From: Sarah Parsons <se_parsons@yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 10:13:22 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: xfc: NEW:Substitutes Part 0 of 7 (NC17)
Source: xfc

From: Sarah Parsons <se_parsons@yahoo.com>


TITLE: Substitutes (Sequel to Unnatural Tendencies and
Prone)  Part 1 of  7
AUTHOR: Sarah Ellen Parsons
E-MAIL ADDRESS: se_parsons@yahoo.com
DISTRIBUTION: Archive wherever you want, just keep my
name attached.
SPOILER WARNING: The whole ball of wax, especially
anything to do with Krycek and the mytharc.
RATING:  NC-17 Egregious boinking. Adult language and
situations.  General disturbing content.
CLASSIFICATION: A little something for everyone
(twisted). Story, UST and RST for everyone, A for
Scully, Mulder, Krycek, Skinner, the Gunmen are in it,
Scully/Krycek, Scully/Mulder and Mytharc.
KEYWORDS:  Angst by the bucketload with some
resolution.
THANK YOUS: To everyone who waited so patiently while
I finished this bugger.  To Punk for diligently
beta-reading even if she doesn't believe in the
material, to Ripley, who encourages me to finer levels
of Krycek smut all the time, to Nikki, who has read
every word I've ever sent her and promptly returned
excellent advice, and to Livia Balaban, for, well,
being there, being my pal, and telling me to get
Mulder off his ass.
SUMMARY: Scully almost gets killed and decides to make
some changes in her life.

NOTE: Ok, I said I wasn't going to write anything
after Unnatural Tendencies.  Then I saw "One Son",
then I listened to Madonna and mopped my kitchen
floor.  And cleaned the catbox.  And somewhere in
there, this story was born.  I think it should wrap
things up a little.  This is the end of this
particular series.  Poor Krycek.  Poor little bunny. 

Feedback welcomed at: se_parsons@yahoo.com.

DISCLAIMER: None of the characters are mine. Like
Chris Carter would ever allow this.  Like I could earn
money for writing it.  I'm broke and can barely afford
to WATCH Fox let alone have anything for them to take
if they sue me.

Not songfic, but I was listening to Madonna and the
Who when I thought of it and stole the title.




Substitutes

By Sarah Ellen Parsons


	The phone on Mulder's desk rang for the third time. 
He pulled his head out of the bottom file drawer where
it seemed Spender had stored all of the real X-Files
that had come in during his tenure, and answered it.
	"Turn on CNN International, Agent Mulder," the voice
was mechanically generated and sounded as though it
were coming from a very long distance away.
	"Why should I?"  Mulder asked reflexively, wondering
if it could be some member of the Syndicate that still
remained at large after some miracle escape from the
burning at the hangar.  The DNA typing still wasn't
finished on the burned bodies from  El Rico Air Force
Base, but C.G.B. Spender's remains still hadn't been
located, nor had Fowley's. And with Jeffrey Spender's
murder, there were only two names that immediately
sprang to mind.  Unless it had been Krycek, but why
would he bother? There were only three unidentified
bodies remaining at the base, one of them a child's. 
Mulder had to believe Fowley and Spender were still at
large.
	"It's information you need to know,"  the voice said,
and then the caller hung up.  The call had been far
too short for even the beginnings of a trace.
	Mulder got up from his desk and turned on the TV he
kept in the office mostly for the purpose of viewing
videotapes.  They had cable hookup.  He made sure it
was connected and began surfing through the channels
until he got to CNN.  That blonde woman announcer with
the strange looking eyes was reading the news, file
footage of familiar-looking charred corpses running
behind her, the location listed as Verviers, Belgium.
	"...the area around the corpses is strangely
unaffected.  While it is scientifically unlikely, mass
spontaneous human combustion has been suggested by
some theorists.  The Belgian army has secured the site
and has released this film of the burn victims. They
are attempting to identify the bodies with medical
records."
	"Oh shit,"  Mulder said, as the newscaster moved on
to the latest round of fighting in the Balkans, hand
still clutching the remote.  He'd been so mesmerized
by the news report that he hadn't heard the tell-tale
sounds of high heels clacking on the floor tiles to
herald the entrance of his partner.
	"Oh shit, what?"  Scully asked, with a worried frown.
	"Um, bad news from around the world,"  Mulder gulped,
his fevered brain running over the options of "tell
her/not tell her" and not liking the results of any of
the deliberations.
	"What kind of bad news?"  Scully asked.  "It's not
killer bees is it?  They're not starting colonization
anyway?"
	"Um, no,"  Mulder said carefully, searching her eyes
to find the best way to break it to her.
	"What is it then, you're white as a ghost,"  Scully,
stepped forward and put a hand to Mulder's forehead. 
"You don't have a fever, so it has to be whatever you
saw on TV.  I know it was the news and not one of your
videos that aren't yours, so what is it?"
	"Mass burning in Belgium,"  Mulder said, taking her
hand in his and lowering from his forehead.  "Just the
kind we're used to."
	"Who?  I thought they'd gotten all of the members
except for C.G.B. Spender and Fowley,"  Scully said,
not taking her hand back and starting to look a little
glassy around the eyes.  Mulder didn't often notice
things like that, but he thought Scully was looking a
little freaked.
	"Krycek's missing, too, remember,"  Mulder said. 
"But I don't think he was ever at the hangar in the
first place.  But this was a lot of people, Scully. 
Hundreds of bodies."
	"Like in Pennsylvania,"  Scully said hollowly, and
her attention drifted from Mulder's face over to the
TV screen, where bodies were being carried away in
bags after some meaningless atrocity or another.
	"Yeah, just like that," he said, wishing she'd look
at him again.  "Look Scully, it's bad.  But it doesn't
have to be as bad as all that.  I mean, this one was
in Europe.  They're probably just doing a clean up, on
the people who were leftover after the attacks in
Russia and Pennsylvania.  I'm sure we don't have
anything to worry about."
	"Why were you watching the TV, Mulder?"  Scully
asked, looking at him again, with a frown of
concentration.
	"Um," he panicked again, but he didn't know how to
lie to her about something that affected her so
directly. "I got a phone call."
	"From whom?"  Scully asked.
	"I don't know,"  Mulder said.  "I figure it was
someone who's voice I'd recognize. The caller was
taking some care to disguise him or herself.  Using a
mechanical voicebox."
	"But you did it anyway,"  Scully said.
	"All they did was tell me to turn on the news,
Scully,"  Mulder told her, giving the hand he still
held a warm squeeze.  "It's not like they asked me to
go out and meet them at the old ravine."
	"But you would have gone anyway, even if that was
what they'd told you,"  Scully sighed.  "Like you said
Mulder, with the destruction of those people at the
hangar, all bets are off.  We don't know what's coming
or who it's coming from, and there are enough people
left out there with grudges and scores to settle that
things are going to be very very dangerous from now
on.  I know that you didn't want to tell me this, but
keeping information from me is only going to weaken
us.  It always has, but now more than ever.  Can't you
see that?"
	"I just don't want you to worry yourself to death
over something that probably won't affect us in any
way,"  Mulder said sincerely.  "That was the only
reason I thought I might keep it to myself.  The only
reason, Scully."
	"Whatever,"  Scully told him, and attempted to regain
possession of her hand, but Mulder held it tightly.
	"Like you said, Scully, things are going to be very
very dangerous from now on and I don't want you
marching around here pissed off at me when I'm just
trying to help you out,"  Mulder told her.
	"What's with the PC language all of a sudden,
Mulder?"  Scully asked.  "You know you weren't
'helping me out'.  You were doing what you always do,
trying to protect me by not telling me what I need to
know.  And we know how well that's worked out in the
past on so many occasions.  You can trust Diana Fowley
while she's selling you out to C.G.B. Spender and all
the rest but you can't trust me to handle information
that might affect my life, or end it.  I guess that
just goes to prove that the more things change the
more they stay the same."
	Mulder let go of her hand and Scully stalked across
the office to the desk that had been Fowley's and was
now hers.  She sat down and began doing what he'd been
doing before he'd gotten the phone call, going through
Fowley's desk to see what had really been going on
with the X-Files during the time they'd been in exile.
	Mulder didn't know what to do about Scully or what
she'd said, but he did know that trying to talk to her
now would be like talking to a brick wall.  She was in
her obstinately angry mode and it was no use trying to
deal with her until the mood passed.  And the fact
was, she'd been nothing but angry with him ever since
they'd gotten the X-Files back.  Despite his
explanation of what C.G.B. Spender had told him about
the project and its purpose and what those old men had
been trying to do all of those years, Scully didn't
seem to care.  She could view it intellectually with
reason, but it didn't change the way she felt about
any of it.  But then, she'd been one of their
experimental subjects and he hadn't.
	He figured that she must feel toward them like the
Rhesus monkeys felt about the people from the CDC.  It
didn't matter why it had been done.  Just that it had
been done.  And he could understand that, too.  He
just couldn't understand it in Scully, always the
rational scientist, always trying to get a view of the
big picture.  But when it was finally explained, she
only cared about one detail - the one that affected
her.
	But then Scully had proven amazingly contradictory
about other things as well.  Like her fixation on
Fowley's 'betrayal' of him.  He didn't see a betrayal.
 She'd simply been working to save the world as she
saw fit, the same way his father had been his whole
life.  Did that make her evil?  He just couldn't be
certain any more.  But he knew Diana.  He knew she
didn't want to hurt him, to hurt anyone.  It just
wasn't her.  But Scully refused to see it.
	He wasn't really certain how to deal with a Scully
that was emotional all of a sudden.  Or rather, he
wasn't certain how to deal with a Scully that actually
acted on her emotions, even if she continued to deny
that she had them.
	He'd seen it from her before from time to time.  Most
notoriously just before the incident with Ed Jerse.
And he knew that the things he did affected her when
she was like this.  But he'd never really been able to
work out the complex geometry required to calculate
how his actions were going to affect her.
He could deal with her when she was being cold and
rational.  But when she was acting on her deeply and
purposefully hidden feelings - Mulder found himself at
a loss.  Despite the years of profiling.  Despite the
years of association.  Scully played things
notoriously close to the chest.  Almost like she had
something to hide.  And he knew her.  He knew she was
honest, that she had no secrets.  But she acted like
she had something to hide.  Now more than ever.  He
could see the beginnings of it just under the surface
sometimes, when she forgot to be so guarded.  But the
clues were so veiled he still had no idea what it was.
 Just that it was Something.  Something she felt she
had to keep from him.
	And it hung there between them like another cancer.
	And it made him feel like a Medieval Barber worrying
about her bodily humours when he really should have
been ordering a CAT scan.
	Mulder went back to his desk.  Might as well get some
work done.  Any fun the day might have promised had
just been shot to hell.
	
