From: XRae1013@webtv.net
Date: 18 Dec 2002 17:38:47 -0800
Subject: [all-xf] NEW: "Sacrificed" by XRae (1/5)
Source: atxc

TITLE: Sacrificed
AUTHOR: XRae
FEEDBACK: XRae1013@webtv.net...Come on, gimmie a sign!

RATED: NC17 for language, violence/torture, disturbing imagery, and
sexual situations.
KEYWORDS: Major M/S Angst, character death
SPOILERS/TIMELINE: No spoilers but generalized refrences to Scully's
abduction and characters introduced in "Fight The Future". I imagine
this taking place at any point after season 4. Specifically, all key
characters are still among the living...at least for now.

DISCLAIMER: Never had'em. Never will.

NOTES: I'd like to take this opportunity to say a huge thankyou to my
beta-reader...If only I had one! Where do I look? Anyone out there with
some info earns an hour with a NAKED FOX MULDER---courtesy of my REM
state. Tee Heeeee...And for the record, this story is the result of
rain, coffee, and reading "Hamlet" in a bad state of mind. Forgive me.

DISTRIBUTION: Ephemeral, yes. Gossamer, yes. Anywhere else, yes--just
please let me know!

SUMMARY: Scully is his life...and They know it.


SACRIFICED by XRae
-------------------------------
Rain. Cold, bitter rain. Pummeling the ground relentlessly. He looked
out of the window but could barely make out the street below. The
downpour created an almost visible wall, a blurred transparency that
covered everything.

He knew she was down there. And that was enough. He smiled.

The conversation had been short. He answered the phone and heard her
say, "I'm across the street. Can I come up? I...need to see you".

And he knew. She'd never said the words but he knew. It was the way
she'd said "need" that told him...An innocent enough word until laced
with the desire he heard behind it. And the love. Strong, yet so
vulnerable. No, she didn't say the words, not yet, but something in her
voice spoke directly to his heart.

And he was listening.

He could hear profound revelations in the silence that followed, her
quiet breathing speaking volumes. She was ready. God, finally. Ready to
be with him, to give herself to him...and a force so strong blossomed in
his soul he'd later marvel it hadn't allowed him to fly down to meet
her.

It was like being reborn, only into a world Fox Mulder never knew
exisited.

He said simply, "I was waiting for you, Scully.". 
So many truths layered in his shy response. He wanted to weep.

He felt a tremor race through him as she expelled a shaky breath. He
held the phone like a lifeline, waiting for her to acknowledge his
unspoken invitation. In his mind he chanted *I love you. I love you. I
love you*. He hoped she was listening, too.

After a brief pause, she gave him a promise of magic and miracles..."I'm
on my way...".

And it was over. There was silence. Nothing but the sound of the rain.

Merciless.

He raced to his window then, wanting to watch her as she made her way to
him. Afraid on so many levels that he imagined the entire conversation.

He strained to focus through the downpour and then caught movement on
the street below. A shape, hard to make out but distinctly hers. His
heart thundered in his chest. He felt dizzy. Lust and love reaching so
deep inside of him he could feel it in his cells, his marrow.

What happened next would seem very far away to him, so submerged in
euphoria as he was. It was like watching a movie almost, the events such
a brutal contrast to what he was experiencing some part of his mind
refused to accept them.

He saw her make it to the sidewalk in front of his building. And then, a
dark shape suddenly emerged from behind her. Only moments later would it
register as a vehicle and by then it was too late...He watched as it
moved along side her, his comprehension slow, even as the door slid open
and two men emerged. He saw the lift of her head in his direction. She
was looking up, searching for sight of him. She never heard them behind
her.

She disappeared before his very eyes. Taken as he looked on in
bewilderment.

A full minute passed before this tore into his soul and left his mind
reeling. His vision grew dark, fuzzy. His hands and feet went numb. He
could barely breathe as he stumbled on weak legs out of his apartment
and down the stairs, falling onto the street below...

His head connected with the pavement, the skin above his temple
instantly ripping open. But he didn't stop. Drunkenly, he found his
footing and took off on a dead run in the direction of the black van.

