"Leviathan" by Pellinor ___ SUMMARY: Many years ago, in a smoke-filled room, the men of shadows signed away the future of mankind. The date was set; and now the date has come. It has come... RATING: R for some disturbing stuff CLASSIFICATION: CRA (but please see notes below) Very, very loose crossover with Stephen King's "The Stand". No knowledge of that work is required or expected. CONTENT WARNING: Secondary characters die. Spoilers for episodes up to and including season 5. ___ CLASSIFICATION NOTES: The crossover is very, very loose. In very broad terms, the plot is parallel, but the characters, the setting and the events are all either my own or Chris Carter's. Only one character from "The Stand" appears here, under a different name. The "R" part comes from one or two scenes (in later parts) in which Mulder and Scully behave in a rather more-than-partnerly manner, and I've classified it thus simply to warn the most passionate of non-shippers. This story is most definitely NOT a romance, in any normal use of that word. DISCLAIMER: Mulder and Scully etc belong to Chris Carter, 1013 and Fox. One other character, although going here by a different name, belongs to Stephen King. I use them without permission, but without profit. THANKS: To The Real Pellinor, for heroically providing me with a computer that works, and Miss Becky for introducing me to Stephen King - his books,I mean. ****** In the shadows, the man smiled. The sky was the rich blue velvet of midwinter, and the cold light of the moon gave him enough light to view the scene before him. The two combatants were moving sluggishly, now, weakened by a dozen wounds. The pools of blood glistened like mercury. It pleased him. The watcher exhaled, in something that could have been a laugh. He let his breath condense as steam, let it cloud across his vision, then pass. The combatants were still there. Regardless of who died here in the dust, neither of them would live. A stream of blood snaked through the dirt, until it was stopped short by his boot. He stepped back sharply, the plastered smile cracking for the first time, and ground the toe of his boot into the dirt. His reputation was spotless. He had no blood on his - and he smiled again, grimly, enjoying the joke - on his hands. There was dark enough in everyone, and he merely.... encouraged it. "No. I didn't. It's not true. I didn't." A cry of agony, and he was all focus again. One of the combatants was on the ground now, his handsome face a mass of smashed tissue. His breathing was tortured, gasping, as the other man's feet drove into his body with rib-shattering force. His dark hair shone like a raven's wing, slick with blood. "Dead yet?" the watcher called out, suddenly. In the enclosed yard, his voice was like a bullet. Neither of them turned their heads. He didn't exist to them. They were in a world narrowed to a single focus of hatred and pain. They were beyond human. "Dead yet?" he repeated, then threw back his head and laughed with the exhilaration of it. It was so easy - a word in the right place and they were lost. He couldn't even remember how he'd done it. There were so many ways. "Hey." He would reach into his denim jacket, pulling out the blurry photographs that could have been anyone. A seed of doubt was all it took. People saw what he wanted them to see. "See this picture? This is your wife with another man. I know who he is. I can bring him to you." And then, smiling inwardly all the while, he would sit through their disbelief, their anger, waiting for his time. And it always came. "I can help you deal with.... the situation." A low whisper, and he would part his jacket again, showing the gun at his hip. "It makes me weep, how the world is today. Sin needs to be punished." His mouth would twist as the soft victim's face turned from horror to temptation to dreadful acceptance. They always accepted. He chose the weak, the soft, the civilised. He chose the self- styled "good." He chose the police officer and the crusader for justice. He chose the quiet man who had never touched a gun before and whose first wild attempts at murder resulted in blood-spraying injury, and no clean death. There was dark in everyone, and everyone was his. "Dead yet?" he chuckled under his breath. "Ah. I think so." One figure was motionless on the ground, limbs twisted like discarded rags, and the other was bent forward, head in hands, rocking, rocking. "What have I done?" A keening tortured cry, straight out of melodrama. It sickened him. "My God, what have I done?" Suddenly it bored him. They were all the same in the end - all weak. And something was coming. Once more, as he had done for days now, he frowned, sniffing the air. Something was coming - something big. Not yet, he knew, and his fingers itched with impatience, but soon, _soon_. It was coming for him, and he would be formidable. But now.... Somewhere in the distance, a church bell started pealing. "Peace on earth," he whispered, and at his smile the cries ceased. "Goodwill to men." As he stepped away through the dirt, he saw the face of the one to come - dark hair falling on pale hand. ****** As midnight passed into Christmas morning, Fox Mulder dreamed.... Midnight tolled like a knell. One, and Scully turned her back on him, her hands stretched away towards warm arms that called to her, laughing. "Come, Dana," they said, and he knew the voices as her brother's, her mother's, and knew that the worst pain can be inflicted in the name of love. "Leave him. Come back to us." Her red hair faded, and she didn't look back. Two, and Samantha was taken in a scouring agony of white light, but her eyes were open as she left him, and there was hatred in them. "Let me go, Fox. You failed me, and I will never forgive you for it, Fox. Never." The light faded, and she didn't look back. Three, and his father fell to the floor, blood trickling from his mouth, and eye lids shutting against him. "I chose to keep her." In the mine, the file told the truth the man could not utter. "You were supposed to be taken. I never wanted you." He died, and he didn't look back. Four, and he was in a desert, skin cracked by the sun and parched. The sky was fire, and death came from the sky. The earth curved to the horizon and he was alone - alone. There were a million blood- covered bodies in his memory. The world had moved on, and hadn't looked back. It had left him behind, alone. Five, and.... and.... He struggled desperately, wrenching himself towards the wakefulness like one drowning. Gasping, his mouth broke the surface and he had a second when he was aware of his white knuckles digging like claws into the black leather of the couch, but then he was dragged back under. His mind was screaming: Five, and.... "You will not be alone." Calmness like water washed over him. The voice was an oasis in the desert, and the fear fell away. "You will not be alone. After it happens, I will be there for you." "Scully?" he tried experimentally, and his lips felt moist and his skin cool. "Scully?" But it had not been a female voice. It had been a no-voice. It had been male, and female, and in his head, and on his skin like a touch. Almost crying with hope and fear and.... and _awe_, he turned his head, but there was no-one there. From a long-dead branch, a crow eyed him. ****** "Happy Christmas, Dana." Dana Scully paused, one hand on the door frame. Her fingers dug in tightly, and she took a steadying breath. All night, she had felt cold. "Mom." She cleared her throat, then rubbed her other hand across her face. "Happy Christmas." For the third Christmas in a row, her smile was a mask. ****** Fox Mulder clutched his coat round his body, his hands buried deep into his pockets. The dream was still heavy on him, and fear touched his spine like a finger. He had seen it in their eyes. "Happy Christmas, Agent Mulder." The doorman had smiled, his desk decorated with holly. He had read the true meaning behind the taut smile. His footsteps in the empty corridors had chilled him. Walking forward had become like wading through water. The building had been the empty desert, and the doorman's eyes had been crow's eyes, full of contemptuous pity. Creeping through his veins like ice. Blindly, feeling a dread that he couldn't begin to understand, he had grabbed some paper and fled. "Something I needed," he had stammered at the doorman, wondering what he had become - wondering why another man's opinion was suddenly so important. They had always laughed at him, before, and still he had carried on, unchanged. "I'll see you after the holidays." And now, in the park, a woman with straggling white hair and with all her possessions in two split bags, looked at him, and there was pity in her eyes. Her lips moved soundlessly. "No." He turned away sharply, facing into the wind. It chilled his face, driving away feeling. "I have my work. My work is my life. I...." He started, physically. Imagination had never been so strong. His skin prickled, with something that could have been dread, could have been exhilaration. "No!" He spoke aloud this time. From behind him, the old woman gave a strange half moan and he knew it had been louder, wilder, than he had intended. "No." And his hands twitched, wanting to rise to his ears and press against them, shutting out everything, and.... He would hibernate, and come out in the new year, when his mother's silence was just a dull ache, when Samantha's.... He swallowed hard. When.... When Scully was back, and he would _smile_, and come close to meaning it. "Agent Mulder?" A man's voice, gentle. He turned round, his hand reaching for the reassuring coldness of his gun, then relaxed. The man's eyes were blue, and his smile radiated truth. "I can help you, Agent Mulder. I have followed your work. I share your ideals." He took a deep breath, steadying himself. In the past, he had been too quick to trust men who smiled and brought gifts of information. Like a dog, he had begged for scraps that fell from his enemy's table, and had been poisoned by them. "Who are you?" he said, at last, and his hand returned to his gun, soft, like a caress. "You can call me...." The man smiled, spread his hands. "Richard Fry." They both knew it was not his real name. "Richard Fry," he repeated, consideringly, then laughed suddenly, bitterly. His emotions were a finely balanced trigger, ready to go either way. "Better than Deep Throat, or X, or Marita Cover-up-ias. Do I get an address this time too?" The man smiled. He was a large man, and imposing, with a face tanned dark by some foreign sun. At his smile, Mulder's hands slipped from the gun and fell limp to his side. "I find you, Agent Mulder. I have more than the scraps they offered. I have the future." The wind twisted cold fingers in his hair. Mulder's smile froze, although the image that flashed into his mind was of emptiness, and the terrible empty baking desert of his dream. "The future," he managed, at last. "How?" Fry's eyes narrowed, their blue fading to cold sparking ice. "The date is set, Agent Mulder. It's soon. It's very soon. I can find out when, and how. I can help you stop it." Mulder shut his eyes, unable to breathe, unable to feel. His resistance lowered in a public place, they could fell him with a single bullet, or take him without warning. He was naked before the man, unarmed, and at his mercy. "Why should I believe that?" he said at last, blinking. It seemed strange to him that the sun hadn't moved on, that the scene was unchanged. The man placed a cold hand on his shoulder, leaning close - too close. "Because it's true." The fingers caressed through his clothes, and radiated strength. "Because you have no choice." he thought, sadly, but he raised his chin, clenched his fists at his side. He needed some dignity in defeat. But, "yes," was all he said, and he wondered why Fry was smiling. "I have a choice. I choose to listen to you, but I won't trust you. I've killed, before, and I won't hesitate to kill you if I have to." "No." Fry frowned, his brow furrowing. He looked twenty years older, and almost familiar. "Trust no-one, huh?" Then his brow smoothed, and the ghost of Deep Throat was gone from his countenance, and he was laughing. Mulder stood his ground. "Trust no-one." And this time his frozen, stupefied hand, _did_ reach for his gun, and held it. But he followed the man's beckoning finger. ****** His skin was pale, his eyes too bright. He had changed since she had last seen him. She smiled. "Mulder." It was all she could say. She had seldom been nervous about meeting him before. "Scully." He let out a breath. "What's wrong? I.... I didn't expect you back for a week." "No." She shook her head slowly, sadly. Though it was her own choice, she could still remember what she had lost. "I.... I came back." "Come in." He turned away, leading her into the apartment, but he wasn't fast enough. She