	Scully was grateful when five o'clock came and she
was able to leave the office for home.  Mulder had
sulked the rest of the day and while they'd gotten a
lot accomplished, it hadn't been any fun at all.  But
then, things seldom were any more.
	She had thought things were looking up when they'd
been given their crap assignment, in some cases
literal crap, because he'd seemed to view them as in
the mess together at least.  It wasn't just Mulder and
his X-Files with Scully tagging along any more.  It
had been Us vs. Them for once.  And Scully had been
sure she was one of Us, for one of the few times in
their partnership. 
	But after she'd been shot everything had changed
again.  It was as if, by accepting that one
assignment, even though she'd assured him that it was
only that one and had meant it, that Mulder had begun
separating himself from her.  There was no Us any
more, just Mulder and Scully, who had been assigned as
partners at the FBI.
	She had felt him slipping away again, and she hadn't
known how to react.  Without the X-Files she was
entirely dependent on how he felt about things, how he
felt about her, to keep them as Us.  But she knew
about that.  She knew exactly how he felt.  He'd
proven it, so very recently.
	He'd proven it during all the madness with Cassandra
Spender and the announcement of imminent Colonization.
 He'd been in the car with Fowley, speeding to join
the men who'd taken his sister and he'd spent years
trying to stop.  Scully wondered what would have
happened if she hadn't called him then.  If she hadn't
known where they were taking Cassandra.
She didn't like to think it, but often it came upon
her in the middle of the night.  The scene played
before her just as if she'd really seen it somehow,
Mulder and Fowley, hand in hand in the hangar, waiting
for Alien deliverance with the Old Men and their
families while the rest of the world unknowingly
awaited death.  While Scully awaited death, or
whatever the Aliens had planned for the rejects of
their experiments.  Slavery perhaps?  Or maybe food,
though they'd seen no evidence of that.
She thought about it until she wept.  She thought
about Mulder and Fowley.
He'd even called her once when she'd been crying.  On
a Saturday night, when she'd been alone and had felt
she could indulge herself.  Just one of his random,
late night musings. And she'd had to lie.  To tell him
that she'd just run up from the laundry room and that
was why she sounded like she was sobbing.  She was
merely out of breath.
He'd bought it.  He always bought it when she lied to
him.  Because he didn't want to know.  He didn't want
to think what else it might be.  That she might have
feelings about things.
While Mulder, himself, was a veritable fountain of
feelings that sprayed out in all directions wetting
passers-by, he seemed to find it disturbing in others.
 If she cracked a smile or frowned unexpectedly, he
was disturbed by it.  In a way, it helped her keep her
guard up against him.  It helped her be strong under
the onslaught of his own emotional firestorm.
Like just a few months before when he'd told her that
he loved her.  He'd been on drugs, of course, and she
hadn't believed him certainly, but she had thought
about it from time to time.  And thinking had made her
weaken, let her guard down slightly.  She'd thought
that perhaps there had been some feeling there.  She'd
opened herself up to him.  Opened herself up only to
be hurt, it seemed.  Because now it was proven just
how wrong she'd been.  
She didn't want to think about it now, so she kicked
off her shoes and turned on the television, changing
it to the news channel to see if she could pick up any
more details about the incident in Belgium.  She had
some salad in the refrigerator and she was too
disheartened to really cook anything, so that would be
her dinner.
Something about basketball on the news, so she went
into the kitchen and ripped up some greens in a bowl,
smothering it with some really very decent fat free
Italian dressing.  She choked on a piece of raddichio
as she emerged from the kitchen and caught sight of
the familiar burn victims on the television, but this
was somewhere in a desert, with the sun beating
brightly down on miles of sand.  A caption came up on
the screen that said Tunisia.
So the Rebel Aliens had cleaned out that Syndicate
stronghold as well.  But there were a very large
number of bodies spread around the burned domes and
the fire-blackened corn.  It sort of reminded her of
the scene in Star Wars when Luke returns to his aunt
and uncle's farm to find them dead and the buildings
burned.  Except for the large number of bodies.  She
couldn't imagine that all of those people had worked
there.  With modern agricultural methods it took very
few people indeed to grow corn in the middle of the
desert.  And again, there were hundreds of bodies. 
She didn't doubt that if they bothered to autopsy them
they'd find chips in each of the necks.
So the burning in Belgium was the final cleanup?
Damn Mulder and his wishful thinking, anyway.  Now she
was going to have to find some way to keep herself
from answering the inevitable call and escaping the
fate of the others like her, innocent victims of the
Invaders and their human collaborators.

"Well, Langly, do you have anything yet?"  Mulder
asked for what was probably the nineteenth time since
he'd reached the Gunmen's house with his problem and a
big bag of Thai takeout.
"No, Mulder, how many times do I have to tell you?" 
the blond haired Gunman gave him a dirty look through
the thick black rims of his glasses.  "Stats take time
even with computers because humans have to define the
variables.  We're working on it. Why don't you go surf
the net some more."
"Because I'm not getting anywhere with that,"  Mulder
said impatiently.  "We've already got the hard info
from the Mufon groups and every fucking rumor from
everywhere including last night's Art Bell broadcast. 
I've got everything there is.  It's time to crunch."
"Well, you might be ready, but I'm not, and I'm the
programmer, so get out of my hair, Man,"  Langly
snapped back.  "I'll tell you when it's time."
"I'm sorry,"  Mulder said.  "But I have to know how
many more of these burnings there are going to be, so
we can make sure they don't come after Scully again."
"We know that,"  Byers said, handing Mulder his
seventh cup of coffee.  Byers had switched what was in
the pot to decaf two hours before and Mulder hadn't
noticed, so he figured he would get away with this
one, too.  "None of us wants anything to happen to
her."
"The woman I love, I should say not!"  Frohike said,
coming out of the kitchen with nuked leftover Pad Thai
that Mulder had brought for Byers.
"I was wondering, Mulder,"  Byers said, after a
calming sip of his own decaf.  "Why isn't Scully here
with you?"
"Because she doesn't know I'm doing this,"  Mulder
said looking into his own cup, and the Gunmen
exchanged significant looks while he wasn't watching. 
"I... I just don't want her to worry if she doesn't have
to.  She's been through enough.  And... and I'm starting
to think that maybe she doesn't trust me any more. 
That she doesn't think that I'm trying to help her. 
That it's me trying to control her instead.  She said
as much earlier today.  I want to prove that I meant
what I said.  You know?"
"We understand, Mulder,"  Frohike said, setting down
his fork and pounding Mulder's bicep in a friendly
fashion.
"But, seeing she said she wanted to be included, don't
you think maybe you ought to include her?"  Byers
suggested.  "Maybe the problem is that you've both
been doing so much investigating on your own.  I mean,
we hardly ever see the two of you together anymore. 
It didn't used to be like that."
"No Man, it's like the last three times I saw Scully
she came over here alone to have us run checks on
Diana and stuff,"  Langly chimed in, still typing code
into the computer.
"She's obsessed with Diana,"  Mulder said angrily. 
"Or she's obsessed with this idea she has about Diana
betraying me and the fact that I know Diana to be
good, just like you all know her to be good, doesn't
mean anything."
"But Diana was working for them, Mulder,"  Frohike
said around a mouth of noodles.  "The whole time she
was gone and probably before.  Probably the whole time
she was at the Bureau.  We found indications of that,
nothing definitive."
"You sound like Scully,"  Mulder told him, folding his
arms across his chest in unconscious self-defense.
"Or Scully sounds like us,"  Byers commented. 
"Mulder, we ran the checks.  Fowley looks dirty.  Or
if not dirty than at least involved in a very active
way.  And for years.  We like her.  It's not that we
don't.  But, doesn't it mean anything to you that you
might have been just another one of her assignments?"
"That's ridiculous!"  Mulder snorted.  "What evidence
do you have of that?"
"This is going to sound totally rude, and I don't mean
it to be,"  Frohike said.  "But why else would she
choose you?  Out of all the guys in the Bureau.  I
mean, Diana's hot.  She could have anybody.  Why you?"
"Because she feels the same way as I do about things. 
She was always interested in the paranormal, in the
X-Files,"  Mulder protested, and he didn't have to see
the looks on their faces to realize just how lame that
sounded in light of their suggestion.
"Mulder.." Byers began only to have Mulder interrupt.
"So you're all on her side then?"  he asked looking
from one to the other of their faces and not liking
what he saw there at all.
"Mulder, this isn't about sides, it's about facts," 
Byers protested.  "It's about evidence.  While we all
like Diana and we'd all like her to be one of the good
guys, the evidence says otherwise.  She was one of the
ones involved in the experiments.  Why else would she
have visited all those Mufon groups?  She was checking
up on the victims, Mulder.  The victims like Scully. 
Can't you understand how Scully wouldn't want you to
trust her?"
"They almost killed Scully, Man,"  Langly spoke up,
fingers still busy on the keyboard.
"I could never go to the hospital for her again after
seeing that,"  Frohike said softly, looking away so
they wouldn't see the tears that came every time he
remembered what she'd looked like covered in those
tubes and wires.  Every time he remembered what it had
been like knowing she would surely die.
"Diana didn't do that,"  Mulder protested.
"Even if she only did the follow-up, Mulder,"  Byers
said, gesturing slightly with his coffee cup.  "That's
bad enough.  At least it's a reason for Scully to feel
that way.  A real-life, honest-to-God, reason.  What
reason do you have to trust Diana?"
"Other than the fact that she was your chica?" 
Frohike asked.
"Sure. Fine.  Diana's evil.  She's the devil with a
soul as black as hell. Scully's right.  I'm wrong. 
I'm deluded.  I'm fucking irrational!  What the fuck
do you guys want?"  Mulder ranted slamming down his
coffee hard enough to spill most of it out of the cup.
"We just want you to look at it rationally, Mulder," 
Byers went on in his usual quiet way.  "We just want
you to consider the facts."
"You don't have to admit anything, Man,"  Langly said.
 "Just look at it."  Then he stopped typing.  "Hey,
I'm done.  We can run the numbers now."
The men crowded around Langly and the monitor as the
processors crunched out the data.