It was, of course, long gone...But he still pursued it. Never once
wavering the torturous speed in which he propelled himself forward. He
ran. The hard rain lashing at him, blood and the storm obscuring his
vision.

He ran. And ran. And ran.

Until his body simply gave out and he fell onto the street once more.
Unable to stand, he crawled forward, dragging his betraing limbs behind
him. A few feet and then even this movement was too much for him. He
collapsed.

After that, he did the only thing he could.

He screamed.

But the sound of the rain swallowed his grief...

-------------------------

Exactly one week after her abduction, the tapes began to arrive.

The first few were just footage of her in a small, windowless room,
brightly lit with harsh lights that made the white walls almost glow. It
was done on purpose, of course. So he wouldn't miss any of the terror in
her eyes. So he could see every tear that fell down her beautiful face.

Often they showed her pacing. Or banging her hands against the
unforgiving door demanding answers. With each tape, he heard more
desperation betraying her fierce words. She would pound and yell until
her voice grew raw, until she exhausted herself. Then, she'd simply
crumble, sliding down to the floor to weep. Mulder's name sometimes
audible between her sobs.

By the fourth tape, there was nothing left of his heart to break...

In the beginning, he'd watch the tapes under the scutiny of the other
agents in the room. 
Skinner himself unable to keep his eyes from alternating between the
horror on the screen and the horror of his younger agent's tortured
expression.

Mulder imagined that for them, watching his reactions must have been
like witnessing a fatal accident. Unable to look away from a man dying
before their eyes.

For their part, the FBI was frantic and focused on rescuing Scully from
her abductors. If Skinner had called in all his favors on this, he never
once mentioned it to Mulder. The Bureau was more than generous with
manpower and resources. Despite his personal involvment, he was never
left out of the loop. They consulted with both he and Skinner at every
turn. They performed every test imaginable on the packaging and the
tapes. They interviewed his neighbors, her friends, her family, him.

They found nothing.

And though Mulder refused to sleep, refused to give up, refused to quit,
he knew she would never be returned unless They decided to let her
go...Memories of her eyes taped shut, her bloated, abused body barely
clinging to life, followed him from dead end to dead end.
He began to isolate himself from the others involved on her case, unable
to bare listening to their fading hopes, to hear them talking about her
in the past tense.

But it took the sixth tape to finally push him over the edge.

------------------------

Continued in 2/5...

Disclaimers in part one.
"SACRIFICED" by XRae (2/5)
---------------------------

Like the others, the newest tape had mysteriously appeared out of
nowhere. This time, he'd found it in the trunk of his car.

He sat in the small conference room barely able to breathe as Skinner
pushed the PLAY button. But when the picture came alive, he stood up
immediately and took several unsteady steps toward the screen. Skinner
caught him by the arm. He jerked free.

"Oh God...Oh God."

In front of him, in perfect, brutal focas, a very conscious Dana Scully
lay strapped to a white gurney. Medical equipment, strange, foreign
objects with trays of steel tools attached to them, surrounded her. She
was nude, or appeared to be, her breasts visible, though at her hip
bones a blue surgical blanket kept the rest of her body covered. An I.V.
tube ran from her prone arm to a bag of suspended green liquid.

Her eyes...God, her eyes...Mulder had never seen such terror in them. He
felt hot bile make it way up his throat, gagged as he struggled to keep
it down.

He watched as two figures moved into view. Dressed from head to toe in
white scrubs, masks across their faces, it was impossible to see any
detail of their appearance. They stood on opposite sides of the table,
Scully, pale and trembling, between them.

Her small voice filled the room as she struggled against her restraints.
"Please. Please, don't do this."

Ignoring her, one man busied himself with arranging instruments in
preparation. The other took out a syringe and injected a yellow
substance into her IV.

The effect was immediate. In the middle of her movement, her body went
rigid, then immobile. Her eyes grew wide, agony etched across her
features..."No! No! Owwww, oh God!"

The first man moved toward her, a long steel tube with a hard, sharp
point at its tip, in his gloved hand. She began screaming now as he came
closer and closer to her abdomen with the instrument.

And just as he ruthlessly shoved the point into her navel, her partner's
name tore from her lips in sheer, complete torture...