saw his cheek move, transformed by a smile. She knew, also, that his face would be frozen and impassive next time he allowed her to see it full on. "Mulder." She reached for his wrist, holding it. His blood was beating fast against her fingertips. It was.... sensuous, she decided. Sensuous and strange. "Why did you come back, Scully?" His voice was thick, his pulse faster. "I...." But she lowered her eyes. She couldn't give all of herself, not yet. Even this much was hard. "I couldn't.... connect. They were.... They were _normal_. Mom understands, but the others - Bill, Charlie.... all those single male friends Tara wanted me to meet.... I felt as if... as if they existed in a different world." "Scully." His voice cracked even on that single word, and he strained at her hand, trying to pull away. She had always understood him far more than she had let him know. his dark eyes reflected. "Mulder." She dug her fingers in deeper to his flesh, holding him. "Things change. _We_ change. Things happen in our lives and we drift away from old friends - family too. We no longer have anything in common with them. It happens. It doesn't make it a bad thing, Mulder." He pulled his bottom lip between his teeth, almost as if stifling a sob. "I wouldn't change it, Mulder," she said, firmly, and this time she kept her eyes on his face. "I've lost things. I've gained things." "What?" He was close to tears. There were dark smudges beneath his eyes, and his cheeks looked thinner. It was just five days since she had seen him. She held on tighter, suddenly needing the tension to stop herself shaking. "I was lying to myself these last two years," she said instead. "I was trying to do the family thing at Christmas. I was pretending I was still the person I used to be. There's nothing worse than clinging to a past that no longer exists." "Like...." There was betrayal in his eyes. "Like I...." "Like you do." She raised both hands, placing them on either side of his face. Her fingers touched his hair. "It doesn't make you happy." He shut his eyes. "I can't...." "No." Gentle. So much had changed inside her since Christmas morning. She had accepted her past, defined her future. "I wouldn't ever make you change. _I've_ changed. I.... I've had a Samantha, too. Part of me has been mourning the loss of.... of the things I can't have." She ran her thumb softly over his cheek. "I don't want that any more." "What do you want?" It was no more than a whisper. "I want the X-Files. I want a life." She laughed, suddenly. It was so easy. "I've been treating them as mutually exclusive. I've looked at Bill and his family, and hated the X-Files. I've looked at our work, and hated Bill. I... It doesn't need to be like this." He swallowed hard. His eyes widened at something beyond her, then darkened with.... with fear? But, "a bird," he whispered, only. "It's gone now," and there was a strange sadness in his eyes. "I missed you, Scully," he said, suddenly, wildly. She smiled, nodded, and spoke slowly. "I've been through too much to expect a normal life with someone who hasn't. The only person who would come close to understanding is someone who had been through the same." She moved her thumb to his mouth, suppressing the guilt-stricken apology she knew would come. "I know that now." His eyes were lost. "I came back, Mulder." She was beyond smiling now, her eyes solemn, her hands still. "I chose the X-Files, but also - do you understand, Mulder? - I chose you." "I...." He ran his tongue over his lips like a parched man, desperate. "The X-Files.... I've got a lead. A new informant. He says...." "No." It was sharper than she intended. "No," she said again, more quietly. "It's three days after Christmas. I chose the X-Files, but I chose you. I want a life, too. I want both. Can you see, Mulder?" It was almost as if he was trembling before her. His face.... He had not accepted, not understood. She would make him. She smiled, her voice distant. "My family was going out to dinner tonight. They were getting a big group together to see the fireworks on Friday." "Scully." His voice was hoarse. "I can't...." He swallowed. "Does this change things?" She was sober again, knowing the future could change in an instant. "It needn't," she said, at last. "It could." She smiled again, but tears were pricking her eyes, unexpected and unwanted. "It's the date....It makes us look at the past. It makes us think of the future. It makes us...." She rubbed her eyes. There was a sudden headache, like an itch deep in her mind. "Different," she finished, almost fiercely. "Yes." His hands were clenched at his sides. "Something's coming." ****** Shadowed by a tree, the man waited. Before him, a thousand faces smiled, a thousand mouths opened with anticipation. And then, crowding on the edges of his awareness, were a thousand more, and a thousand, and a million. Millions in the darkness, waiting, waiting.... And he could come. He laughed. Anticipated coursed through his veins like blood. He would come, but first he would watch. ****** "The year two thousand...." He spoke as in a dream. His eyes were on the stars, and beyond them. "You were right. It makes you think." Beside him, Scully laughed. "Ready to greet the alien invasion? Or is it a comet? Or a flood?" All evening, she had teased him gently, making him smile secret smiles in the night. Just a week ago he had been on a precipice, staring into the darkness, alone. Today, there had been moments when he was happy - truly happy. "Come now, Doctor Scully." His voice was mock stern. "You know the Millennium doesn't start for a year. And everyone knows that it's the dead rising from their graves that will be the real problem." "Really, Mulder?" She was sober now, and soft. Her hand stroked his beneath the blanket. "You don't believe?" "No." The three stars of Orion's belt were like an arrow, pointing from the trees. The stars had always chilled him, like cold eyes in the night. "I don't..." He swallowed hard. "It's difficult enough, without.... without _that_." "Difficult." Her voice was low. "Taking stock. Hoping...." "Fearing." His nails dug into his palms. "Hoping," she said, fiercely. "Hoping...." He shut his eyes, unable to look at the stars. A thousand voices, laughter, merged into one human cry on the fringes of his awareness. "I hope that.... Samantha.... I hope that I can accept that she's happy somewhere, with her family. I hope that this will come to be enough for me. I hope...." His chest heaved, and his voice rose beyond his control. "I hope I can find her again." And then he was trembling in the cold night, wondering why he had told her. It was safer wrapped deep within him. "I hope that you find...." A soft hand brushed hair from his brow, gentle. "....Peace of mind." "I hope that...." He couldn't finish. Two years in remission, but it could still return. "I hope you live," he said, simply. "I hope you realise that your mother _does_ love you. She does, Mulder. Last summer, when you were shot...." "I hope you don't regret this Christmas." He rubbed his eyes roughly. She had given so much, confided so much. She was someone different - someone not Scully. He couldn't catch up. "I hope you live." Her voice was dark. She pressed her hand against his side, against the healed bullet wound. "I hope...." He laughed grimly, remembering the man he had met the previous week, here. "I hope the date never comes. I hope they are...." The crowd fell silent, fading away in a receding ripple of noise. It was as if some distant calming hand had stretched out, soothing them. "World peace," she exclaimed suddenly, though her laughter was strange, almost hysterical. "World peace, travel the world, and work with children and animals." "Ten." The crowd spoke, their countless voices as one inhuman voice. He was cold with dread, though his voice carried on as if it was a thing apart, brittle with laughter. He felt possessed, unreal. Nine. "A lifetime of videos for Frohike." Eight. "Hair restorer for Skinner." Stupid, stupid words. It felt like sacrilege, as if he should surrender itself to the moment and.... The voice was the crowd's, but the crowd said "seven." "Happiness." Scully's voice was fierce. Her hand closed around his. "Six." "Truth." He was close to tears. The word seemed cheap, meaningless, but it was his grail. "Five." "Justice." Again that strange un-Scully, eyes wild with desperate laughter. Four. "The American way." "Three." "Scully." He squeezed her hand fiercely. "Two." "Mulder." And her voice was calm, her face turned upwards towards the sky with expectation. She had surrendered to the moment, to the excitement. He let out a breath, and knew her again. "One." And then the lights went out. A second's silence, and someone screamed. ****** He bit his lip against the aching beauty of it. Arching above him, more bright, more terrible, than city eyes had seen for over a century. "Mulder." Scully nudged him gently, her voice low. "They're looking," he murmured, more to himself than to her. "I said once that they were up there, looking, and they were curious, but they're not. They're dispassionate. We're just specimens in a lab to them. The light was our shield." "Mulder." Sharper now, but still quiet. An awed silence hung over the park like a pall. People were waiting, shifting, waiting.... He turned to her, smiling suddenly. Her face was a pale smudge in the starlight. "Have you read Asimov's "Nightfall", Scully?" She murmured a no, and he continued. "It's about a planet that never knows darkness - a planet where to be in a dark room literally drives people mad. And then...." He moistened his lips. "Then there's an eclipse." "Ah." Her tone was unreadable. He didn't even know if she was listening. "Desperate for light, they burn everything - everything. They riot. They...." Strangely, he shivered. Above him, a dark patch moved across the sky like a hand. A bird, perhaps. He cleared his throat, continued. "And then, at the moment of totality, they see the stars. For the first time, they see the stars. Never had they even dreamt that they were not alone. It's more than they could bear." "Why?" She grabbed his wrist, suddenly fierce. "Why are you telling me this?" "I...." He shrugged, and wondered. "The darkness...." He gestured at the sky. "When do _we_ ever know darkness, really, Scully? If...." "Nothing's wrong." Again, that strange fierceness in her voice. "This is for effect, before the fireworks." He pulled the blanket tighter. "It's been minutes, Scully," he said sadly. He wondered why he had accepted it all, understood it all, without surprise. The shadow that was Scully moved, as if wrapping her arms around her body. Her voice was small and tight. "I believe that we are alone." He twisted a corner of the blanket between his fingers. "I used to fear that. It was my childhood nightmare, being alone in this world, or this world being alone in the universe. I wanted to believe there was life, other than us, in the universe. Somehow, I derived hope from that possibility." "Past tense, Mulder?" Soft. He swallowed, grateful, now, for the darkness. It was a concealing veil. "It scares me," he said, simply. "Now I know what might be out there, being alone doesn't seem so bad." She was silent, but her hand sought his, and held it. Beyond their tiny universe that was their two voices, the crowd stirred. Like a wave on shingle came the surging sound of disquiet, and voices questioning, shivering. "It's not planned, Scully," he said suddenly. He scanned the horizon through the bare fingers of the trees, and felt the first stirrings of a fear he knew he should have felt all along. "It's all over the city, Scully. The lights have gone out." "Then we wait." She stood up suddenly, and he heard the old Scully in her voice, practical and resourceful. "Not here, of course. We go home and wait, and they'll get the power working again." "They...." The word held him, as if there was some deep resonance deep within in, like the truth from a dream that he had not yet remembered. But he laughed, and forced the feeling away. "You have such a touching faith in the authorities, Agent Scully." "Shouldn't I?" He could hear the spark in her voice. "Not everything is a conspiracy, _Agent_ Mulder." He stood up. The single voice of the crowd was harsh and edgy, and individual sounds rose above the mass - an angry shout, a sob, a child's scream.... The dark hand moved across the stars at the fringes of his vision, but when he jerked his head round, there was nothing. In the crowd, someone laughed. "No," he cried, unintentionally aloud. With clumsy hands that shook, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his flashlight. He struggled to hold it, struggled to laugh. "You never know when you'll need one. Bureau issue flashlights, ideal for hunting mutants in warehouses, or dealing with the end of