had proven her incapable of such depth. Mulder's woman, the one with the red hair and passionate eyes, would have had such depth. But not this runny-nosed brat. This one had merely cried and asked if she could go home, and cowered in the corner after he slapped her and told her to shut up. Had it been any other night, he might have taken the trouble to twist her mind just to teach her how to keep quiet, but tonight he had more important visions to chase. The thunder called to him. The lightning danced inside his veins, running out his fingers through his paintbrush. And if he felt this much from a distance, how would it feel to stand in the center of the storm, at the nexus of the rage? Where was it coming from? After he picked up his com-link he knew. "Sir, you might want to come down to the infirmary. There's been an incident." "An incident?" The rumble of thunder in the back of his mind increased. "Yes sir. Commander Mulder and Dr. Scully were ambushed on their way back from leave. A sniper caught them on the way out of town." "Were there any injuries?" "Affirmative, sir." "To what extent?" "Dr. Scully was shot twice. Once in the shoulder and once in the stomach. We have healers working on her but she is still in highly critical condition." Nicolas felt his heart rate edge up a notch. So the stone woman wasn't so invincible after all. Could it have been her pain he was sensing all evening? No...no...he could only have sensed those things in someone whom he had previously established a link with... Then it hit him. Mulder. "And Commander Mulder?" "Flesh wound in his upper arm. Light bleeding, but he will injure himself further unless he calms down. That is why I called you, sir. We're having trouble restraining him." /I'll bet you are./ He half-smiled to himself at the thought. "I'm on my way." He switched the com link to neutral and moved quickly to wash the paint from his hands. It was all very clear to him now. Mulder's woman had been injured and now the man was ready to tear earth, heaven, and hell apart. How very useful. In fact, tonight might be the perfect opportunity for him to regain control of his puppet. Mulder had become increasingly harder to manage since the lovely Dr. Scully had arrived. Well, now that Scully was bleeding to death in the infirmary, he was sure that he could convince his wayward protege to return to the fold. Nicolas keyed up his com-link again and spoke to the guard outside his room. "Captain, send for my personal healer and bring him to the infirmary immediately. No, I'm not hurt. This is a favor for a friend." He glanced back over to the girl in the corner, almost as if she was an afterthought. "Oh yes, and you can come clean the trash out of my room now. She was....disappointing....I'll expect your men to send me something better next time." The lightning-buzz increased inside his brain as he headed for the infirmary. Time for the Leader to save the day again. It would work out very nicely, really. His people would be reassured of his never-ending compassion. Mulder's unchecked emotions would only open him to further control. And with more and more discontent in the streets and talk of new leaders in the underground meetings, a little control was most needed. He would save her life and then he would make Mulder pay for it. With interest. He opened the door to the infirmary and for the first time in his life was pushed back by the sheer power of a man's emotions. The storm raged inside his mind, out of control, as giant thunderclaps of rage and jagged spears of electric agony pierced his subconscious. He was forced to grab the doorpost before he could even stay on his feet. The anger was frightening. The pain was raw, relentless like a driving rain. The whole effect heightened the senses better than any drug. But every drug must be taken in small quantities, so Nicolas took the opportunity to raise a few shields against the onslaught of emotion before he continued into the room. He heard Mulder before he saw the man. "I want to see her! It's been too long... something should have happened by now." "Sit down, sir." A woman's voice, most likely a nurse. "Dr. Scully's injuries are critical. Only the medical staff and the healer are allowed to be in the room. If you will please sit down and let us treat your wounds..." "She's still in pain. I can hear her. Start doing something for that pain now or I'm going to do it for myself!" "We told you, sir, medication will hamper the healing process." "What healing process?!? Has she opened her eyes? Has she stopped bleeding??? Maybe your healer isn't working hard enough. Maybe he's holding back!" "Sir-" "NO! You listen to me!! She is going to wake up! She is going to be fine! I don't care how many healers you have to us, or how much it sucks them to the bone, she is going to be okay! Or else I'll turn that hybrid freak into a puddle of green Jell-O. I don't care what he is to Nicolas." A new voice, the deep military growl of General Skinner, cutting through Mulder's shouting with surprising calm. "You will do no such thing, Mulder, and you know it. Now sit down and let them look at your arm. You can't help her by threatening them." For ten seconds there was dead silence. Then Nicolas heard Mulder speak again, in a very small voice.You could have heard the tears from three miles away. "Just keep her warm, please...if you can. She hates to be cold." The nurse's voice. "I'll tell them to put a blanket on, sir." "Tell her I'm here. Right outside. Tell her I'm waiting. Tell her I love..." The words fell away into silence again because no one, not Skinner or the nurse or the doctors, knew what to say to that. Nicolas rounded the corner. Even though he had shed blood, even though he had taken life and enjoyed it, even though he had fought many battles and seen many wounds, at the fragment of a second that Mulder's eyes locked with his own, he was stunned. He'd found the heart of that thunderstorm. Naked fear that screamed lightning. Naked pain deeper than thunder. Naked love that cried so softly in the seconds between both. There were tears in the man's eyes and fingerprint-shaped smears of crimson on his cheeks where he had tried to wipe away tears with bloody fingers. No doubt it was her blood, covering his hands and his clothes from attempts to hold the pieces of her together until help had arrived. Then Mulder blinked, once, and looked away, and Nicolas found himself for once relieved. The pain had been too tangible there. It would have hurt just too much to probe the man's mind tonight. And not just the mental ache of emotional pain either. It would have been physical too, like trying to walk on fire. Skinner saluted, a stiff and formal gesture. "Sir. You honor us with your presence." His eyes left the distinct impression that it was an honor he would rather not have received. "The Leader is never too busy to see to the needs of his people." Nicolas chose to ignore the general's hostility, for now. He allowed his face to meld into a perfect mask of sympathy. "I heard that the doctor was injured and sent my personal healer to attend to her. Robert is very good. I have no doubts she will recover." "Thank you for your concern, sir." Skinner nodded again, though his eyes remained suspicious. Walter Skinner was smart man, Nicolas knew, and one day he would have to die. Sooner than later. He walked to the door of the healing unit- a room in the hospital designed especially for the treatment of critical patients using hybrid therapy-- and peered through the small window. Scully lay on a hospital table, her hair spilled out around her in stark contrast to the sheets as her body twisted and writhed in restless agony. Velcro straps around her wrists and ankles kept her on the table. A dark blue blanket was pulled up to her chest, concealing the wounds, but the amount of bloody bandages on the tray beside her and the death-white pallor of her face told him it would be a miracle if she lived. Even under the best of medical care. But she was one of the few privileged enough to receive something better than traditional medicine. Robert, the hybrid who attended her, was well known as one of the most powerful healers to come through the resistance. Nicolas had recruited him as his own personal miracle worker, and tonight he would earn his keep well. He would eventually heal the woman; of that Nicolas was certain. Though judging from the strain on the hybrid's face and the pain-wrinkles around his eyes, the battle would not be easy. When Nicolas turned back to Mulder, the man's eyes had gone vacant. One of his hands held a tiny golden cross, and his lips moved endlessly in something that did not look like a prayer but might have been a secret for his woman's soul alone. A nurse worked on his arm, but he acted as if he did not even feel the antiseptic or the bandaging. It was as if his body alone remained alive while his soul traveled wherever his lover's was, searching her out. Bringing her back. Touching, really. Rather pathetic too. Such blatant weakness and dependence on another... He would give Mulder a while to wallow in his grief before he called him into his office for "debrief". It would give the emotions a chance to subdue, at least to the point where penetration of the subconscious would not be so painful. And it would also give him time to think how exactly to use Mulder's newly volatile emotional state to his own benefit. That answer came sooner than expected. "Alert me as soon as she regains consciousness." He instructed the nurse. "I regret that I must leave so soon, but I have several items to attend to before I retire for the evening. A leader's work is never done." "Of course not." Skinner's words were hardly sarcastic, though his eyes sang with mockery. "Again, thank you for your help." Nicolas was half-way past Mulder, on his way down the hall, when the man's voice caught him. Suddenly. Desperately. "Sir, will you do me a favor?" "Anything." "I sent the patrol that picked us up back into the city to find the sniper who shot her. Let me know if they pick him up." "Of...course. I'll let you know immediately." He hid his surprise with a grave nod. Mulder had sent the patrol out sniper-hunting? It was like looking for a rat in a sewer system. There was no guarantee you'd find the right one. Obviously he wanted blood bad enough not to care. An idea sprang into Nicolas' mind, the perfect idea. If Mulder wanted to kill, then he could accommodate. "I will have him delivered into your custody." For three seconds, a terrible coldness took over Mulder's eyes, and Nicolas knew he had hit exactly the right spot. "Thank you, sir." "Anything to ensure that justice is done." He nodded once more to Skinner, who made no attempt to mask his disapproval, then left the infirmary. An old passage from his war textbooks crossed his mind as he headed for his room. He quoted it aloud. "Therefore when you want to do battle, even if the opponent is deeply entrenched in a defensive position, he will be unable to avoid fighting if you attack where he will surely go to the rescue." That place for Mulder was Scully. She had been attacked, wounded. He wore her blood on his clothes and on his hands and underneath it he wore layer after layer of guilt. So it was only natural he would want vengeance. At heart, Mulder was still an Enforcer. Nicolas believed that beyond doubt. The man would never turn from the chance to take blood for blood. The opportunity would have to be presented quickly, while his logic was still weakened.... With a little of the right emotional stimulation, he wouldn't even bother to ask whether the "criminal" they brought back to him was actually the one that shot her. He would simply remember how easy it was to pull the trigger and shoot the young boys in the head. He would simply kill. And then he would be controlled again, just that easily. Nicolas smiled. Don't fall away and leave me to myself. Leave love bleeding in my hands, in my hands again, Leave love bleeding in my hands, in my hands again, Love lies bleeding. - Hemorrhage Fuel to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (27/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - And I will never leave you 'Til we can say, "This world was just a dream We were sleepin' now we are awake" 'Til we can say In a moment we lost our minds here And dreamt the world was round A million mile fall from grace Thank God we missed the ground... Burnt to the core but not broken We'll cut through the madness With a nuclear fire of love in our hearts.... Rest easy, baby, rest easy. and recognize it all as light and rainbows Smashed to smithereens. Run to the water; find me there. -- Run to the Water Live The first time she opened her eyes, he was there. His head rested on her stomach, positioned over the ghost of the wound, and he was crying. Not in sobs or in gasps but in silent, hot tears that soaked through the thin fabric of her hospital gown to burn her skin. A flash within her mind, a memory that seemed like a dream, of lead burning her skin. Of pain so hot she couldn't breathe, didn't want to breathe, only someone forced her to. /Scully, look at me. Keep on breathing and look at me. Don't... God...don't look at it. Just at me. Help is on the way. C'mon, now, look at me. I want to see those baby blue eyes./ It was Mulder's voice. Try to hide the fear but failing... /No, Scully, don't close your.....look at....please....try....I'm gonna kill him. He's already a dead man. Dead and rotting. I'll find him for you, and I'll take blood for blood and please, open your eyes.../ She remembered trying but something had held her back. A dark, heavy cloak of fire that made each second seem like an eternity of hell. Each time she tried to cling to consciousness, to l ife, to his voice, the fire burned hotter. Deeper. She just wanted to let go, but something inside her had whispered for her to hold on. /You can't let go yet, Dana. You haven't saved him yet./ She remembered it had been Samantha's voice. And she held on, until Mulder's hands were pried from hers-- she still felt his palm against hers, holding on until the last possible heartbeat-- and strange hands closed around her forehead and pushed the life back into her. She did not want that. The fire fought against it, causing pain. So much pain. So easy to die. But she hadn't saved him yet so she opened her mind to the agony until, gradually, the burning subsided. It faded from blinding to moderate pain to a dull aching weariness draped around her entire body. She waited to feel his arms around her, his hands on her back, holding her and protecting her, but the nurses would not let him in. The need to sleep at last overwhelmed. Now she was awake. She could tell him she was fine....that he didn't have to cry anymore... Her vocal cords tangled thick and sluggish in the back of her throat, refusing any commands for speech; instead her fingers reached for him. Slowly. Steadily. Her hands seemed to be made of lead, and she gritted her teeth to force them forward. Just a few more inches, yes. Centimeters now... The barest tip of her finger brushed the bones next to his eyes, sliding across the tightly closed eyelids to catch a falling tear. He jolted as if she had touched him with fire, and his eyes were so big when they met hers, wide and amazed, the eyes of a little boy more than a man. With the rise of an eyebrow, he asked her if it was real. With a smile, she reassured him it was most certainly real. That she wasn't leaving him any time soon. Mulder buried his face in her stomach for another moment, pressing his lips over the place where the bullet had entered her. He wanted to pretend he kissed away the hurt, that he was the one to take the final sting from her body. In a perfect world, he could absorb it all into himself. He could take from her even the memories of the pain, but not only this one pain. He could take all the different hells from her. The torture scars on her back. The brand on her wrist. The claw marks on her mind. All of this, he would remove with one touch of his lips. One vow of love. In a perfect world, that was all it would take. This was no perfect world. There would always be scars, deep ones, and kisses could not take them away. But he kissed her again anyway. He wrapped his arms around her anyway, pulling her against his chest until she was warm and safe and protected. Somehow they did not need perfection. Only life itself, and life was scars as well as kisses. You could not have one without the other. For her part, Scully did not think about perfection or love or the balance of joy and sorrow in life. She did not even think about the shooting, or her memories of the pain. She closed her eyes again and listened to his heart until the weariness became too much again and she faded into sleep. The second time she opened her eyes, he was there. This time she could speak but where did she begin? She started with the easiest words. "Good morning." "Afternoon, really." He shut the door behind him and opened the window to let in the golden light. "I slept all day?" "Try two days." She grimaced. "You should have woke me." His mouth widened in a grin. "But you look so cute when you're drooling all over my pillows. Besides, you've got doctor's orders to stay in bed for three more days minimum. Intensive healing procedures do a number on your body, so they tell me. Not as bad as a gut wound, you can be sure, but you're still going to be a little weak for a while. They don't want you running around until your system has pepped up a bit." "Give me a gun and a target and I'll show you peppy." She tried to move into a sitting position, but the sudden motion sent a blood rush to her head. She leaned back against the pillows and waited for the room to stop spinning. Good, he hadn't seen that one. "Forget the doctors, Scully. I'm not letting you out of that bed until I am sure you're back to normal." He finished fiddling with the blinds and walked back towards her. The afternoon light framed him like a golden shadow, throwing his face into enough darkness to hide the scars on his temple and the worry lines around his mouth. All she could see was the glint of his eyes and the flash of his smile. She pulled the blankets tighter around her chin and smiled. "What are you grinning at now?" "The view." "Out the window? It's just a garden and some buildings-" "That wasn't the view I was talking about." "Oh." His hand rubbed the stubble across his jaw then moved up through his hair. Now that he was closer, she could see the worry-lines again. He stared at his hands, his feet, the carpet. Everything but her. After the silence stretched from seconds to minutes, she took the first move. "Spit it out, Mulder." His shoulders rose and fell in a slow sigh. "There's a deep cover mission heading for the field in three days. They'll be doing routine surveillance and sabotage runs up near the Canadian borderlands for about three months. They need a leader. I'm going to volunteer." /He's leaving me again./ She took a long breath, chasing the remains of the dizziness from her mind. /No, wait, take a look at his eyes. He's not going because he wants to. He's running from something./ "Why?" Best to let him put it in his own words first. "I promised to take care of you," His eyes remained steadfastly fixed on the small plant Skinner had brought her. He still refused to look at her. "Above everything else and everyone else, I promised to keep you safe. But it seems like my being with you now only leads you more and more away from that safety." "You're going to run." That got his eyes, alright, but she almost wished it hadn't. There was hurt in him, deep hurt. "I'm not running, Scully. Believe me when I say that there's nothing I want more than to stay. When I'm with you, I'm alive. That's the only time I am. But I don't care what I want or what I feel. I'm not dragging you down with me any further. I refuse. Skinner can take good care of you...he's done it before--" "I don't want to be with Skinner.." She heard the bite in her tone and hoped it could cut through this thick stubbornness. "And if I had wanted something easy and safe and pretty, I would have walked away before my first year on the X-files was over. I've looked at the choices, Mulder, and I've picked you. Your truth, your quest, your life. It's hard sometimes. We get hurt sometimes. But if the alternative means living apart, then I don't want it. I won't accept it. I want all of this....not just the happy things." Oh dear, now she felt the tears begin to build. Curse the pain relievers and their idiotic emotional side effects. "But if this is not enough and if you still feel the need to go out and kill again, I'm not stopping you. I'll just go with you." "Scully, no, absolutely-" "Then stay. Don't run again." He stared at her for a moment, a strange shadow over his eyes. Then he moved forward, trapping her hand between his. She could barely hear him speak even though he stood right beside her. "You win. I won't go anywhere." "Say it as a promise. Say 'I promise to stay'." "I promise to stay." He kissed the back of her hand. "I'll hold you to it." She managed to work up a grin and was relieved to see him mirror the expression. "I'll bet you will." He glanced at his watch. "Um, I have to go. It's time for ration distribution in the Quarter and there has been a rash of riots lately. Nicolas wants us to ensure the order is kept." "It's awful hard to be orderly when you're starving." "I think more and more people are finding that out. Not just in the Quarter....it's everywhere these days. Something's going to have to change." "We could kill Nicolas for a start..." "Shh." He held a finger