Mulder fell to his knees. And was loudly, thouroghly sick before passing
out completely.
-------------------------

Helplessness, in and of itself, creates its own type of madness. Twice a
week for the next five weeks, Mulder watched as Scully was subjected to
more horrifiing experiments, each new one somehow more terrible than the
one before it. Through empathy and love, he suffered with her. But in
the end, he knew he could do absolutely *nothing*. She was alone.
Afraid. And he could only watch her. He couldn't ease her pain, he
couldn't hold her while she wept...he couldn't *find* her.

And it was killing him.

Sometimes during the tests, she'd call for him. Other times, she merely
lay there completely still, beaten. Both reactions were like acid on his
soul. After one particularly brutal session, she cried for him to help
her, to find her, to save her...

He ran through the streets, roaring her name.

It took Skinner, three EMTs, and enough sedation to practically comatose
him to finally bring him down. His next four days were spent in a
drug-induced haze, lying in restraints.

It was the closest he'd felt to her since her disappearance.
-------------------------

Once he was able to speak directly to the hospital psychiatrist, he
calmly and rationally explained his behavior. Stress, lack of sleep,
lack of proper nutrition, his inability to help his partner...it had all
contributed to his breakdown. In the context of the current situation,
his reactions had been completely understandable. He felt rested now,
thank you very much. His head was so much clearer. And yes, of course,
he'd be sure to keep his scheduled follow-up appointment with her.

Not for the first time, Mulder was thankful for his background in
psychology. He knew just what to say and how to say it.

He was released.
-------------------------

He faught bitterly with Skinner about returning to the case, more as a
token protest than any real desire to rejoin their efforts. In the end,
he was escorted out of the Hoover building and placed on mandatory
medical leave. He was no good to Scully in his condition, the A.D. had
argued, he should never have been allowed to leave the hospital. And he
knew his boss was probably right. Being taken off the case made little
difference to Mulder, really. He had long since stopped communication
with the other agents. And the tapes he viewed privately in his office
before turning them over to Skinner.

Fox Mulder was not by nature a violent man...but this nonstop misery was
changing him. The images of her torture never, ever left him. His sense
of justice was nothing compared to his hunger for vengence. And with no
place to direct it, his appetite only grew stonger. He became more
reckless. More driven. More lost...

Freedom ultimately only gave him the opportunity to try more unorthodox
methods of searching for her. From one shadow source to another, he
ruthlessly obtained his information and left a bloody trail that led him
straight to the Smoking Man.

CGB Spender had the audacity to claim complete innocence in her
abduction. He liked Agent Scully, he stammered as Mulder forced him
further into the dark hallway. None of his own collegues could find her,
he tried to explain as Mulder shoved the barrel of the gun against the
older man's temple. Fox, something else is at work here, he pleaded as
he heard the telltale click...

Mulder would get no answers from this man.

And Mulder had nothing left to loose.

The son of a bitch deserved it. The bullet hit its mark.
-------------------------

He'd never fully feel the repercussions of the murder. Later, the entire
event, like the beatings that preceeded it, would seem surreal, distant,
and the part of him that had committed the act actually felt like a
seperate person from himself. And perhaps it was. He had only a casual
aquaintence with this other man and so, his questionable methods were
his own. Mulder would step aside in his consciousness and let this part
of him do what he normally could not, would not, do. And when all was
said and done, he was able to disconnect from his own actions. Denial at
its most primative level.

He didn't sleep. Some defence mechanism in his brain had him almost
convinced that he was in a waking REM state, so everything around him
was subject to the possibilty of illusion. Especially the man he saw in
the mirror, when he was able to look at him.

An insomniac dwells somewhere between sleep and awake, a place where
reality takes on dreamlike qualities, where everyday life feels more
like Theater of the Absurd. Mulder now lived in his nightmare
twenty-four hours a day, a strange, cold, Neverland of grief. Yet he
walked through it in a daze.

It was a blessing, really.
-------------------------

continued in 3/5


Disclaimers in part one.
"SACRIFICED" by XRae (3/5)
--------------------------

One night, not much different from any of the others really, he found
his way to her apartment. It wasn't the first time he'd been there. He'd
spent long hours before this searching for clues. Searching. Searching.
Searching...But this time, he was there to enfold himself within her
things, to feel closer to her in the only way he could now.