=====
Webpage updated at http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Portal/9943

"Pictures of perfection as you know make me sick and wicked."
Jane Austen, 23 March 1817


Substitutes Part 2 of 7
Disclaimer in Part 1

Scully considered herself for a moment as a werewolf. 
Mulder would love that.  But, with the chip in her
head, she could at any moment be entirely out of her
own control and in that of the Invaders.  So she had
to take precautions, not so that she wouldn't hurt
other people, but so that she wouldn't be hurt.
The easiest way seemed to be chaining herself to her
bed.

She didn't remember how she'd gotten to
Pennsylvania the last time, she didn't remember much
of anything except hearing herself on the tape after
hypnosis talking about things she'd supposedly seen. 
She hoped that the Aliens could only spur automatic,
normal actions in their victims.  It wasn't normal to
have to unlock handcuffs to let yourself out of bed,
so Scully hoped that would keep her safe.

She used Krycek's method, wrapping duct tape around
the cuff so it wouldn't scratch her headboard, and
chained her left hand securely to two of the headboard
rails.  As she lay there trying to sleep she could
almost wish for Krycek's presence again.  Having
someone to watch her back would be comforting.  And
she knew he'd do it, too, if it meant getting what he
wanted.  Whatever that might be this time.

She'd considered and rejected the idea of calling
Mulder fifteen or so times throughout the course of
the evening.  But she just couldn't bring herself to
admit to him that she was frightened.  That she
believed something was going to happen.  He already
interpreted her misgivings about things as weakness
and overreacted accordingly, becoming paranoid about
her safety.  She couldn't betray any real weakness in
front of him, not without telling him how much she
needed him, the bastard.  And she couldn't do that
now.  Not after what had happened at the hangar.  Not
with how she knew he felt about Fowley.  She couldn't
let him know how pathetic she really was, or she'd
have to give him up, leave the X-Files for good.  And
that would leave her with nothing.

As she drifted off several hours later, she wondered
if her pride was finally going to cost her her life.

Scully could see them up ahead of her through the
trees on Skyland Mountain, some already on fire.  She
could see them, and she knew what it meant.  But she
couldn't stop. The summons was too strong.

Scully walked forward.

She knew what was going to happen, but she wasn't
afraid.  The pull of the chip was strong and it calmed
her.  It had a sense of inevitability, of rightness. 
The fire would clean up the mistakes.  It would end
the collaboration with the Invaders.  It would cleanse
them all and leave them with no path but resistance.
She'd walked into the broad black-clad chest before
she'd even realized someone was in her way.  She
didn't look up into his faceless face.  She didn't
want to be frightened, and she didn't want that to be
the last thing she saw in life.  She tried to conjure
up another face instead, as if he was there with her
at the end, even though she wouldn't wish it on him. 
She waited for the man in front of her to touch her
with his burning device.  The wand she remembered from
before, to roast her from the inside out.

He didn't say anything, just wrapped an arm around her
waist and dragged her off the path, through one of the
patches of scrubby pines that dotted the hillside. 
She went along with him, his arm and his momentum too
strong to resist, even though they seemed to be
heading in the wrong direction, even when the pull of
the chip made her want to turn back toward the fires
and away from the slope of the hill.

But the one she was with drew her on, running like
hell, down the hillside toward the river.  Scully
turned mid-flight and looked behind them.  Fires
flared here and there on the hill above, some
brighter, some moving as the victims tried to run
away, only to crumble to ash where they stood.  
It was like looking onto the gaping maw of Hell
itself.

Suddenly, there was a flash of fire to their right, a
man coming alight and revealing the Faceless One who
burned him, turned away from them searching for more
stragglers.

The one she was with cut left abruptly, on a much
straighter line toward the river.  She didn't know why
he seemed to think that would help.  She thought the
alien rod would most likely work under water as well. 
But she couldn't stop herself as he dragged her away,
despite the siren song in the back of her head.

He stopped them, sliding partway down the hill as they
reached a smoldering pile of meat that had once been a
human being.  The alien who had done it was already
gone, maybe the same one who they had seen above them
on the hill.  Scully just kept looking backward, up
the hill, to where the chip wanted her to go.

His hands fumbled at her throat and she gasped as he
tore the cross from her neck and flung it down on the
ground by the body.

"Come on!"  he hissed, dragging her forward again. 
"That ought to throw them off."

The hillside steepened as it neared the river, and
Scully could see one of the Faceless Ones, heading
down the hill as well.  She wasn't certain whether he
had seen them, or sensed them, or whatever it did, but
it was going in the same general direction.

"W...One is coming," she gasped out as he dragged her by
the hand toward a footbridge over the river.
He looked behind them and caught sight of the Alien as
well.

"Shit,"  he said and stretched his long legs further,
dragging Scully stumbling along behind him.

Scully saw the alien behind them veer off suddenly to
their right, and a flare of bright fire through the
tree branches was a glowing testimony as to why he'd
done so.

"Th... they got another one,"  she said as they reached
the bridge.
  
But there was a long stretch of bare hillside between
the bridge and the treeline, and the alien was nearly
behind them again.  Her companion didn't hesitate, he
let go of her hand and jumped off the bridge into the
rushing dark water.  It reached his waist.  But before
she could turn back to answer the call of the chip,
he'd gotten hold of her ankle and had pulled her off
the footbridge into the water beside him.

Scully gasped at the touch of the frigid water and
thankfully ceased doing so before she went under. 
When she surfaced he pulled her along with him under
the footbridge, nothing but their heads above the
surface of the cold, black river.

"Oh," was all she could say before her teeth began
chattering as the chill water swept what little body
heat remained away and downstream.

Her companion gathered her against him, pressing her
face against his neck, perhaps for warmth or perhaps
to stifle any noises she might inadvertently make as
she shivered.

She could hear the Alien even above the rushing the
water made as it sped past them.  His heavy footsteps
thundered above them on the footbridge.  She hoped he
wouldn't be able to see them there, huddled in the
darkness, just inches above the water.

Suddenly her companion took a deep breath and
disappeared below the surface of the water. Panicking,
Scully wondered what had happened, whether to follow
him or to remain where she was. And, without him
holding her in place, there was still the call of the
chip summoning her to the hillside and her certain
doom.
	She began creeping to the downstream edge of the
bridge, readying herself for the short swim to the
shore and her inexorable fate.  The Alien was still
above her, hesitating and looking out on the
downstream side just feet above her.

	Suddenly, her companion surfaced beside her, taking a
deep, but quiet breath and motioning for her to do the
same.  Scully obeyed and felt him pulling her down,
deep into the freezing water beneath the bridge.  They
lay together at the bottom of the stream until Scully
feared she wouldn't be able to hold her breath any
longer and would end by drowning rather than burning
to death.  That or freezing.  She could no longer feel
her hands or feet.  She struggled in the grip of the
man that held her, she had to get air and she had to
get it now or drown.  As if sensing her desperation or
perhaps feeling the need for air himself, he loosed
his hold on her and they surfaced together, Scully
taking care to make as little noise as possible.

	As soon as her head broke the surface of the water
she knew that the Faceless Alien was no longer on the
bridge above them.  It had been perhaps two minutes.