to her lips. "No matter how much you dislike the man, it would be best not to voice those opinions these days. I was serious when I talked about the unrest. Everyone is paranoid and careless words can easily be misconstrued as a threat." "Don't trust him, Mulder." "I don't." "Don't let him control you. He will try." "He doesn't control me." "Are you sure of it?" "Yes." His hand disentangled from hers as he headed for the door. "Now stop worrying. The resistance can survive for a while without the express concern of Dana Scully." "Ha." She smirked at him, giving up on any hope of serious conversation. She could win nothing against his denials. "You just don't know..." He laughed one more time, and then he was gone. She did not want to worry about the riots or the fact that Skinner was no doubt in the middle of it, or the idea that he and Mulder might end up on different sides. She did not want to think that Nicolas would use her weakness as an advantage to gain more control over Mulder. (Some existed already, she knew. It was only a question of how much and how deep.) But she worried anyway. And she hated most of all the cloying sense of the inevitability of loss, and of her complete helplessness to stop it. The third day, she opened her eyes and he was not there. Skinner came, bearing water for the plant and coffee for her, but he would not answer her questions. He spoke of the food riots, the unrest, the growing ripeness of the time for action, but he said nothing of Mulder. Not until the very end, when she had grown tired of begging and pleading and demanding and finally told him that if he did not answer her, she would get up and find out herself. He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. "He left early this morning to oversee a prisoner transfer. One of our patrols caught a Colonist soldier last night and they are bringing him here for questioning." "Just a soldier? But why would they send an escort for questioning--" "It's the sniper who shot you." A sharp hitch in her lungs cut off her next breath. "Nicolas gave him full custody of the prisoner." He guided a thin stream of water over the dark green leaves. "In the full interest of justice, of course." There was no attempt to hide the sneer. "You think there was another reason." He set down the water pot and locked eyes with her, his eyes dark but frank. "I think Mulder will kill him. I think that is what Nicolas wants." "Mulder has killed many times for the Cause. Why is this one important?" She did not want to admit she took satisfaction from the thought of the soldier's death. The man, whoever he was, had caused the fire to burn inside her, had caused the pain. For that she would almost be willing to kill him herself. She knew she should forgive. Seven times seven, just like all good Catholic girls, only it was so much easier to take an eye for an eye. It wasn't a feeling she asked for or cultivated. It was just there. "Remember what he is, Scully." A bit of warning shadowed his words, and she felt an odd resentment for it. Of course she knew what Mulder was. She of all people... "I know what Mulder is." "Do you, now? Have you forgotten what he's been doing for the past two years? He hasn't just killed men for our Cause. He's murdered for the other side too. He's killed innocent men and women, and probably children too. It was his way of life." "What are you saying?" The resentment began to change to anger. "That he's a murderer? That he enjoys it? He's not like that. He's changed back into the same man he was--" "No, Scully, not the same. Violence doesn't just leave a man when he changes sides. You get a taste of blood and power and it becomes easy to solve all your problems that way. With your gun. It's easy to excuse it as your duty, or your job, or...." His voice trailed slowly away. She realized he was not talking about Mulder anymore. "A cause?" His eyes flicked back to her, his gaze pained. "Yes. A cause. Even if it's a just one." "You were like Mulder is." She had not seen it before, but she saw it now. "In the beginning, I was addicted too. I hated the Colonists so much. I hated what they had done to my country, to my friends, to me, and I hated the ignorant people who stood by and laughed at us-- the same people now begging our help. It was so easy not to think, just kill. For a while, that's what I did, but even after I realized what I was becoming, it was so hard to resist that urge. By the time I came to my senses, Nicolas was already in office, and I had lost my chance to stop him. I do believe we could have stopped him, then, if someone had spoken up. Mulder w asn't there to do it. You weren't there to do it. The people looked to me, but I let them down because I was too caught up in my own anger to see the need. I didn't want to the one responsible for building a better future. I failed and we've all paid for it." "It couldn't have been all your fault." Scully leaned forward to touch his hand. "Nothing like this can be traced back to one person. Everyone made mistakes. We still make them. You've more than paid yours back." "I've done nothing." He looked away abruptly, the lines of his jaw taut with frustration. "Nicolas still leads. He's destroying this city. He's destroying his own people. The longer I stay here, the longer I am sure of it. When I've done something to stop him, and succeeded, then perhaps we can speak of paid debts." "You can't save them all, Walter." She placed her hand on his forearm, feeling the strength in his muscles but also the weariness. "Believe me, I've tried." That had been a hard lesson to learn, when she discovered that the she couldn't protect the children or the innocent, that she could only survive and fight and kill and hope in the end it balanced out. Someday, they would all have a lot of penance to do. "It's hard enough to save one man....let alone...." This time it was her voice that failed. He covered her hands with his, brushing his fingers clumsily across her knuckles as he used to do in Chile, when she woke from nightmares. "You have already saved him, Scully. He just has to realize it. He will realize it." "Soon, I hope." "Soon." She smiled at him then, showing him her belief, her assurance. Then he left and the door closed and the silence resounded with her doubt, not only for Mulder, but for herself. Skinner depended on her to talk Mulder out of his violence. She knew it was the right thing to do, the only thing to do if she wanted to keep him from slipping back into the pit. What she did not know was if she herself could get past the memories of the burning, the occasional spasms of residual pain, the simmering hatred boiling just beneath her mind. Was this what Mulder had lived with every day? Because of her? Sleep came only after many restless hours. And even then, she was not granted peace. She dreamed. It was not as before, a wasteland of frozen oceans and burning skies and eyes in the mist. Nor did she find herself alone. She stood in the center of a vast crowd, pressed on all sides by heat and sweaty flesh and the smell of hatred cooking under the noonday sun. It sizzled on the pavements and on the sidewalks and in the eyes of the men and women around her. The air trembled with a sudden thunder, the ground shaking beneath her feet. No, not thunder. A scream. A thousand screams from a thousand throats, forced into one sound and one voice. "Kill them!" Again.... "Kill them!" Again... "Kill them!" Then another voice, rising over the crowd in righteous exaltation. "The will of humanity has been spoken!" She knew w ho spoke. She knew well his evil. Nicolas. Protector of humanity. Murderer of children. He raised his arms and continued to deliver his judgment. "The hybrid infidel must pay for her crimes and heresies. Who will accept the shedding of her blood?" The sky shook once more under the cry. "Her blood be on us and on our children..." The thin scream of a terrified girl slid momentarily above the roar. As soon as Scully recognized the voice, her stomach begin to churn. Not again...no....it wasn't possible.... "Aida!" She called out, not expecting an answer, as she began to shove her way through the crowd. She would save her this time. She would stop it. "Where are you running to, Dana?" A man grabbed her arm, his hand reptile cold and his eyes snake ugly. It was Nicolas. His fingers bruised her wrists, his eyes mocking her. She jerked her arms away. There was no time to answer. "You can't win, darling." A second man, also Nicolas, blocked her path. "I am the mob." Members of the crowd began to turn towards her. "I am the people." Their faces shifted, changing shape until all had white-blonde hair and pale as ice skin. Until a sea of electric blue eyes stared through her, and the faces behind them smiled as a legion of demons. "I. Am. All." Their voices writhed through her brain, a knot of baby vipers. /Run, run, run, Dana-girl. Save the little weak one, Dana-girl. Stop us if you can. Now run alone, run, run..../ She covered her ears with her hands, squeezing her eyes shut. /Mulder will stop you./ She told them. /He promised never to leave me again and he will not let you do this thing./ /Ohhhh,/ The voices rose again, swelling with delight. /But you don't have to search for him, He's already here..../ Like waves receding from a shore, the crowd parted on either side of her, and she was given a clear view straight to the execution platform. Her horror shimmered before her with the heat. Aida knelt on the wooden platform, her face streaked with tears and sweat and blood. Metal handcuffs bound her hands behind her. The tattered remains of a torn pink sun dress (the wedding dress, Scully remembered) hung from her shoulders. Her back was exposed, the bones jutting out through the skin and her head was bowed. And before her stood Mulder, his face cold with disgust and hatred. In his hand, the gleaming metal cylinder of a stiletto. "Mulder!" His eyes, she could see his eyes, as if they were inches from hers. They screamed. /Stop me. Help me. This is not who I am./ "Stop, Mulder! No!" The Nicolas crowd closed in around her again, even as she ran. The voices returned. /What's wrong, Dana-girl? Is it too far to run? Is the sun too hot? Go on now. Run to him. Save him if you can./ /He is not yours. You will not use him to kill for you. He belongs to no one. You fear him because he can destroy you./ /And you think he will be the savior of the people? You think he can save you? Look at him, Dana-girl. He sees nothing but his hate. He tastes nothing but blood. Your blood. He'll do anything to avenge you, you know. It makes him so easy to control. So easy to break./ "Let him go!" She screamed, aloud. "He's done enough! He's suffered enough!" /He belongs to his own guilt. We merely form the outer cage./ "Then take me! If you have to take someone, if you have to use someone, use me! She held out her hands to the crowd of identical monsters, turning so all could see her. "Leave him! Let him heal! Take me!" The fear in her stomach blended with the heat and soured her breath like old whiskey. She knew they would kill her. She knew they would rip her apart. Just like Pavlov. Worse, perhaps, than Pavlov. But all she saw was Mulder on the scaffold, ready to take a life, not knowing what he was doing or how he was being controlled. So close to falling back into the darkness....." "I am yours if you spare him. If you spare the girl." /Very well, Dana-girl. Very well./ They smiled, as one, and as one they surged forward to claim their prize. They spit in her face. They cursed her. They struck at her with their fists, with their boots, with the palms of their hands, dragging her to the ground. Their hands ran over her body, tearing her dress, bruising her skin. And all the time, their laughter. And all the time, their voices, inside her head. A tearing pain in the flesh of her wrist, driving down between the bones. A flow of blood into the dust of the courtyard. A nail. Another pain, more blood, another mark. Pain around her head, as thorns, blood running down into her eyes. Such a fire across her back....through her feet.... Yet she did not hate. She loved, more than she had ever before. She felt ready to split with the love for the man she had saved. She had finally won him back....just as she had promised.... /Samantha, forgive him, He never knew what he did..../ /There is a price to saving the one you love./ Then they were raising her, lifting her up, and there was no earth nor sky, but she was in between, and she could not see Mulder, and the pain, oh, the pain, and she screamed.... Her body twisted into a convulsion as she woke, shivering from her own cold sweat, clenching the blankets between her hands as if they were the only thing holding her in the conscious world. The room around her was dark, the shadow tinted silver by the light of a full moon. Outside the window, the sky hung heavy with stars. A clear night. A beautiful night. And she did not see any of it. She saw the courtyard at noon, the crowd in which every man was the man she hated (and perhaps feared, if she admitted it truly). She felt the despair behind his cold features, the heat of the pavement under her bare feet, the metal driving through her skin and bone. /There is a price to saving the one you love./ "You dreamed it." She whispered it slowly, firmly, making herself hear it. "He can only hurt you inside your head. Only if you let him. But you are stronger than he is. You have fought greater evils than he. So do not worry about the inside of your head." The window were open, and a lazy breeze stirred the curtains. It dissolved the goosebumps tightening her skin. She took deep breath after deep breath, smelling the thickness of the roses in the garden below, the freshness of the dew. Yes, she was certain now that it was only a dream. Just to be expected as part of the trauma of her wound. Her body had been healed, but her mind still had to deal with the aftershocks. All things considered, it would have been stranger if she had not had a nightmare or two. Her wrists ached nevertheless. And she remembered that she had also dreamed the day they took Aida... "Logic, Starbuck." She wrapped her robe around her and slid off the bed, walking toward the window to better enjoy the night air. "You're getting as superstitious as the old gypsy women in the Quarter. The ones who try to sell you magic amulets and call you a saint because you give them bread and who tell you that your man is the one they've all been waiting for. The one who's going to set them free. What would I tell them tonight? That their savior's not available right now because he's gone to kill a man? That their saint wants that man to die just as badly? But then how do they even know it's the right one....snipers are almost impossible to flush out." Maybe the point was not if he was guilty or not. Maybe it was just a matter of finding someone to die. She wanted to believe Mulder would ask for verification, but she remembered how hard his eyes grew, in the old times, before he killed. He might not care. Even if he did, he'd have to take their word for it... That drew the gooseflesh to her skin once more. The whole thing felt like a trap. And she would be the bait... "No way I'm letting you win this one, Nicolas." She whispered the words to the breeze. "You won Aida, and you won Che, but Mulder is another story. Oh, you think you can control him. You think he's so weak. But you've never seen the way he loves me. You were not there when he kissed me, so you could never have seen his eyes." At this memory, she let her voice slid into silence. It had been beautiful, that night. They had been safe, secure between the darkness and the threads of light. As she danced, for the first time since the cities burned down, she had felt alive. She had felt for the first time that maybe they had a chance at a better future after all, if everyone could have one night like this.... But then they shot her. The bullet might as well have hit Mulder, so quickly had he changed. He might have been with her tonight, holding her hand in the garden and running rose petals over her fingertips. He might have smiled with her, laughed with her. Instead he was out in the desert bringing back a man who was condemned before any trial. It was not fair. There was always a bullet, wasn't there? Maybe not one made of lead, but there was always something to push them apart. To hold them back. She was not permitted to dwell on this thought anymore, for a sharp and urgent knock at her door demanded her attention. Skinner's voice carried easily through the wood. "Scully, open up. It's me." She crossed the room in four steps, unlocking the deadbolt as she pulled the door open. He stood in the hallway, his chest heaving slightly as if he was out of breath. He looked so old in the dingy light of the hall, the lines of his face seemed so heavy. She wondered, vaguely, how old she herself looked now. How many wrinkles she had earned. He was wearing his uniform, she noticed, and one sleeve was spotted with tiny red spots. Blood. Her pulse jumped up a notch. "What's going on?" Her voice a thin wire coiled around the tension in the air. "They're here, aren't they? Mulder and the... others...." She tried not to think of the fact that he had with him the man who supposedly tried to kill her. She needed to be human, tonight, for Mulder. She could not afford the luxury of hate. "They returned around thirty minutes ago." "And you didn't tell me?" "No." His eyes begged her not to be angry. "I didn't want you to have to see it. You've seen so much, and I wanted to protect--" His teeth clenched as he cut off the words. "They brought back a kid, Scully. A teenager. He can't be more than seventeen, I swear to God, and he certainly is no sniper. I watched his hands when they unloaded him. The hands of a sniper never shake. This kid shook like an old man. But Mulder won't see it. They showed him a doctored mission log and said it was the kid's. They lied to him and he doesn't know... " A bubble of nausea swelled up inside her gut. She had been right. It was a trap. "What will they do to the prisoner?" The words were slow, deliberate. She wasn't sure she wanted to know. Reality seemed to bend and curl around her, leaving her caught in a dizzy middle ground. There was too much death....too much blood....not enough time to get it all straight.... "He's being interrogated." So that's where the blood on his sleeve had come from. Had Skinner taken part? No, he couldn't have. He wouldn't. "By whom?" He remained silent just long enough to confirm her fears. /Mulder. They've got Mulder killing that boy./ She leaned back against the doorframe, her hand pressed against her forehead to relieve a sudden headache. "He wouldn't." The denial hissed through her teeth. Skinner's hand moved to rest on her shoulder, trying to comfort her in a touch because neither of them knew words that could help. He did try to find them. She appreciated him for his effort. "He doesn't see a boy, Scully. All he sees is the Colonist who almost killed the woman he loves. And I smelled liquor on him. They must have gotten him drunk first. He wouldn't listen to me....I tried....I came here because you are the only person who could make him understand....that's the only reason I'd bring you into something like this. Forgive me..." Forgive. Such a heavy word. "Just give me a moment to get dressed and I'll be there...." She patted his hand and moved back inside her apartment. The breeze seemed so much colder now. Now she knew why Skinner looked so tired. Now she felt the same weariness in her bones. So tired, yes, and remembering she was weak and had been shot only three days ago, and what could she do to stop anything? What could she say? It would come to her. For now she just had to get there in time. to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (28/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - The world was blood. Tiny droplets in the air, inhaled with his every breath, collecting like dew inside his throat to mingle with the leftover tequila to form a taste like scorched copper. He could taste the hate above all else. The world was blood. Slick and wet across his knuckles, splattered across his uniform, across his face. It oozed in tear-like streams down the face of the boy-- no, the killer, he would not think of him as a boy-- bound to the chair in front of him. Some of it blended with real tears to drip from the killer's chin, down onto his neck.... It wasn't enough. Scully had bled more than that when the freak had shot her. Well, the night was young. His fists clenched into a tighter ball and the muscles in his arms tensed in preparation for the next blow. "You shot her!" A voice, raw and bent until it was not as man's voice, tore through the air. "I want to hear you admit to it!" More blood, flying from the freak's nose as his fist drove straight into it. He thought he heard the bone crack. He hoped. He hoped it hurt, real bad. "Did you enjoy it, huh?" A blow to the gut, sharp and fast and hard. "Did you like seeing her bleed?" Another one to the stomach, finishing the job. The boy doubled over, gasping for breath through swollen lips, but Mulder grabbed him by the hair and yanked his face up until they were eye to eye. His voice dropped to little more than a growl. "Did it make you feel like a man?" The boy's lips were moving, trying to form words through the blood. "What is it, son? I can't hear you?" "Didn't....shoot....her....please....didn't..." Rage, boiling up inside his stomach, scalding every nerve inside his body until it erupted again through his fist. Let the Colonist scum lie all night. He knew the truth. The