the world." She didn't speak. She was close to him, almost touching. He could feel her fear, but also her strength, that she was mastering it. It was only because he knew her so well that he could feel it at all. He touched her hand. The light bleached her face white, but beyond her was only darkness. A thousand voices surged, but they were beyond the small circle of their light. "Let me lead you to your carriage, my lady," he said, his voice light. Someone had told him once that if you can laugh at the darkness, then there is still hope. They walked. After a few steps, they held hands. He felt an eternity of darkness at his back, and faces he could not see. Footsteps whispered. "Mulder." Her voice was urgent, low. Her hair was the only colour in the stark white and black. "Look behind you, Mulder. _Look behind you_." He turned, slowly, slowly, dread quickening his breathing, half expecting.... "People." He let out a shuddering breath. His hand to his brow, and it came away moist. "Just people." "They're following us, Mulder." Her eyes were wide, and there was something strange in them, something beyond his understanding. Deep horror, perhaps, but pride, too. "Look at them. Hundreds of them, following." Their faces were blank shadows. He ran his hand across his face, and gave a short mirthless laugh. "I always wanted to be the Pied Piper, Scully - did I tell you? It's another of those childhood ambitions things I never grew out of." She ignored him, her face solemn. "It's the light. They'll follow the light. They'll...." Then she passed a hand across her face. She seemed dazed. "It's like a dream I had. I'd forgotten it. It's...." "It's nothing." He felt stronger, now, giving reassurance. "Like you said, it's just a power cut." "Yes." And then she smiled, and said it again as if she believed it. "Yes." "We've got to leave them behind." He gestured with the flashlight, pointing towards the FBI building. Behind him, he felt a hundred heads follow the light. "Yes." Strangely, she laughed. She seemed almost happy, suddenly, and started walking faster. "No." A hoarse voice beside him. A hand plucked at his sleeve. Turning, he looked into the lined face of an elderly man, all deep shadows. "Don't. The subway's _that_ way. You've got to take us there. You're the only one with a light." "The subway?" A woman's voice cracked. "If the power's out...." "How will we get home? My God, how will we get home?" A hand twisted in his coat, and held. "There'll be buses." It was a strong voice, firm with reassurance. It took him a second to realise that it was Scully's voice, and that her eyes were shining. "They'll organise something. Everything will be okay." The hands fell away. Only one remained, clutching at his sleeve, making his arms shake with holding the light. He blinked, saw the hand was deep claws, digging in and drawing blood, but then it was normal again. Just a hand. Just a.... "No." Scully again. Her voice was all control, but there was a desperation in her eyes. "Let him go. _Let him go!_" The crowd fell silent, but it was the silence of a reservoir about to burst its dam. The dam held, this time.... As they walked away, he realised he was close to tears. There were deep currents here that he didn't understand - deep currents in Scully. Scully breathed out suddenly, letting her breath out as a relieved laugh. "That was...." "Scary," he finished, simply. He wasn't sure what had scared him more. "They'll be okay." Scully's voice was high, and he could hear her desperate need to believe. "It'll be fixed before morning." He tried to say the right words. ****** "You can't go home," he had said, and she had nodded. Once, she would have bridled, resenting it as over-protectiveness, as patronising. Now, though.... "No." Her nails had dug into her palms, resting on her lap. "It's a long way home." Order had held, barely. There had been no traffic lights, but the drivers were all party-goers who had started the evening relaxed, full of hope. They had witnessed a dozen accidents, and many more near-misses. During the day, with impatient workers stressed about deadlines, it would have been far more serious. "No," she had said, again. "It's getting worse." They had witnessed a dozen accidents, and nearly been involved in a thirteenth. She had been thrown against the safety belt, her chin slamming into her chest. She had been numb then, as if in a dream. Only now, an hour afterwards, was she shaking. "You can have the couch. I'll have the chair." A passing car's headlights had showed her his smile. She had known, though, that he was hiding something. A strange sudden realisation. She'd pulled her coat tightly around her body, and stared straight ahead. "Scully?" She blinked, back in the present. He had found a candle from somewhere and had placed it on his coffee table. The flickering light made his face unearthly, almost demonic. "Mulder." The tip of her nose was cold. Everything else was wrapped in blankets, but she knew that the coldness deep inside would not be eased even by a dozen blankets. "What if...." His finger traced absent patterns on the arm of the chair. "What if this is the.... beginning? The beginning of.... something - something serious...?" "It's not." A reflex reaction. She didn't want to listen - wanted to sink into the blanket and not hear him, and go to sleep. But in sleep there were dreams.... "It's the electricity, Scully - the heating, the lights.... Think about it, Scully. There'll be no money tomorrow. No traffic lights. No subway." His eyes were intense. "Why don't our phones work, Scully? Why is there no water?" "The Millennium Bug." Her hands were tight clenched beneath the blanket. "They warned that something like this might happen. People thought it was scare-mongering, but...." She shrugged. He frowned. "Maybe...." "Yes." Her voice was steel. "They're working on it already." "Mmm." He gave a low distracted noise in his throat, and shut his eyes. She could tell from his breathing that he was far from sleep. Thinking, she knew. She closed her eyes. There was so much she had hoped for, so much she had dreamed, but.... She didn't trust herself to speak of them. Alone, she closed her eyes, and hoped that she wouldn't dream. ****** Asleep, she drifted, floated.... Down silent dark streets, moving smoothly as if on wheels. She glanced down at her feet and saw them bare. She was walking, but there was no feeling, and no uneven rhythm. Broken glass littered the ground beneath her, spilled onto the street from a shattered window. The voice was her own, though it came to her as from another person. "What?" she asked.... herself? "What's started?" For a second, she was aware of the feel of leather beneath her cheek. The her that was not-her. It was her own voice, but she did not understand. And then there was a door, and behind it a child was crying. She reached for the door knob, but it was like mist in her hand. Her fingers touched it lightly, and the door faded. There was a soft whisper that could have been its hinges. "It opened," she said, out loud. "It wasn't shut properly, and I touched it, so it opened." The voice.... She refused to accept it was her own, now. The voice laughed. She could imagine it shaking its head, fondly, patronisingly. "No." She half-raised her hands to her ears, then let them fall. Instead, she raised her chin, and carried on, through the dark rooms of a city house. Her vision was all grey and black. There was no sound but the crying. And then she stopped, and fell to her knees. One hand pressed to her mouth for a moment's steadying, then reached out towards the.... the voice supplied. It was a man's body, slumped on the floor, unmoving. Her hand froze above him, not touching him. If he dissolved like mist at her touch.... She swallowed. "Is he dead?" She was aware that she as being less than herself, having to ask. The voice was silent for a long time. it said at last, and sounded thick with tears. She smelled the alcohol, then, and understood. Pushing herself to her feet, she.... "I'm scared." A small girl's voice. The girl sniffed loudly, gulped, then, "who are you?" She turned round, breathing fast. Though there was darkness, the two of them seemed to stand in light. She could see every details of the girl's face, and could see that her hair was golden. Her face glistened with tears and her stuffed lion's fur was matted and damp. "My name's Dana." She fell back down to one knee, staying on the girl's level. "What's your name?" The girl sniffed again. "I'm.... I'm scared of the dark." She smiled, gesturing at the lion. "Who's that?" "The dark." The girl ignored her and clutched the lion tight, her face twisting in sobs. "The bad man. I'm scared. Will you...?" Fist pressed to her mouth, she stood up, stepping back in horror. ****** Dawn was grey at the window. "Wh...?" Scully rubbed a hand across her face and through her hair. "You okay, Scully?" Across from her, Mulder was still in his chair. His chin was resting in his hand, his eyes reflective. As she watched, he blinked slowly, his eyelids closing over his dark eyes, then.... She felt a sudden strange terror that they might reopen red. "Mmm. " His lovely deep brown eyes, intense. She rubbed her eyes, and gave a wry laugh. "Dreaming," she muttered, more to herself. He tensed. "Do you dream?" Doors. She slammed a door shut in her mind, and cut off the girl, and the darkness, and the betrayal and the feeling that she was not herself. "No," she said, firmly. He let out a breath. In his left hand, he was twisting something, round and back, round and back, round and back.... It was a black feather. ****** Halfway through the morning, she saw a police car, and suddenly she laughed. It started as a smile, and welled into a full laugh - a laugh of relief, of freedom. "Scully?" Mulder glanced at her, then looked forward again. He was clutching the steering wheel tightly, his knuckles white. He had been subdued all morning. She reached out and opened the car window. The hair lashed at her face and twisted her hair, flashing strands of red across her vision. The sky was the most perfect blue. "Scully?" He was still in chains, still in the grip of the darkness of the night. She had been liberated. She smiled at him. "The most beautiful days are in winter." "No smoke," he said, roughly. "No power. No industry. No pollution." He looked so tired. "It only _looks_ beautiful." She clenched her fists, hating him. "It's getting fixed. It's under control." "Maybe." He shrugged. His tone said the opposite. "It's under control." She had to shout over the wind. "I've seen it. We've both seen it. No sign of disorder all morning." He had resisted at first when she had wanted to drive home alone. "I need clean clothes," she had insisted, "and I don't need a baby- sitter." Still, when she had arrived back outside his building, calmly directed all the way by patrolmen taking the place of traffic lights, there had been several days' worth of clothes in her trunk. She hadn't told him. She was trying to forget, herself. She closed the window. She no longer felt like laughing. ****** For the first time since midnight, Mulder smiled a real smile, felt real hope. He laughed wryly to himself. "You wound us, Mulder." Langly shook his head, making tutting noises. "You really thought we'd be caught like everybody else?" "What sort of underground conspiracy theorists would we be if we didn't have our own generator?" There was a smear of oil on Frohike's face. "What sort of underground conspiracy theorists would we be if we didn't distrust anyone's Millennium-compatible software but our own?" Byers didn't look up from his computer screen. Scully was leaning against the wall, her eyes half-closed. He glanced at her, echoing her words from the previous night. "It's the Millennium Bug?" She didn't meet his eyes. The three Gunmen exchanged a look. "Maybe," Byers shrugged, and then there were four of them, sharing the same doubts, and seeing it in each others' eyes. Scully made an impatient noise in her throat and looked away. Byers tapped at the screen. "Our computer's working, but there's no-one out there. A few like us, but...." He spread his hands, palms upwards - a gesture of failure. "No commercial ISP is working. No academic institutions. No organisations." A television hissed, a storm of white noise. "There's nothing out there. No transmitters are working." Frohike lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Last night, I couldn't even watch...." "Video, Frohike." Mulder gave his best impression of a leer. "Works for me." Footsteps on the floor. Scully was pacing, arms folded, head cocked as if listening intensely. He swallowed, sobered suddenly. "And the water." Langly clutched a hank of his hair in his hand. "I couldn't wash my hair this morning." Frohike patted him on the shoulder. "He's ashamed