	She looked into her companion's face and saw him
motioning for her to take another breath.  She did and
followed him down again to the bottom of the river as
the water swirled away what little heat remained
trapped inside her sodden suit and coat.  She was
beginning to feel sleepy and she knew that as a sign
of encroaching hypothermia.
	This time he had to pull at her to get her to follow
him up from the bottom of the water, and he didn't
return them to their place by the pilings of the
bridge but dragged her along behind him as he crossed
the river, still beneath the footbridge.  They left
its shelter only once, as they had to get by the
pilings that supported the center, and then resumed
their course beneath it until they reached the other
bank of the river.
	"Come on, Scully!"  he whispered harshly, half
dragging her from the water and into the chilly night,
her sodden clothes weighting her down like lead.
	"I...I don't think I can,"  she breathed.
	"You have to!"  he hissed and pulled on her arm hard
enough to hurt, but it got her moving up the bank,
though she did lose one of her pumps in the mud as she
climbed.
	"I...I lost my shoe,"  she whispered as they reached
the bank and he began pulling her forward at a run.
	"Leave it!"  he said, hauling on her arm and looking
worriedly behind them.  "I can't carry you, so you
have to run.  Just watch out for rocks and sticks."
	Scully did her best, and the numbness of her
extremities helped.  She was probably doing herself a
great deal of damage moving at a dead run through the
trees away from the burning, but moving she was.
	"H...how far?"  she gasped, the frozen water having
taken most of her breath along with her warmth.
	"Not very,"  was his reply.
	It didn't seem like it was not very far.  It seemed
they ran forever through the cold night, wet clothes
flapping in the stiff wind as Scully grew colder and
colder and cared less and less if the Aliens captured
her.  Burning alive was seeming like a better and
better option. 
	She hated the cold.  She hated being cold.  She and
Mulder had had more bad experiences in the cold in the
past six years than she could count.  Ice worms, nasty
green cocooning bugs in the forest, moth men in chilly
winter Florida, and the madness that was Antarctica. 
She didn't think she could take any more.  She knew
she didn't want to.  No more cold.  No more cold.
	"We're almost there, Scully.  We won't be cold any
more,"  her companion assured her.  
	She hadn't realized she'd said it out loud.
	Suddenly, Scully saw a light ahead of them, through
the trees.  It was steady. It was yellow.  It was
artificially generated, not the flickering flames of
the burning dead.  It seemed to welcome them toward it
like a sign from God.
	When they finally stumbled through the trees and
undergrowth Scully finally saw the source of the
light, just as she stubbed her toe up against the
concrete barrier for the nearest parking space.
	"The S..s....s..leepy Mum..mountain Muh...motel?"  she
heard herself say as her jaw quivered uncontrollably
with cold.
	"Best I could do on such short notice," her companion
shrugged and his teeth flashed in a smile in the dim
light, just before they started chattering in time
with hers.  "It's h...heated and has g...good water
pressure.  I know I'm g...going to want a sh..shower. 
I'm fu...fucking frozen."
	He led the way across the parking lot, fumbling in
the pocket of his jacket for the key.  Scully limped
after him, avoiding some broken glass on the asphalt,
hoping he hadn't lost the room key in the river.
	He had the door open before she reached him, and he
stood aside to let her enter first, in gentlemanly
fashion.  She went inside, but stopped just as she
crossed the threshold, exhausted suddenly, and
absolutely unsure as to what would happen next.
	She heard him shut the door and lock it behind them. 
But still she didn't move, she just shivered and
dripped onto the carpet.
	"C...come on Sc...ully," she felt him tugging at the
collar of her trenchcoat from behind her.  "We've
g...got to get out of these c...clothes b..before we
freeze."
	She just stood where she was, as if she'd already
turned to ice.
	"I know i...it's h...hard," he said compassionately,
still tugging ineffectually at her coat.  "B...but
you've g...got to h...help me h...here."
	Scully shrugged her shoulders and he pulled her
trenchcoat off her shoulders and onto the floor. It
fell like a black puddle at her feet.  It was as wet
as a puddle, too.  He put his hand on the small of her
back and propelled her toward the bathroom.
	She kicked off her remaining shoe on the way and the
next thing she knew he was helping her off with her
suitjacket and doing his best to unbuckle her belt as
she shivered away from him.
	She needed to know what had happened.  Why he was
here, what was going on.
	"W...what a...re y..you doing h...here?  W..why t...tonight?"
she managed, taking over the unfastening of her belt,
and allowing him to work on removing his own sodden
garments.
	"B...because I knew.  I...I knew it was t...tonight.  I
kn...knew you'd b..be h..here.  I...I just d...didn't want
them t..to to k...kill you, Sc...Scully,"  he said.  He'd
managed to get off his jacket and unfasten the fly of
his pants, but he was having a lot of trouble with the
buttons of his shirt.  He was shivering badly, and it
was already a difficult task one-handed.
	"K...Krycek, I d...don't know w..what t..to s...say," 
Scully said, and unfastened his shirt buttons for him.
	"I th...think 'Thanks' w...would p...probably b..be
appropriate,"  he said, and smiled again through
chattering teeth.
	Scully smiled back.
	While it was truly surreal to be undressing Alex
Krycek in a motel bathroom at Skyland Mountain, she
was glad it was this and not the alternative.  But
God, she was cold.
	Scully shrugged out of her own silk shirt as Krycek
turned on the water.  She was ecstatic when she saw it
begin to steam.  
	As they'd already seen each other naked, Scully
didn't bother with modesty.  She just wanted her
sodden clothes off and herself in that hot water as
soon as possible.  It seemed Krycek had the same idea
because he was peeling his clothes off as fast as
shaking hand and frozen fingers would allow. 
Stripping off her bra and panties, Scully made it into
the tub just seconds before Krycek himself, and found
herself locked in battle with him over the prime place
under the spray.
	"Y...you're b...blocking the w...water!  G...get out of the
w...way!"  Scully commanded imperiously, giving him one
of the looks she reserved to cow Mulder.
	Krycek just smirked at her.
	"T....too bad if you're t...too goddamned sh...short,"  he
said.  He stood under the spray for a few more seconds
to make his point, and then he stepped back behind the
water jet and let it hit Scully full-force with its
nearly heavenly warmth.
	Scully shut her eyes and let the water beat down over
her face and run down her body, making the barest
beginnings on warming her river-chilled flesh.  She
was smiling up into the spray, she could feel herself
doing it, and she knew that it was weird, but she felt
oddly euphoric, as though she hadn't just escaped a
horrible death and run headlong into what might be a
fate worse than that.  Endorphins, one part of her
mind told herself, but she just didn't care.
	"N..now who's hogging the w...water,"  Krycek said, and
placed his hand on her hip, pushing her around toward
the inside wall of the tub so he could move back up to
share the spray.  Scully stepped backward to distance
herself from him and slipped on the wet enamel.  She
felt herself starting to go down and flailed her arms
to catch hold of the wall, of anything to prevent one
of those really stupid accidents that everyone has but
never wants to admit to.  And she certainly didn't
want to have to admit to anyone that hers had happened
in a rather seedy vacation motel room with a wanted
criminal.
	It all happened very fast, but she was lucky that
Krycek had good reflexes, or maybe not so lucky as it
turned out.  But he caught her with his good arm and
the next thing she knew she was clutching him for dear
life while he helped her get her feet under her again.
	"Whoa, Scully,"  he said, grinning at her like a
maniac.  "A...are you all right?"
	Scully looked at him like he'd lost his mind all the
while sternly reminding herself that it was most
certainly NOT
good-looking-naked-man-who-just-saved-my-life-rubbing-warmly-up-against-my-skin
but evil, lying, killing, raping, conspirator Alex
Krycek trying to take advantage of me while I'm down. 
Scully waited for him to try to take advantage of her
while she was down.  And she waited.  And then she
waited a few seconds more.
	Finally, Krycek turned her a little to the left so
that the warm water was hitting them both and running
down the few gaps that remained between their bodies. 
He wasn't smiling any more.  He was looking at her
speculatively.
	"What's going on in there?" he asked finally.
	"W...what do you mean, Krycek?" she countered.
	"I mean there's something about as complicated as
quantum theory going on behind those blue eyes.  What
are you calculating?"
	"I asked you before, Krycek, why are you here?"  she
asked, getting her shivering under control a little,
now that she had the added heat of his body and her
own embarrassment to help the water along.
	"I told you before," he said.  "I knew this was going
down and I didn't want you to get killed.  So I came
here to stop you before you could get up there on that
mountain and get burned with the rest of them.  I owed
you that.  For how badly I fucked up the last time we
both were here. Or, how I didn't fuck up. Or, well,
you know.  I'm sure Mulder must have told you what I
did.  He probably got it pretty much right except for
the embellishments as to motivation."
	"H... he said that you k...killed the tram operator. 
That you tried to kill him up on the tram, stopping it
and then starting it and knocking him off the side and
almost dropping him down the mountain. That you told
Duane Barry where I lived.  That you killed B...barry
and tried to frame Mulder and then disappeared when he
made his report to Skinner."
	"Yeah, that's essentially it,"  Krycek nodded. 
"Except for the part about trying to kill him with the
tram.  I stopped the tram before he got to the top,
that's true. I was supposed to delay him so they could
take you. But then the idiot went climbing out and was
trying to get up on the cable or some damn thing.  I
couldn't really see what he was doing very well, but
he was going to get himself killed, and I was under
orders to make sure he didn't get killed.  So when he
was that stupid, I started the tram to get him to get
back in the car.  He fell.  That wasn't what I was
trying to do, I almost had a heart attack when that
happened, believe me.  It would have meant my ass. 
So, when he was hanging off the side I moved the tram
up to the top so he could get off safely and wouldn't
drop."
"And the rest of it?"  Scully asked, finding it a lot
easier to remember he was evil, lying, killing,
raping, conspirator Alex Krycek now, despite the fact
that he still had his arm around her back and was
holding her tightly against his wet, naked body.
"It's all true, Scully.  I worked for them,"  Krycek
said seriously, and there was trouble there in his
green, green eyes.  Scully knew what real trouble
looked like, what guilt looked like.  She'd seen it
often enough on Mulder over the years, and most
recently in the mirror.  "But what nobody knows is
after what happened with you and Barry I asked my boss
what the hell was going on, what they were going to do
with you.  He told me I didn't need to know.  I asked
him why they didn't just kill you both if you were
such problems, why all this jerking everyone around? 
He told me that if I didn't like it he'd essentially
take care of me.  You don't have to believe that, but
a few months later, after your sister was killed by
accident, he decided I was getting to be too much of a
problem, asking too many questions, questioning too
many decisions, so he had the guy who killed your
sister try to kill me with a car bomb.  I got away. 
Went to Russia.
"I worked for them, Scully, but I didn't like what
they were doing, or what they were having me do.  I
couldn't see the reason for any of it.  It didn't make
sense or go along with what I consider, I don't know,
professional ethics, I guess.  I'm not trying to shy
away from the responsibility for what I did.  I am
responsible for everything I did myself.  Including
what I did to you.  But I was really fucking stupid
not to know more of what was going on when I was doing
those things.  Being the good little soldier and not
questioning authority.  I'm sorry for that.  For all
of it.  And I'm doing my best to try to make up for as
much of it as I can.
"I owe you Scully, for what I did on their orders. 
And for the way you've always been decent to me even
though you knew I was involved somehow.  It's not
professional any more between us.  It's personal.  And
with all those old men and their families getting
fried in that hangar, personal is all any of us have
left."
"Is that meant to be some sort of an apology, Krycek?"
 Scully asked, feeling more than a little overwhelmed.
"Not some sort of an apology, a bona fide, genuine
apology,"  Krycek told her, tightening his arm around
her slightly in something disturbingly like a hug.  "I
know it doesn't make up for any of it.  I KNOW,
Scully, because I got fucked by Them, too.  Except in
your case I was one of Them.  But I was younger and
stupid, and I didn't know any better.  I learned
better.  And now I'm trying to, I don't know.  I can't
fix it.  I know better than that.  But I just want
to.. .I just want... oh, fuck, I don't know!  I just
want to do something good for once.  Something morally
fucking unambiguously good.
"Do you know how hard it is to spend your life
screwing everyone over?  Not trusting anyone, and not
deserving to be trusted either?  Just waiting for the
next fucked-up thing to come along the pike in your
totally fucked-up life?  I mean, who says "I want to
be an assassin when I grow up."  I mean, I sure
didn't.  I wanted to be fucking rock star.  I'm not
saying I could have been, I'm not fooling myself, but
at least it was something normal to want.  What's
normal about this?  What's normal for any of us?  I'm
just so sick of all of it!"
Scully looked at him and she didn't doubt it.  She
didn't doubt any of it.  His anguish was too real and
too obvious to be feigned.  He'd have to be the best
actor in the world, ready to make his acceptance
speech to the Academy, to fake that.  The self-blame
and guilt rivaled Mulder on his worst day.  Or maybe
on his best.
"Try having a chip in your neck,"  she said with a
rueful smile.  "I spend my whole life waiting for them
to call, for the cancer to come back, to wake up one
morning and not know who I am.  To wake up one morning
and find it's years later and I'm as crazy as Duane
Barry.  Believe me, Krycek, I know what it's like to
be sick of your life."
"And you get the added fun of taking shit from Mulder,
too,"  he said.  "At least I get to skip that part,
most of the time.  All I have to take is the
occasional smart ass remark and slug to the gut.  I
don't know how you take that steady erosion.  Those
looks, that guilt he lays on you like a blanket.  I
would have killed him by now."
"I thought you didn't want to kill him the last time
you saw him,"  Scully commented.
Krycek half smiled.
"What the fuck was that about?" he said shaking his
head at the memory.  "I don't know what I was
thinking.  No, wait, I do know, but it's still fucked
up.  I'd been... I'd been having to do some stuff,
Scully. Stuff that I don't like to do, but sometimes
is necessary if you want to stay alive and have favors
in the right places to call in when you need them.
	"When I look back on my life now, I can't believe
half the things I've done.  I can't even look at them
most of the time, because...well, I don't know how to
without going crazy, finally.
"I have....I don't really know how to put this, or how
to express it adequately.  I have debased myself in
every way it is possible to do it.  I've sold out
every single principle I've ever had, done every
single thing I ever believed was wrong, and have
managed to do it all without putting a bullet in my
brain just to fucking end it.  
"Sometimes the only thing that keeps me going is hate.
 Hating fucking Them for putting me in a position
where I had to do those things to survive.  I can't
even believe it.  
"I get up in the morning and look in the mirror to
shave and ask "Who the fuck ARE you and what have you
done with Alex Krycek?"  Alex Krycek was not a bad guy
all in all.  Alex Krycek had a college education,
graduated Quantico, had a job, had a life.  Alex
Krycek had friends and an apartment, and a car.  Alex
Krycek had normal things that normal people want.  And
he had every expectation of keeping all of them, like
Bill Mulder, and Marita Corvorrubias, and all of those
Old Men and their families.
"And then one day I got the orders to be Mulder's
partner.  The son of the Great Old Man.  I thought it
was great.  I thought they had something cool planned
for us.  I knew I was supposed to watch him, to watch
you.  I thought it was time they were going to tell us
both what was really going on.  To turn Mulder into
their instrument, like I was.  Bring us into the plan.
 And what happened?  We all got fucked.  All three of
us.  They fucked me and used me to fuck you.  And I
lost my life.  Lost everything.  And for what?
"I mean, I know what it was all for now.  And it was
wrong.  And stupid.  We all lost what we've lost
because of someone else's stupid miscalculation.
Someone else's bonehead plans.  It's the ultimate
fucking raw deal."