patrol had shown him the boy's mission log, shown him proof that he had a credited sniper kill the same night Scully had been shot. Had the freak watched through his scope as she doubled over in pain from the bullet? Had he gotten off on her scream, on the sudden flow of blood? Had he laughed? He wouldn't be laughing much longer. Before the night was over, he would confess all or he would die in the chair. Slowly and painfully, just like he wanted Scully to die. The world was blood. Most of all, it was inside his mind. It soaked his brain, coating his every thought with hate and anger and kill-lust. It soaked his eyes, turning everything he saw a sickly shade of red. Never had he hated so much. Never had it burned so deep. At first he had tried to keep control. He had tried to reign in the emotion, the disgust. But then they'd offered him the liquor, and he had thought it would drown the voices in his head, but it had only broken down the restraints....Something in him had torn free, seized his mind and his body and twisted it until all he wanted was to kill. To destroy. The urge grew with every punch, every scream of the prisoner. /More,/ the voice inside his head sang out. More. He tried to take the one you love. He tried to take her from you, and you couldn't protect her then, but you can now. So make him pay. C'mon, make him scream again./ He obeyed. With relish. It was Nicolas' voice inside his mind, but he did not realize it. It was Nicolas' hate, Nicolas' anger, Nicolas' lust that drove him so, stirring his own emotions into a frenzy, but he did not feel the invasion of his mind. Nor did he see the smile on the Leader's face every time his fist smashed \ into the boy. He felt only the fire and never stopped to think that it was not totally his own. It was like he dreamed and watched himself from outside his mind. In the dream he marveled at his ruthlessness, at his brutality, but he could do nothing to stop it. Only sit and wait for the dream to end. And in the back of his mind, in a far away corner so remote he could barely hear it, another voice called for him to wake up. A soft voice, almost totally buried under the chaos of hate and pain and guilt. Pleading with him. Begging. /Don't do this, Fox. Open your eyes. Don't do this..../ It was Samantha's voice. Every time he heard it, every time he began to listen in the smallest way, the Nicolas voice hissed a reason to keep on hating. /People like that scum are the reason your sister is dead./ /He's one of the ones who shoot children in the streets. You remember that, don't you, the blood in the morning mist and the screaming mothers and the little tiny bodies..../ /You let him live, he's just gonna shoot another woman./ The world was blood. It was in the eyes of those around him, a crowd of fellow soldiers pressed in a large circle and cheering every time a new splatter of blood hit the floor. They were a blur before his eyes, a jumble of faces he did not recognize and voices he did not know, but it was easy enough to recognize the common bond of hatred. "That's right! Hit him again!" "Give the freak a taste of his own medicine!" "How do you like that, boy? Look at him, crying for his momma. I shot your momma, kid. I shot her and listened to her scream!" "Show him what happens when he shoots one of our women!" And then there was Nicolas' voice, an audible one this time, low and intense. "That's right, Mulder. Listen to them. Listen to yourself. Make sure justice is done." And then there was the sobbing of the prisoner, barely heard beneath the shouts and jeers and obscenities. But Mulder was close enough to hear it. /God, he's crying like a child. He might as well be a child. How old can he be? Sixteen? Seventeen?/ Samantha's voice again. /How can you do this to a boy?/ /So he's young./ Nicolas' voice, dark and ugly. /You don't have to be an old man to kill. And that's what he tried to do to Scully. Do you remember how it felt when her blood flowed from her body underneath your hands, and you couldn't stop it? Remember how she shook with pain each time the jeep hit a rough patch, but you couldn't stop or slow down because every second she was growing paler?/ Justice had to be done, no matter the age. Something in his soul twitched at that, asking him if this really was justice. If it was anything more than a lust for revenge. He did not stop to answer because he could not answer. After he broke the kid's nose in a second place, his hands began to ache and he reached for his pistol, turning it to use the blunt end of the handle as a bludgeon. He paused for a moment to catch his breath. The Nicolas voice inside his head swarmed around his thoughts, an angry cloud of hornets. /Don't stop now. You're so close. You can really hurt him now. I'll bet you can break all of his ribs. And then we'll start to work on his hands....do you know how many bones you can break in a man's hands? Let's see him try to hold a gun after that..../ /Fox!/ Samantha again, sharper than before. Angry. /Don't listen to him! Listen to me, now! This is not what you are!/ The hatred in his mind rose up and pushed her voice aside. He raised the gun, already focused on the spot where he would break the rib. The muscles in his shoulders bunched together. The voice in his head laughed, and as it did, so did the burning within him. It pushed him forward, pushed him into action. He was not so sure he could stop now if he wanted to. The prisoner screamed for mercy.... He poised to deliver the blow. The Samantha voice sharpened, demanding his attention. /Look at me when I'm talking to you, brother!/ He froze. His eyes moved slowly from the soldier to scan the crowd, his heart slowing within him. It echoed in his ears. Thud-thud-thud. Monster-monster-monster. Killer-killer-killer. Thud-thud-thud. And he saw her. She stood directly across from him, side by side with Nicolas although Mulder knew the man did not see her. No one saw her, except for him. She was his angel, after all. Of light or of judgment. She wore the same white dress he had seen on her that day in Washington, when the children had been shot. Her hair hung down to her shoulders in the same way, loose and carefree. Again, her eyes burned his, with a silent flame. Her face showed no anger, none of the scorn or condemnation he expected, but instead only sadness. And such a sadness, like the tears of God, because they held every kind of grief and every kind of pain there was in the world. It was all focused on him. Asking him why. Begging him to stop. Crying for his soul. The hatred swirled and churned around his mind, vying to regain its control. His hand began to move forward but it jerked to a dead stop as her voice sounded again. Only this time it was real. It carried above the crowd and above the static of his mind. "Mulder, stop!" His lungs became dry in the middle of his breath. How could it be? The dead could not speak....how then.... Then he realized it was not Samantha's voice at all, but Scully's. He turned to see her striding through the crowd, her eyes burning and her lips set in a thin line of determination and anger. Behind her, Skinner hovered protectively, his massive bulk and stony glare warning away all who would stop her. /Get her out of here!/ The voice hissed, and Mulder detected an odd note of fear. /She doesn't belong....don't make her see what you are..../ She stopped inside the circle of soldiers, less than three feet away from him. Her eyes moved from his face to the face of the boy. He saw the anger flicker in the back of her eyes, the shock, the disappointment. It took him aback for a moment. How could it be that she was disappointed in him? Didn't she realize he was doing this for her? Then the hate swelled, a wave of fire, and he didn't care whether she realized it or not. He'd make her understand later. After vengeance was taken and justice was satisfied. "Skinner," He spoke to Skinner without taking his eyes off Scully's face. He was vaguely surprised at the snarl in his words and the way his lips curled back when he spoke. "Take her back to her room. She doesn't belong here." Skinner said nothing. She moved closer and reached out for his arm. He shrank back instinctively, as if her hand was a red hot iron. The voices inside his head were wailing, shrieking for her to get away. To leave him. When her eyes met his again, there was no anger. No shock. Only pain. "What are you doing, Mulder?" She spoke softly, as if she was asking him why he was combing his hair a certain way or wearing a certain shirt instead of asking him why he was beating a man to death. He wanted to tell her that he didn't know, but different words came from his mouth. The words the voice in his mind placed in his throat. "Making sure he doesn't shoot anyone else." "That's ridiculous. He's not the sniper. They lied to you. They want you to kill him. And even if he is guilty, he deserves a fair trial and a fair execution.' "This is all the trial a Colonist deserves." "Listen to yourself!" Her tone was sharper now, grating across his mind and scraping back the numbness coating his senses, forcing him to hear her every word. "Just listen to how you're talking! You have no idea what you're saying or what you're doing. You're angry and you're drunk and Nicolas is controlling you. I can feel it. He's inside your head and he's making you do what he wants you to do. Are you going to let that happen?' "She's lying!" Nicolas spoke quickly, the veins in his forehead bulging underneath skin turned a stranger shade of white. "She is trying to manipulate you into weakness!" Mulder watched as Scully's eyes left him and traveled over to Nicolas. Her face froze instantly in a way he had not seen in quite a long while. When she spoke, her voice was steel. "You are the one who is trying to manipulate. It might work on frightened girls and adoring subjects, but it will not work on me and I will not allow you to use it on Mulder. Get out of his head. Now." She turned back to him. "You can fight it, Mulder. Whatever he's making you feel, whatever you think you are feeling, you can fight it. You can--" He tried, but the hatred inside his mind intensified as a living creature trying to keep its foothold on a slippery mountain. It burned him, seared him, raged within him, until all logic was pushed away and he broke Scully off with a snarl. "No one is doing anything to me! This is what I want!" "No! It's not! I know you!" The rage sharpened, sharpened, pushed.....it forced words he did not mean out of his mouth and threw them in her face. "You know what I was!" He backhanded the prisoner across the mouth as if to prove his words to her. The boy's head slung back, sending a spray of blood and sweat into the air. Some of that blood splattered across her face. He watched it stain her skin, her perfect flawless skin that should never know blood, and it shocked him. Through the anger, through the hate, through the blinding emotions, it cut deep into his mind. He stood looking at her and said nothing. Staring at her face, at the smears of blood across her cheek. She sensed his confusion and moved forward, wiping the blood away with her sleeve as she walked. He wanted to shrink away again, to hide from her eyes and from her touch that certainly would break him, but he could not move. She did not stop until she was face to face with him. He knew she could smell the blood on his clothes and the tequila on his breath. He begin to sense the first glimmerings of shame. He waited for her to strike him, to judge him. Instead she reached out and traced the line of his cheek with her fingertips, ignoring the smears of blood left on her hands. "I know what you are, Mulder. Let me tell you what I know." All eyes waited on them in a strange fascination. He knew she felt the stares just as he did, but that did not stop her. She continued, her voice firm and clear. "You are a soldier, one of the best. You are strong. You're difficult sometimes and stubborn sometimes, and maybe your high ideals are a little cracked, but underneath it all, you're still a believer. You were the only one of us who believed, before. You gave us hope. You gave us someone we could believe in. I still believe in you. I believe you are something better than this. You are something better than him." Her finger jabbed toward Nicolas. "Don't throw yourself away for a cheap shot at revenge. Don't throw us away. He can only control you if you let him. It's time to break that control. Break it now. And let's go home. It's late. I'm tired. Aren't you, Mulder?" Her hand rested around his, nudging his fingers away from the gun. "Aren't you tired of this too?" The hatred-voice inside his mind faded, faded as he pushed it back, screaming its rage at him and clawing at his mind, but it was not strong enough to stop him. She pushed it back too, with her eyes. With her soul. He awoke slowly from the nightmare. One by one his senses returned to him. For the first time he discovered there was blood on his hands. And on his face. And on his clothes.....and everywhere. A knot of nausea began to knit together in the pit of his stomach. For the first time he saw the face of the boy-soldier he had been beating. He saw the fear. He saw the pain. He saw the humanity. The gun dropped from his fingers to the floor and his eyes fell with it. He could not look her in the face, knowing what he had just done before her eyes. He could not stand to see her light touch his darkness. "Yes." He whispered. "Very tired." "C'mon-" She pulled him towards the door, but Nicolas' voice cut them off, cold and deadly. "You were not dismissed, *soldier*. Pick up the gun and finish interrogating the prisoner." Mulder lifted his eyes to meet those of the man who had been inside his mind. Tomorrow, perhaps, he would hate. Not tonight. Tonight he'd had his fill of hate. He felt only disgust, and a bit of pity, for if the dark fire had truly been Nicolas' emotion, the man was torn inside. He spoke in even tone, but firmly. "No." Nicolas' voice increased in pitch and volume. "You will do as you are ordered. And I am giving you a direct order to finish the job. I don't care what your whore says, you are a member of the Humanity Corps and you are under my command, and you will obey." Mulder's hands clenched on reflex to fists. /How dare that little *pig* talk about her that way...in front of these men...../ No, focus. He had to focus. He took a deep breath and forced his hands to relax. "I won't kill him for you. If you want him to die, you're going to have to do it yourself." "Very well then." Nicolas waved to the two of the men standing behind him. "He is guilty of insubordination. You all are witnesses. Arrest him." Scully's hand tightened around his, her eyes wide and flaring with fear for him. "Run." She whispered, just low enough for him to here. "I'll keep them back...." "It's all right, Scully." He pulled her hand from his arm and held out his wrists for the soldiers to cuff. "Just stay with Skinner and promise me you'll be careful--" He would rather be in jail and have her think of him as human than go free and have her think of him as a monster. She had said she believed in him. That made it worth it all. But Nicolas wasn't through yet. Mulder watched the man's mouth crease into a smile as he waved out two more guards. A feeling of dread begin to mix with the nausea in his stomach until he tasted it as bile in the back of his throat. "The woman instigated it. Arrest her as well." "No!" He strained against the two men holding him, pulling to break free of the handcuffs. He lunged forward, using his entire body to push himself between her and the soldiers. "She is still sick....she hasn't recovered yet.....you can't arrest her...." He drew his leg back and let it fly in a fast kick to the stomach of the first man who tried to drag him away. Another soldier kicked back, a close-range blow to his ribs. He gasped for breath. Strong hands clamped around his arms, lifting him off the ground and hauling him back. He made them fight for every inch. They could take him, yes, but not her. She was still weak.....even now she swayed a bit as she stood. He was guilty, yes, but she had done nothing but stop him from killing an innocent boy. "Contain him." Nicolas ordered, his voice dripping disgust. "If she is well enough to stir up treason then she is well enough to pay for it." For Scully, the world spun at a thousand miles an hour, and she tried desperately to hold on. She stiffened her legs so that she might remain on her feet, tall and straight, that she might look them in the eye as they came toward her. She had not been out of bed for more than five minutes since the shooting, and from the moment she entered the room she had been fighting off the dizziness. Now it washed over her in waves, contorting the world before her eyes, bending it into strange shapes and colors. She had to stand up....had to be strong for Mulder....had to... stand... Her knees trembled and shook. When they grabbed her, rough hands locking her wrists tightly into handcuffs, she couldn't hide the flinch. Skinner saw it and stiffened, his hand edging toward his sidearm with murder in his eyes. "No." She pinned his gaze with hers, forcing him to see the caution in her eyes. "We need someone outside." He nodded, but she saw the barely restrained fury in the tightness of his jaw. He would have killed if she asked him to. But she would not, no matter how much the handcuffs hurt or how much she felt ready to collapse. Nicolas already hated Skinner. All he needed was a reason to act, and she wasn't about to provide that. They pulled her toward the door and she moved to obey, but suddenly her legs refused to work. The bones and muscles turned to rubber and she fell....fell.....the floor rushing up to meet her but never quite reaching her as the guards caught her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mulder struggle to get free, cursing the hands that held him back, screaming her name. Scully, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Screaming over and over again, Let me go to her. Let me help her. Let me touch her. And he even begged. Please.... She tried to open her mouth to tell him she was fine, but whirlpool around her sucked the words from her mind. She saw Skinner, standing stone still, his face expressionless but his eyes burning. She saw the resolve, the promise that passed between them without words. I will get you out. I will find a way, no matter what I have to do. No matter what. She saw Nicolas, his whole body quivering with rage and hatred as he looked at her, but also with desire, a secret lust burning in his eyes. More terrifying than the hate. Darker than the anger. He said nothing to her in words, but the stare told her enough. I will own you. I will possess you. I will make you pay for taking him back from me. And then the darkness came and she saw nothing. /I have saved him..../ A last thought. Yes, but what would it cost him? But it was too much to think, right now, and she surrendered to the imploding universe around her before finding the answer. to be continued.... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (28 B/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - Drying blood and sweat plastered his clothes to his skin, but Mulder felt naked. It was as if all his outer defenses, all his protections and carefully constructed fortifications, were stripped away between the blinding glare of white lights on glossy white walls, leaving him bare before the never-blinking red eye of the camera. That was the danger of this room, he knew, the same danger of every other room like it in the world. It existed not to terrify you so much as to break you down. To lock you in a world without relief from the burning exposure of lights and video cameras, and the brutal, relentless interrogator of your own thoughts. Nicolas would have known that this was the only torture that could break him. He could give them the finger through beatings and blood-lettings of any sort, but lock him in a room away from Scully and imply that she is being hurt......that quickly became a different sort of battle. It was your own imagination that killed. She had been so small in the middle of that room, surrounded by hate yet somehow untainted by it. So fragile. The handcuffs had seemed so ugly on her wrists, the faces of the guards so hard.... Had they taken her to Nicolas? Was she.... /No. Don't think it. God, don't think it./ He swallowed back the fear that turned the muscles of his throat dry and tight. His hands shook within the handcuffs in a mix of instinctive rage and a greater sense of helplessness. /Please let them leave her alone./ They could have him, if they wanted. They could strap him to the table under the bright, bright lights and they could send pain through his body until they were sick of it. They could cut through his flesh just to see him bleed (wouldn't Nicolas like that) but she had to be kept safe. But that would require mercy, and mercy was too human for this place. She had known that right away. She had tried to warn him, but he had been blind, so preoccupied with what he thought was the way back to light and redemption. And the very man whose guidance he had relied on turned out to be a darker monster than even himself. If she had not come back, who knows how worse it would have been? What would he have become? The door opened and he knew the answer, for Nicolas was standing in the doorway, an indolent smile on his face although the expression was betrayed by the hard glint behind his eyes. What Mulder saw was not entirely human, but purely evil. He did not know how he could have missed it before. He hardened his face into a mask of blank granite, determined not to be blinded again. "Well, well, you seem to be quite the man of the hour." Nicolas stepped into the room, flanked by two of his personal bodyguards-- each holding a long metal billy club. Their faces begged Mulder to give them an excuse to play with his ribs. It seemed that the overwhelming urge to attack the Leader and rip the smile off his face would have to be postponed. For now. Nicolas leaned back against the hall, his body loose in deceptive casualness. Mulder saw, however, the way the muscles in his hands were bunched, waiting to form fists at any moment. The smile never faltered as the Leader continued to speak. "Word of your little game has spread all over the city. The common rabble are so fascinated, as peasants will be, and you can be assured that Skinner and his idiot followers are making the best of it. Some are even calling you a hero. The new Leader." The smile hardened, glinting in the light as a shard of glass. "That does not bode well for you, my friend." "So is this the part when I get the sense beat back into me?" Mulder held his voice in the flat cadence he used when dealing with the Smoking Man. "I'll have to say that I thought the great and terrible Leader of the Resistance could have come up with something a little more creative. Electroshock therapy, perhaps? Or at the very least, the rack." Nicolas laughed, a sound like the scratch of snake scales across the desert floor. Mulder was just waiting for the fangs to come out, for the true poison to be revealed. Something was hiding behind that smile, something dark and black and evil.... "Mulder, you know better than that. I am not going to insult you by attempting to break you physically. It would be a waste of our time. I have a better use for you. One that is far more productive to the Cause and, might I add, mutually beneficial to your health." "Imagine my relief." Perhaps it was the light, but the more he looked at Nicolas, the less human the man seemed. The voice became slurred, a hissing obscenity of sound that echoed Pavlov's voice. The eyes burned a blue unnaturally bright, while his pupils dilated into an almost reptilian slant. Mulder shook his head to chase away the hallucination. He had been under the lights too long. "I suppose that now you're going to tell me what you want me to do." "We only ask that you use your strengthened influence over the people to expose a threat to our stability and effectiveness." "Cut the noble crap and tell me who's trying to take your toys." "Very well. I shall lay it out for you. Your friend Walter Skinner has always been an nuisance, caught up in womanish concern for humane warfare and minimizing the loss of life. We have suffered his whining because of his tactical skills, but now it is clear that he is a threat to the Leadership. His following has increased since your return, even to the point where he has began to turn the ear of some of the other generals. You see that this cannot be allowed." "I see that the people are beginning to see you as the freak you are and that they want a change. I see that you're running scared, like a whipped mutt with your tail between your legs, but I don't see what I am supposed to do. If you're expecting me to kill him, the answer is no. You'll have to kill me instead and then you'll be making a martyr for Skinner's cause. I don't think you want that." Nicolas' eyes flashed sparks of blue-black fire for a moment as he stared at Mulder. "Do not overestimate the importance of your life, my friend. I doubt they would call you martyr if your somewhat un-hero like past was exposed. But all this is beside the point. No one is asking you to kill. All we want is for you to reveal him as the threat he is. Go before the Committee and denounce him before the other generals as a Colonist sympathizer and a traitor. We have three witnesses ready to back your suspicions with their own reports and hard evidence has been arranged. Not that it will be needed. I am confident the others will listen to you. Your word is highly valued, even in your....fallen....state." There was the slightest emphasis on the word "fallen", but Mulder refused to entertain the notion of guilt. He would not let the monster back into his head. The revulsion that had been growing within his stomach swelled into a climax. That....freak... .was asking him to betray the man who had saved his life, the man who had saved Scully's life.....just to save his own skin? Did the Leader think he had learned nothing all this time? That he would fall so easily back into the Judas mold? It was beyond insult. It disgusted him, so much that he would not dignify it with anger. He merely allowed his repulsion to frost over his eyes, to drip through his voice as he spoke. He leaned forward until he held Nicolas' eyes. "You think you're so powerful, don't you. You think you've got them all terrified. I have seen ten times the evil you are, and I am not awed by your darkness. I am not cowed by your threats. Listen to me, Nicolas, and listen well. There is nothing you can do to make me betray Walter Skinner. He is worth a hundred of you. Feel free to do with me what you will, but I will not be your traitor. If I die because of it, at least I will die a human. Which is something you will never be." Seconds dragged by, bitter with a palpable tension and rage. He watched Nicolas' face, saw the hatred and resentment pool in thick black swirls across the man's eyes before the emotions disappeared behind a smile which was now as cold as ice. The smile twisted as a viper twists to reach his prey, gloating, mocking. For all his resolve, Mulder felt his spine twitch against his nerves. "A fine sentiment." Now the voice was indeed a hiss, low and inhuman but at the same time holding delight. "Yes, you will make a fine spectacle on the scaffolding, your flesh hanging in ribbons from your bones and your naked wounds baking in the sun. They call for you to save them now, but they will just as eagerly watch you die. That is how they are....they smell blood and they are drawn to it. They will accept yours as readily as they will any other Colonist dog. I really do admire your nerve. Really--" Nicolas leaned closer. "But indulge me with one small question, if you will. Merely to gratify my own curiosity."His eyes gleamed and their electricity danced in his words, a barely audible hum. Mulder could feel the man's breath on his face. Smell the hatred. "How do you think it will feel to her?" The demon smile curled up at the ends, reminding Mulder so much of Pavlov that he had to fight the urge to cross himself, to shrink away. A sheet of ice began to move slowly up his spine, toward his heart.... And then, beneath the ice, a rage. A pure, white hot, hatred. The more he sat and listened the more it built. An explosion was imminent, but Nicolas did not know how close it was. The man was too busy talking in a sort of ecstasy, as if the act of describing pain gave him a deep pleasure. "She has such soft skin, so delicate and pure.....how do you think it will feel when it is exposed to the sky and the hungry eyes of a mob? Do you think it will be cold to her? Do you think she will blush in shame? Or will it burn her, when the whip falls? Again, and again, and again, until she is screaming with that soft voice. Until she's cursing your pretty little truth and her pretty little faith, but most of all cursing you for letting her die like that. Do you think she'll be strong until the very end, or will she beg for mercy? Ah, you'd like that, wouldn't you. Your whore's last words will be to me, begging me to spare her life. Promising to give me anything I want. Who knows, I might grant the wish. I'll make her work for it though....she might wish she was dead before it was ov-" His last word turned into a choked gurgle of sound as Mulder's fists clenched around his throat in a mix of iron grip and steel handcuffs. to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (29 A/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - The force of Mulder's attack knocked Nicolas back into the wall, cracking the plaster behind him. The guards moved in immediately, plowing their clubs into Mulder's back and sides but the rage, for the moment, blocked out the pain. And Nicolas-- as the air began to leave his throat, as he was thrown to the floor, pinned beneath the weight of a very angry man-- felt the first glimmerings of something he would later admit to be fear. He had never seen eyes like the eyes that stared down at him. It was not senseless hatred, not mad rage, not even disgust. It was something entirely different, something glowing white and searing like the point of a finely honed sword. The words were cold and emotionless, spoken in a low rumble meant for only Nicolas to hear. "You touch her, I will kill you. Make no mistake. Whatever you need to satisfy your sick little game with, you get it from my mind. You take it from me but you leave her alone." Just as his fear began to blossom into something real instead of imaginary, his men managed to pry Mulder away. He remained on the floor a moment, gasping for breath and taking satisfaction from the dull thud of the clubs into Mulder's body. From the not-quite-concealed gasps of pain that followed each blow. He let the beating continue a full minute more, then waved at the guards. "Let him go. We want him well so he can testify. And he will testify." He placed his boot on the small of Mulder's back as the man tried to rise, shoving him back onto the floor. "He knows I don't make idle promises." One last kick to the gut, to make clear the point. "Take him to the woman's cell. Our two lovers will no doubt want to make the best of their last moments together." He smiled as they half-led, half-dragged Mulder from the room, but as the door shut behind them, that smile faded imperceptibly. He remembered the blade in Mulder's eyes, the marble gravity in his voice. That was not a man to make idle promises either. Then he reminded himself that he was the Leader, and he was the one who made the rules, and with this thought to calm his nerves, he returned to his quarters. He knew Mulder well. The man did not have the stomach to let his woman die slowly and painfully. It was only a matter of time before he came crawling back, ready to deal. Begging for mercy. Then they would see who was the whipped dog. And if he chose to play the hero, that was all good and well. Let them die for their honor and their love. Let them both find out how futile such delusions really were. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Why did the lights have to be so bright? Why did they have to grate along the ragged edges of his nerves, burning his brain and the lining of his eyes? He watched the cold white fire as it danced along the surface of the metal bars opening before him, and then all he could see was cement rushing towards him as the guards shoved him into the cell. His hands shot out, palms flat, seeking to spare his ribs the added punishment, wincing in advance at the thought of peeled skin and fresh pain, but he never hit the ground. Someone caught him first. Someone small and soft, whose arms kept him from the pavement then wrapped in a crushing circle around his neck. His senses still reeled from the lights and from the fall, so he could not yet see her, although this did not matter. He felt every part of her-- the warmth of her face pressed into his neck, the needle-prick sensation of her fingernails digging into the top of his spine, the heat of her breath against his skin. Mulder moved his arms automatically to return the embrace, and through her back, his fingers could sense the frenzy of the pulse. For those first few moments, the lights did not matter and his ribs did not ache. All he could think was "she is alive. She is safe. He hasn't taken her from me yet." And all he could do was hold on to her, try to pull her so close that they blended into one person, because then no one could separate them again. No one could force him to kill just to keep her safe. That thought brought him back to the unremitting glare of white and the dull thudding pain in his side. Over her shoulder he could see the splatters of blood still on his hands. Still on his clothes. The irrational fear that he would stain her with it struck him suddenly and nearly overwhelmed him. He remembered what he had almost done, what she had watched him do. "Don't touch me, Scully." His whisper disappeared into her hair. "Please." The muscles in her shoulders tensed beneath his hands into tight, angry bunches. "They did something to you." Her hands slid over his face, down his shoulders, along his sides, seeking out the injury. "They hurt you." She spit out halfway between a question and a curse. "It's not that." He broke the embrace, sliding away from her to lean against the wall. Trying to hide his hands beneath his legs, behind his back. Blinking to wash the dry ache from his eyes and wishing ten times to heaven that it was dark, a deep oil dark, so she could not see his hands or his clothes. Or his guilt. /So easily do you forget. She stopped you from killing one man and now you're considering killing another just to keep her alive. You'll never admit that you're thinking about it, but you are. You've already betrayed your sister, the human race, your faith.....what's an old friend?/ /Stop it./ His lips moved in a words that held no sound. He closed his eyes, forced the lids shut to escape the fluorescent nightmare. The light pounded through his defenses in a violent wash of red. Why did his world always have to look like blood? He almost remembered a time when it was another color, the shining white of distant spaceships and his sister's nightgown and a truth he had somehow lost along the way. "Mulder...what...." Her voice jerked him back to awareness of reality--- though it was becoming harder to stay focused on the present and not slip into the dark waters of his mind-- and he realized she sounded confused. Maybe even scared. He had to find a way to re-connect. Had to be strong now, for her. Had to let her know it was all going to be okay. Even if it wasn't. Mulder began to search his mind for an excuse, a diversion, but suddenly his thoughts froze in the attempt. No, he would not lie to her this time. It was time, at last, to tell the truth. To lay all the cards on the table and turn them over one by one to read his fortune. "I'm afraid." His throat was sandpaper; each word a harsh and strained sound. "Of what?" Tiny wrinkles appeared at the corner of her eyes. She edged closer but made no attempt to touch him again. He swallowed hard. "You." He counted fourteen seconds of silence. Her voice trembled when she spoke again. A very thin, very tiny voice that did not quite believe itself. "Me?" He nodded. His eyes fled upward, to the lights, preferring their sting to the hurt in her eyes. No one said this was going to be easy. Only that it had to be done. "Why?" A deep breath. A struggle for words. Then-- "You are the only thing I have left to lose. The only thing about my life that is worth anything. It was that way long before the invasion ever hit. Because of this I have done....things...." His eyes thickened but he told himself it was the brightness of the room and forced himself to continue. "I have betrayed my people. I have given my gun and my allegiance to the killers of innocence. I....myself....have become such a monster. Men, women. Friends. My sister...." Here his voice broke. Thin lines of moisture leaked from his eyes and he ran his hands over his face to brush them away. The momentary shadow of his hands over his eyes was like heaven. "Mulder." Her voice hung heavy with the effort to restrain her own tears. "Mulder, you don't have to do this--" "Let me finish, Scully." He spoke through his hands, the words muffled as he dragged his fingers across his eyelids. Rubbing away the pain. "For once, let me finish." Mulder let his hands fall to his lap, slowly bringing his eyes to meet hers. This was the key moment. His soul hung or fell depending on her reaction to his next words. "I became something ugly and dark. Something I could barely recognize as myself, even as a human. Scully, it was hell every day. My sanity was so close to breaking. You'll never know how close. That's why I had to run. I had to find you again, be with you again, because I knew that you were the only thing that could save me." His voice dropped even lower, stretched by the crushing weight inside his chest. "I only wanted to be forgiven. By her. By you. By myself. I came here looking for redemption but when I saw you, I couldn't tell you the truth. You were too beautiful for that. I couldn't bear the thought of infecting you with my ugliness. I tried to think of a way to tell you. I would lay awake at night and try to piece together the words, but nothing ever seemed to be enough. So even though I was with you, I was still living the lie. I tried to pretend it didn't matter.But I knew, inside, that the darkness was still there. Nicolas knew that too. He fed on it. I made it strong with denial. And I almost killed a boy because I would not tell you the truth. So I am going to tell you. Now. This moment." He paused, moving close to her until his hands rested over hers. /Blood against ivory,/ he thought. /Beauty and chaos and will she still love me when it's all over?/ He brought his eyes to meet hers until the core of his soul was dead level with the center of hers. He saw the tremble in her jaw, the glistening rim of tears in her eyes. He suspected she saw the same in his face. "I ask you to forgive me, Dana Scully. Knowing everything I have done-- that I have killed for you, that I have lied and destroyed--I ask you to forgive. I can't justify what I have done except to say that I have loved you through all of it. If you asked it of me, I would do it all again. I hate that truth, but I believe it. Anything you ask of me. Anything." He barely heard his words, barely knew whether she heard them or not but he kept talking through the pain. It always hurt to bare the soul but this was a good, clean ache. The ache of healing. He dropped his head onto her lap, pressing his face against their hands. His eyes squeezed tightly shut, his breath frozen. He pressed a kiss into her open palms. A prayer. "Please....find something inside me that can be saved. That can be loved. Walk with me. Stay with me. Please." A wetness filled the space between his face and their hands and realized he cried onto her skin. But there was no shame. Not here. The silence was short but it seemed to Mulder so very long.... an endless agony of waiting measured in fragments of seconds and pieces of heartbeats. Her hands remained limp under his face. Her body tensed. Then slowly, with infinite gentleness, her fingers moved up the side of his face to smooth back his hair. Their warmth spread through his whole body. She folded her hands on top of his head as to give him a blessing, and lowered her forehead to rest on her hands. A sensation of rain falling onto his hair let him know that she cried as well. "I will always walk with you. I will always stay." The words so soft, echoing through every level of his being. Shattering the darkness. Creating new light. She pulled his head up so their eyes could meet, and again he thought of her as an ocean. Wide, deep, all-compassing. He never wanted to return to land. "And though I have doubted myself, though I have doubted why you would do this for me, there has never been a time when I have had to search for a reason to love you. That has always been a natural part of me. Nothing can take that away." She kissed his forehead, smoothing the wrinkles under her lips until his skin was smooth and untroubled. His arms moved up her arms to cradle her face between his hands. He brushed his thumb across her eyelashes to remove a stray tear. She smiled at him and he leaned forward to taste it by placing a kiss gently across the curve of her lower lip. "What took us so long to say it?" "You weren't the only one was afraid." "So how 'bout we run to Vegas and get married? I'm sure I could find us a slot at the Elvis Presley Wedding Chapel. Only $19.95 plus tax....but five dollars extra if you want the King to serenade you as you walk the aisle." She laughed. "Only if we get to honeymoon in Cancun." "Deal." And he smiled. Yet even at that moment, even in the midst of rebirth, one thought played in the farthest back corner of his mind. /Tomorrow she will die. Unless you choose to fall all over again. Unless you turn this into a lie as well. Unless you betray./ No, no, he would not. There had to be another way. Please, he begged in silence, let there be another way. to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (29 B/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - Restons immobile rien ne nous attend rien qui ne soit plus futile que ce doux moment.... (Let's stay still nothing awaits us nothing more futile than this sweet moment...) Restons encore un instant un instant comme s'ils etaient cent rien ne nous attend... (Let's stay for one more moment a moment like there was an hundred one. Nothing awaits us...) - Immobile Autour de Lucie * * * * * * * * * * * * * The waiting was hardest on both of them. It would have been an easier thing to walk directly from the embrace to the scaffolding, from the kiss to the flame, but Scully knew the real valley of shadow would not be then but now. It was always harder to wait for death than to merely die. The true test of courage came in a harsh white silence broken only by the faint buzzing of the lights and the fainter, stiller whispers of seconds