to be seen by a lady." But the tension was palpable beneath their jokes. Mulder took a deep breath. The click click of Scully's heels stopped. "It's worse than it should be, isn't it, guys?" Their silence was the only answer he needed. ****** Her steps grew slower. She was slipping behind him, and further behind. "Scully?" Mulder turned round. He resisted the urge to grab her by both hands and physically drag her forward. "What?" She didn't look at him. Her voice was sharp. "It's people, Mulder - just people. Why did you dr.... Why did we come here?" All the way from the Gunmen's office, he had been silent, lost in thought. She had asked no questions either, accepting the way he took them. This was the first time they had spoken. "People, Scully," he said, now. He stepped up close, his voice low and only for her. "Look at them. Really look at them." Eyes burning, she raised her head, scanning the crowd quickly, impatiently. "It's a crowd of people outside the White House, Mulder." She spoke with exaggerated patience. "There's always people outside the White House." He would not let her escape. "_Really_ look at them." He stepped behind her, speaking over her shoulder into her ear. He put a hand on her cheek, keeping her head steady. "People." There was a shake of doubt in her voice. His thumb was at the base of her jaw, and he could feel her pulse, fast against his skin. "Scared people." "They want leadership. What does the White House symbolise?" The crowd was swelling by the minute, speaking with one voice in a rising tone of anger. An elbow jostled him in his back. "It's barely twelve hours." She stepped forward, away from his touch. "It's only a power cut, Mulder." He dug his nails into his palms. But he took a deep breath, and kept his voice low. "It's not the lack of power, Scully. It's the lack of leadership." He gestured at the crowd. "All they want is for someone to come out and tell them that it's under control. They went to be told to get their water from Muster Point B, and their food from Muster Point A. They want to be assured that someone else is dealing with the problem." He spread his hands. "Where's that assurance?" Her hands were clenched at her sides. "The police were taking control back there. How can we know what's being done elsewhere? How can you say no-one's getting that reassurance - how can you know?" "Show me," he said simply. He pulled the car keys out and held them out to her. "Show me that they are." She turned and walked off without a word. ****** "There." They didn't even need to drive. Head held high, she'd walked against the flow of the people, averting her eyes from the look on their faces, then stopped still, and pointed. In the middle of the road, a patrolman stood tall, his arm stretched out to direct the traffic. A dozen people flanked him in a tight semi-circle, their body language showing agitation. "There, Mulder." Still she pointed, letting the scene speak. As her arm began to shake, four more people joined the circle. She lowered her arm. "There's their reassurance." "No, Scully." He shook his head sadly. He moistened his lips. "I tried, this morning." She turned away. Something inside her screamed at her not to listen. She felt that her life depending on this belief. If she was wrong.... "It was when you'd gone home," he continued, relentlessly. "I talked to one of them, not telling him I was FBI. I pretended to be scared. I didn't need to pretend much." He gave a self-deprecating laugh, and she could imagine him smiling, trying to lighten the situation. She stayed turned away, eyes always on that small group, willing those tense stances to relax. "I asked questions about what we should do about.... oh, about water, food.... if the army would be distributing blankets to old ladies.... things like that." One of the crowd reached out an angry hand and grabbed the patrol man's hand. Voices raised above the noise of the traffic. She shut her eyes. "He said he didn't know." There was nothing but bleakness in his voice, now. "To all my questions, he said he didn't know." She whirled on him then. "Damn it, Mulder, we're FBI." She reached for her pocket. "We should be...." "No." His hand closed round her wrist, almost painfully. "What could we give them?" "Order." She glared at him. But her anger was more at herself. The thought of taking control filled her with a deep dread. The blank- faced procession following the flashlight.... She swallowed hard. "This reassurance you say they need." "By lying to them?" he said softly, and she hated the pity in his eyes. He was looking at her as he would look at a child. She let out a breath. Slowly, slowly, his hand released her wrist. She kept her arm where it was, reluctant to give him the victory of letting it fall back to her side. "Someone will know." She raised her head defiantly. Somewhere, a horn blared, and then another, and another.... ****** "I was right, Scully. I wish I wasn't...." They sat in the car on a random nameless street where they had finally stopped, exhausted. The air was thick with dread, suffocating. His hand shook as he reached out and opened the window, just a crack. He rubbed his eyes, and for a moment Samantha's six-year old face flashed as if living, then faded. Scully sighed, but said nothing. Her chin was resting in her hand. She looked almost asleep, though he could see how every muscle in her body was tense. "They just need someone to tell them what to do - just someone in the street with a bullhorn, telling them it's under control." He shivered. The sun was lowering, and long grotesque shadows twisted in the street. "They're children." "They're...." And then she laughed, mirthlessly, as if recognising the hollowness of her words. "They're Americans." "Land of the Free?" He shook his head. "These militias who claim to detest authority, to stand up for individual freedoms.... What do they all have in common, Scully?" She was silent, closed against him. He felt lonely as Christmas, desperately trying to connect. It was worse, perhaps, knowing she was so close physically. He felt tortured by her proximity. "They all have a leader." His tone was flat. There were few things worse than knowing the future and being unable to change it. "Everyone needs a leader... Oh, maybe not when times are good, and never a dictator, but in times of stress.... We _are_ children, Scully. Everyone wants to know that someone bigger and stronger is looking after things. That's why people created gods." Absently, her hand rose to her cross and twisted it. He had expected an objection, a statement of faith, but got nothing. She was silent. "It will be dark in a few hours." He touched the back of her hand and.... He blinked hard and the tears receded, unshed. "It will...." He cleared his throat. "It will be dark in a few hours - the second night without everything people take for granted. What will people do, Scully?" She wrenched her eyes to meet his. They were bleak, afraid. he realised, suddenly, and this time it was harder to fight the tears - tears for her. "Nothing," she said. It was closer to a croak than a voice. She coughed. "They'll wait." "They'll riot." "They'll wait." She dropped the cross as if it burnt her. Her fingers were scored with red lines from twisting the chain. "You're the one who said they want leadership." "They won't wait." His voice was leaden. "They want it now. I said they were like children, Scully, and what are children but adults who haven't been touched by the veneer of civilisation? Babies don't make sacrifices, or follow rules, or respect other people's needs. They are purely selfish. If they want something, they take it - or cry until someone stronger gives it to them." "Civilisation can't be just.... forgotten in a day." Her hand was back on the cross, gently now. "But it will start tonight. A convenience store will be looted for bottled water, or a flashlight. A crowd will smash the windows of a police station, angry at how little is being done." He shrugged, his hands spread despairingly. "It will escalate. In a few days...." "I can not accept that view of human nature." Her eyes were like steel, shining. He forced a laugh, and resorted to a lie. "I read 'Lord of the Flies' when I was at school. It changed my outlook on life. It... explained things I saw every day. It made me what I am today." "I read it at school too. I thought it was implausible. That's where we're different, Mulder." He bit his lip, and said nothing. She sighed, and suddenly he wondered if the shine in her eyes was unshed tears. "So, Mulder. let's say you're right." She folded her arms. "Why, Mulder? I presume from your tone that you think someone's doing this deliberately? It's too much to expect that you haven't got a _theory_ on it." There was heavy sarcasm in her words. "Let's hear it, Mulder." But, instead, he reached across the car and touched her cheek with his fingertips. "Why are we fighting on this, Scully?" he whispered. He responded physically to the memory of the dream, jerking his head up, listening. There was longing there, and revulsion. There was.... Scully. "I.... I don't want what you say to be true." She looked at him warily, sadly. A drop of water fell onto his fingers. ****** "We need to talk," he had said, simply. "All of us. We need to go back." But someone had arrived before them at the Lone Gunmen's office.... "Agent Mulder." Richard Fry's teeth flashed white in his tanned face. "And this must be the lovely Agent Scully Frohike's been telling me about." Mulder flashed Frohike a sharp look, but said nothing. He had met Fry a couple of times after that first meeting in the park - meetings in which he had promised a lot but said little - and knew that he was not a man he felt safe with. He was glad. Dangerous men made the best informants. "This is Richard Fry, Agent Scully." Frohike looked subdued. For once, he shrugged apologetically rather than following up with further innuendo. "He has certain.... information about what's happening." "Oh." Scully smiled wanly. One hand twisted her cross, the other hand rested on the door frame. Cold air billowed behind her, but she did not come in, did not shut the door. Fry smiled charmingly. "I know who's doing this, and why. You're just in time, Agent Mulder, Agent Scully. I was about to tell there noble crusaders the truth." Mulder stepped forward. "Mulder." A soft whisper, only for him to hear. "I want to go home." He stopped, torn. Ahead were the four men in their circle of light, strange shadows on their face from the naked bulb. Behind, in the gathering darkness, was Scully. He felt a creeping fear that his choice would be pivotal - that it would extend far beyond this moment. "Mulder." Louder this time. Her voice was distracted. "I need some air. I... I'll be okay." He dared to turn round, and she was smiling, privately for him. Deeply relieved, her let out a long breath. "Tell me what he says afterwards, okay?" Afterwards. He smiled. "Mulder." Fry reached out a hand towards him. "Fox." He opened his mouth to object, then shut it. The name didn't seem wrong on Fry's lips. It was familiar, as if he had heard it before. Scully's heels on the stairs, receding.... "We were talking about the future, Fox - your friends and I." Fry's soft boots made squeaking noises on the floor, like a whimper. He paced around behind him. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. "I was about to.... describe it." Fingers clutched his shoulder, abrupt as a claw. He gasped. "Can you see it, Fox?" His shoulder was frozen and numb from where the fingers dug into it, but he could no more have pulled away than he could have stopped breathing. He _had_ to hear. "No," and his breath sounded like a moan to him, weak and needy. "No..." "Imagine it, Fox." he thought, suddenly, then smiled, for Fry spoke again. "Imagine it, Frohike, Byers, Langly. You need to see it. You need to see the horror of it to know what you will be fighting. And you must fight them." He shut his eyes, his head swaying from side to side, seeking pictures. And, fuelled by Fry's voice, they came.... "There will be weeks of rioting. Thousands will die - millions - caught in the crossfire. Children killed in a fight over a flashlight. In the darkness, everyone will be a threat. Some people will shoot first, and ask questions later. And they will set fires for light...." Red sheeted his vision - red and crackling cruel orange. Cecil L'Ively's demonic laugh, and hot smoke in his lungs as he cowered beneath a pile of twisted aliens.... Fire.... But worse, a million times worse. Fire in city after city, and screaming faces consumed in it.... The skin on the back of his hands bubbled with agony. Someone gasped - a strange high note of pain, or concern. "And in the rubble, people will dream...." Low and mesmerising. he thought suddenly, but made no move, no resistance. His burnt hands still by his side. "They'll dream of light, and a world in which they can eat cooked food, and walk safe, and stay clean. They'll dream of order. They'll dream of...." A monstrous ruler, striding the earth. "Leviathan," he murmured. Fry laughed. "And how easy it will be, Fox. A whole world facing chaos, and a life that's nasty, brutish and short. Would they not sacrifice some freedom to a ruler who offered them light, and freedom from crime, and running water, and food?" Like sheep, they fell onto their knees in the streets, hands held up in supplication. Broken glass pierced their skin, and blood flowed. They were kneeling in their own blood, and the blood of civilisation. He shut his eyes, unable to watch. "Who will be Leviathan?" he breathed. "You know, Fox. All of you.... You know." He heard it like a low growl at first, then growing, swelling. Closer, it became distinct sounds, like a hovering helicopters, or.... or.... He felt his face twist in laughter - hysterical laughter. "No." He felt rather than heard the whisper. "Not horses - helicopters. They don't get the horses." And a laugh, soft enough to be a dream. "Helicopters," he said, aloud, and again heard soft wondering noises from the others. he wondered, his mind half in the small office, half in the glass-strewn street. "Let yourself see it, Fox." And then the part of him that was still in his body blanked out, and he was wholly there - wholly there in a street of silent lifeless faces, gazing with adoring terror at the helicopters. Slowly, slowly - and he held his breath with the others, and moaned with dread and relief as they did - the doors opened and.... "Him," he sighed. His stomach twisted with the horror of a suspicion confirmed. The man's skin was white, his bearing regal as ever. He paused in the dust, one long exquisite finger brushing at the arm of his suit. "Don't stop..." "You...." He tried to lash out a furious fist, but in this vision- world, he was powerless. The man stood next to his associate, and smoked. Black ash fell upon black ash. The crowd's mouths opened in silent supplication. He knew the third, too. Tall and solemn, it was wearing the face that it had worn when it had thrown him to his death in Alaska, and when it had killed his only hope for saving his mother and gaining absolution. With a silent hiss, the weapon in its hand shot out, ready to kill. The point dripped with red blood. And the fourth was pale.... "No." He fell to his knees in the dirt, and the glass cut through his flesh with a pain that was nothing compared with.... with this. It was his nightmare. It was the pale deathly grey, and the harsh white light, and the willowy figure that promised to look after her, but _took_ her. It was the self-loathing of Puerto Rico, of living for a thing for twenty years, and panicking when he saw it. It was.... "You understand." In that moment, he could have worshipped Fry for ever, for pulling him back. He was fully in the office now, just one man talking to another. The terror of that street was gone, leaving nothing but a lingering creeping fear like the memory of a dream. He nodded, unable to speak. "They will come forward and offer an end to the anarchy, and people will welcome them - the alien and the human alike. The people will be bruised, and will take a while to lick their wounds, grateful only to have survived. By the time they realise that the order has become repression, and the repression tyranny, it will be too late. The date will have come, and passed." "The date?" He shook his head, like a dog shaking water from its coat. Some of it lingered, and he was still half under the spell. "This _will_ happen?" And then Fry laughed - a beautiful terrible sound. "How the Hell should I know, Fox? I'm just telling you what they plan." "Vividly." Frohike swallowed hard. He looked deeply moved. he wanted to say, and would have, had Fry not been standing there, smiling. He felt relief, that he had not been alone - that he had not been seeing visions, going crazy - but somewhere, insanely, he felt jealousy. As if he wanted to be chosen, to be picked out, alone.... "Yes. Vividly." Fry shrugged. "I have been told that I have a.... gift with words." Mulder raised his hand to his shoulder, massaging where the fingers had dug in deeply. It would bruise, tomorrow. The three Gunmen looked at each other. "So, what do we do about it?" Byers asked. He looked long at Frohike, at Langly, briefly at Mulder, and not at all at Fry. Langly cleared his throat. "What _can_ we do?" Mulder looked at Fry, awaiting an answer. ****** The shy was deep orange, and the windows shone like fire. Scully rubbed her eyes with her hand again and again. They itched with tiredness, and the ache of unshed tears. Her head was throbbing mercilessly. She ran a finger along the cold metal of the car, lingering a while on the handle. The part of her that believed Mulder's story craved that safety, and the lovely control of a light that could be switched on and off at will. But the part of her that wanted to be free, to escape from.... She had no idea where the thought had come from, but she recognised the not-Scully voice from her dreams. The cross at her throat began to irritate her. She had pulled it, earlier, digging the chain into her skin, and now she ran her finger gingerly around her neck, exploring the skin. It wasn't broken. By the time she had finished her exploration, the after- echo of the voice was no longer troubling her, and that was _good_. But the idea, the sentiment.... "I need some air," she had said, and it had been true, although she had no idea how the words had come out coherently. Her mind had been reeling, assailed by some horror she could not begin to understand. The man had smiled, and she had seen the grinning worm-crawling skull of the worst autopsy she had ever done. "I need some air," she said, aloud, and raised her chin almost defiantly. There was still light in the sky, and she had her gun. As she walked down the street, her footsteps were the only noise in the world. It was as if they were all already dead. ****** "Can they be stopped?" He clenched and unclenched his fists. Fry shrugged. "Perhaps." "Can _we_ stop them?" "No." He hated the light, then. The dark, only the dark.... In the ruins of the world, he would curl in the darkness, put his hands over his ears, and scream. ****** Pattering feet. She had lost all awareness. She shook her head sharply, and found that barely minutes had passed. Turning round, she could see the car, still visible, shining like gold in the sunset. Pattering feet, echoing.... She reached for the gun, but didn't draw it. The feel of its cool metal on her fingers was enough. It always anchored her, gave her strength. In resolve, in skill, she was the equal of a man twice her physical strength. Pattering feet, and blonde hair flying in the wind. Arms flailing wildly, mouth open with silent fear, it was a little girl. she thought, at first, for there was something about her struck a chord, that was familiar. For two years, she had seen Emily in any blonde girl, the way Mulder saw Samantha in any dark one. It took a year before she could see one and still smile. She held her hands out, palms open, like hands calming a storm or hushing a crowd. "Hey..." The girl ran straight into her, blindly, then reeled, and almost fell backwards. Scully clutched at her, and steadied her, and, as she did so, looked into her eyes. It was all she could do not to cry out. The girl heaved great shuddering breaths, broken with sobs. Her face was red and drenched in tears. A tawny mane and two bead eyes peeped out of her coat pocket. Her own breathing slowed to the rhythm of her reassurance. She was composed again, accepting, ready only to soothe and comfort. "It's okay. It's okay. It's okay...." She stroked the girl's hair, pulling her close into her body. The girl's sobs stilled. She looked up, and her face was at peace, her eyes half closed, like a baby being lulled to sleep, utterly content and safe. "Hi, Dana," she said, and smiled. ****** Soft feet on the stairs. Langly stood, mouth open, ear pressed against the door. They waited. Frohike twisted a pen between his fingers, round and round. "He's gone." Langly turned round. "We can talk." Mulder raised his head sharply and breathed in as if to speak, then stopped. He would assess, first. His emotions felt bruised. "I don't trust him." Langly's face was lined. He had aged ten years in a day. Silence. Mulder clenched his hands into fists, and waited. He felt that he and Fry had touched in some special way - connected. It had not been without pain, and fear, but.... He unclenched a hand, and rubbed his shoulder. "How does he know?" Byers stroked his beard. His ring shone in the light. "It makes sense." His fingers dug deep, massaging. Through the shirt, his skin felt cold. "It is in keeping with...." He paused. "With other things we've discovered in the past. It fits in with our own observations today." Frohike nodded, but said nothing. He looked deeply troubled. "You trust him, Mulder?" Langly leant forward sharply. Mulder frowned, consideringly. "Yes," he said slowly, and found that he did. "Yes, I do." "You're so damn quick to trust, Mulder." He had never heard anger in Langly's voice before. "You've always trusted _anyone_ who comes to you with information. Unlike you, _we_ value our lives too much to do that." Byers placed a hand on Langly's arm and the two exchanged a look that he could not catch. "But if there's any chance that he's right, we risk our lives by _not_ trusting him." "How?" Langly snapped. There was a tension in the room, and disharmony. Mulder had never seen these men except as a perfect team, finishing each other's thoughts. he had thought once, and smiled internally. But Scully had gone. He rubbed his hands over his eyes, using that as an excuse to hide, to gain a few seconds alone. "If he's right," Byers said firmly, "and we can't stop this.... this thing, then we have to work out how we can survive it." Langly walked away. He rested his hands palm down on the wall, and stood there, head leaning forward. When he spoke, his voice was muffled. "If we want to survive it...." ****** "No..." The girl moaned, squirmed. "No. The bad man's coming. Dana, it's the bad man. The bad man...." Her mind was reeling. She was stroking the girl rhythmically, focusing only on that need as her anchor in the storm-lashed sea. she hammered in her mind, like a mantra. "The bad man...." The girl shuddered. "Listen...." She had created a world of just herself and the girl, shutting her mind to all other sounds, but now.... "The bad man." Heavy feet ahead of her, and behind her, their echo. It sounded like soft-soled boots creeping behind them, ready to.... "No." She whirled around, hand ready to grab her gun, but there was no-one there. In the empty street, paper blew in the wind. A dark bird flew overhead, low, and its feathers whispered. "Get away from her." The click of a gun was unmistakable. She raised her hands, turned round slowly. The girl entwined her fingers in her coat and held on tight. "Get away from my daughter." She ran her eyes assessingly over the man, from red face to heavy boots. She could smell the alcohol even over several yards of winter breeze. His gun was shaking, but his finger had already half-pulled on the trigger. He would be unpredictable. She wouldn't know which way to dive, and the girl's grip would hamper her own draw. She drew a deep breath, and stuck her chin forward. "I'm with the FBI, Mr....?" No answer. She pointed towards her coat, offering to pull out her ID, but he didn't give. "She was scared. She looked lost. I was...." She shrugged, wondering how to explain it even to herself. What _were_ they? "I was comforting her," she said, at last. "Look, Miss FBI. I don't trust no-one, least ways your kind. For the last time, step away from her." "Is this your father?" She lowered her voice, speaking to the girl. If the man shot, he shot, but she would not hand a child over to a stranger. In her dream, she had walked away.... The girl nodded. Slowly, oh so slowly, her hand loosened its grip. "Do you want to go with him?" She kept her hands high, but stroked the girl's hair with her eyes. "You don't have to, you know." Though where, in this future world of Mulder's, she would find the law to support her, she could not begin to imagine. She knew, though, that she would try. She wondered if it was the girl's hair colour that made her so sure. "I'll go." The girl choked a sob, and stepped forward. "It's not for long. I'll see you soon, afterwards....." The man made an angry sound in his throat, thrusting his gun forward. She ignored him. "How do you know?" The words came out in spite of herself. She didn't want to ask, though part of her needed the answer. There