What he felt went so far beyond merely missing her that to say that's
what drove him would be a mockery. A part of his very soul was
lost...with her, where ever she was. He felt the absence like an amputee
must feel it after the loss of an arm or a leg. Only, for Mulder, this
was no phantom limb. It was a missing organ. A vital one.

He walked numbly from room to room, ending up in her bedroom. A place he
had studiously avoided until now. He stood at the foot of her bed and
felt his keening ache practically consume him. It was just as she'd left
it that cold, rainy night that seemed like a lifetime ago. 
How long had she lay there, tossing and turning? He had a mental picture
of her suddenly, flushed and hot with need, twisting the sheets and
moaning his name...

He closed his eyes, bit hard into his lip. The metallic taste of blood
filled his mouth.

What drove her to him that fateful night?

He could speculate all he wanted to now, but 
the truth was he didn't know, *not for sure*.

Maybe now he'd never know. Maybe he would never hear those words he
wanted so much to believe was she was finally going to say...And maybe
he would never have the chance to love her, touch her, feel her move
under him, hot, slick, ready.

There was so much between them left unsaid. Left undone.

In the deepest, darkest part of night, his suffering reached peaks of
complete dominance over him. He could almost imagine it pumping through
his veins and contaminating every piece of him. He felt lonliness so
acute it vibrated in his bones. And it was then that regret would start
to coil its way around his soul and threaten to squeeze the very life
out of him.

He wanted her. God, he *wanted* her. It was probably no secret to
Scully, but he'd tried to hide it nonetheless. And he succeeded, at
least enough to keep her at arm's length, to deny himself what he was
certain he could not, should not, have. Now, he wondered *why*...?

She was everything to him. So beautiful it sometimes hurt to look at
her.

Why hadn't he told her?

He'd come to her apartment to feel close to her, yet now that he was
there, the intimacy of it felt base and tainted. He had no right. He
felt the loss of something he'd never had, what gave him the right to
mourn it now?

It was his own fault. He'd had so many chances.

Memory began to claw its way to the surface...Touches, looks, soft
smiles, gentle hands...God, the things he struggled constantly to push
away, knowing the pain they would bring in their wake, knowing the power
they had to destroy him. But it was useless to try this time. His
strength was gone, and he ached for her too much to deny himself.

He sank into images as he sank into the softness of her beaconing
mattress.

Instantly he groaned against her pilow. Her scent somehow still
lingered, faint but detectable to his suddenly heightened senses. He was
assulted with a mental slide show on full speed, vivid pictures
flickering across his mind's eye.

It was too much...

Scully...Scully...Scully...

He clutched desperately at the sheets under him, frantic for her, unable
to control the responses overwhelming his body, his mind, the very fiber
of him. He was distantly aware of his hips pumping ruthlessly into the
mattress, his sudden, painfully hard errection seeking its desperate
release. Shame coursed through him, but his arousal was its own beast,
clawing its way to satisfaction amid images of her, the smell of her,
the rush of her...Always her.

Always her.

He grunted her name with each thrust until the friction proved too much.
Then, he could only whimper it as each forceful spasm erupted from deep
within his groin.

And for a few blissful seconds, cradled in her soft bedsheets, he was
held gently by a ghost lover.
-------------------------

continued in 4/5

Disclaimers in part one.
"SACRIFICED" by XRae 4/5
--------------------------

After three long, long months had passed, the final tape was delivered.

He woke from a fitful hour of sleep to find it waiting for him on the
top of his VCR. He didn't question how it got there, he was far beyond
being surprised by Them. After all, shadows could move across a surface
and not make a sound, darkness could creep into any corner and hide
undetected. Those responsible for Scully's abduction were more like
aparitions than real people. These were men who walked through walls.

It wasn't so much the fact that They'd been in and out of his own
apartment right under his nose, it was the location They chose. They
always left the tapes in places where Mulder could find them easily. But
this...this was the first time one was left so brazenly. And the first
time one was left in his home.

They surly knew he viewed the tapes privately in his office before
turning them over to Skinner. It was a practice he stil maintained
despite being taken off the case. Skinner never questioned his reasons
or refused to give him access.