as they passed. Each minute told a different story... of the wedding night she would never see, the names of children she would never hold. She and Mulder lived out a thousand lifetimes in her mind before even one hour had passed. The images rose clear and sparkling inches from her fingertips only to shimmer into vapor when she tried to touch them. The false memories seemed at times more real than her past itself. Oh, she remembered that too. Those pictures surfaced every so often amid her day-dreaming, appearing suddenly on the forefront of her mind as an old black and white photograph falling out of a pile of color snapshots. Sometimes she saw her mother, her brothers, her first catechism teacher, her high school boyfriend. These were happy memories, to be taken out one at a time and savored. Sometimes she saw barbed wire and mass graves and chains around her wrist as a fat man sold her to the highest bidder. She saw the look on Mulder's face when she found his Enforcer badge, remembering the horror that had flashboiled her inside. For the only three seconds of her life, she had entertained the idea that he had been working for them all along... Scully shoved these memories away quickly and tried not to even acknowledge them. They took time which was not theirs to waste. Sometimes she drifted back to the present. This came over her as a diffuse awareness of pain, of discomfort, of the contrasting warmth spread over her eyes as his hands shielded her from the lights. She could almost hear his blood flow. He was that close. Yet she felt the separation between them stretch with each new moment of the horrible silence. It was as if the absence of sound devoured them piece by piece, and if she did not speak soon, they would be quickly nibbled to the bone. She spoke because in the end it was the silence, not the death, that drove men mad. "Skinner came, while you were gone." "What did he say?" He had been hungry for sound as well. "Nicolas is calling for blood. He has legal grounds for an execution and plans to drive it through. Skinner has taken it before the generals, though. He used your status as Commander to provide reasonable merit for an appeal." "They'll never listen. Nicolas has them all under his thumb, one way or another." "Skinner seemed to indicate we had allies, though not enough to overturn Nicolas in a vote. But he did mention another factor that could play in our favor." "What?" "The people, for the majority, side with you. Nicolas has to call on them for our death....all part of the glorious brotherhood of humanity we have here. Everyone shares judgment and responsibility. Only he knows exactly how to control the mob. They've all heard rumors of what you've done, of what you can do, but it's going to take a lot more than hearsay to get the mob on our side." "So I'm supposed to do what....walk on water?" She smiled. "Maybe just call down an angel or two to help us out." "Nah, I already caught one." Her skin sensed his gaze on her even though his hands still covered her eyes. "And she's more than earned her wings." Part of her laughed at that, singing out that this was what it felt like when love was restored after so many months of doubt. This made you fly. Yet just as soon as the impulse left the ground, remembrance of reality sent her crashing back into the rocks. They would die tomorrow. Both of them, unless it started raining miracles, and the sky had been dry for very long. It was at that moment that she struggled with the fate of it, trying to reason the justice of a universe that would let love die so soon after it had been realized. That would take him from her despite the long struggle to save him... There had to be something she could do. And then she knew what it was. The idea crawled from the pit of her stomach, repulsive as it coalesced into a thought. She swallowed back the bitterness and spoke with deliberate detachment. If she even listened to her voice speak the words, she would shrink from them. But she had to say it. "Wings won't save us tomorrow, Mulder. I know what will. I am going to go before Nicolas and appeal myself." "No." The answer came hard, fast, plated in iron resolve. "I don't see a choice." Scully pushed herself up into a sitting position so she could stare him eye to eye. The light stung her after the darkness under his hands. She blinked twice and tried to focus. "He won't listen to Skinner and he certainly won't listen to you, but I...I have something he wants." The renewed horror in his eyes cut her off. "No. Just...no. I know exactly what he wants from you and....how can you even say it? Not for one moment do you dare think that I would send you back to another Pavlov just to spare myself a little pain. I thought you knew me so much better than that. So much better." "I'm sorry-- I mean, I do. I just thought--" "I know." His thumb brushed the corners of her mouth, smoothing away the frown. "But it'd never be worth it. Even if it was, he can't be trusted to keep his word. The man is evil. I am convinced of it." She shivered on instinct, though she had not meant to let it show, and she tried to pretend the chill was from the cell and not the temperature of her thoughts. "He reminds me of Pavlov. The way his eyes kill the light, the sound of his voice. The tingle in my skin above the implant when he walks into the room...like something is always hovering just outside my mind, just waiting for me to let my guard down." His hands moved up the back of her neck to trace slow circles on the skin above the hated metal, massaging the warmth of his fingers into her body. She never feared becoming frozen inside, of losing her humanity, when she sat beside him. He could always thaw her. He could always keep her warm, no matter what. Yet in this touch, there was a stiffness, a knot around his joints as if they held back a question he wanted to ask but feared. She counted to twenty twice and his hands had stopped moving. He'd found the nerve to speak. "Did he approach you....like Pavlov did...." "No." She shook her head. "Not directly, at least. I'm not sure what held him back. He used different methods of getting to me. Through Aida, through Che. Through you. And--and I think he was in my dreams, sometimes." The entire length of his body tensed. Scully hastily continued in attempt to put his mind at ease. "But never like Pavlov. Nowhere near that deep." "Lucky for him." The words floated into a moment of quiet thought, and then another, before he dragged another question to the surface of their minds. One from a far deeper past. "It was bad for you with him, wasn't it. With Pavlov." Bad. She almost laughed. "Bad" didn't describe it at all. She let him continue, though, because each of the thousand words springing to life inside her mind was either an admission of weakness or a lie. "I had already suspected Nicolas was influencing me," he said. "But that didn't help much when I realized he had been manipulating my emotions the whole time, twisting me for his own gain. There was a kind of shock, at first, and I didn't want to believe you because it made me feel so hollow. Like something had been taken from me, something integral and sacred, and I had no idea how to get it back. That was all I thought of at first. How to regain what had been stolen. But he was only on the barest rim of my mind....I can't even begin to imagine what it must have been to have something inside your thoughts themselves. I can't even begin to fathom how it would feel." "Filthy." The word shattered in harsh fragments on the floor. Scully stared straight up into the lights as she spoke, until she saw and felt nothing but a thick white that separated her fromwhat she was saying. Not that she could stop herself now, even if she wanted to. The gates had been unlocked. "Naked. Burned. You don't know how to make it stop, so for a month of midnights you wake up hearing the same voices, feeling the same sensations, and worst of all the same fear. There are nightmares, of course, but you are never entirely sure whether they are your dreams or his. That's because part of him is forever wrapped around a part of you, just waiting in the dark corners of your soul. It never goes away. You just learn to lock it out of reach and move on...." He kissed her again, then, and she did not know he was shaking with as much hatred as a man could feel. All he could do to keep it inside was remind himself over and over again.... /I killed him. I killed the monster. And I am glad of it./ Instead, he said--- "I should have been there, after it happened. Me, not Skinner, though I'm sure he did all he could. But I should have been the one...if you had asked, I would have found some way.... "Don't apologize, Mulder." She hushed his regrets by placing one finger over his lips. To touch him was a craving, just to feel the solidness of his flesh against hers as if even her hands realized on instinct that these moments were their last. She set aside the thought, for now. "What is in the past is in the past and it will stay there. Until tonight, I wasn't so sure about that. Not until I stood in the room and stared down Nicolas. I felt nothing. No fear. No memory. Not even hate. What Pavlov did will always be a scar across my mind, that much I know. Nothing I can do will change that, but I won't be controlled by a dead man. Not anymore." He only needed to nod for her to know he understood. It went far deeper than a mere understanding of her words, but it came from intimate knowledge of the experience behind them. They had taken the same journey-- though on different paths-- fought the same war--though on different battlefields-- and slain the same demons-- though under different names-- and tonight they had won the same victory. Freedom. The cost, however, had been high. Even now, the final casualty report was not in. One...final...sacrifice was required of them both. The thought struck her as if for the first time. In the space of a blink, the light seemed to invert into darkness. The chill of the room became a hot wind against her face, driving her further away from Mulder, into the final void... A desperate grab for his hand, afraid she would not feel it. A momentary quiver of faith. /I can't believe. It's too dark./ /What if I fall apart? What if I fail him?/ /....that we may be made worthy./ /I still believe. Mulder, kiss me just one more time, to make sure.../ But she did not ask for a kiss. And when her eyes opened again, the vision disappeared. Suddenly she was very tired with the weariness of an old woman who had lived through too many dry summers and now only wanted to sleep and dream of thunderstorms. She leaned back against his chest-- where she could feel pulse by pulse the life pounding through him, where he could feel it in her-- as her fingertips threaded through his, easing them back across her eyes. To hide her from the light once more. Or maybe just to hide. /Close my eyes, love./ His fingertips sealed her eyelids shut, his whisper telling her to rest. /Close my eyes and tell me of the rain. Tell me it will fall soon, so very soon, and we will never be thirsty again./ "It feels like its day now." She whispered. "Or very close to it." "Pretend its midnight." "That won't make the sun go away." A slight pause. "No, it won't." They were falling again, into the pale silent chasm, and she had to stop it. "Talk to me, Mulder." "What do you want me to say?" "Anything." She let her mind wander. Her thoughts snagged on a stray piece of a memory. Their first night on the run. /The green neon glow of the cheap motel sign outside the window. The stiff ache along the sides of my jaw as I tried to hold back the tears, the screams. We were never supposed to be right. And it was the first time he held me like this, his arms so tight with something made of desperation and need and something more beautiful. Only we didn't speak of that. We didn't dare./ That night, he had not talked to her of the falling sky or of the breaking world. He had placed his mouth next to her ear and told her of a dream. She wanted to hear it again. She wanted to pretend. "Tell me about the house." He grinned. "It's been a while, hasn't it?" "I've never forgotten." "Neither have I." Mulder paused momentarily, shifting her into a more comfortable position against him as he began to speak. He blamed the sudden watery sheen over his vision on the light rays bouncing off the walls and tiles. The lie was scientifically accurate and technically perfect. But it did not take away the ache in him as he spoke. "It's on the western coast of Canada, not too far north but far enough to make sure no one ever finds us again. It sits on a bluff above a rocky beach that drops straight into the ocean. This ocean is bluer than anything you've ever seen. From our bedroom window we can trace the path of the sun straight back to the horizon. The first thing we hear in the morning is the tide breaking against the rocks, and the wind over the waves is the last thing we hear before we go to sleep. Well--" He was grinning again; she could almost hear it. "Almost the last thing." "Where does the baby sleep?" The question cut an odd ache through her chest. "In the nursery, of course. That's next door. You wanted to paint it lavender and I wanted to paint it blue, but after much deliberation and two pillow fights, we decided on yellow. So nice and cheery, you'd tell me. Just like hope--" "Is that her name?" "Whose name?" "Our daughter's." "And who said it was a girl, pray tell?" "Call it maternal instinct." "Who am I to argue with that? Our daughter sleeps in the nursery, and you're right....Hope is the perfect name for her. She's our new start in the world, our new beginning." "She'll be beautiful. Just like her father." "Let's hope she's not cursed with his nose. Though even that could be forgiven if she has her mother's eyes." "What does the house look like?" "It's built to face the sea, made of pine that shines like gold when the afternoon sun hits it. There is a front porch with a cedar swing--we broke it on the first night of our honeymoon, by the way-- and there is a garden out back. We grow some herbs, some vegetables,some flowers." "Roses." She said. "Wild roses that no wind or storm can kill. They grow just underneath our window, and in the summer we sleep with it open until the whole house smells like salt breeze and rose petals. It's so strong I can even taste it when you kiss me...." The moment came then when neither of them could go on; it hurt. "Scully, I-" His voice formed a heavy cloud across her mind as a thunderstorm brewing over their ocean. He didn't say anything else, not with words. He just kissed her. Nothing remained to distinguish the ache on one side of her soul from the love flooding the other. This was where love really existed, she realized, on the razor wire line between pain and beauty. You found yourself in the middle and you did not know what to do other than call it love. "Mulder," she spoke the words with her lips still against his. "You remember this." Another kiss, deeper, stronger. "No matter what happens tomorrow, no matter what they do or how bad it gets, you have to remember this." Tears in the corners of her eyes, though she tried to keep them back. "You hold onto this, Mulder. You put it somewhere deep inside you and don't let go. When they start...the beatings....you disappear into your soul because you'll find me there and you'll know I'll love you forever, and then you won't feel a thing. Then they can't hurt you." Her hand smoothed his forehead, tangled in his hair. "Then they can't hurt me. Because I am only as alive as you are. You are only as alive as I am. Remember that for both of us." "You, Scully," He breathed hard and fast, his words broken by the heaving of his lungs. "You remember this." He pulled her closer and pushed his mouth to hers like he wanted to pour his breath and life and soul into her body. It was thunder and lightning and rain all at once, washing over them and soaking them to the bones with all the things she had never thought she would feel alone. And between these things, it smelled like roses, and likethe salt breeze coming on over the cliffs. She knew, beyond any doubt, he smelled it too. Because he smiled just that way. Then it was over, and she realized it had also been goodbye. "Do you think," Shadow words. A hush. "do you think that somewhere in the world there is a house just like ours, and two people living in it with just that kind of happiness?" "I have to believe it." His eyes burned hers. "If not, then what kind of world have we been fighting to save?" She closed her eyes. Exactly one hour later, the guards came. to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -= From: clone347@aol.com Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 00:08:52 EDT Subject: xfc: NEW : Becoming Judas II : Resurrection ------ by darkstar (30/32) Source: xfc Title : Becoming Judas II : Resurrection Author : darkstar Email : clone347@aol.com Feedback : adored and craved Website : http://members.tripod.com/darkstar_phile/index.htm Archive : I would be honored, only please let me know. Category : MSR/Angst/Post-Colonization Spoilers : None Rating : PG-13 for war violence Disclaimer : See Introduction Summary: He sold his soul. Now he wants it back. Disgusted with the life he is living and the man he has become, Mulder breaks from the Colonists and risks everything for one last chance at humanity with Scully. But redemption, like betrayal, has its own price. - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (30/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - For only the fourth time in his life, Walter Skinner found himself totally helpless. Place him on the battlefield, an automatic rifle hot between his hands, his enemy plain before his eyes, and he could perform as well as any man. Ask him to command-- even to send men to their deaths-- and he could do it, so long as the objective was clear. But he could not fight the invisible things, such as the cynicism or fear in the eyes of his fellow generals as they one by one abandoned Mulder in favor of Nicolas' demands. Nor could Skinner fight the mob he watched fill the city square to overflowing. Like a net full of fish, he thought to himself, and about that stupid. Every man, woman, and child in Freedom City would witness the execution, via their presence in the square or over a special television broadcast. Most of them had no idea at all what they were about to loose. Mulder and Scully were not merely heroes of the resistance. They *were* the resistance. Without them, the war was already lost because it didn't matter how many battles the humans won if they lost their humanity itself along the way. The people needed Mulder for his passion, and Scully for her faith, and both of them for their love, but he feared he was the only who realized that. Maybe a handful of the people in the square realized it too. Most of those who did, however, would throw vegetables and hurl insults anyway because such "spontaneous displays of patriotism" were often rewarded with extra ration cards. Nicolas' executions always had that sort of flamboyant violence, a garishness that drew the fascination of the people like any other horror. Nicolas thrived on it. Skinner found it repulsive. /There was a time,/ He reflected as he screwed the cap from his Jack Daniel's, /when we used to believe in something and fight for it. Now we're all cynics-- even my old friends, even myself-- and we stand in the street throwing rotten vegetables at our saviors just to earn an extra pound of hamburger./ He began to reach for a glass but changed his mind and drank it straight from the flask. He drank it like a soldier should drink it. /Maybe I am an old man. Maybe I have lived too long to adjust to this new world, but I can't fight for this warped cause anymore. Not that we'll survive for much longer anyway, not as long as we're cutting the throats of our own people. Today will save us or destroy us. If the people let Nicolas murder Mulder and Scully, then we are all lost. Nothing will save us. But if the people prevent it...or at least try....then there is hope.../ It was so easy to think that "hope" was not even a word anymore. That years of blood and hate and lost worlds had erased it from the human vocabulary. But he still believed in it. He had seen it in the eyes of his men, late last night, when they had pledged to stand by him even without the support of the generals. A direct intervention in the execution was the only way to save Mulder and Scully's lives. No more playing safe. The plan was to attempt to sway the people to demand mercy, but if they didn't listen.... Well, each of his men had been told to bring their guns. They agreed to this without hesitation, knowing full well the possible consequences to them and their families. He admired them for this. They were young and had wives and baby children. He was old and had nothing much to loose but his life. But they had promised to stand with him....on one condition. Mulder had to appeal to the people. He had to defy Nicolas directly. Skinner understood this request. The crowd in the square weren't the only ones looking for something to believe in. His people searched for it as well, and they weren't going to lay their lives down for Mulder unless they had proof that he could deliver. He had told Scully this. She had nodded, and thanked him. Then she'd kissed his hand through the bars. /You are father and brother to me./ She told him, her eyes unnaturally bright but making even the ugly light seem beautiful in reflection. She remained the most beautiful woman he had ever known. /You are all that is left of us, once we are gone./ But he would not be left. He knew this. His eyes drifted over to the gun lying before him on his desk, the metal gleaming with a sheen of gold in the morning sun. It was the same weapon he had carried back in the FBI days. He had come to rely on it as friend, protector, and confidant. Today he would use it to save his friends or he would use it to die trying. Either way he would not be left behind. He did feel old, after all. His hands shook ever so slightly when they held the flask, and his back ached often when he returned from missions. It would be easy to stay in his office, with his whiskey and his memories of better days, and hide from a world he did not understand nor wish to understand. It would be very easy. But it would not be honorable. It would not be a soldier's action, nor that of a father nor that of a brother. He remained all this even if he was an old man with too many memories and aching bones. And so he took one last swig of his whiskey, strapped on his gun one last time, and walked out his door to meet fate. He paused, for a moment, on the steps, as a swell of shouting rose up from the crowd outside. This would mean, he knew, that the truck bearing the prisoners had appeared. The beginning of the end. /Someday, when this is all over, will our children be able to forgive us for the things we've done? The future we sold out, the men and women we betrayed? The innocents we killed?