were more things here than she could believe. The girl smiled. "I just know." After they had gone, she pressed her fist against her mouth and stood there, still, for a very long time. ****** He was tense, now, listening always for the sweet sound of her feet. The other man's words faded in and out of focus - in and.... "I know a man with a bunker." Frohike gestured at the radio set and gave a brave attempt at a smile. "Useful guy to know. We could go there first sign of anarchy." He shrugged. He was twisting his hat between his hands, his knuckles white. "I'd hate to die by a random brick when I could die later as a proper resistance fighter." He struck an affected pose. "Looks better on the resume, don't you think?" "It's not happened yet." Langly's voice was soft. "It might not happen at all." None of them believed it, now. It was just how, and when, and how much could be saved. Mulder felt numb inside, knowing that if he let himself feel, he could break down utterly. The loss of the whole world he knew.... a small voice whimpered inside. His lips moved, almost saying her name aloud. It was a worry he could deal with - a normal, human worry. And then he laughed aloud, knowing he was close to hysteria but unable to stop. He really cared more about the safety of one person than he did about the future of a million million in the world? he imagined her saying, stroking his hair as he wept. If she.... "....tell them?" Langly's voice was rising again. Mulder blinked, pulling himself back. He wanted to hide his face in his hands, rock to and fro, and hope it would go away. Fear would sniff for him, searching, but he would hide, and it would pass him by and take up residence with someone else. "What can we tell them?" There was sympathy in Byers voice. He wondered, suddenly, if all three of them would cry, alone, when no- one else could see. "Get out there with our ham radios and pamphlets, and tell people not to panic? It's what I meant, earlier. If Fry is one of Them, it's only in his interest to tell us the truth. There is _nothing_ we can do. Telling people will only accelerate the process. They'll panic all the more, if they know. There's nothing we can do, Langly. Nothing." Langly held his head high, though his voice was ravaged. "I do not accept that." "I do not accept that." Mulder ran the words over in his head, mouthing them silently. "I do not accept that." He smiled. He felt as one who has stepped from a suffocating room into cool fresh air. He felt alive, and himself. A wild desperate hope stirred within him, and his hand fell to his side. The last lingering memory of Fry's touch was gone. "I do not accept it," he said, aloud, and six eyes were wide, staring at him. None of them smiled. Heels on the steps, moving slowly.... "I do not accept it, Scully." He stood up blindly, and the chair fell over with a crash. He smiled, laughed, and his vision clouded with moisture. As she walked through the door, her face doubled, trebled.... She smiled wanly, and her smile was unfocused, multiplied. She ran a hand over her forehead. "I want to go, Mulder." Behind her, the light from the window was almost completely grey. Just the tiniest hint of orange.... ****** It was about to break. Scully glanced round anxiously, at the tightly packed cars, the impatient faces bent over their wheels. Mulder had told her what Fry's vision of the future was, in a dull monotone that told her that the true horror was much greater than he admitted. She could not believe it, but now.... "Something's going to break," she said, aloud. Mulder nodded. His behaviour had been.... strange, alternating between spell-bound abstraction and feverish hope. He was abstracted, now. They had travelled three miles in the half an hour since they had left the Gunmen, and the darkness was almost complete. "Let us go!" The man in the next car wound down his window and shouted at the patrolman, adding a few choice swear words. "I've got a wife at home...." They were close to the front now - close enough to see the pale pinched face of the patrolman. He was alone in a sea of traffic from four directions, and their neighbour was not the only driver who was shouting. The city was a chaotic cacophony of horns. "Let me through now!" The man's engine revved up into a scream. "Let me through, or I'm going through." The patrolman's scared face behind his flat out-stretched hand.... "No!" Scully screamed. "No....!" But even through her shout, she could hear the thump, and faint "oh" of surprise from the patrolman as the air was forced from his lungs, as he flew through the air and landed, half on the road and half on the sidewalk. She was out of the car in an instant. "No..." She wanted to rock with the horror of it. Kneeling in the dust, she reached for the dying man's hand. Even a cursory glance told her that he had no chance, though she would breathe for him if she needed to. But every drop of his blood was a symbol. "Scully?" Mulder's hand on her shoulder. She loved him then, though she could not smile, could not spare time to speak to him. He had come back to himself in time, and was there for her. She wondered, sometimes, if he knew what one word could do. "Can you hear me?" She bent down low, whispering through the sounds of the horns. "It's okay. I'm here. You'll be taken care of. Everything's going to be okay." Hollow, hollow words.... She felt the warm breath of exhaust as a car pulled past her, almost close enough to touch. Dispassionate eyes looked down on her, and on the dying man. "Get out the way!" an angry voice shouted. "It's nearly dark." She wanted to bury her face in her hands and weep. "No." Mulder's voice. She heard the click of a car door opening, and sounds of a scuffle. A dull thud, and she wanted - needed - to look, but could not wrench her eyes from the man's blue lips. He had died, and, mesmerised with horror, she had not breathed for him. "Mulder," she murmured. "Now will you get out of our way?" Two voices, saying the same thing in different words, and another thud. She blinked hard, and turned around. One man held Mulder, arm around his neck, while the other swung his fist back, ready to drive it into his stomach. She knew he wouldn't have threatened civilians with his gun, even this time. For all his threatening words, he was childishly naive, sometimes. "Mulder." She ran a hand across her face and it was wet and sticky. "Let it go, Mulder." "But...." He looked at her, and his eyes were wild, desperate. his eyes were crying at her. "Let it go," she said, more sharply. She just needed to cry in the darkness - to curl up and cry. Her vision had shifted, and she saw normal human beings now as monsters. She knew that part of her had changed forever in an instant. She had moved beyond Mulder, gone from denial to total comprehension. "Scully." It was a cry of agony, though the fist had been lowered. There was blood on his lip from an earlier blow. "Let it go." Her voice was low, and, in the noise, he would only see her lips move, and not hear her. The man's cold hand was clasped in hers. His hands fell to his sides. He looked lost, utterly bereft. When the man released his hold, he collapsed to the ground, kneeling in the road as if he was boneless. "Help me, Mulder," she whispered, pulling at the dead man's limbs. His head lolled at the movement, and she felt a tiny insane hope that the movement meant he was alive. Mulder pulled himself to his hands and knees, raising his head, and for a moment she thought he was going to howl to the darkness like a dog - total grief. But he shook his head, and his control held. She was grateful for it. If he collapsed, she would too. "Mulder..." The man who'd hit Mulder drove past, his car crawling to a halt just ahead of them. It was every man to himself, and the intersection was packed solid. The air was thick with crumpling metal and swearing. "Three yards, Scully." And Mulder was beside her, adding his arms to hers, pulling at the dead man. "He just moved three yards." When they reached the sidewalk they slumped, arms around each other, the dead man on their laps between them, and wept. ****** The light was pulsing. The doctor's eyes were rimmed with red. "What?" He seemed to respond to everything on a five-second delay. Mulder knew he was weary beyond the point of exhaustion. "I said...." A long moment of darkness. When the lights came on again, it was as if the very walls of the hospital sighed with relief. "I said there's a dead man outside, in my car." He spoke in a whisper, though some of the faces there were blank, dead. "He needs to be taken to the morgue." It had been a journey from a nightmare - a slow crawl through tightly-packed traffic. He had tensed at every shout, every swerve. On the back seat, Scully had cradled the dead man, her hand gentle on his hair. The doctor sighed. "When we have time." Her face had been a mask of desolation. He had glanced in the mirror, then again, and again.... The rectangular snapshot of Scully, grieving. He had _needed_ it - needed to know he was not alone. But when she had seen his eyes in the mirror, she had wiped her face roughly, then smiled, defiantly. "Scully," he had mouthed, and looked away. His hands had been shaking on the steering wheel. He blinked, and Scully's remembered face became the doctor's, now. The same face... Both were strained and devastated, but this man was frail, nothing. He had none of Scully's skill at hiding it, at keeping going. "What's with the lights?" He spread his hands, then saw the blood on his right cuff and held it there, staring. "We have a generator." The man ran a hand through his hair, rubbing, as if at a headache. "We had enough fuel for several days, but the army came and took it." His voice was dead, but there was a hoarseness to it, as if he had shouted his fury, earlier, and now was spent, drained. "They said they were centralising all supplies to ensure a fairer distribution at emergency points. But...." He swallowed. "They haven't left us enough to last the night...." "You let them?" He balled his hands into fists. "You didn't fight?" The doctor opened his hands, palms upwards. "With what? Bare hands? You don't fight the army - not these guys." Almost fiercely, he raked a hand through his hair and pulled it back at the temple. A blue bruise was spreading from the hairline, and there was a faint matting of blood. "Don't - judge - me." "No." Mulder shut his eyes, hearing the doctor walk away, hearing other footsteps, other breath. All dead soon, or slaves. All.... He wanted to sag at the knees, to sway, to.... "I told you, Fox...." A soft smooth voice, like a phsycial pain in his head. "I told you how it would be." He clutched his head in his hands, mouth moving silently, like a prayer: Then, breathing out deeply, he opened his eyes and..... Broke. "How do you know?" He grabbed Fry's jacket at the collar, pushing him back into the wall. His balled the leather in his fist. "Why are you here, now. How...?" "I think you should let me go, Fox." It was soft as a hiss. He tightened his grip. "Not until you tell me. Are you one of Them? Is that how you know?" He wrapped his other hand round the reassuring metal of his gun. His voice was a deadly whisper. "_Is_ it?" Fry smiled slowly. His eyes were burning, and they were fire, not blue. "You can't kill me, Fox." He needed a black and white war movie, and a cigarette. The chilling confidence was the same. "I can." He drew his gun. Hatred clouded his vision. "I will, if...." He swallowed hard, fighting to keep the gun level. "Just tell me how you know all this." Inside he was sobbing. "Fox." The man raised both hands and gently closed then round him, hand and gun. Mulder made a low noise in his throat and - - made no resistence. The man's skin was cold, so cold. "I...." And the strength flowed from his limbs like water. He sank to his knees, his head slumping forward with grief, held up only by the man's hands around his outstretched right hand. But his eyes saw only the a small circle of white tiles, and the toes of Fry's worn boots. "It's hard, Fox, I know," Fry murmured, and the timbre of his ever- changing face was soft. "It's not my doing. I know because.... I know. I'm not on their side." He raised his head, focusing not on the man's face but on the tight clasped hands that enclosed his own. "How can I fight them?" Low and intense. "You c...." "I do not accept that." He burned with fire. "I.... I _hate_ them." In his mind, it was noble, declaring allegiance to a cause. In his ears, it was tawdry, and childish. The last day had robbed him of himself, making him into something he did not recognise. "Yes." Fry smiled - a strange smile. "How you fight.... How you dare to hope the hopeless.... How you will never accept the new order, even after everyone you know has been.... assimilated.... It's the fire in