So why deliver it here? To make *sure* he'd watch it at home first?

The implications of this terrified him. But They indeed knew him well
enough to predict his actions...

He knelt on his knees before the television, clad only in old, torn
jeans, his bare feet tucked under him, a peasant worshiping a false
idol, praying silently to the black screen to give him a miracle. To
show her safe. To show him anything. Anything but that awful gurney and 
her pale, shivering form on top of it.

His hands shaking violently, he fumbled the tape into his VCR and
quickly pressed the STOP button, not ready for the picture. He leaned
heavily on the glass in front of him, his forehead pressed to the
screen. Tears flowing freely, he sat motionless for several moments.

God, how easy it would be to just slip into complete insanity now. He
could step over that line without any hesitation and never have to know
the truth. He could live the rest of his days in some semi-catatonic
netherworld, where Scully's image would smile behind his vacant eyes. He
could fall down the rabbit hole and never, ever have to come back up.

But that would be an easy out for him and deep down he knew he couldn't
allow himself such a simple abatement. She was suffering so much more
than he, it was selfish to desert her now. He owed this to her. Whatever
was on the tape was his fault and he deserved to bare witness to it.

He failed her. From the moment that first instrument touched her
exquisite skin, he failed her.

He pushed PLAY.

It's impossible to say what he expected to see, only that had he spent
days in Hell preparing himself for it, the horror there would pale in
comparison...

Again she lay on the gurney, restrained, and for the first time,
completely nude. The room was quiet except for the sound of her harsh
breathing. She was consciously attempting to keep her breaths steady and
was failing miserably. She was so pale, the dark hair at the apex of her
thighs a sharp contrast to the almost translucence of her skin. Never
had she seemed so small to him. So fragile. And stil so beautiful.

He watched as her eyes darted nervously from one instrument to another.
She bit her lip savagely to contain the sudden sob which ripped its way
from her throat. Tears rolled from the corners of her eyes.

He said her name, his voice thick, and brought his fingers to her image.
"Don't be afraid, Scully. Don't be afraid."

As if answering him, he heard her whisper, "Mulder...Oh God, Mulder.
Where are you?"

He felt her words like a blow, bending at the waist from the impact of
them. The pain was crippling but he refused to take his eyes from her
face or remove his hands from the screen. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm
sorry...Oh Scully, I'm so sorry."

She wept as quietly as possible. Desperate, he thought, not to call
attention to herself. Mulder could hardly believe it but she somehow
made herself appear even smaller. And he found himself insanely wishing
with every ounce of his being that she would somehow just will herself
to disappear completely. To escape.

She was his angel. Why couldn't she just fly away?

Reality took its cue to assert itself. A door suddenly opened. The two
masked doctors entered, walking swiftly to the front of the room to
stand in back of her. Scully's eyes widened at the sight of them and
almost immediately she began to struggle. "No! No, please! No more! No
more!"

She tried to follow their movement, craning her neck in an attempt to
see what they were doing but had little success. Her restraints held her
body so tightly, Mulder could see where they dented her skin. God, that
had to be excruciating...

A fresh wave of dread washed over him as he watched one of the doctors
remove a small vial of red liquid from the pocket of his white coat. The
man nodded to the other who then moved to stand behind Scully's head.
She was in a true state of panic now, pulling so hard against her
bindings that thin lines of blood formed where they held her.

The doctor behind her moved his hands to the sides of her head to keep
it stil. She began thrashing, twisting back and forth trying to dislodge
his hold. One particularly hard jerk and his grasp slipped momentarily.
She saw her opening and took it, following his hand as it slid and
turning her head up as far as she could. Quick as lightning she sank her
teeth deep into his hand, the latex glove instantly shredding as she
ripped into his flesh and refused to let go. She was actually growling.

"Bitch! You fucking bitch!", the man screamed from behind his surgical
mask, frantically trying to pull away from her.

Mulder flew to his feet. "That's right, mother fucker! That's right!",
he bellowed at the TV. The sight of the man's blood running down
Scully's chin made him snarl, so hungry for it himself that he could
practically taste it in his own mouth.