/ Walter Skinner walked out the door to join the mob. * * * * * * * * * * * * * Mulder's first thought when they led him from the truck onto the scaffolding was that the glow of the morning sunlight across her face and hair had to be what heaven looked like. Her face tilted up upward to meet the sun, spilling the light over her skin and through her hair like water. It took him into another reality, one more real than the handcuffs around his wrists, or the whipping posts waiting for them. The reality he saw in the first few seconds held nothing but Scully and the sunlight and a sky too blue to be real. It was beautiful. Then the rest of the world forced its way through the cracks. The taste of dirt and mob hatred entered his mouth, gritty and dry between his teeth like sand. The heart of the sun poured down on his face and back in torrents of clear fire. The thirst.... The distant, pinched ache of his wrists pinned tightly beneath the steel handcuffs. The distant, pinched ache of her eyes pinned tightly beneath her steel control. (He wasn't sure which he felt more keenly or more painfully... the lack of blood in his wrists or the lack of feeling in her eyes.) The screaming of the crowd destroyed the final illusions of beauty. The sound rose up in dark, salt desire for death; the bloodlust hung above their heads in almost visible waves of shimmering heat. They hated what they were told to hate. Feared what they were ordered to fear. This was the thing Skinner had told him to challenge. Appeal to the people. Ask for mercy, ask for truth. It's our only hope. Mercy. Truth. He was not sure if they were capable of such things The cries of the mob merged together into one pitch black tidal wave inside his mind, swelling to push out all other thought. /Kill them!!!!/ /Traitors!!! Colonist sympathizers!!!/ /Die!/ /Betrayors!/ /Coward!/ His mind was going to rip at the seams. Right down the middle. And there was so much hate... And there was so much darkness... He pressed his eyes closed before his brain tore in two. Begging escape. Begging silence. But even then he heard them, even in the golden-brown darkness. He heard the screams, the curses, the fear. All of the confusion, all of the anger, all of the lost faith and jaded belief. His own question to Scully turned back to haunt him. /....then what kind of a world have we been fighting to save?/ He did not know. He did not know. That set off a panic within him, deep and slick with cold sweat despite the heat. Had he been wrong the whole time? Had it been futility all along? The fighting, the bleeding, the dying. Maybe the only truth was that they just did not want to be saved. Maybe they only wanted to destroy... The rough wood of the post sent splinters into his cheek as they slammed his body against it, two men pinning his shoulders down while two more freed his hands and retied them above his head. The ropes tightened around his wrists, pulling his body until the skin on his back stretched tight. Heat washed over his bare skin as they tore his shirt away. He buried himself in her eyes. Never moving. Never flinching. /I am only as alive you are./ Deeper, deeper, beyond her mind, into her soul. Just like he had promised. /You are only as alive as I am./ By then the crowd had fallen silent. Everyone heard the rip of the fabric as they tore the back of her dress open, exposing the skin to the sun and to the lash. Everyone watched her flinch. Mulder leaned his forehead against the wood. Her voice, always and forever a part of him, played out as a second string of thoughts inside his head. More real than his pulse. More real than his breath. /Remember....then they can't hurt me. Then they can't hurt me. Can'thurtme can'thurt me can't hurt me.../ He stared out at the sea of blind hatred and hoped to God she was right. "You look tired, my friend," Nicolas' voice. Mulder looked up to see the Leader standing beside him, the glow in his eyes betraying the politically appropriate gravity of his face. "Didn't sleep well?" "Let's get one thing straight here and now. I am not your friend." "But I want to be yours, Mulder. It's not too late to save your life. Or hers." He followed the man's eyes over to Scully. Her eyes stared blankly into the sky above the heads of the crowd, and from the small distance he could see her lips moving. "If she's already praying for mercy," Nicolas whispered, "What do you think she'll do when the pain hits?" "I think you are a dead man. Maybe not by me, but by someone. Soon." "Who? Skinner? Your old comrade Krycek? Don't insult me. No one can touch me. No one can threaten me. I own this city. It's mine and I refuse to let you or anyone else take it from me. You have no options left but to cooperate. Step out and denounce Skinner and you can take your woman and go live happily ever after. Or would you rather me begin the execution? Don't think the people will save you. They belong to me as well. You heard them all screaming for your death." "Kill me, kill her, you'll only make what we stand for stronger. You know that. You're afraid of it, even now." The light in Nicolas' eyes turned cold in a spasm of sudden anger, his voice razor-edged. "Fine words. Dying would be easy enough, I admit, but it's the slow minutes before death that you will hate and fear. Long before you die, long before she dies, both of you will have cursed everything you think you stand for. You will destroy it with your own mouths." "I will only curse you." "Very well." The left corner of his lip twitched as if he was trying to contain a grin. "You want your honor and your death? I'll give you what you want." He stepped away from Mulder, raising his arms to gather the attention to the mob. The perfect Caesar, the perfect leader. The perfect murderer. "My brothers and my sisters," Oh, the voice held so much pain, such a reluctance to duty. "A great tragedy has befallen our ranks. Two of our own have left our side to be counted with the enemy. You know them both by name, though perhaps not by sight. The man is Fox Mulder, a onetime defender and champion of our cause. Yet last night he deliberately defied my personal order to execute a Colonist prisoner, a monster responsible for who knows how many dead innocents? The woman, Dana Scully, urged him to commit this treason." Nicolas allowed the murmurs and whispers to continue just long enough to provide the optimum impact, then held up his hand for silence and continued his speech. Mulder had no stomach to listen to the lies. His gaze threaded through Scully's again like two hands seeking one another in a darkened room. Despite the crowd packed in on all sides, he fought an increasing sense of desolation and abandonment. Of utter aloneness, except when he looked at her. Except when he met her eyes. When he looked at her this time, her face was white and pained as she listened to Nicolas manipulate the crowd, and there thin wrinkles of anger creased the skin around her lips. "No justice." She mouthed, forming the words with careful deliberation so he could read her lips. "No truth." "Truth is you." He mouthed back. "All I need." The sun cast a shadow of a smile across her eyes, but he noticed too a glimmer of pain as she turned her face away from him. A whisper in the back of his mind told him to look away as well, not to make it any harder than it already was. But he kept his eyes on her a moment longer in defiance of the insistent ache within his chest. He watched the sun slide down her hair, again, dripping in waterdrops of light to her shoulders, down her back. Her naked back. Mulder flinched away from the sight. The exposure was too cold, too ugly, too brutal. Too helpless, and helplessness drove him closer to madness than any pain. Already the sanity wavered. He focused his entire mind on that sanity. He no longer saw the crowd as individual faces and individual hate, but only as a blur of humanity, a shimmering mirage in the heat. And beyond them, the sky. And beyond the sky, the sun. And beyond the sun, a sister. "Dearest Sam," In all the letters he had written, even in his darkest moments, he had always believed she somehow heard him. That she somehow understood. Now there was only one letter left to write. One request left to make. "When we were children, we filled our heads with many things, many plans for our lives. This was never among them. But now, at this moment, I only ask to live these next minutes with honor..." Nicolas' voice sounded to Mulder to be very distant, as if he was underwater listening to the man speak. He heard no words, only impressions of speech colored with vague anger and indignation. Then the answering thunder of the mob, rumbling low and ominous to answer their Leader.... Nicolas flicked his hand toward the soldier holding the whip. "For the things I have done that should never have been done," /Blood on hands in downtown city streets, an Enforcer badge and a hired gun. Dead friends, a murdered sister. Hard liquor, broken faith, and the overwhelming stench of cigarette smoke in the background./ "For the things I have lost that should have been saved," /Innocence and laughter and summer afternoons in Maine. Sleep without nightmares. The ability to look myself in the eyes without guilt./ "For the things I should have been that I will never be," /An idealist. A crusader. A hero. A husband and a father.../ The whip hissed softly in the air as the soldier drew his arm back. Mulder could see it out of the corner of his eyes, a long black snake glistening in the sun, fangs bared to strike. "I ask you one last time...." His lips barely formed the words. "For forgiveness." The first lash fell. A jagged pain sliced the length of his back like barbed wire dragged across his skin, white hot but at the same time filling him with a cold and terrible nausea. A scream started at the base of his spine and burned through his nerves into his brain at electric speed. Only his jaw and his sheer will held the impulse in check. A craving to release. A desperation to breathe. His lungs were paralyzed, and it seared, and it wouldn't go away until he screamed and let it out. He couldn't hold his silence...couldn't...even...breathe. /Remember...disappear..../ Her words faded in and out of his mind, fuzzy and distorted like static on a broken radio. A moment of clarity. /Can't hurt you. Can't hurt me./ He forced his eyes shut despite the first and in one act of desperation, Mulder threw his mind. Somewhere distant, many miles beyond the horizon. Somewhere safe. His lungs unfroze in a fierce passion for air, though the oxygen barely reached his brain before the second blow fell. The impact ripped his eyes open but this time he saw nothing of the world before him. The skin tore but he did not allow his mind to register the sensation. Sunlight scorched his pupils but it was not this sunlight but another kind of burn, from memory or from dream he did not know, only that it shone so much brighter than anything he had seen before.... /July desert heat sliding across a cheap motel bed, quivering in waves of light above the curve of her dress along her hair as she watches the metal fan blade stir the air. Sweat plastering your skin to your clothes and to the sheets and to her skin and you hand her another piece of ice. Passing it between your palm and hers until the fingers are dripping wet, smoothing the moisture across foreheads and necks and lips. She is golden in the sun, a sculpture of light.../ A white flash of pain tore the vision in two. Number three. His fingers tightened around the ropes, muscles taut and quivering as his blood turned to ash and his entire body burned from inside out. Mulder gritted his teeth and willed himself back into his mind. /Caribbean blue sky and two black pigtails flying in the wind, the ends tied with orange and red ribbon to match her dress. A tire swing and the last day of summer vacation. Higher, Fox. Higher. The sun stings your eyes, a pale yellow blindness that sharpens to the hottest white, growing whiter and hotter and hotter and swallowing her shadow as she spins out of your arms..../ Four. His body arched in a spasm in response to the new pain, but it was the instinctive reaction of his cells more than his mind. His mind still hovered in separation, waiting for him to give the order for it to disappear again into the never-ending solace of a perfect memory. Every minute of his life stood ready to be called to life again at his wish, to take him from the present nightmare. But he hesitated at the sound of a woman's scream, for the voice sounded far too much like Scully. He heard it but chose not to accept it as real, just as he was choosing not to acknowledge the thousand stings across the skin of his back-- assuming he still had skin. A mechanical voice in his mind told him not to be preposterous; it would take more than four lashes to flay a man. That would not occur until twelve, perhaps thirteen... The nausea returned, partly because now he smelled his own blood. Hot. Thick. It was time to escape again, and quickly, before she screamed again, because if she did, then it would break him. He shoved his mind away from him, letting it drift out into oblivion, but this time his eyes would not close. Something kept them open, though it was not the prodding of pain or the relentless heat. Instead, the feeling was as if invisible hands rested on either side of his temple, cool and soft, urging him to watch something....what he did not know.... Then a voice, but not Scully's. Not this time. /Hello, Fox./ A woman walked toward him through the crowd, moving easily through the mass of flesh as if she passed right through it. He could not clearly see the face yet, but he knew it was Samantha. He knew because the hair was parted into two braided pigtails, tied at the ends with scraps of orange and red ribbon. She smiled. /You like it....I knew you would. It makes me think of old times, but you were already doing that, weren't you? I could feel it./ The voice was so soft, so warm, without a trace of anger or condemnation, but suddenly he wanted to cry. At her beauty. At her innocence. Her dress was white, again, made of layers of nearly transparent gauze that turned colors wherever the light touched. The closer she got to him, the harder it was for him to l ook at her and remember what he had done, even as he paid his penance for it. His head dropped as shame sent a flush through his face. /You should hate me, Sam./ /Do you want me to hate you?/ She climbed the steps to the platform now, walking right in front of Skinner though he did not know it. /What is easier for you to accept, the fact that I would spend eternity hating you for my murder or that I would know full well what you did and why you did it and choose to love you anyway?/ He could think of nothing to say to that, so he tried another question. /Why are you here now? Am I dying?/ /Not yet. I wish you were, though. It is hard to see you in pain./ /I feel none of it./ /You feel more than you admit. Not for you, though, but for your woman. You ache with her pain and she with yours and in between neither of you have time for your own./ /Tell me this will not be in vain. Tell me if it is enough to earn forgiveness....if you can look at me as a brother again and not as a murderer. Tell me that and I can die well./ /Oh, Fox./ She stood directly in front of him, and reached out to trace her fingers along the side of his face. He sensed every detail of the caress-- the smoothness of her skin against his, the coolness of her fingertips. /You never had to earn anything. Not from me. Only from yourself. And I think that today you have more than filled that debt. Today you are free. You understand? Free./ Samantha leaned forward, the smile of a sad angel on her lips and in her eyes, and kissed him gently on the forehead. /Until we meet again, brother./\ The fifth lash fell, screwing his eyes shut in sudden and intense darkness. When he opened them again she was gone. For a moment, he thought it nothing more than another dream, another vision created to save his sanity. Yet his skin still felt her kiss. His words still spun circles within his mind.. Today you are free. Free. Free. He would have tried to smile if it hadn't hurt just to breathe. If it hadn't hurt so much to think what this "freedom" was doing to Scully no more than five feet away from him. He knew he should look at her, but he could not. He did not want to see the blood. "Hurts, doesn't it." A hiss in his ear sent a live wire of hatred running straight through his veins into his soul. He turned his head slowly to see Nicolas standing beside him, a mocking grimace on his face. "Stings, doesn't it." Mulder ground his teeth together as the man traced his finger along the raw skin of his back, exerting just enough pressure to send the exposed nerves along the lash marks into a concerted scream of pain. Nicolas leaned forward until their faces were only inches apart. "Look over there, at your whore." The man pushed his face back toward Scully. Mulder forced his eyes shut before he could see her. "She is dying with you." More pressure. "She has such a beau-ti-ful scream." More pressure. "You've killed for her before. You've already gone as far as a man can go. But I'm not asking you to kill. Just to tell a story. Tell the truth about Skinner, how he is their enemy, how he has been against them all along." More pressure. Agony. Fresh blood oozed between his torn skin and Nicolas' hands. A dizziness, the sensation of falling without any particular direction, just tumbling over and over and over without control. "Then you will be forgiven. You will be set free." More pressure. Mulder gasped for air through his teeth. The hiss faded to a mere breath against his cheek. "Do you really want her to die this way? Open your eyes. Look at her. Or are you afraid?" Yes. Oh yes. But he looked at her anyway. Just because he had to know what they had done, what he had let them do. He had to know if it was worth a betrayal to stop. She slumped against the post, held upright more by the ropes around her wrists. A fine sheen of sweat filmed her face, and her eyes were very wide, though he did not notice this so much because her back drew his gaze immediately. Four ribbons of blood split her skin from shoulder to hip, stray rivulets of crimson soaking through the material of her dress. The entire length of her body shook like a child's body shakes when the thunder is loud. Mulder barely recognized her. He did not want to recognize her at all, not like this. Not when her eyes met his, clinging with such stubbornness to her strength yet at the same time begging for mercy. No one but him saw the plea. No one but him held the choice, save a life, destroy a life. Betray a friend or betray a life. Or was there a third choice, a glimmer of hope that would either save her or kill him or perhaps both? Nothing mattered if she died. Not the Resistance. Not the truth. Not his own life. His breath served only as extension of hers, his heartbeat merely the echo of her pulse. /I am only alive as you are./ All this flashed through his mind in a matter of seconds, though it felt much longer. His breath leaked from his lungs with the sound of an old man's sigh. Appeal to the people, Skinner said. They will listen. Time to see if that was true. He turned his face back to Nicolas and met the full fury of the man's gaze measure of measure. "If I do this thing, you will let her go. I have your word." "You have my word. You will both walk away free." Mulder shifted his eyes to Skinner, standing on the fringe of the crowd, his forehead wrinkled in suspicion and worry. When the time came, Skinner would understand. He would be ready. He knew he could count on that much from a friend. He had to drop his eyes before he could speak. "Cut me down."He spoke the sentence in a jumble of words and syllables so he would not have to hear what he spoke. "I'll say what you want." Nicolas glowed. He said nothing further to Mulder, but flicked his wrist toward the soldier standing behind them. "Cut him down. Make sure he can stand." The Leader replaced his smirk with a benevolent smile as he walked to the edge of the platform. "The Corps is always merciful to her errant children, always ready to bring them back to her side. Commander