you, Fox. You're a stubborn, insane fighter. It's why I chose you." Footsteps approached along the corridor, then stopped. A female gasp of breath. The steps receded, echoing fast. Mulder licked his lips. "Chose me? How?" The man released his hold. The gun fell to the floor and lay between them, stark black on white. "Can you fight them?" He pushed himself to his feet. His limbs were tingling, numb. "Can - you - fight - them?" "I have..." A shrug. "Ways...." "I want...." But it ended in a groan. He wanted it so much, so intensely, that he was unable to say it. He let his head fall into his hands, rubbing his eyes roughly with his fingers. Yes. Flashes of light in the darkness from the pressure of his fingers. Yes. Whisper-footsteps on the tiles. He opened his eyes, and was alone. ****** With the dead man, she waited. Her eyes drooped. Like the dead man, she drifted.... She left her body. Silently down the street on an early evening of blood and fear. Her feet were bare. Houses slid past, and eyes looked through her - a million million eyes that could not see her. But one.... "I've been waiting for you." A voice - whose voice, whose? But the smile in the voice was joyous. She felt her own smile as if it was a living entity, spreading over her face of its own volition. She wanted to fight that smile. She heard a soft exhalation, as if someone was pushing themselves to their feet, hope overpowering physical pain. "You came," the voice said. "It will be all right, now." Her head turned a fraction, but she would not.... "I will not do it." She clenched her fists, tight. "I do not accept this. I...." Her head snapped back, and she was in the car, and there were curved red indentations in her palms. With the dead man, she waited.... ****** "Scully." A low murmur, warning. The coffee slapped rhythmically against the side of the mug - slap, slap, slap. It was colder than her hands, now, although the small camping stove had heated the water to boiling. "Scully." Louder. "We need to talk." Her knuckles were white. Earlier, she had poured bottled water over her hands and rubbed and rubbed and rubbed, long after all traces of the blood had gone. Mulder had had to grasp her wrist firmly, then, and it had taken all her control not to break down and cry. She moistened her lips, but said nothing. The surface of the coffee reflected fire. "Scully." He was fighting as hard as she was, she could tell. "We've got to.... What can we do? How can we stop this?" "We can't," she said dully. She wrenched one hand from the mug and rubbed her eyes. The mug jolted, and a drop of lukewarm liquid ran down her leg. "How can you say that?" A shout, a slam of his fist on the coffee table, and the drop became a trickle, became a flood. She bit her lip, and did not move. "How can you just accept this?" She blinked, her voice level. "Earlier, you said I wasn't accepting it, and you told me - you told me, Mulder. I believe you." She felt so bleak. "You should be pleased." His fingers dug into the arm of his chair. "I wanted you to believe their plan. I didn't want you to believe that the plan will succeed." "I..." There was no coffee left, but still she circled the mug rhythmically. "I don't know if I do believe their plan," she said, dully. "You know I can't accept all... all parts of that - not that this is a prelude to some sort of extraterrestrial colonisation process." He let out an audible breath. His hands were shaking. "I do believe, though," and she raised her head almost defiantly. "I do believe that, unless we get power back soon, we're looking at anarchy. I do accept that things are breaking down faster than I ever thought possible. I do admit that I was naive." She shut her eyes. Oh, and what it cost to admit that.... When she opened her eyes again, he was staring at her, leaning forward in his chair. "Whatever you believe about.... about what comes after, you know the anarchy mustn't be allowed to happen." It was phased as a statement, but his voice, his eyes, showed a desperate question, a desperate hope. "Of course." There was an edge to her voice. She was angry that he had doubted her. The patrolman had died in _her_ arms. "How could I think _that_ was right?" "We must fight it." She shook her head wanly, but said nothing. "We must fight it, Scully." His voice was intense and thrilling. "We must fight _them_." "How?" And then, insanely, she laughed. "Like you did back there, picking a fight with the first looter you see and getting yourself killed?" The laughter faded, and her chest continued to heave, closer to sobs. But she would - not - cry. "What good will that do, Mulder?" He looked at her, unblinking. "We must fight." Then, "I have never known you to be defeatist before, Scully." She sparked at that. "I have never known you to be so...." Then she laughed again, bitterly. "Yes, I have. You've always been impractical, childish.... naive." "What...." "No, Mulder." She lowered her voice. She wanted to speak the truth, not to hurt him unnecessarily. "I admire you, Mulder. You will never give up, never stop fighting. You've always kept going long after the point at which I've drawn the line, putting yourself into situations you've known you couldn't win. You've risked you life, for.... for what?" "The truth." His voice was dull. There was betrayal in his eyes. "The truth." She leant forward and touched his hand softly. "Will knowing 'the truth' save the world? Will knowing 'the truth' put right everything that's gone wrong in your life? Will knowing 'the truth' make you happy?" "I.... I thought...." He took a deep breath, and looked at her with eyes that shone. "I derive comfort from that dream." She looked down, at the discarded mug and the puddle of coffee at her feet. "If you're right about what's happening to the world, we don't need dreams." "I do." His voice was pained, as if he had taken off all masks, confessed all, and it was killing him. "I can not live without hope. It's sustained me all my life - hope that I could...." He swallowed. "That I could find her." "Hope...." She looked at him, then wished she hadn't. The pain in his eyes was more than he would have wanted her to see. "I need hope, Mulder, but if we hope too much, then we will be disappointed. If we are to do anything, we need to plan, to be practical. We must pick our battles, Mulder." "How?" He was on the offensive, anger covering the pain. She frowned, searching for hope. "We can find Skinner," she said, at last, her finger tracing absent marks on the arm of the chair. "We can organise all the agents we can find, and the police. If they.... If someone is deliberately sabotaging the water supplies, and the power.... We go to the source. We.... we try to rectify the situation." "We fight." He smiled - a dark, dangerous smile. She shook her head. "No. Fighting is blind. We would need a plan, not just... not just to strike out wildly out of hatred. Fighting every symptom of disorder would only get you killed." "You sound like a politician, Scully. You'll let more people die like... like earlier... You think we should turn a blind eye to all that, while we quietly get on with our oh so practical plan." She shivered, and had to bite her lip not to cry out. "You talk as if it's my choice," she said, at least, her voice tight. "As if the world's my responsibility. As if what I say now will make a difference...." "I...." His voice was a mumble, as if more to himself than to her. "I have to believe that it will. I... I want to believe it...." She wanted to cry for him - for the weight that he bore. In her mind, she held him, reassured him. And she did hold him, walking to his side and placing her hand on his head, her fingers stroking his hair. "Don't try to make a difference in too much, Mulder," she murmured. "I... I don't want you to get killed." "I can't." His hands were twisting in his lap. "I can't let it happen. Fry...." His hands clenched, tight and shaking. "I think Fry knows how to fight them." She snatched her hand away. "I don't like him." Silence. A long, long silence. There was a faint, distant sound outside, and she tried to tell herself it was not breaking glass. Neither of them spoke again. ****** He saw the dream like a television screen, powerless to influence it, powerless not to watch. A scream of pain.... The image swung around, like a camera man with a hand-held camera, searching. Pictures flashed. A burnt-out building, black and shattered.... A pile of twisted bodies in the street.... Green leaves in a pile of rubble.... He knew he was seeing the future. Pain rose to agony - an inhuman shriek. "No!" Red anger burnt inside him. He clawed at the image, feeling the reistence like a solid wall of glass, cold and unyielding. "No. Stop. Let me in. Let me stop it...." A black feather fluttered lazily in the wind, spiralling through the wreckage. "No!" Blood ran from his torn fingernails. He clawed and clawed and pushed and screamed, but he could not connect. He was outside, somewhere in a void of nothingness, alone, and could only watch, and listen. The image moved again, and he saw the bird. Wings flapping, it was standing in the street, proud and hurt. Feathers mingled with its blood in the dirt. There were several blood-stained stones at its feet, and, as he watched, another stone flew through the air, hitting it full in the chest. It screamed, but still it stood. "No!" And suddenly he was through, and he was strong and fiery red with anger, and he knew that he would do anything - anything - to stop another scream. The world had seen so much pain. He would die rather than let another suffer. He would kneel down before it and take the stones meant for it, and take its pain for himself. His blood would flow willingly. "No." A voice, urgent and commanding. He didn't move. "No," it repeated, louder. "Step away from it. I _will_ kill it, and I'll kill you if you get in the way." He spread his arms wider, shielding the bird. It was no longer just a bird to him. It was the world, and the people in it. It was innocence, and it was everything _they_ wanted to destroy. It was.... It was to die for. "I will." The stone came towards him, blanking out the sun, hitting him full in the face.... "Scully," he murmured, as he died. ****** She was in a dead world, scared and alone. Glass cut into her feet. Her left hand was pressed across her mouth and nose, but the stench of the dead was everywhere. "I'm in the future," she murmured. "This is how they want it to be." Then, strangely, she laughed. "We won't let it die," she said, aloud. The wind whispered, like the voices of a thousand people behind her, echoing her words. It made her shiver, but it made her smile, too. "No?" A man stood in the middle of the ruined street, his arms folded on his chest. The reek of him was worse than the dead, and his eyes.... His eyes were red. She clenched her fists, and raised her chin defiantly. She was screaming inside, but, "no," she said, all control. She reached to her waist, but her gun was gone, so, never taking her eyes off the man, she crouched down and picked up a brick. She tried it in her hands for weight, assessingly. It hit him full in the chest. She felt no regrets. Another. Her vision was sheeting red. He was not a man to her, not any more. He was evil, and the force that had destroyed the world. He was the red-faced man who mowed down a patrolman, and the drunken looter who killed a child with a shard of glass. He was everything she hated. He was.... "No. Don't hurt him." Another voice. It came from nowhere that she could see, but it swelled closer, and she could feel the hatred - the fierce hatred of everything she was. "No." Pain slashed at her fingers as she closed them around a fresh stone. "Keep away. I'll kill him, and I'll kill you, too." Whispers of echoes behind her murmured appreciatively. The wind felt like hands touching her clothes, supporting her. "No," the voice repeated, deadly now. A whirl of movement, and a figure launched itself at her, a kaleidoscope of images in its dark eyes. She saw teeth at her throat, choking her. She saw a coarse hand on her thigh, forcing her legs apart. She saw tearing cloth, and blood on her breast. She saw.... "No!" Arms shaking with the weight, she held the stone above her head, and threw it at the blur of movement that was his face. And then she was alone. The man had gone. The whispering crowd behind her had gone. She was alone in a ruined world, her fist pressed to her mouth, surveying the ruined face of the attacker she had just killed. Tears ran down her cheeks. Gently, so gently, she reached out and stroked Mulder's hair, already soaked with blood. ****** She was still sleeping, her cheek resting on her hand. Mulder wrapped his arms tightly around his body. The dream would not leave him. he thought, feeling cold inside. "Sc...." He stopped himself just in