=====
Webpage updated at http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Portal/9943

"Pictures of perfection as you know make me sick and wicked."
Jane Austen, 23 March 1817

Substitutes Part 3 of 7
Disclaimer in Part 1

"I know,"  Scully said.

"I know you do,"  Krycek replied.  "So now's when we
have to decide what to do.  Now they're gone and their
plan is gone and it's our turn.  Now is when we get
control over our own lives again, at least a little. 
So, this is what I've decided to do with my own life. 
What do you think?"

"I don't think I'm in any position to argue about your
choices so far,"  Scully told him with a small smile. 
"Is this hat change a permanent one?"

"Oh don't be looking for white on this boy,"  Krycek
smiled back.  "It was far too late for that before you
ever met me.  But a nice grey would be good.  I'd just
like to have something to look back on that I can be
proud of for once.  It's awfully fucking hard to be
bad, Scully, when you know what good is.  You've got
to have a good reason.  You've got to make choices. 
It would be easy if I was a sociopath, or a narcissist
or a zealot.  But I'm not any of the above.  I just do
what I think I have to to survive.

"And sometimes I just do what I want.

"And sometimes I just do anything to make me forget
about it for a few minutes, you know?"

"I know,"  Scully said with a sigh.  "I know about
wanting to forget.  Mostly I pick fights with Mulder. 
Oh, he doesn't even realize I'm picking.  I just get
really silent and look at him skeptically and then he
picks them himself.  I pick the fight and he takes the
blame."

"Nice work if you can get it,"  Krycek said with an
evil grin.  "I think abusing Mulder would come high on
my list of favorite pastimes if I was allowed to
indulge myself.  God knows abusing me is one of his
favorites."

"After what happened in Rhode Island, I'd stay out of
Mulder's way if I were you,"  Scully told him.

"I don't think that's going to be possible,"  Krycek
said.  "Besides I want him to know.  I want him to
know that I saved you when he didn't even give a fuck.

 I mean, where WAS he Scully?  He saw those burnings
on TV.  I know, because I'm the one that called him. 
Why wasn't he watching you?  Why wasn't he camped out
at your place until he was sure you were safe?  Hell,
I would have been camped out in your bed with you
handcuffed to me to make sure you couldn't go
anywhere."

"You do seem to have a thing for handcuffs,"  Scully
said, unable to suppress a smile.

"Very funny,"  Krycek said, but then he grinned
himself.  "I mean, if you'd really prefer it I suppose
I could be persuaded to locate some.  But, judging
from the way your wrist looks, you've had enough of
handcuffs for one night, don't you think?"

Scully frowned.

"They've stopped calling me right now, but what if
they call again?  I think I may need them."

"No, you don't,"  Krycek told her, pulling her even
closer to him if that were possible.  "I've got you. 
And I have no intention of letting you go.  I'm not a
jackass like Mulder."

"I'm sure Mulder just thought I'd be angry with him," 
Scully said, craning her neck up to look at his face. 
"We had quite a fight today.  Because you called him
and he didn't want to tell me about the burnings.  He
said he didn't want me to worry."

"So he'd let you get killed instead of brave some
yelling?"  Krycek sounded incredulous.  "He really is
a jackass.  Either that, or he's more whipped then
even I'd imagined."

"What are you talking about?"  Scully asked.

"Whether or not you've actually fucked him, Scully,
you have him totally whipped.  All you have to do is
quirk an eyebrow and the man cowers,"  Krycek smiled
wickedly.  "Must be nice to have that kind of power
over someone, but the fact is you've got him so cowed
he's actually not any good for you any more."

Scully gave him one of her patented skeptical looks
and he just smiled more broadly.

"Yeah, like that,"  Krycek told her.  "You just do
that and he backs down.  When all the while what you
really want is for him to back you up against those
file cabinets of his or toss you down on the desk or
the floor and have his wicked way with you eyebrows
and snorts be damned."

Scully was somewhat alarmed to find that as Krycek had
been giving his explanation he'd backed her up against
the cool tiles of the bath, pressing the length of his
naked body against her as he'd just envisioned Mulder
doing against the filing cabinets.  He was getting
more than a little turned on, and Scully found it more
than slightly alarming that Krycek could be aroused by
a fantasy of Mulder that she'd had herself at least
half a million times.  Was he imagining he was Mulder
or that he was Scully?  After what had gone on in
Rhode Island, despite Krycek's protest that it had
been momentary madness on his part, she really
couldn't be sure.

And the worst part was how little she actually cared.
What was that old women's restroom saying, a good man
is hard to find, but a hard man is good to find? 
Well, Krycek was quickly becoming the latter and
Scully, despite her attempts to maintain some kind of
objectivity, was not about to let it go to waste.  It
was somewhat awful to think that Krycek was the only
man she'd had sex with in more than five years, but
the first time, despite it not having been her idea,
had been far from an awful experience.

At the moment she just felt so wrung out emotionally
at being so out of control and at the mercy of the men
that had put the chip in her head that a little
physical affection would be one hell of an excellent
release.

Scully had a momentary pang of guilt.  She'd be using
him.  And she wasn't the sort of person who did that. 
But Krycek made his living, or stayed alive by using
people himself, so it wasn't like he was unaware that
she might have her own agenda.  It didn't make it
right, but it wasn't like he was an innocent, or that
he was expecting it to be love.

"How many times have you thought of that, Scully?" 
Krycek continued, grinding his growing erection
against her belly as he spoke.  "Hmm?  How many times
have you wanted him to fuck you right there in the
X-Files basement?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Krycek,"  she
said in her best haughty tone.  Krycek's green eyes
sparkled wickedly.  He saw right through her wall of
bullshit and it was really kind of amazing, because
Mulder never did and she would have said he knew her
better than anybody.

"So is it the file cabinets or the desk, hmm?"  he
continued, bending his head to press his mouth to the
side of her neck, leaning into her and pressing her
flatter up against the wall.

"What makes you think that I have fantasies about
Mulder at all?"  Scully asked, annoyed at how
breathless her voice had become, but Krycek was
talented and his lips were blazing a hot trail up the
side of her neck to the sensitive spot just behind her
ear, and she wanted more, despite the fact that she
had her hands plastered flat at her sides against the
slick tile of the bath.  She wasn't going to touch him
until he laid off about the Mulder thing.  It was
starting to get kind of creepy.

Krycek just chuckled and ground her flatter into the
tiles, slipping his hand between their slick bodies
and inserting it deftly between her thighs.

Scully almost levitated straight up the wall, both
from the possessiveness of Krycek's touch and the fact
that it felt so damned good.

"If it had been me," Krycek said between hot kisses
trailed down her neck to the hollow of her throat,
while his hand made itself very busy at its task and
Scully suppressed a gasp.  "It would have stopped
being a fantasy years ago, Scully.  You would have
been mine years ago.  Not like Mulder.  He's an idiot.

 A fucking idiot.  No, a non-fucking idiot.  A fucking
idiot would be better, because at least you'd be
getting some kind of compensation for putting up with
his shit."

"Krycek,"  Scully said reaching out to steady herself
on his shoulders as he lowered himself to his knees in
front of her.  They were lucky the tub was fairly
wide, because as it was he had to practically cross
his long legs to make it down.  But Scully couldn't
bring herself to stop him as his mouth joined his hand
between her legs.  "I...it doesn't matter about Mulder. 
Nothing's ever going to happen with Mulder.  If it
had, it would have, years ago."

There, she'd said it.  She didn't know why.  But she'd
said what she'd been secretly thinking, fearing, since
she'd been diagnosed with cancer.  That all the
bickering, the jealousy with Mulder and his Bambi and
his Detective White, her stupid attempt at a fling
with Ed Jerse, had just been them ironing out the fact
that he looked at her as his little sister, a Samantha
surrogate.  That he wanted to take care of her, but
that was all.

She'd known it as long ago as the hallway of the
hospital, the night Penny Northern had died,
foreshadowing her own impending fate.  Mulder had been
there for her, of course.  He'd held her. He'd
reassured her.  She had even thought for a moment that
it was going to be something more, that he would kiss
her somewhere other than her forehead, but no.  And
she'd contented herself by imagining he didn't want to
pressure her while she was ill and had so much else to
worry about.