Mulder has sought this mercy and we will grant it. He will now confess to us the true force behind his crimes, and reveal the enemy in our midst. I myself am unaware of what he will say, other than that it is a truth he has been willing to die for. But never let it be said that a good man had to die before justice could be done. I call General Walter Skinner forward to act as official witness to this confession." As the soldier cut his wrists free, a ball of nausea blossomed within his stomach. Mulder fought to remain standing, but his legs bent more like rubber than bone, and he slid to his knees. His back shrieked at even the slightest jar of impact. /Pull yourself together, soldier./ He ground his teeth together until he could hear the bone slid across bone. /That is an order. You've been hurt worse than this before. Act like a man. Act like an Enforcer./ He pushed away the soldiers reaching to pull him up. Laying his palms flat against the wood, he supported his weight on them while he worked one leg into position. Halfway there. He paused to allow the dizziness and nausea to ebb away, then carefully moved the other leg. And pushed. And then he balanced on his feet, shaking at the arms and the knees, but standing nonetheless. Two soldiers hovered on either side of him in case he should collapse again or entertain any thoughts of escape. They began to walk toward the edge of the platform, where Nicolas waited. His back throbbed with every step but he staunchly refused admittance to any sort of pain sensation. "Mulder, no!" Scully's voice hooked him by the shoulder and jerked his head toward her once more. The horror in her face shock him; the utter disbelief and betrayal in her eyes froze him where he stood. She shook her head violently, begging him not to do it. Not to give in. Two small tears in her eyes. She did not understand, but she would. He had to believe that if he was going to do what he needed to do these next few moments. He needed her strength, her defiance, her passion. Her trust. Most of all, her love. /Please believe in me./ He pleaded with her in his mind. /If there was ever a time for trust, believe I can never betray you again. But belief or unbelief, I will do what I have to do. I will save your life./ He stopped on the edge of the platform, twenty feet from the people who held their lives in careless hands, fifteen feet from the man he had sworn to publicly condemn. Skinner kept his face expressionless, but trust flickered in the man's eyes. Confidence. Mulder hoped he would prove worthy of it. And even if, in the end, he failed....well, at least they would be forced to kill him outright and he would not be strapped back to that post. "You may begin, Commander." "No! Mulder! It's not worth it!" Her voice, a faint cry for sanity. A plea for honor. Ignoring her ranked among the hardest things he had done in his life. It stung far worse than the whip to know she believed he had betrayed her. She believed he had betrayed their friend. Maybe, when it was over, if he lived, she would still love him. But now he was very afraid she would not. This was the last thought in his mind to fade to silence before he began to speak. to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (31/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - "My name is Fox Mulder. I am a Commander in your resistance, but this war is not new to me as it is to many of you. For those of you who may not know, I was a federal agent before the Invasion. My partner and I fought the same battle we do now, only then without the luxury of an enemy we could see. I learned from those days the important of truth. Of honor. Both are at stake today, not just for myself, or for my partner, but for the Humanity Corps itself." Those who had called for his death now listened to his every word. A noticeable irony. Their faces showed what even might be an air of respect, though perhaps it was merely surprise that he still stood. The surprise was mutual. Pain from his back ate away at the corners of his mind with slow acid, forcing him to battle for each clear thought, each coherent sentence. He seized the words one by one from murky darkness and strung them together like beads on a string. His existence stretched no further than the next sentence, then the next, then the next... "Some of you here think I am a hero. Others of you believe me to be a traitor. I have been both. I stood up for truth and I betrayed those closest to me. Those decisions were mine to make and mine to bear the consequences for. I have paid the price a hundred times, but do not stand here today to seek your forgiveness. Or your applause. I will not stir your emotions with high words, and I will not sway your greed with promises of more food or better housing. I will simply offer you the truth. Whether you accept it or not is up to you." He must choose his words carefully. If Nicolas suspected he had anything other than full cooperation in mind, he would be silenced. Instantly. And he knew he had to finish. It was not just about Scully, anymore. He had to do this for himself, to prove that just once-- once-- he could save those he had started out to save and protect those he had promised to protect. If he could open their eyes, if he could make them see, then it would be worth a death. "I came here for the same reason as many of you. A search for redemption. For hope. I did not find hope here. Instead I found a reproduction of many of the same evils I had left with the Colonists. Despair. Corruption. Brutality. I found a city that has lost its reason to fight but continues to shed blood while humanity-- the very thing for which you are named-- disappears in the struggle. And I promise you that it will not matter if we own this planet again if we lose ourselves along the way. If we are no longer human at the end of the battle, it will be the same as if They had won. It will be worse." A nod, here, there, in quiet agreement; an echo of quiet agreement scattered throughout the crowd. "The beliefs of a people determine their course. What you are really witnessing this morning is a crisis of those beliefs. A line has been drawn. On one side there is the true soul of the Corps and the resistance. On the other, there lurks a dark and bloody lie spread by one of our very own leaders. A trusted man, one you have looked to for guidance and salvation. He used this trust to deceive you and distort your perception of everything we stand for. I myself was deceived by this man, for I called him friend. I trusted him and in turn he betrayed me as he did all of you. You are not blind to this. You have sensed the symptoms of the disease but have not known the origin. You have felt the presence of the enemy among you and reached for your guns, only to discover you could not identify him. Today I will identify him for you. Is this your will?" For a fraction of bent sunlight, there was nothing, and he was afraid he had lost them. And with them, Scully. Then a woman near the front stepped forward, balancing her toddler on her hip as she called out-- "Who is he? What is his name?" Others joined her. Hesitant, at first, but gaining confidence as the momentum of the voices swelled. "Tell us!" "We want the truth!" "Enough with the corruption! Restore the Resistance!" His eyes locked with Skinner, who edged his hand with casual grace toward his sidearm. A brief nod, a momentary exchange of glances. An agreement that the moment was now; there would be no other chance. Beside him, Nicolas' smile shone golden in total assurance of his victory. Totally drunken with his power. "I accuse this man of polluting the Cause with his own lust for power and bloodshed and brutality, even against our own brothers and sisters. If you still fight for freedom, then I call for you to reclaim what has been lost. Carry out the justice for which so many have given their lives." He hesitated just long enough to breathe. Just long enough to kill the pain, to promise Scully that even if they shot him where he stood, he died with her face behind his eyes. Her love within his heart. And with freedom.... "That man is Nicolas." Silence. A soundless tsunami whipped across the square and paralyzed every man, woman and child with shock. Even Nicolas, whose smile still molded into place but lacked suddenly its suave assurance. Skinner stepped closer to the platform, flanked by two "civilians" armed with very non-civilian rifles. White static whisperings scraped against the underbelly of the silence as the people began to realize what was happening. Skinner spoke before any of them, even the soldiers, could react. "Leader Nicolas, by the authority of the people, I place you and your associates under arrest until inquiry can be made into these allegations. Lay down your weapon now and you will be escorted without harm to the detention quarters." Then he turned to the soldiers ringing the square, his tone clear and authoritative. A general's voice. "Be advised that my men are placed in strategic locations throughout the area and they will fight if necessary. But we do not wish to shed any blood here today. We merely seek to take custody of the Leader until his crimes can be investigated and brought to trial. For the sake of the people, hold your fire. Allow us to do our duty." His words dragged out in the dreadful calm one second longer, stretching thin as a rubber band about to snap, or as the last second on a timer before the bomb exploded. It all happened within seconds, but it unfolded before Mulder's eyes with the lazy blur of a dream or a late Augsut afternoon by the lake. He stood outside his own body and watched the world go insane. He saw first the fire in Nicolas' eyes as the man's hand moved in sharp, silent command to the soldiers beside him. The man drew his weapon and fired three rounds into the chest of one of Skinner's bodyguards. An instant later, the soldier crumpled with a scream as the bullet shattered his torso. Two shots unleashed twenty as other men appeared in twos and threes from the crowd and from the doorways of buildings. The soldiers opened fire first. Or at least a number of them did....most appeared to be fighting on the side of Skinner's people. It was then Mulder became aware of the blood splattered against his cheek, and of Skinner's frantic motion for him to come, but as he began to move, the butt of pistol caught him across the back. A wave of red fire engulfed his entire consciousness. It singed away every other aspect of existence. A small part of his body realized that he had been shoved to his knees, and that the pistol now rested against the back of his neck. Someone spoke to him, but the roar in his head all but drowned out the words. "....move.....you..die...." He could not see the face of his killer, neither did he see that Nicolas had vanished. He heard the staccato of gunfire as it were the rumble of an earthquake underneath the ocean of screaming that washed the air in fear and panic. The platform beneath him shook as everyone in the crowd raced for cover in different directions. Mulder forgot the burning and the gun at his neck in the sudden, frantic need to reach her. Images of her-- still tied to the post, defenseless-- sprang in garish clarity to his mind. With them came a numbing sensation within his chest, something cold like fear yet frenzied like panic. That was when he heard her scream. His body reacted with every instinct of a trained Enforcer. His hand shot behind his head to grab the soldier's wrist, twisting it until he felt the bones pop. The sudden movement stretched the skin of his back and his grip faltered before he could completely get the gun. The man's good hand smashed into the side of Mulder's face once, twice, three times....he responded by jerking the injured wrist even more out of proportion. A scream. A sweaty fingered fumble for the gun. A single shot. The soldier fell to the platform, dead from a bullet that passed neatly through the base of his skull. Mulder wiped the blood from his eyes to see Skinner standing behind him. A thin curl of smoke trailed from the barrel of his automatic. He glanced from his friend down to the soldier's body. "Nice shot." "Good to know I haven't lost the touch. You all right?" "Yes." His mind registered the facts that his hands were shaking, covered in blood that was partly his own, partly a dead man's, that his back had started bleeding more heavily, but he did not feel these things as a man felt wounds. He merely catalogued their existence then filed them away for later use. This was a mindset of an Enforcer and it had helped him survive more than one field injury. This would be another. "Scully--" He spun to see a horror of nothing. The post stood empty. His pulse skidded to a stop and he struggled to keep it moving and to keep breathing and not to think about the panic and the possibilities and the fact that he didn't see Nicolas either and....oh.. God... "She's gone." Skinner spoke calmly but now that Mulder looked closer, the man's eyes betrayed his fear. "Mulder, you listen to me. We will find her. She will be all right. You are in shock and you are losing blood, and the only place you are going is to the infirmary--" He ignored the words, jerking free of Skinner's grip to reach for the dead soldier's gun. He ejected the ammunition clip for quick examination. At least ten rounds left. More than enough to exterminate a rat. "Look, I said I'll find her. You know that." "I know." He jammed the clip back into the gun. "But you're the leader here. If you leave, who will keep it under control?" He motioned to the square around him. "And this is something I have to do myself." Skinner said nothing for a moment, then nodded curtly. "I can't stop you anyway, I suspect. He's probably headed for the transport vehicles; they're on the southern end of the square. Expect body guards, at least three. Are you sure you don't want me to go with you?" "Yes." "Be careful." "Always." A slight pause. "Are you going to kill him?" "Yes." Then it was down into the whirlwind of panicked bodies and gunfire and screaming children, running as fast as he could push people out of the way, shouting he would shoot and meaning it, his breath hard and his pulse mad, and a hope, a prayer, a scream in each step, that he would not be too late. * * * * * * * * * * * * * A gun to her temple, a scream wrapped around her throat, every cell in her body saturated with pain, and her only fear stemmed from the fact that she had seen Mulder fall but had not seen him rise. If he died, there would be no way for him to know she believed in what he had done. That she may not have understood at first-- the fire in her mind being great, then-- but now she understood fully. And she would trade worlds to stand beside him, to taste the defiance with him until freedom won or life ended. That wish was not granted her. Instead she stumbled through a haze of gunfire and smoke and panic, pinned against the body of a monster who pushed her to run faster, faster though she could barely walk, his voice uglier than the barrel of his gun. "Don't even think about slowing down, Dana-girl. We're going for a ride, you and me. They won't come near me as long as your pretty little tail is on the line." His fingers dug deeper into her arm, bruising to the bone. "I am secondary objective." She hissed the words through her teeth. "They won't stop for me." "Oh, but Mulder will. And he is the only one I need to kill." Anger. Fear. The overwhelming helplessness of being bait. She grabbed at hope the way a falling man clutches at a rope. "He'll never find us. Not in this crowd." "You doubt your lover, Dana? He could be blind and deaf and still know a way exactly to where you are. Trust me on this. I've been inside his head. Quite an exhilaration....a bit rough, but sometimes it's better that way...." He pressed his face against hers until she smelled the rot of his breath. "You'll see." "Freak--" She shoved back with all her strength, squirming, writhing out of his grip, screaming to kill the pain as she threw her body forward. Half-falling, half-running. All she knew was that if he did not have her, then he could not have Mulder, so she had to get...away.... Three steps into her escape, her body turned traitor under its own weakness and her legs crumbled underneath her. On her knees now. Begging strength, just enough for one more step...one more... His hand shot out and grabbed a fistful of her hair, jerking her body to his in one sharp movement that crushed her back directly against him. Ten thousand screams inside her mind. Nerves crackling,popping, shriveling under their own heat. Any thoughts of struggle turned to charcoal and ash and then disappeared. A sob for breath, an attempt to fight, but her lungs were filled with fire and not air. "Do. Not. Try. That. Again. Ever." He slammed his fist into her back, and this time she couldn't hold back the scream. Her blood formed a second skin between their bodies. "Now move." The rational part of her body prepared to refuse, to let him shoot her and be done with it, but rationale no longer functioned and she walked under mechanics of instinct.. One step. One breath. Then another step. Another breath. A string of frantic liturgy unraveled within head, thoughts within thoughts, deliberate yet subconscious. The words flowed without her control. Stained glass fragments of prayers and meditations, whispered penances of confession cells and votive candles, pleas to saints and sinners and the mother of God. Throughout them all, a plea that Mulder would live. /Hail Mary, full of grace...tell him I love him....Lord, make me an instrument of your peace...I am alive only as he is alive... Glory be to the Father and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit... he is bone of my bone..../ Pushing through the crowd, staring blankly at the brown uniforms of Nicolas' bodyguards as they cleared a path by threats or force, walking but standing still, awake and asleep and maybe it was all a dream after all, if only she didn't taste the blood in her mouth so strongly. /As it was in the beginning, and now, and ever shall be...where is hatred...hatred...hatred...let me sow love...let him know I believe.... Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb...where there is darkness, light...He is flesh of my flesh..../ A parting of the sea of flesh and she sees the truck. The same vehicle that brought her into this nightmare will take her into another, darker dream. She will die but not until she has wanted to be dead many times over. No. That part is not true. She will destroy her life with her own hands before she will let Nicolas touch any piece of her, flesh or mind. A flash of a mirthless grin across her face. Now she has resolve. All she needs is the chance. "Almost there, Dana. Keep behaving and I won't have to shoot any of your limbs off. I wouldn't want you around if you were missing parts." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his smile. His breath, hot against her neck, soiling her skin and her hair in corruption of Mulder's old habit of kissing the top of her head. She would like to be kissed that way, now. And to be held, with fingers and knees and elbows touching at all the safe places. All the places he protected her. She shut her eyes. The rhythms of her mind sped and the words flew by. /pray for us sinners that I may not seek to be loved as to love (him) always in the hour of our death as it is in pardoning that we are pardoned in dying that we are born to eternal life world without end. world without end./ From another world, a dying world, someone called her name. "Scully!" His voice. His voice. Oh God. She opened her eyes to see him moving out from behind the truck toward them. The world was a blur within a fog within a dream but he was there. Clear. Sharp. Alive. His eyes burned through all mists and all confusion as they fastened onto hers and told her in no uncertain terms that she would be all right. He would not let anything else happen to her. But there was a danger, something she could not remember but needed to warn him of...desperately... Metal drove further into her skull, grinding against the bone through the skin. And suddenly she remembered. All her last energy and last breath spent in one final shout. "Mulder! No! Go back--" /World without end to be loved as to love in the hour in the hour for thine is the kingdom, for I am his and he is mine.../ Too late.... Nicolas' bodyguards were used to proving their might against frightened hybrids and starving civilians. Neither of them had met an Enforcer-trained killer, and their clumsiness with their weapons ended their life just as surely as the bullets which shattered their foreheads. He killed them quickly, coldly, not even stopping to watch the bodies fall. There had been pain, moments ago, but now there was only electricity, pounding in his pulse. In his brain. The metal of his gun sang to him through his fingertips, a familiar mantra of violence and blood and hot lead splintering bone. The sound throbbed through him, his muscles twitched in time to the beat, waiting. Begging release. But he could not, he *could not*, because in between him and his target stood a woman with blue eyes that flared wide with fear for him, whose body shook with pain that he had to end. This and this alone quelled his urge to kill Nicolas immediately. "Do it, Mulder! Try to shoot me!" A wild laugh, not the laugh of a man but of something else entirely. "You'll probably kill me but I'll have more than enough time to take her with me." "Let her go." "Oh, no, you're gonna have to do better than that. C'mon, make another speech. Stir me to patriotism. I might be moved enough to keep her alive." Nicolas slid his hand across the bare skin of her shoulder where her dress had torn. "For a while." He moved his hand down her arm, leaving a smear of her own blood on her skin. Mulder's hand trembled on the gun with the effort of restraining rage and passion. Neither had place in a mission. One did not indulge in feeling but merely carried out one's duty and never, never, let the other side get into your mind. Not even when they were holding a gun to the only reason you have to live. He held his voice flat. Cold. Just like the metal under his fingertips. "This has nothing to do with her and you know it. This is between you and me. You knew it would go down this way ever since I came into the city. You've always tried to beat me. To control me." A cracked ice smile, something he learned from Krycek back in the Washington days. Always make them think you have nothing to lose. Especially when the reverse is true. "So why not take your shot? You and me. No guns, no weapons, no bodyguards. Just flesh and bone and may the best man win." Outside a stone mask locked his features in place but inside he begged Nicolas to listen. It had not yet occurred to him how he would keep his sanity if he had to watch Scully die. Nicolas stared at him, his eyes glittering Pavlov black, the barrel of the gun pressing into her temple until the flesh underneath turned white. Then the smile returned. "I can beat you without a gun." "Prove it." "Drop your weapon." "Drop Scully first." "No, first the weapon." This time his Enforcer instinct screamed for him not to be stupid, not to expose himself to the enemy without a weapon. But there was not a choice. His weapon dropped to the pavement in a clatter. "Ok." He held his hands out to show they were empty. "Your turn." "You're a dead man, Mulder." He shoved Scully away from him. Before her body had reached the ground, Nicolas slung his gun aside and flung himself forward with lightning speed. Mulder barely had time to brace for the blow before the full impact of the dive caught him square to the chest, knocking him off his feet. To land on the back would be deadly. He twisted his body as he fell, landing instead on his side. Nicolas' momentum still carried him forward, and Mulder stuck out his leg to meet the man in the gut. He heard the air leave the Leader's lungs in a *whoosh*, forcing him to fall back and gasp for breath. Mulder used the opportunity to jump to his feet, a tiny smile on his face, but there was no time to revel in victory. Nicolas ran at him again, this time heading his attack with a series of quick punches aimed at his temple. Mulder swung to avoid a left hook and countered the blow with a fist to Nicolas' rib cage. One good hit, two good hits. His defense slipped. Stupid mistake. A powerhouse right collided directly with his forehead. Blood in his eyes. He stumbled back, shaking his head to regain clarity, and another right connected with his solar plexus. This time he fell on his back. He screamed more from frustration than pain, but it was the pain that paralyzed him. His arms and limbs turned to lead and refused to obey his frenzied commands to *get up*. Nicolas' foot slammed into his kidneys. Once. Twice. After the third time, the edges of his vision began to tinge with black and he no longer felt the boot in his side. The battle for consciousness grew harder by the second. He could not see because his eyes were closed though he distinctly remembered trying to keep them open. Tiny crimson and yellow balls of light danced before his vision. He watched them in childlike fascination as they throbbed in time to his racing pulse. The longer he stared at them, the further they led him into a growing darkness far within his mind. A cold, thick, seduction that promised no more pain and no more fire within his nerves. But he remembered blue eyes. Blue eyes and a reason he needed to get up, a reason to fight. If he thought about the blue eyes, the darkness shrank. He could not remember what they meant to him, only that he had to focus on them and find a way back to them. Close behind him, a woman screamed. He knew the voice. He knew it as the voice of the blue eyes. In it was fear; in it was pain. That sound raced along the course of his veins until it collided head on with the agony in his head and dissolved all knowledge of injury. She shouted again and this time he picked one or two words from the background static in his mind. "Mulder.....knife...." to be continued - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Resurrection (32/32) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - His eyes flew open in time to see a blade arching through the sunlight in dead trajectory for his throat. Survival pushed the feeling back into his arms along with a sharp command. Move. Now. Now. Now. His hand snapped up to catch the knife along the edge of the blade. Metal death stopped four inches above his throat. The skin of his palm split open, turning steel to crimson. He was aware of the blood spilling down his arm, though he did not see it; he saw instead Nicolas' smile, ruthless and gloating, as the man begin to push the blade through the rest of his palm. "Looks like she's mine after all." Another push; more blood. /Don't feel the pain. Feel the hate. Feel it./ "That's something to remember when I slit your throat. That in the end, I owned her. I was the one to break her and you just died in the street like any other animal. How about some last words? Make the moment stretch." The grin, again. "I'm more a man of action." He jerked his palm away and grabbed Nicolas's wrist with his right hand. He twisted the knife while his legs shot up at the same time, knocking the man in the lungs. Nicolas' body sailed back toward the street. Mulder followed the motion of the fall, his hand still locked around the wrist that held the knife. At the moment Nicolas hit the pavement-- hard-- his grip weakened. Only for fraction of a second, but that was more than Mulder needed. He tore the knife from the man's hand. By the time the shock of impact had faded, Nicolas found himself staring up into eyes that held a razor soft whisper of anger. But mostly they held resolve. That frightened him far more than rage. The blade of the knife kissed the skin of his throat, like a teasing lover. Nicolas pulled his fear together into a cracked grin. "What now, hero?" "Take a guess." No smile in return. Not even a flicker of emotion. "Do it. Prove that you're a killer, no matter what your whore says. C'mon, you know it's the only way. You know you want my blood all over your hands. You know you're just like me. You always will be." Mulder increased the pressure of the blade until it coaxed thin bubbles of blood to the surface. "That was always your mistake, Nicolas. I am nothing like you." The knife rested against the throat; vengeance rested within his hands. The blade gleamed silver in the sun. /This what you did to me. Inside my head. Inside my thoughts./ /This is for what you did to Scully. This is for the way her skin shivered in the light before the whip drew blood./ /This is for her./ He brought his hand down in a stiff karate chop to the man's temple. Time, which had slowed to the measure of blood and heartbeat, sped up much too quickly and reality slammed into his body with all the grace of a freight train. The pain returned, dizzying waves of heat and nausea that set the sky to spinning above him and the ground spinning below him. He rolled away from Nicolas, tearing oxygen from the air in great gasps and heaves as full awareness of his injuries returned. With that came a different sort of numbness. He could not convince his fingers to release the knife. His hand clenched it with a stubborn grip of their own free will. No mental command could shake it. He could only sit and stare at the blade, a wicked silver grin underneath a sheath of blood. The end. The end. He had expected relief but instead he felt nothing. A vacuum over his soul. Then a hand closed around his. He flinched, his eyes flashing upward to see a pair of the deepest blue eyes hovering close to his face, so close he imagined he could dive into them and be part of their secrets forever. Soft hands pried his hand open around the knife blade; thin fingers worked their way through his fingers until the grip loosened. The weapon was laid aside; instantly forgotten. He closed his hands around the fingers, pulling them to his lips as her other hand stroked the beard stubble along his jaw. The sunlight framed her face and her hair until she was made of nothing but light and beauty and every time she touched him, a little leaked through her fingertips into him. Making him light as well. He realized that there was no more gunfire. Only silence. The silence of peace. Beyond her, he saw for the first time the circle of people watching, them. Waiting. How could they have been there the whole time and he not even notice? Had his focus been that intense? He glanced back to Nicolas' unconscious form. Intense was not the word. The next wave of pain washed over his mind, and he closed his eyes in a grimace. Her fingers tightened around his, her voice raised in a command despite the fact that the sound barely carried. "We need a healer over here! Now!!!" Her face turned back to him, the eyes clouded with worry though her voice soothed like her touch. "It won't be long, Mulder. Just hold on for me until then. A little space of seconds and they'll fix you up better than ever..." She blinked and a drop of liquid splashed onto his cheek. Her tear. For him. He would tell her not to cry. That yes, he would be all right, whether the healer came in time or not, because she was there and she was turning him into light, and he loved her. Why was it so hard to talk? Why did he have to struggle for words? "Don't....worry..." A flicker of a smile. "After all this I am entitled to a little worry, I think." "Sorry....you....hurt....because...me." Her face sobered in an instant. She laid her hand across his lips as if to erase the residue of the words. "Not hurt because of you. Alive because of you." "Love you." She bent over him until her lips touched his forehead. "Me too." He smiled because the effort of speech quickly turned to a burden he did not wish to bear. Again the darkness called him, not the cold darkness of before, but a warm, familiar shadow like a blanket wrapped around you in the night. The warmth was very much like sleeping in her arms, which was all he wanted to do. To sleep, and to rest, and to know she would be there when he woke up again. She would always be there. His eyelids fluttered under their own weight and began to ease shut. But he remembered there was one last question he had to ask. One thing he had to know. "Scully," "Yes." "Samantha....proud...of this...wouldn't she?" She smiled, and the sheen of tears shone brighter over her eyes than they had a moment ago. He knew they were tears brought by the smile, not working against it. "Yes, Mulder." she whispered, her hand tightening around his. "Samantha is so very proud of this." He nodded, just once. And closed his eyes. The last thing he saw before oblivion was the outline of her smile in the sun. The first thing waiting for him inside his mind was the smile of a little girl on a tire swing, orange and red ribbons tied around her braids as she stretched out her arms to him. As she welcomed him home. * * * * * * * * * * * * * Dana Scully awoke to the sensation of feeling the morning sunlight from the inside out. It was warmth. Contentment. And, for the first time in many mornings of waking up, peace. The events of the previous day seemed distant and blurred, as if she had just dreamed the most terrible, beautiful dream of her life. The details slipped in elusive fragments through her fingers-- sunlight in her eyes, a pain that burned but also cut, a gun to her head. One thing alone remained concrete. The simple relief in Mulder's face as he passed into unconsciousness a forgiven man. She even remembered his last words. /Samantha would have been proud of this, wouldn't she?/ Samantha wasn't the only one. A knock at the door drew her attention, and a moment later Skinner peeked cautiously into the room. "You're awake." "Yes. I'm getting quite used to this coming in and out of consciousness thing. A few more times and I'll be a real pro." "This isn't going to happen to you again." The simple conviction in his statement and in his gaze surprised her. "Ever." He coughed then, and averted his eyes to scan the room. "Too much white in these rooms. Not enough color. That's something I'll change once we get things settled down, but for now, I thought these might do." He brought a vase of daisies from behind his back and set them on the table beside her bed. "These are donations from his ex-Leadership's Nicolas private garden," She caught his grin as he talked. "So you can be assured of the finest quality." "Thank you." Scully brushed her fingers over the softness of the petals. "What does Nicolas think about your invasion of his garden?" "The Leader isn't in a position to think much of anything. My men currently have him in the barracks under heavy guard-- more from the people themselves than from any possibility of escape. He's not going anywhere until he can answer for what he's done." "Has there been much fighting?" "Here and there. Some is still going on, but we're lucky. Only a small contigent of soldiers remained loyal to Nicolas after the people turned." The wrinkles around his eyes deepened. "We've had a few outbreaks of mob violence, so I'm keeping the city under martial law for a while longer. Just until everyone calms down." He sighed. "I waited and waited for this and now that it's hear, I'm not even sure if they're ready for it. If any of us really are--" She placed her hand over his to quiet him. "You are ready, Skinner. And you will make them ready. I believe that." He squeezed her hand. "You always believed." "Not always." She said. "I had to have help along the way. You'll be there for the people just like you were for me. That's how I know this will all turn out okay." She pulled her hand away to fiddle with the daisies. "How's Mulder?" "Fine." he said. "The healing process went well, but he'll be out of it for a while longer. His injuries were more extensive than yours." "What will happen when he does wake up?" "That will be up to you two. You're free to stay here or free to walk away. No obligations. After all this, you've more than earned the right to live your own lives." Another pause, and she took the chance to speak her mind. "I never did say thank you." She looked up from the flowers. "For getting my back through all this. There were some times when I didn't know if I'd make it, especially the beginning, but you were always sane when I needed you to be. I should have told you a long time ago, but I guess I didn't know how." "You told me." A slight grin began to ease the tautness along his jaw. "Maybe you never said the words, but you let me know." The grin stretched into the kind of smile she hadn't seen since they'd come back to the States. "Now get some rest, Scully. That's an order." She smiled. "Yes sir." He closed the door and left her with the flowers and the sunlight. * * * * * * * * * * * * * THE CALIFORNIA ROCKIES THREE MONTHS LATER As an infant sun learned the first words of daylight, a man left his wife in their bed, kissing her once in the twilight, and picked up his pen to write a letter to his sister. It would be the last letter, for after this there would be no more need. No midnight confessions of vodka and dead men. No more hate. Just a goodbye. Dearest Sam, He paused, fingers tapping against the pen as he searched for a beginning. Good-byes were always difficult for him; he preferred to think of reasons not to say them. This farewell, however, was long overdue. She deserved her peace just as he deserved his sanity. At times it seemed the past had been lived by someone else, and he merely heard the story. He still wondered, at times, if it really happened to him. But it did. It was real. The scars on his back, on his mind, on his dreams, proved it beyond all question. The first slivers of sunlight flirted with the edges of the paper as his thoughts began to translate into words. The intangible captured with pen and ink. Today is the last time I will write to you. These letters have been my confessions, my sanity and my hope during this travel through hell, but now I stand among the living again and feel it time at last to give the past its rest. The path has been hard-- a barefoot walk over fire-- but you were always there to guide me when I was alone. There is no doubt in my mind that I would have given up long ago if you had not been there to guide me. My northern star, you led me through the darkest midnight back into the light. It has been three months since I stood on the scaffolding and you kissed me, but I still feel it when I wake up at night. Scully tells me it was a hallucination, but we know better, don't we? I told you many times before how I craved death. When you looked at me that morning, I knew I wanted to live. So you have saved me life, Sam, but much more. My humanity. My soul. My capacity to love and be loved. For this I owe you an infinity of lifetimes, but I can only offer this one. I will live it well, I swear to you. I will not waste a day. You are probably interested in news of the Resistance. We won. Some confrontation was inevitable, but I am glad to tell you that very little blood was shed. Skinner knew exactly when to shoot and when to talk, and the people listened to him. He is a natural leader and his dedication to their cause is obvious, even to the cynics. Right before Scully and I left, they elected him Leader. It was not a job I would have wanted. There is much pain and much to rebuild. The previous Leader, Nicolas, came very close to devastating everything we had worked for. He was tried and found guilty of corruption and unnecessary brutality. The very people he controlled for so long sentenced him to public hanging. For those of us who personally met with his evil-- Scully, myself, Skinner-- the penalty seemed light in comparison. I have asked myself many times why I did not kill him when I had a chance. The knife was in my hands, and I could smell his blood in the air. I could have paid him back in pain for the things he did to me, even more to Scully. But when the moment came, I decided he was not worth a murder. He did not deserve to stain my hands with his blood, or my mind with his screams. Perhaps it would not have been so much murder as justice, but for me the two have been tangled for so long that I feared to risk tangling them again. Just because I have turned from darkness does not mean it has left me. I can feel the violence and the bloodlust waiting, just waiting, in a far corner of my soul. That will be the battle now; to keep it locked away. Permanently. The more human I become, the easier this battle grows. That was in part the reason Scully and I left the Resistance. We need time to remember how to live, to find out who we have become after all this. I would like to think we are unchanged, but of course we are not. It will never be "the way it was." But I do believe it can be better. We are going to prove to anyone and everyone that there is life beyond war and survival and hate. I'll settle if we can prove it to ourselves. She is my wife now. I am more in love with her each time I wake up beside her, each time we touch. That will never change no matter what else around us does. Further change will, inevitably, come. I know this, though right now the world and its uncertainty seems so far away. Someday we'll leave this secret place and go back to trying to save the world. Someday, but not yet. Now is a time to live, not to kill. This is not to say our lives are perfect. The guilt remains a constant, threaded through every day and every thought. The past remains an ever-present ghost in our mind. We still wake in screams, some nights, from the nightmares. The important thing is that we do not wake up alone, anymore. I hold her hand when she sees Pavlov or Nicolas inside her head. She wraps her arms around me when I hear the screams of the men I've killed. Until I die, I will live with those screams. With the knowledge of what I have done. That cannot be changed. But ask me about the future, and that's a different story. I'll be your Don Quixote once again, little sis. I'll believe every impossible thing and hold on tight to every impossible dream. We'll take off, you and me, and tear down every windmill in the land. Only we won't just knock them down. We'll load them up with dynamite and blow those suckers sky high. You and me, Sam. You and me. Always and forever, your loving brother, Fox. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - finis. I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to read this story and come on this little journey with me. It has truly been a pleasure to write and I hope it has been the same for those of you who have read. If you have any questions, comments, or other thoughts, I would be delighted to hear them. My inbox is always open at clone347@aol.com Feedback is worshipped with candles and Mulder clones :) One more round of applause to Suzanna, Lixy, and Do, the Beta-Angels who helped me turn this story from incoherence to fiction. ::claps enthusiastically:: Thank you all for reading. darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Come over to the Dark Side : A Conspiracy of Truth http://members.tripod.com/darkstar_phile/index_m.htm - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -