From: ephemeral@ephemeralfic.org Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2000 12:12:15 -0500 Subject: All That Glitters (complete) by Jssangel Source: direct Reply To: Jssangel@aol.com Title: All That Glitters Author: Jssangel (Jssangel@aol.com) Rating: PG-13 for a bit of gore and implied violence Spoilers: Requiem Classification: V/ANGST Keywords: SCULLY ANGST/ KRYCEK ANGST/ CHARACTER DEATH (but don't be chicken, just read it) MSRish Archive: Gossamer is fine, anywhere else just ask. Disclaimer: I sure didn't think these people up. Feedback is always nice. Summary: Exactly how will Scully go about looking for a man who disappeared into the sky without a trace? What will Krycek's role be. Author's notes: I noticed some (Ok, a LOT) of small things I wanted to change about this story about ten seconds after I originally posted it, and I also noticed several formatting errors which will trip it up when it reaches Gossamer. I have also gotten a couple of letters about the lack of a character death warning. I sort of thought it wasn't necessary, but I can also see the other point of view. I am posting a revised version now to go with my new story "Silence". Both of these take place in the same universe as "Submerged". In terms of a timeline that the characters experience, "Silence" happens before this story, but I think they should probably be read in the order I wrote them: 1)"Submerged", 2)"All That Glitters", 3) "Silence". *********************************************************** The worst ones were the autopsies, the cases where a body was found too damaged to be easily identified, when she actually had to do the autopsy herself to be sure that some local ME didn't miss the clue that would tell her that the body was his. The steady stream of John Does and slightly crazed homeless guys were another matter. After a month she had stopped getting excited when she got a call, and just went to the police station or hospital or shelter to see the man in question, to eyeball him and make damn sure that he wasn't Mulder. The Lone Gunmen had set up a network of informants for her, so that she was automatically notified when any man who fit Mulder's basic description turned up anywhere in the country. It was the first of the programs that they had set up to search for him, and everyone said that it was an important base that had to be covered, but she couldn't help feeling that it was the one least likely to generate results. Which part of Alien Abduction didn't they understand? Obviously Mulder was not indigent in Idaho, or a drunk in a Dakota, or an amnesiac in Arkansas. An Amnesiac in Antarctica, on the other hand... That was the problem. She was only one person (no, two!) and growing steadily more awkward with each passing day. She couldn't go to Tunisia, or Tunguska, or Antarctica. She had sent Skinner, though. He had gone to the South Pole Observatory station, just to guarantee that the mysterious crater that had been formed by the "earthquake" of two years ago hadn't experienced any other activity. He had called it his vacation, and, to her disgust, had refused to take her with him. She shouldn't have told him she was pregnant. When he returned empty handed, she had been certain that there was some clue he had missed or that somehow he had betrayed her, and that Mulder was really down there, glowing with green goo and gestating in time with her. She had regarded him with suspicion instead of gratitude when he stood exhausted in front of her and told her that it was a dead end, and had examined his body for signs of the peculiar bruising that had been there of late each time he had lost his balance between. Her mother, on the other hand, told her that she was being paranoid, that she was foolish and blind to doubt her boss's dedication to the search, and had started to call Skinner "Walter". Not all the time, just often enough to catch Scully off guard. She didn't like it. She didn't like any of the upheavals in her day to day relationships that rippled out across her life, originating from the stone's throw (crashing collapse) of Mulder's disappearance. It was hard enough just dealing with the one intolerable fact. He was missing. She shouldn't also be asked to deal with Skinner transforming into a man her mother called Walter, or with Langly volunteering to be her Lamaze coach. It was probably nothing. Her Mom called everybody by their first name, and Langly was still trying to prove that he was more man than he had been during that Vegas autopsy. Autopsy. Her mind turned to the body that awaited her on the examining table. Had she really taken fifteen minutes to pull on a pair of latex gloves? She approached the table reluctantly, aware of the taste of bile in the back of her throat, a tightness around her heart, and an uncomfortable swishing feeling in her stomach. That wasn't good, not good at all for the baby. She tried to imagine her little guppy swimming happily around her womb, oblivious to the black fear that crawled up her spine, that this would be it, that this body would be the one. It had been found in Oregon, although not in Bellfleur itself of course, or she would have flown there immediately. He had been miles away, actually, dumped in a wooded patch along the side of the coastal highway. He might never have been found at all except for the reports of bright lights in the area. She glanced at the cover sheet of the ME's report. Adult Male. Six feet something. 175 pounds. Age undetermined, but between 20 and 50, not a boy, not an old man. Caucasian, although his skin had been terribly burned, particularly the skin on his hands, precluding the possibility of fingerprint identification. The tuft of hair that remained was brown. His teeth were cracked and broken, poking through the ruined skin of his face, almost as though his jaw had been clamped so tightly that he had crushed them himself, but she could still take a partial dental cast. Mulder still had two of his wisdom teeth. He had refused childishly to have them removed after his first round with the dentist had been a disaster. He must have lost 10 pounds when the first two had been pulled and his face had swollen up. Thank God it had been during July, when the Hoover building was almost deserted, and their case load was light. She had been able to convince him to actually take his pain meds for once... Stop. What was she thinking? That this body was Mulder? It wasn't. His rebellious wisdom teeth would not be sitting in the burned and cracked jaw of the corpse in front of her. She reached forward to lift the sheet from the body when she saw the ME's note at the bottom of the report. In addition to scraps of cotton, denim, leather and rubber (the routine remains of the average American male's clothing), the ME had found something else. It was just a trace, a whisper, but it was a gleaming whisper. A bit of precious metal was trapped against the chest, held in place by the hand that had been seared across its heart. It was a tiny fragment of gold. *********************************************************** Part 2 Krycek found her eventually, trading on their uneasy alliance, sure that there was something different about this body, something that he needed to know. He found her standing silently, head bowed, in the autopsy bay, hovering over the figure on the exam table. He had made his way down the hall silently, aware that although Mulder had been the agent with the stated desire to kick his ass, Scully was armed and more dangerous than he had ever seen her since Mulder had disappeared. There was a time when he hadn't had any feelings about her one way or the other. She hadn't been more than a secondary player to him; he hadn't suffered any undue regret over the part he had played in her abduction, and he hadn't been particularly reluctant to wait for her with a gun in the shadows of her apartment a year later. In the past few months, however, he had found a new image of her and an uncomfortable awe. She hadn't come unraveled the way Mulder had while she was gone. She had chosen to seek him out. She had chosen to propose this alliance over the loud objections of the three Musketeers and the silent fury of her boss. She chose coldly and swiftly, surprising him with how fast she had figured out that Mulder's abduction had created a dangerous power shift in what was left of the Consortium, and that Krycek was almost as anxious as she was to get him back. She surprised him by readily admitting that he would have the access to make sure that she saw things that might be clues, things she might otherwise miss, like the body in front of her now. What really got his attention, though, was that she did not believe that he had arranged for Mulder's abduction in the first place. He held a superstitious belief that she knew exactly the jolt of sickening realization that had hit him when he realized that he had gambled with the wrong playing piece, and that rather than being the new father of the Project he had presided over its abortion. He watched her from the doorway a moment more, curious that she wasn't moving. His breath picked up as he felt a wave of panic rise over him. Was this it? Was this body his? He calmed himself and studied her more closely, looking for signs of the hysteria that would surely be their if... No. Her breathing was steady. "You may as well come in, Krycek." Her voice was cold and clear, running along his nerves and interrupting his train of thought. He should have guessed that she would sense his presence. He gave up the skulking and came into the autopsy bay. She looked up at him, eyes like crystal He saw the same flash in them that he saw every time. It was something he didn't want to understand. It was nothing liked the hatred and betrayal that burned in Mulder's eyes, it was something less connected to him personally, and more terrifying. It was an utter desolation that he could not help but feel somehow sick about, a piece of her soul breaking behind her eyes. Krycek knew all about broken souls and desolation. He shivered and looked away from her. "I just want to make sure that we are really sharing all the data that's available, Agent Scully. That no one is letting their personal agenda stand in the way of the good of mankind". She didn't look back at him, and he shut his mouth. It was a pointless conversation. Mulder was the one who was an expert at exchanging enigmatic comments, and reacting to threats to the whole human race. Scully just wanted Mulder back. That was it. There was a moment of silence. He didn't know quite what to do with a Scully who was not up for a fight. She seemed both sharp and breakable today, and he imagined that if he touched her she would shatter, and lacerate him with her death. "What do you think of this?" He nodded at the table where the charred remains of a body lay broken apart by her autopsy. She hadn't sewed him back up yet - there was something on the inside that held her interest. He was vaguely shocked when he saw her hand move inside the rib cage of the corpse spread open on the table before her. Her face was pale and serene like a painting of an angel, and her hand was rock steady as she lifted something up and held it out. Instinctively he reached out to take it from her, and only recoiled in horror at the last second as he realized that she was holding a human organ in her hand. "Do you know what this is?" He shook his head dumbly, revolted by the sight, unsettled that she could stand there so calmly. "It's the most beautiful piece of machinery. So complicated. The chambers are locked into each other, exchanging their secrets back and forth in pure oxygen whispers, transforming blood from violet to ruby, pushing it through the rest of the body. It's stronger than the most elegant man-made engine, because it can be broken and still keep moving." Her other hand made an abortive movement towards her chest and abruptly he had to blink away the image of her holding her own broken heart together with one hand, while she cradled his" (His? Not His, don't let it be His!) in the other. "It's more perfect, more perfect because it locks secrets as well as blood and breath within its chambers, and pumps the knowledge of those secrets all around the body. Haven't you ever wondered what secrets a man can carry in his heart, Krycek?" He felt as though her voice came from God, asking him that question, and chills swept down his spine. Its him, its him, its him... Her voice had taken on rough edge. He shook his head dumbly, not knowing if he should really edge closer to her, but her voice had dropped and changed to that pure oxygen whisper she had spoken about, and he thought that if he listened closely enough he would hear the dead man's heart talking to him as well. Perhaps forgiving him. Tears were starting to gather in Scully's eyes, but they didn't spill over. They swam across her vision until he was sure she wouldn't be able to see what she was doing, but her other hand was unerring as it reached back to the body on the table and picked something else up, something that flashed briefly in her palm through a red haze. She finally looked directly at him and then the tears did spill, washing over her white cheeks like rain. When she spoke again her voice had changed. The voice of God had become the voice of a scientist, not blurred at all by the silvering tears that tracked endlessly down her face. "This - this heart has not spent the past four months in a weightless environment. The muscle tissue is still too strong, too compact. That wouldn't mean much, not by itself, if this piece of gold didn't tell me something too. It's a piece of a promise, a promise that was broken. Its Billy Miles' wedding ring. And it means that the abductees weren't taken to..." she faltered over the words "...weren't taken as far away as we feared. Mulder may be closer than we think." the end (for the moment)