But that had been a lie.  Another lie to herself
because she didn't want to know the truth.
Just as the moment last summer in his hallway had been
as much of a lie.  Mulder would have kissed her, she
knew, to make her stay.  He would have done anything
to make her stay.  He HAD gone to the ends of the
earth to save her.  Because he loved her, she knew. He
loved her, but not how she wanted.

It had been more than evident with Diana Fowley's
reappearance and Mulder's refusal to hear any ill of
her despite the evidence to the contrary, but Scully
still hadn't wanted to believe it.  Even when he'd
gone with her, even when he'd been on his way to the
hangar to be burned with the rest, Scully had only
wanted to believe that he'd wanted to find the truth,
to know, finally what his father and the Smoking Man
and all the rest had been doing for so long.  To know
everything from the horse's mouth.

But what Mulder had really been doing had been
ditching her again.  To go off with his lover.  To
leave her and go off to the alien spacecraft, or the
Consortium stronghold, to find the truth, and Samantha
and be with Fowley, a woman he viewed as a woman, not
the emotional substitute for his little sister lost so
long ago.

Scully moaned and leaned back against the tiles as
Krycek's talented hand and mouth sent tremors of
pleasure through her abused body.  What did it matter
who it was?  That all she wanted was for it to be
Mulder's tongue lapping at her clitoris, Mulder's long
fingers pressed up hard inside her.  Mulder making her
shudder and writhe against his face.  She would never
have that.  She would never have what she wanted, and
Krycek seemed to want her.  It didn't matter why.
And in an odd way, he was the perfect substitute. 
He'd had Mulder, after all, both as partner and as
lover, even if it had been by force.  Scully hadn't
even had that dubious pleasure, she could never force
Mulder to do anything he didn't want.  And he
obviously didn't want her.  And at least Krycek was
like her.  He knew what it was to want Mulder and not
be wanted back.  There would be sympathy between them
if nothing else.  There already was. She'd felt it
from the first, and she knew that he did.  Or why
would he keep coming back?  Why save her?  This wasn't
because of Mulder, but because of her. He'd wanted to
save her.  And now he wanted to make love to her, to
show her that someone valued her as a woman even if
her partner did not.

Scully was absurdly grateful.

It was so pathetic.

Here she was in another dingy motel bathroom having
voluntary sexual relations with a man who less than a
year before had tied her up and raped her.  And she
was grateful to be doing it.  She was putting her
hands in the back of his hair and pressing his face
harder into her crotch.  And he was making little
humming sounds and moaning himself and she was coming,
God, she was coming.  And it was good.  It was so
good.  It was good even if it wasn't Mulder, even if
it wasn't the one she wanted.  At least she was
wanted.  By someone.  Even if he was a liar and a
murderer and a rapist and whatever else he was.
And Krycek was kissing her belly and pressing his face
against it.

"Oh, Scully, that was so good.  You're so beautiful,"
he said, his voice a warm buzz against her skin as the
water turned lukewarm around them.

"Krycek, I think we ought to get out of the shower
now,"  Scully still had her fingers in his wet, spiky
hair.  "It's getting cold."

 "Right,"  he said, heaving himself up from his knees.
 And Scully had to appreciate how uncomfortable it
must have been for him, kneeling on the shabby
porcelain while he'd pleasured her.  "And I've seen
about as much cold water tonight as I ever want to
see."

"I agree,"  Scully said, shutting off the shower as
the water temperature dropped a few more degrees.  She
turned back from the faucet to see Krycek eyeing her
speculatively.  She raised her eyebrows at him.

"Come here,"  he said, and held out his arms to her,
the real one beckoning, the other, held stiffly
straight out at his side.

Scully only hesitated for a heartbeat.  Then she threw
herself into his arms, pressing her face into his
broad chest, not looking at his face.  She didn't know
Krycek's reactions yet, and she was afraid to look.
He wrapped his arms around her and held her close. 
Then he kissed her on the top of the head gently, for
all the world like Mulder, though he claimed they were
so different.

Scully idly wondered why they did that.  Was it just
because of the extreme height difference?  And then
she decided she didn't care.  It was just as
comforting when Krycek did it.  And at least she was
assured he was interested in her as more than a sister
substitute.

Suddenly she lost the feel of his arm around her, then
she felt Krycek's long fingers underneath her chin. 
He tipped her head up to meet the warmth of his mouth,
and that as well as his still prominent erection was
more than enough to reassure her that this was no
platonic comforting.

And again she was insanely glad, nearly euphoric. 
Sure, it was probably adrenaline from the run, and the
sex, but she felt good.  He was making her body feel
good.  And that was more than she'd had in a long
time.  Too long a time.

Krycek kissed her thoroughly for a good long while,
unhurried, but seeming to want to taste every texture
inside her mouth, and she allowed herself to explore
him as well.  And it was so good.  He was so solid
against her.  It almost felt right.  Finally, Krycek
broke the kiss and whispered roughly in her ear.
"Com'on, Baby, it's time to go to bed."

It was so trite.  He called her Baby.  He called her
Baby and she wasn't even mad.  She didn't even feel
like insisting that she was a grown person and
deserving of more dignity than that.  Because she
knew, she just knew that he didn't mean it in any way
that was injurious to her dignity.  He meant it as
endearment.  And it was endearing.  Scully threw her
arms around his neck.

And Krycek laughed and picked her up.  He picked her
up with just his one, strong arm and carried her into
the bedroom, sparing her the pain of walking on her
lacerated foot.  The foot that was even now beginning
to pain her as the euphoria of sexual pleasure had
begun to fade somewhat.

When he set her down on the bed, she must have
grimaced as her foot hit the bedspread because Krycek
noticed she was in pain.  And since they'd left the
shower, it had even begun oozing blood once more out
of the deeper cuts.  Krycek turned around and
immediately headed for his bag.

Scully secretly called it Krycek's Bag of Holding
after a magical device she'd read about out of one of
Langly's Dungeon and Dragons books she'd idly picked
up one day when she was waiting for Mulder to get some
information he'd wanted from the Gunmen.  It was like
Mary Poppins' carpetbag, it seemed to have an endless
supply of strange objects one wouldn't expect and it
seemed to hold a great deal more than a bag of its
size actually should.  This time, however, he pulled
out something that looked quite mundanely like a
shaving kit.

"Krycek, what are you doing?"  she asked, she couldn't
imagine what he wanted out of that now.  But then,
Krycek was Lord of Random.

"Getting something for that foot,"  he said, returning
with the shaving kit.  When he unzipped the black
leather, she could see that it did contain shaving
things, but also some scissors and needle and thread,
generic acetaminophen, tweezers, superglue, a
leatherman's tool, toothbrush and toothpaste and a
small first aid kit.  That's what Krycek brought out,
along with a tube of Neosporin.  "Thought I'd return
the favor, seeing you did such a good job on my
shoulder the last time."

Krycek grinned and gently took Scully's foot into his
lap, taking great care not to touch the lacerations. 
She focused her attention on his movements as he
ministered to her injury.  He examined the foot
carefully, and Scully watched in fascination as he
removed the splinters and bits of wood she'd gotten
embedded in her flesh as they'd made their escape
through the forest.  Krycek was one-handed, but he was
dexterous all the same, and he used the tweezers when
he couldn't grasp the splinters with his fingers.  It
was a long and rather painful process, but he was
typically thorough, and Scully was quite sure when he
was done that she had no more foreign objects inside
the ground-up flesh of her foot.

Krycek opened the tube of Neosporin and slathered it
all over her abused flesh.  Then he took some bandages
and gauze pads from his first aid kit and carefully
wrapped the foot up in a light protective layer. 
Scully didn't offer to help because she knew it would
only insult him.  He was very touchy about his
handicap and wanted to do everything to prove it
wasn't one.  

And the plain fact of the matter was that he wanted to
take care of her and she was finding it incredibly
nice to be taken care of for once.  With Mulder it was
nearly always the other way around, no matter how hurt
or tired or worn she was, he was always more needy so
she put her own feelings on the back burner to ease
his pain.  Even when she was dying, she'd worried more
about his reaction to her illness than the illness
itself.  Perhaps worrying about him had made it easier
for her in some ways, but it was an odd situation to
be in.  To always have to be concerned with someone so
fragile.

Krycek wasn't like that.  If he had needs emotional or
physical, he told you what they were and took steps to
get them satisfied.  It was straightforward and
refreshing after years on end of the Mulder
crystal-ego dance.  She didn't have to worry about him
shattering unexpectedly if she was merely honest.
Krycek's hand stopped as he tied the final knot in his
careful bandages and Scully looked up at his face to
see him smiling at her.

"Do I want to know what you were thinking about, or
will it depress me?"  he asked.

"I was just thinking how nice it was to have someone
do that for me,"  Scully said honestly.

"How can he be such an asshole?"  Krycek asked.  Then
he carefully packed up the contents of his shaving kit
and returned it to his bag.

Krycek came back to the bed and turned down the covers
on the side Scully wasn't on.  She looked at him
speculatively.

"I don't know when they last washed this bedspread," 
Krycek said.  Scully immediately raised herself up on
her good foot, and pulled the covers down to below the
level of her ass.  Then she stuck her legs under them
and was immediately sorry she'd done so.

"Hurt yourself?"  Krycek asked.

"Putting anything on this foot is a really bad idea," 
Scully said through teeth grit with pain.

"That's why the Lord made decorator pillows,"  Krycek
told her and brought the two rather sad and saggy ones
that had been on the bed over to her side, shoving
them under the covers and making her a little house of
sorts for her injured foot.  "Something I discovered
when I sprained my toes jumping out of a third story
window once.  Hurt like a son-of-a-bitch for nearly a
week and I couldn't get into my shoes."

Krycek went around to the other side of the bed and
got under the covers.  Judging by his anatomy, he was
still interested, but she wondered how he planned to
do anything with her foot all secured against pressure
like that.  Scully realized then that she'd been
looking forward to having sex with Krycek and that she
was disappointed now that it looked like it wasn't
going to become a reality.

That fact scared the shit out of her.  

What had she become?  Was Mulder right?  Was she
allowing Krycek to poison her thinking in some way? 
Had he done something to twist her thinking and turn
her away from Mulder?  Away from the Truth?

Scully thought about it hard.  And the only answer she
could come up with was - no.  Krycek hadn't done
anything except express his own opinion.  He hadn't
demanded she change hers, or agree with him or
anything.  He hadn't tried to convince her of
anything.  There had been no arguing.  No long
conversations where he'd harangued her about how she
didn't trust him and wasn't he right all the time?  No
puppy dog looks, no emotional manipulation, no pouting
or sulking or tragic glances full of hurt and
betrayal.

Instead there'd been an apology, an explanation -
admittedly skewed and biased and one-sided, but an
explanation nonetheless.  There'd been sympathy, for
her position, for her plight, for the abuse she'd
taken on an emotional level, for her emotional and
physical exhaustion.  And there'd been some pretty
excellent cunnilingus mixed in with affectionate
hugging and passionate kisses.

And while all that was much more than she'd had in,
well, if she admitted it it was a lot more than she'd
ever had seeing she kept falling in love with men who
were too self-absorbed to really see her, while it was
much more than she'd had, it was still not nearly
enough to turn her head.  Because while she was
looking forward to having sex with Krycek, that's
exactly what it would be - having sex.  It would
probably be really good.  It would probably be
sympathetic and affectionate.  But it wasn't love.
Scully was already in love.  With someone who was too
self-absorbed to really see her, it turned out.  With
someone who would never love her the way she loved
him.  With someone she could never really have.
But she could have Krycek.  He'd just offered himself
to her.

And Krycek was something.  He was someone.


=====
Webpage updated at http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Portal/9943

"Pictures of perfection as you know make me sick and wicked."
Jane Austen, 23 March 1817

Substitutes Part 4 of 7
Disclaimer in Part 1

She had no illusions about him being a better man than
she thought.  She didn't expect to suddenly be swept
away by his fabulous compassion for humanity and his
fantastic philanthropic desires.  She was too much of
a realist for that.  And he was too much of a realist
to allow himself to be swept away by any such
grandiose strivings.

But he was real, and he was there.  And he cared, for
whatever reason.  And she knew that her own heart
wasn't yet so hardened that she could simply turn her
back on genuine caring when she saw it.  It was the
same way she couldn't despise Frohike for his dirty
mind, his lack of social grace and his geeky
appearance.  She knew that there was a great heart
behind all the trappings of nerdom and the knee-jerk
male defensiveness of ogling women.  Frohike belied
his appearance by his actions.  Krycek was belying his
former actions with new ones, or at least adding a new
layer.  And he'd always been a man of many layers.
He'd saved Mulder's life, for instance.  How many
times?  He'd brought him warnings.  He'd protected him
from harm.  And he'd mercilessly manipulated and used
him for his own ends.  And he'd suffered physical
abuse at Mulder's hand.  And he'd meeted it out upon
Mulder as well.  

Scully wasn't certain yet what Krycek really was.  But
there was more to him than Mulder's one-dimensional
villain, that was certain.  There was a person in
there.  And one who obviously had impulses and
feelings as good as he had bad.  Perhaps she could
encourage him to act upon the good ones more often. 
She had no illusions that she could change him.  But
perhaps if she gave him good advice, he might make
better decisions.  Mulder said he had benefited from
her advice.  Why not Krycek?

"Where are you?"  Krycek asked, his green eyes nearly
black in the light from the shabby bedside lamp. 
"You've left me again."

"I was just thinking,"  Scully said.

"Obviously,"  Krycek said, moving closer to her and
sending the slightest of anticipatory shivers up her
naked skin. "What about?"

"Many things,"  Scully said, watching him closely as
he bent his dark head and kissed her bare shoulder,
leaning over beside her until his arm was propped
firmly between her back and the headboard, not quite
around her, but touching, so that she could feel the
strength of his muscles against her.

"Shoes and ships and sealing wax?"  he teased. 
"Cabbages and kings?"

"That's "talk of many things", not think,"  Scully
corrected.

"Well, it's been a while since Freshman English," 
Krycek told her.  "And some of us don't have
photographic memories."

"Well, you should really never misquote nonsense," 
Scully replied, arching her eyebrow for effect. 
"Because if you do it wrongly enough, I should imagine
it would come out sense, and that would be no good at
all." 

"Please don't channel Alice, ok?"  Krycek said, trying
hard not to smile and failing miserably.  "Unlike Mr.
Carroll, some of us aren't pedophiles.  And if you
were Alice what we're going to do would get me
arrested in all fifty states."

"And just what is that?"  Scully asked looking at him
demurely from behind her hair.

Krycek smiled wolfishly.

"What do you think?"

"I really have no idea, Sir.  But perhaps I should go
home now," Scully continued, playing the small
helplessness for effect.

"Oh, yeah, I'll take you home, Little Girl,"  Krycek
said and wrapped his arm around her waist while moving
around in front of her to straddle her outstretched
legs.

"You know, my mother told me that if ever I found
myself in a situation like this, I most probably ought
to scream," Scully said, staring blatantly at Krycek's
erection, now just a tempting few inches from her
mouth.

"Oh, I think you'll be doing that in just a few
minutes,"  Krycek said, green eyes twinkling with
amusement.  He probably hadn't known she was able to
play.  It was a side she usually only showed to
Mulder, and only to him on rare occasions.  But it
just seemed right tonight somehow.  Like laughing in
the face of death.

"You know it's really not polite to point,"  Scully
said, unable to stop herself from rolling her eyes
slightly.

"All right, Young Lady, that's enough of that," 
Krycek said and lowered himself down on top of her,
pinning her to the mattress with his weight and
pressing his lips to hers, mercifully silencing her
nonsense.

Scully wrapped her arms and her legs around him,
flinching only slightly as her injured foot knocked
against the tangled sheet.  It didn't take Krycek long
to take the hint, and she could feel his cock pressing
at her moisture-slicked entrance.  She knew what she
wanted was the same thing he did, so she reached her
hand between them and guided him in.

"Um, damn girl, that was direct,"  Krycek said,
raising himself up on his elbow to look at her
somewhat suspiciously.

"Shut up and fuck me,"  Scully ordered imperiously. 
Then she chickened out a little and pulled his mouth
down to hers again, more to silence any response or
protest he might make than from any need to kiss him
again.

She gasped slightly as Krycek did as he was told.  She
hadn't been with anyone since, well, since him, and
that had been a while back.  But it was only a second
before it started to feel really good and she gasped
again, but for a different reason.

One thing you could say for Krycek and that was that
he was hell in bed.

It had almost been a problem the first time.  She
hadn't wanted it then.  But he'd been good.  Too good.
But now there wasn't too good.  And allowing herself
to enjoy it almost made her feel guilty.  It almost
made her feel Bad.  She was with a Bad Boy, after all.
 The kind of boy her Mother and Ahab and her Partner
would NOT approve of.  Did that make her Dirty at
last?  Would it make her the kind of girl Mulder liked
to look at in his magazines?  The kind of girl like
Fowley that demanded his attention, his trust, his
lust, his love?

He had been interested the other times she'd been with
Krycek.

But he had always said it was about loyalty.  He had
never said he'd wanted her, even if it had felt like
he did for a few seconds, like the other times she'd
deceived herself about him.

But there was no deceiving herself about Krycek.  She
could feel his lust, it was as real as her own, and
she allowed herself to be comforted by it.  By the
feel of his mouth, his hand, his body, his cock,
moving on her and inside her - because it was real and
not just useless wishing.

And Krycek was doing everything right.  He'd angled
his long body against hers so that each thrust
provided ample stimulation just where it was needed. 
She was already close.

"Scully,"  he moaned her name into her mouth as she
twined her fingers in what little of his too-short
hair she could grasp.

"Come for me," she said.  "It's good."

"Not without you," he told her.

"Mmmmnnnn," was all she could answer as he moved
slightly and set off anticipatory twitches all inside
her.

"Oh yeah," he said.  

It wasn't poetry, but Scully didn't need poetry.  She
needed exactly what she was getting.  And she knew
that he did, too.  And he was as close as she was.
Krycek thrust a few more times, hard, but quite
spasmodically, and Scully shut her eyes as she lost
control of her body and mindlessly reacted, her
muscles uncontrollably clenching and unclenching
around him.  She could feel him shuddering as he was
wracked with his own orgasm, but it was only
peripheral to her own quasi-consciousness of her
surroundings.  Strange how something you did together
ended up being something you only experienced alone.
And Scully was tired of being alone.

She kissed Krycek on the forehead as he lay collapsed
on top of her, wrung out by the force of his own
orgasm.  He was so real, so human, she didn't care at
that moment what else he was.  She wondered if she'd
ever care again.

Mulder's phone rang at 4:14 a.m. only half an hour
after he'd finally been able to fall asleep after
returning from the Gunmen's place.  According to the
numbers, the next burn attack would happen sometime
between 24 and 36 hours from 6 a.m. that morning.  He
wondered who the hell could be calling him at this
hour.  He hoped to hell it wasn't Scully, but he
couldn't think of anyone else it might be, unless the
boys had found something else in their redundant
checks.  With Scully's life in the balance they were
being even more thorough than usual.

	"Mulder,"  he answered the phone, rubbing his eyes
groggily.
	"Get dressed, Agent Mulder, I'll be at your door in
fifteen minutes to pick you up," said the
familiargravely voice of AD Skinner over the clear
cellular connection.
	"Sir, what is it?"  Mulder asked.
	"Turn on your television, Mulder," Skinner told him.
"Any news channel will do. It's on everywhere. I'll be
there in 14."  
	Skinner severed the connection.
	Mulder fumbled for the remote, sitting up so quickly
his vision blacked from the head-rush.  He turned on
the television, the audible moans and gasps telling
him he was NOT on the news channel.  He punched in
numbers and plugged directly into the feed.
	"...there appear to be hundreds of bodies, though the
forest fire is now under control after the rain early
this morning.  There are only a few isolated patches
now being contained by the rangers and local fire
crews.
	The similarity to other incidents in Pennsylvania and
the Balkans is under investigation, but the
authorities claim there is no reason for panic among
the general public.  All of the dead identified so far
in this and the incident in Pennsylvania have been
linked to activities in various UFO organizations
around the country.  Investigators are acting under
the suspicion that this is some Millennial suicide
pact coordinated through these groups."
	"Suicide pact my ass..." Mulder mumbled, pulling his
t-shirt off over his head and turning up the volume on
the TV so he could still hear it while pulling clothes
out of his closet.
	"...no one quite understands the significance of the
location, though advertising for Skyland Mountain has
always included the phrase "ascend to the stars". 
Perhaps these disturbed individuals viewed that as
some kind of omen."
	At the mention of the location Mulder dropped the
suit he was holding on the floor from fingers numbed
by shock.  This was not supposed to be happening.  Not
again.  Not in the same place.  It was against all of
their projections.
	He ran to the living room to look again at the
reporter on the screen, a box behind her now showing
spotlighted footage of the burned bodies of the dead
littering the hillside.  The same hillside he'd
frantically ridden a chair lift up to try to get to
Scully when she'd been abducted.
	If it had truly ended for Scully in the same place,
he didn't know what he was going to do.
	But no matter what it was, one body on that hillside
more or less wasn't going to make any difference at
all.
	Mulder ran to his bathroom to put on his clothes
before Skinner arrived on his doorstep.


It was some time later, she wasn't certain how much,
but the moonlight coming in the window was dimmer and
at a different angle.  Scully was warm.  Held warm and
naked against the equally warm naked body of a man. 
The wrong man, of course - Alex Krycek.

And Scully wanted to feel guilty.  She wanted to feel
that she had betrayed Mulder.  She wanted to feel that
what she had done was wrong, that it had somehow taken
something away from them, had cheapened their
partnership.

But she couldn't.

It wasn't that it had nothing to do with their
partnership.  It had everything to do with that.  Or
rather, the situation she now found herself in had
everything to do with the fact that it was not Mulder
there beside her in the bed.  That it was not Mulder
who had saved her.  Mulder who had wanted her.  Mulder
who had made her scream his name in ecstasy.  She knew
in her heart that the only reason she was there, that
she could be there, was that Mulder didn't love her. 
He didn't want her.  So she was free.  To be here,
with Krycek, or anyone else she chose.  There was no
reason for her to be guilty.  No matter how much she
craved a reason.  And she also knew with dreadful,
hateful certainty, that it didn't matter who it was
beside her in the bed, because no matter who, no
matter what the one who was there meant to her, he
would always be, at the base of it - not Him.

That's who Krycek was.  That's who the next one would
be.  All down the long, dreadful years to come.  No
matter what else her life would hold - work, family,
the end of the mystery, colonization or victory over
the invaders - at the heart of it would be Mulder and
his absence.  Even if he was there with her, he still
would be absent.  Absent in the way she needed him,
real and warm and next to her in bed, loving her as
she loved him.

Krycek moved beside her in the bed, turning his body
toward her and shifting her head to rest upon his
shoulder instead of on his broad chest.

"I know you're awake,"  he said, his voice rather
hoarse from sleep, and reminding her of His voice
unpleasantly.  "I've been thinking."

"Yes?" she said, for something else to think about
besides wallowing in her own pain.  Thinking of others
was always so much better than thinking of yourself.

"What's going to happen tomorrow?"  Krycek asked.  His
voice was open, neutral, wondering.  As if he wanted
her to tell him and was mildly curious.

"What do you mean?"  she asked, without the strength
to play games with him.  Mulder had worn out her
capacity for that over six long years of attrition. 
She didn't need games from anyone else.  "You mean
something, so you might as well say it."

"Fine then,"  Krycek said, taking a deep breath, as if
steeling himself to do something difficult or
unpleasant.  "I'll tell you what I want to happen. 
And you tell me if it sounds all right to you."

"Ok,"  Scully said.

"But..."  Krycek faltered, and, as she had discovered he
did when he was uncomfortable, he changed the subject
abruptly.  "First,  I... I don't want you to call me
Krycek."

"What?"  Scully asked, raising up on her elbow to look
at him in the darkness.  He did look uncomfortable,
lying rather stiff and tense beside her.

"I mean,"  Krycek turned his head toward her in the
dark, his eyes glittering slightly as they caught the
moonlight from the window.  "Is this a professional
relationship?  I mean, is this part of your job
description?  I know it's not part of mine, even
though I sort of make up mine as I go along.  You call
colleagues by their last name.  Or, at least we did at
the FBI.  But that's not what normal people do. 
That's not what... what lovers do.

"That IS what we are, isn't it?"  Krycek asked, and
for the first time in a very long time Scully saw
something on his face that she recognized as fear.
And it was more than clear what he was afraid of.
He was afraid of her.  He was afraid that she would
tell him no.  That she would reject him as she had
been rejected without having ever had the courage to
ask the question.

"I have to admit that I hadn't thought about it," 
Scully said.  "I guess I've been trying very hard not
to analyze this at all.  It's so complicated.  It's
part of so many other things.  It hurts my head."

"Welcome to my world,"  Krycek said with a rather
nervous but simultaneously evil grin.  "But even if
you haven't thought about it, think about it now. 
Doesn't it seem weird?  Doesn't it seem wrong? 
Impersonal?  Distancing?"

"You want me to call you Alex?"  Scully asked.

"Yes,"  Krycek said.  "And I'd like to be allowed to
call you Dana.  I don't want to call you what he does.
 I don't want you to be listening for that when you're
with me.  Because it isn't about that.  This is about
us.  This is about us getting something decent out of
all this bullshit.  Can you...will you let it be about
us... Dana?"

Scully smiled.  He said it so tentatively.  Like he
was trying it on for size and wasn't quite sure it was
going to fit.  And even she wasn't certain.  She
wasn't certain she even was Dana anymore.  She most
often thought of herself as Scully.  Even when Mulder
wasn't there to say it fifty times a day.

"I know exactly how you feel... Alex,"  she said.  And
his name didn't feel bad inside her mouth.  And it
didn't seem wrong.  Or that it didn't belong to him,
as Fox always did when attached to the person who was
Mulder.

"Good, because I wouldn't do it unless you agreed," 
he said.  "But I've been thinking about it a while. 
And I really wanted to do it.  I think we need it.  To
get back to some part of ourselves.  No one has called
me Alex for so long...  And I AM Alex.  I am."

"And I AM Dana,"  she said.  "I know what you mean."

"Ok, then,"  Krycek, Alex, she corrected herself,
said.  And he reached up and brushed her hair away
from her cheek, his fingers warm and gentle on her
skin.  "Now we have to talk about what happens next."

"Why?"  she asked.

"Because, like it or not, the future is coming,"  Alex
said, his fingers lingering on her skin.  "And I want
us to agree.  So we know what to expect from each
other when it gets here.  So we have something to
count on.  Something to look forward to.  It's been a
long time since I had that.  And I think it's been a
while for you, too.  I think you've been living and
just waiting for the other shoe to drop, for them to
take the next shot at you.  For the next awful thing
to happen.  And it shouldn't be like that.  Not for
anyone.  Not for us.  I don't want it to be that way."

"We can't change it just by telling ourselves we want
it to be different,"  Scully said, pressing her cheek
into his caress like an oversized housecat.

"Not just by telling ourselves, but that's part of it.
 You can't make anything happen without a plan,
without having some idea what you're going to do, or a
clear idea of what you want,"  Alex told her.  "I know
what I want.  I just need to know if you want the same
things so I can get them for us.  So that we can get
them together."

Scully smiled at that.  Krycek wanted things.  So what
was new?  It always seemed that he wanted something. 
And as long as she'd known him, even while he'd been
working for someone else, he'd also been taking steps
to make things happen.  To get the things he wanted. 
And now she was one, it seemed.

But, just as he had in the hotel room in Rhode Island,
Krycek wasn't taking, he was offering.  He was asking
her what she wanted.  She couldn't remember the last
time anyone had.

"What do you want, Alex?"  Scully asked him, and he
continued to caress her as he looked deeply into her
eyes, as if he was striving to see her soul.

"You,"  he said simply.  "I... I want you.  I want to be
with you.  I want us to be together.  We're good for
each other, and it can only get better if we get away
from here.  We can find out more together.  I know
things.  I can protect you.  You know he can't. Or he
won't. Or he's just too wrapped up in himself to give
a damn.  But this isn't about me vs. him.  Or it
shouldn't be.  This is about us.  This is about what
we can be together, Dana.  It can be good.  It can.  I
can see it.  In my head.  And if I can see it there, I
can make it happen.  I can make it happen for us."

He meant it.  He meant it all.  There was no question.
She could see it in his eyes, on his face.  It
practically shone out his pores, he meant it so much. 
And it was so different than the too wide-eyed,
feigned truth she'd seen him use on Mulder.  This
time, he believed in it.  He believed in his own power
to change things as much as Mulder ever had in the
Truth.  Scully didn't know whether to laugh or to cry.
 It was so ridiculous, and so wonderful at the same
time - and so impossible.  So, she just threw her arms
around his neck and buried her face in his chest.
And Alex put his arm around her and hugged her tight.

"God, how I wish I had two arms to put around you," 
he whispered into her hair.

"It doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter to me,"  she
said, kissing his strong neck.  "But, God, Alex,
Mulder is right about you."

"What do you mean?" he asked, not liking the sound of
it from his tone.

"You ARE the Devil," she told him.

"Explain that, please,"  he said, gasping slightly as
she ran her hands down his chest possessively.

"Because the Devil tempts, Alex,"  she whispered as
she moved her mouth to take his earlobe between her
teeth.  "Because he offers you what you've always
wanted, or thought you did.  Because he makes you
choose."

"We all have to choose, Dana,"  Alex said, moving his
hand up to grip the back of her head and move her
mouth to his.  "It's not the Devil that does that. 
It's Life.  And that's what I mean to give you - a
life.  Your life back.  And you can choose to live it
with me.  You CAN choose that.  If you want."

And he kissed her.  And she considered it.  Because it
was real.  And she could choose it.  If she wanted.
Ignoring the pain of her injured foot, Dana made up
her mind.  Life was calling and she was tired of
ignoring it.  She moved her body over Alex's
possessively, taking him inside her as if to force the
emptiness out.  It would be a long time in going, she
knew.  But maybe there was still a chance.  It had
been a long time since she'd had a chance.

And, as always, Alex was pleased by her.  Made happy
by something as meaningless as her body.  It made her
wish she could give him her heart or her soul.  She
didn't know if he deserved it, but she liked to make
him happy.  It was nice that someone was happy for
once.





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"Pictures of perfection as you know make me sick and wicked."
Jane Austen, 23 March 1817