Scully was lock-jawwed on the man's hand, like a pitbull in a dogfight.
When the other doctor drew back his fist and punched her across the
face, she never wavered. It took him four hard blows, her cheek
splitting open with his last punch. A two inch gash spilled blood in
every direction as she flung her head away from the source of the
impact, finally forcing her to loose 
her hold.

Once released from her grip, the wounded doctor ran to a sink in the far
corner of the room. He placed his hand under the water, wailing in pain.
She bit him clean through, his flesh now barely clinging to him, the two
fingers which bore most of her wrath were connected only by thin strands
of tissue. He was in complete hysterics, screaming curses at Scully and
helplessly trying to wrap the digits to keep them from falling off
completely. He turned to her, grabbed the nearest sharp instrument with
his good hand and lunged at her.

The sound of the gunshot was deafening in the small room. He'd been in
the middle of "I'm gonna KIll--!" when his mask and entire mouth
suddenly exploded in a projectile of bloody gore. He slumped down, dead
before he hit the ground.

The remaining doctor calmly moved to the sink and placed his gun on the
counter top. He turned the water off and then bent to retrieve the vial
he must have dropped while subduing Scully.

The blast of the gun had left her momentarily shocked into silence. She
was still, watching the man carefully as he came to face her at the foot
of the gurney. She held his hard gaze evenly, her blue eyes fierce.

Mulder was never more proud of her.

It was then that the doctor slowly reached up to his mask and untied it.
Letting it fall to the ground, the face he revealed was neither familiar
nor remarkable. The man's lips curled up in a vicious smile.

Mulder's blood ran cold, one hand covered his mouth. "Oh fuck..."

And he watched in horror as the doctors features morphed into those of
the Alien Bounty Hunter.

Scully reacted immediately, the fight draining out of her. Her head
slumped down against the gurney and she literally moaned her despair.
"Oh my God..."

Without words or preamble, the bounty hunter moved to stand beside her,
grabbing a fistful of hair to bring her head up as far as the restraints
would allow. His grip was unforgiving, unyielding. Scully yelped in pain
and as soon as her mouth was open, he tugged her head back and shoved
the small glass vial to her lips. Reflex took over and she swallowed the
offending liquid before she had time to react.

He watched to make sure the fluid went down, then dropped her head and
turned He went to the remains of the doctor on the floor and took the
dead man by the colar of his blood stained coat. Without looking back at
her, he took the corpse and left the room.

Now alone, Scully looked around, bewildered.

Mulder continued to watch the screen, all of his senses on alert. And
for one beautiful moment...nothing happened.

She relaxed marginally. So did he.

Then she coughed.

Then she coughed again. And again.

Her eyes grew wide as she gulped in a large lungful of air. She winced,
no sooner taking in the breath before being forced to expel it in a deep
bronchial bark.

Followd by another. And another.

These gave way to a fit of harsh coughs that never seemed to end.

She grew frantic for air, wheezing in a small amount, only to choke on
it. This time, when she coughed again, a tiny spray of red...foam...flew
from her lips.

Mulder dropped to his knees before the image, watching in terror as she
opened her mouth wide and a sudden, large stream of it began to bubble
up from her throat and flow down the sides of her cheeks. Trying
desperately for breath, she only managed to suck the substance further
into her airway.

Her pale skin grew red as fire, her eyes large and bulging.

With sick, terrible certainty, Mulder now understood the significance of
the tapes. They were never meant to be anything more than a testimonial.
He and Scully were the focus of a macabre documentry on the destuction
of their spirits, made to place them exactly where They wanted.

And the curtain was about to fall.

"Oh God, Scully."

*Scully*

The sound of his braying sobs echoed through his apartment, but all
Mulder heard were her strangled, watery coughs. Each one tore into him,
slicing into his mind with the cold precision of a scalpel, searching
through the folds of his brain for that one small piece of sanity and
beginning to cut it away.

She was blue from lack of oxygen now. He moaned in agony as she fought
once more to drag in a breath. And failed. "No, Scully...Please, no.
Please. Please..."

She began to convulse. He beat his hands against the screen and
screamed.

And then...just like that...she grew stil. Mulder froze. Several long
moments passed and all he could do was stare at her prone image in
shock. Red foam slowly trickled from her nose. Her mouth was slack, her
eyes open.

And she was looking right at him. Or seemed to be. Her gaze was vacant.

"Scully?" The sound of his voice startled him. He touched the glass. He
touched her. "Hey, Scully...Hey...". He tried to smile at her, his mouth
twisting into another sob. "Come on, Scully, don't fuck with me. Don't
fuck with me!". He used both hands to knock frantically at her image.
"Come on, Scully, cut it out! Please, God. Scully, cut it out!"

He stood suddenly, turning his back to the screen. His hands flew to his
scalp. He grabed great handfuls of hair and began to chant, "No. No.
No...", softly at first, but growing in volume and desperation with each
repetition.

He took a couple of unsteady steps away from the television and then
stopped, at a complete loss as to what to do.

His mind began to lurch...

Wait. No. This couldn't be right. This was...This was...Wait! He was
stil asleep on his couch! That was it! This was a nightmare! And any
second now, he was going to wake up. Wasn't he?

He was going to wake up.

He was going to wake up, God damn it!

He pulled at his hair violently, his hands coming away with clumps of
strands twined through his fingers. His scalp burned.

He *was* awake.

And if he was awake, then...

Then...

He twisted toward the screen and when his eyes connected with her
lifeless strare once more, he began to whimper, a sound born of
complete, absolute devastation.

She was dead. She was dead!

His legs buckled beneathe him and he went down instantly, not even
registering the pain of his knees connecting with the hardwood floor. He
brought himself up enough to reach out to her, his fingers brushed
across the glass.

He drew them back. And then, his body trembling, he used every ounce of
strength left inside of him to bring his lips to the screen. He kissed
her image. "I love you, Scully. I love you. 
I love you, baby. I love you..."

He didn't stop. Not even when the tape ended and the screen turned to
static.
------------------------

Hours passed. Or maybe just minutes. There is no true concept of time
when your world has just ended. Or at least Mulder didn't think so.
He sat on his couch. His apartment dark and quiet now. A candle
flickered on his coffee table. Had he lit that? He couldn't really
remember. His existence had narrowed down to two objects, both of which
lay before him offering their own distinct forms of solace.

One of them was Scully's picture. The only one he had. He remembered
lifting it from a stack of crime scene photos, slyly tucking it into his
trenchcoat. She looked so in her element, in the process of snapping on
a pair of her ever present latex gloves, crouching down to study
something on the ground, a look of deep concentration on her face.

The soft light danced across her image. If he closed his eyes just far
enough, through the distortion of his tears, it almost came to life. He
could almost imagine her turning toward him, "Mulder, come take a look
at this..."

He tried to concentrate on seeing only the picture in front of him, and
not the horror he saw when he closed his eyes...His Scully was full of
life. *Full of life*! She wasn't that pale, battered form on that
fucking gurney. How long ago was the tape recorded? Was she stil there,
on that table, slowly decomposing for no one to find...?

He shook his head violently to dispell the image. He was slipping. Fast.

With every breath he took, dementia threatened to claim him and God only
knew if he would ever venture this far into reaity again once it did. He
couldn't hide away in his mind while she went...on...without him.

He could find her now. He knew where to look.
And he was wasting time.

It seemed to him a most natural conclusion. Their fate was intertwined.
It always had been. 

And he wasn't about to question method now.

He reached for the second object before him. His eyes never wavered from
her picture. He lifted his gun and opened his mouth.

Three...

Two...

One...

Peace.
-------------------------

continued in 5/5


Disclaimers in part one.
"SACRIFICED" by XRae 5/5
-------------------------

It was hot. Hotter than hell.

Though the plants were high, the crop the man waded through did little
to lessen the glare of the beating sun overhead. If anything, it made
him feel more oppressed by the heat. But he squelched his discomfort and
made his way through the rows. A corn maze in the middle of the fucking
desert, these guys were priceless.

The object of his excursion finally came into view as he reached a small
clearing. He walked toward the older man whose head lifted in
recognition when he saw him. "Ahhhh, Alex. I trust you are enjoying our
beautiful weather this afternoon?", the man asked, his accent heavy and
the easy mirth of the powerful twinkling in his eye.

"How can you stand this?", Alex Krycek asked as he made his way to stand
beside the other man.

"Conditioning, young Alex, conditioning.", Strughold replied taking off
his hat and removing a hankerchief from his pocket to swipe at his brow.
His expression grew serious as he placed his hat back into place. "You
didn't travel all this way just to discuss the heat, did you?"

"Actually no, I didn't. I thought you'd be pleased to hear that our
former colleague has met with a rather unsightly end. Mulder must've
been seriously fucked, he didn't show the old man one ounce of mercy,
blew his whole face right off."

"Excellent. Excellent." Strughold replied. He turned his head up to the
hot sun and sighed. "He behaved just as predicted."

Krycek nodded and watched him carefully. "He's more predictable than
Pavlov's dog. The last tape was delivered yesterday."

This caught the other man's attention immediately. "And...?"

Krycek looked down, then to the horizon to avoid Strughold's steady
gaze. "They haven't found him yet."

Strughold watched the younger man with something that almost looked like
sympathy. Almost. If he were truly capable of feeling such a thing. "It
was necessary, Alex."

Krycek fought to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "You knew what
sending him that tape would do to him. It would've been more humane to
just let me shoot him"

"Perhaps, yes."

Krycek shook his head. Mulder had been misguided, true, but a man of
conviction, he at least deserved to die at the hands of someone who
respected him. Not the way he went. "All this drama just to push him
into killing Spender? To drive him outta his mind?"

"Not entirely, no. The outcome of events has eliminated our most serious
obstacles. Our smoking friend is no longer of any concern and Mulder can
no longer interfere in our plans. You know, just as I do, that Mulder
was the greatest threat to the Project."

Krycek looked away. He wasn't sure why he felt such derision. He *did*
know that Mulder at some point would have to be silenced. It was just
the method Strughold had used to acomplish this. No matter what the man
said about necessities, Krycek knew he had taken an inordinate amount of
perverse pleasure in slowly unraveling Mulder at the seams. And then
there was Scully...Jesus, look at what they'd done to her. Mulder was
probably the lucky one.

A shudder ran through him. Not for the first time, Alex Krycek was glad
to be in this man's good graces.

He planned to stay there.

Strughold broke the silence. "What about the merchandise?"

"Already taken care of."

Strughold nodded his approval and began to make his way back into the
canopy of corn stalks. "Very good. Very good."

Krycek stared after him. "Fuck" he whispered to nothing in particular...
-----------------------

He'd never seen anything like it. And 27 years as an ER doctor had
exposed him to some pretty insane shit. He looked at the test results in
front of him and shook his head again in utter disbelief.

What the hell was this stuff? The chemical make up didn't seem
elementally possible for one thing and the effect it had obviously had
on the patient wasn't humanly possible. Or wasn't supposed to be. Yet
there it was in black and white.

How was he supposed to explain this to his med students on rounds?

For lack of a better definition, the substance pumped from the lungs was
carbonated blood, no other way to put it. Carbonated blood! What the
hell? Fizzed like cherry soda and foamed like rootbeer. And somehow it
had sustained oxygen in the bloodstream and kept the patient alive
without the need to draw breath for God knows how long. Crazy, crazy
shit.

More to add to the mystery of his newest Jane Doe. It wasn't enough that
she appeared out of thin air behind curtain four, comatose, and without
clothing or ID. Not to mention the fact that she was also fully hooked
up to an IV and food tube no one at the hospital claims to have
inserted.

He was baffled.

He stood at the end of her bed, openly staring at her in astonishment.
Something major had happened to her, and he hoped that, despite the
facts in her chart telling him it was next to impossible, she would wake
up and shed some light on all of this.

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Wait a second, had he imagind that?...

Her eyelids fluttered. Holy shit!

He went to her side at once. "Miss? Miss? Can you hear me? Can you open
your eyes?"

A long moment passed before she responded, her eyes finally opening to
reveal a dazed blue visage.

And in a quiet voice she spoke one word:

"Mulder...?"

END 

Remember, it's just *fiction* :) Send feedback and help save the whales,
save the humans, save the universe...Yeah ok, just save my fragile
ego...XRae1013@webtv.net


"All we are is dust in the wind, dude."---Ted Theodore Logan

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