time, but continued silently. "Scully, I'm sorry. I dreamt you were one of them. I'm sorry, Scully. I trust only you." There were tears on her cheeks. But she killed him. It was like a physical pain inside, remembering. She was on the side of the enemy, and she killed him. He had always believed in prophetic dreams. ****** His eyes were shut, but he was awake. Scully kept her breathing carefully measured, knowing she would be unable to face him without crying. Just a minute longer.... she thought, and dug her nails into her palms with the pain of it. They had left things unresolved, she knew, and fallen asleep with some harsh words still not taken back. They had disagreed. They had even fought. They had.... Silently, she rubbed her eyes, cutting off the thought. She was ready. They had disagreed, and it had found its way into her dream. It was only natural. It was something to forget. "Mulder?" Her voice was hoarse, and she coughed, then tried again. "Mulder?" His eyes opened slowly, warily. They were rimmed with red. "I trust only you, Mulder." ****** They had spoken softly, touched alot, and the truce had held. They hadn't spoken of the future, looking only to the few hours ahead. "Shall we go to the FBI Headquarters?" she had asked, glanced across the car. His face had been as grey as the sky. "Report for duty?" Though she'd had little hope. It was Sunday, at the end of the holidays. The place would be deserted. He'd nodded slowly, warily. "I want to talk to the guys again, first." His fingers had drummed at the wheel, tense. "They have.... contacts outside the city. I want to know how.... how bad it is." She'd turned away, watching the silent world pass, and shivering at the memory of the dream. A dead world. Empty. Just like.... "There's people," she said, now, fiercely. She hadn't intended to speak aloud. She cleared her throat and continued, awkwardly. "There are people at the windows, watching, Mulder. I've seen dozens...." A white face pressed against the glass, and a palm pressed outwards. she thought fiercely, and refused to think of the dream. He nodded, but said nothing. ****** Blood was pounding in his head. "Something's wrong." He reached for his gun, gesturing to Scully to do the same. The door was hanging from its hinges, the notice ripped and trampled in the dirt. Gun in hand, Scully stepped forward through the door. She was all focus, her hair the only life in the grey world where the fine rain deadened everything. But he.... He took a deep breath. He was screaming inside, knowing - dreading - what he would find. "Mulder?" A soft cry, and he gasped with the almost physical pain of what might be happening there in the dark. A soldier with his arm around her neck, a gun to her head.... "Scully," he managed, hoarsely. He was in the dark in an instant, ready to confront the attacker and die. He would atone for distrusting her. He would.... "Mulder." Her face was grave, but she was alone. The beam from her flashlight trembled, sending harsh white slashes through the dark of the windowless stairwell. "Look." In a white pool of light, there was blood. "They...." He left her then, running forward up the stairs, wildly. Footsteps echoed like a frenzy of war drums, and the light danced. It was pulsing, white and black, white and black, white and.... he thought, suddenly. Sound and fury and flashing light and running and running and knowing - knowing - that it's all too late, that there's only death at the end of the stair. "Mulder." A three-fold echo. It was laughter. The last syllable of his name, repeated three times.... "Frohike!" he shouted, his gun forgotten. "Byers! Langly!" Their office was nothing but devastation. Scully's dancing flashlight behind him showing a smashed computer, a pile of ash, a broken table. Booted footmarks in the doorway. Scully sank to her knees, reaching out with one finger. "Still damp." She rubbed her finger and thumb together. "Still damp," she said again, her voice warning. it was saying. He stared in stupefied surprise at his gun, as if wondering who he was, how it had got there. "They start early." He was so bleak inside - lost. "They'd have been here." Scully's hand on his back. "It's Sunday." He whirled on her, fierce. "They'd have been here, Scully." And he laughed, a bitter laugh that was closer to tears. "You've said it yourself, Scully. Do they have homes to go to? Do they have a life? Do they exist outside that office of theirs?" "Byers had a wife," she said, softly, and he turned away, hating her for saying it. He didn't want her to see his face. He stepped forward, then fell to his knees, tearing through a pile of debris. "They might have gone." His voice high and unnatural. They spoke about going. They might be safe." "Mulder." She squeezed his shoulder, standing tall at his back. "They'd have found some way to let me know." A splinter of wood tore into his finger, and the papers he rifled through were spotted with red. He was breathing fast, almost sobbing. "They'd have left a note." "In which case this could be a trap." Scully pulled at his arm. Her voice was level - infuriatingly level. "No...." He stood up and whirled to face her, breathing in deep heaving panting breaths. His voice caught in his chest. "They're my friends, Scully." She blinked. "And mine, too. I didn't know them as well as you did, but I... I was fond of them." She gave a small wry laugh. "Even Frohike." He held her shoulders and squeezed tight, pulling her towards him. "I can't walk away, Scully," he said, low and intense. "I have to know." There was such pity in his eyes that he had to look away, had to let his hands fall and walk deeper into the room, alone. "Mulder..." He barely heard her. He blinked, and, safe, with his back to her, let two tears escape. He gestured vaguely towards it, hoping Scully would understand, would believe that that was the only reason he had turned away from her. He lowered his head, coutning to three silently, then raised his head, ready to try again. "Frohike said they were in contact with people on ham radio. I just want to see...." He didn't dare look at her. And then he forgot her - forgot everything but the voice. "....out there?" A high, scared voice from the radio. "Anybody? Guys, where are you?" An anxious laugh. "This isn't funny. Anybody? _Anybody_?" Mulder couldn't breathe. "Where is everybody?" "Dead." Another voice but in, dull and despairing. "I saw it. They went in over night, and this morning. Everywhere that had kept their computers running. Everyone who could talk like us. Everyone who knew, and could tell others. Everyone." The voice cracked. There was a sound of swallowing - alcohol, probably. "They silenced them. They shot them." "They can't...." The high voice again. It was only a boy, his voice only half broken. "Who? They can't just.... just _kill_ people." "Didn't you listen to what everyone was saying last night?" Another swallow, then another. He was swigging the whole bottle. "They can. They will. They're coming for me now. If you don't want them to come for you, go now. Destroy your radio, and go." "I can't...." "They're coming...." Then something touched his hand.... With a hoarse cry, he raised his gun. Her hand closed round his and held it. "If anyone else can hear, they're coming." A loud crash. "Armed men just broke down the back door. They're our men - special forces. They're...." A loud report of gunfire, and then there was nothing. "No..." He lurched forward, pulling at Scully's hand. His gun fell to the floor. Blindly, he groped for the microphone, reaching with shaking fingers for the right control. "You can't...." he shouted, blind, scarcely thinking with fury. "You can't do this. I know what you're doing. It won't work. I'll fight. I'll stop you. I swear I'll stop you...." "Mulder." Soft, crooning, as to a baby. She reached across him and switched the radio off. "It's okay, Mulder. It's okay...." He let his face fall forward into his hands, shaking. His legs sagged, and he fell to his knees. "Mulder...." She crouched behind him, arms wrapped around his body, face pressed against his shoulders. "Mulder...." For a long time, they were still. ****** "Mulder?" She moved her stiff limbs, whispering softly. He had been still for.... minutes? It was as if he had passed out. "Mulder? We should go." His hands fell to his sides. "I brought them here." It wasn't a question. She stood up, though she was slow to withdraw her hands from him. "We should go, Mulder," she said, again. "I'm sorry." He slumped forward. "I lost control. If they were listening, they'll be on their way by now. They'll know where we are." "Then go," she said, sharply. She wanted to shake him. "Why stay here, reproaching yourself, while they're getting closer?" "Yes." He pushed himself to his feet, swaying slightly. He looked as if he was being torn apart. "We should go." But his eyes were distant, not seeing her at all. "Mulder?" He had scared her, when he has lost control and shouted his hatred at the radio. She had known that she had ceased to exist for him. "Scully." He uttered her name as an exhalation, poitning with a trembling finger. "Look." It was a hand. ****** Scully clutched the steering wheel, her head throbbing mercilessly. Her eyes stung with the effort of not crying. It was all happening again, and worse, this time - much worse. She cleared her throat. "Ready?" In the mirror, Mulder's tear-streaked face nodded. He wanted to travel with the body, to hold it, to keep it covered with the blanket. She understood. She licked her lips. "Sure?" He was silent. His hands were lacerated from digging through the debris, searching again and again for the other two bodies he feared - maybe hoped - were there. Once more, she had had to hold him physically, to wait until his flailing limbs calmed and his desperate shouts turned to soft sobs. "They're not here, Mulder," she had said. She had had to fight not to cry herself. "They spoke about going," Mulder had murmured, and touched the dead man's hair. "Langly was the one who wanted to stay. Maybe they went just in time, but he couldn't bring himself to leave. Maybe Byers and Frohike are okay." "Maybe." She'd stroked his hair. "They wanted to kill, not take prisoners." "Yes." Her hand had paused at the back of his neck. She hadn't liked what she was doing - offering comfort she had no reason to believe. "We should go," he'd murmured, in a small voice. She'd lowered her eyes, ashamed. She'd made it seem as if it was his decision, when she had held his flailing arms and shouted it at him again and again, earlier. "Sure?" she said now. She knew that any doubts would fester, becoming nightmares about Frohike and Byers, hurt in the wreckage, calling out for help to his receding back. He paused. In the mirror, his face was exhausted. Then he nodded, slowly. "Sure." She reached for the keys. "I never really knew him." Mulder half shut his eyes. "I didn't know his background, or anything about his family. I knew he played Dungeons and Dragons, and I knew what music he liked. I didn't know where he lived, or what he did when he wasn't with the others. I didn't even know his name." She blinked fiercely against the tears, remembering another man whose name she hadn't known. He had died, too. "People touch us, Mulder. We don't have to know much about them, but they touch us. It's not wrong to feel their death." she added silently. He had turned his back to her, showing his tears only by a shaking of his shoulders that she knew he thought she couldn't see. She turned the key. Nothing happened. ******* She brushed her fingers in the dirt, then held them to her nose, and sniffed. "Drops of it, Mulder." She had to say it again before he heard. "Someone siphoned off the gas." He swallowed. "Them." "Probably not. Probably an ordinary person who'd run out of gas themselves." She wanted to grab him and shake him and shout. The last hour he had burnt with a fire of grief and hatred. If the armed men came, he would run unarmed towards their guns, wanting only to pummel their chests with his fists, screaming his fury. She was close to losing him. "We can't leave him." Mulder was still sitting in the car, one hand on Langly's shoulder. "We'll cover him." Oh, but her head pounded with the strain of being strong. "We'll walk back to your house and get my car." She tried to smile. "Or we walk the FBI and siphon off some gas from one of their cars. You'll like that. You've tried every other way of opposing authority." He didn't smile. "We walk," he said simply, and looked at his gun. ****** They held hands. She felt she was leading him, unseeing and unthinking. When she glanced up, she saw his lips moving soundlessly. "Mulder?" she asked, once. He smiled, and there was a cruelty in his smile that he hadn't seen before. "I won't give up, Scully. I won't stop fighting." She made no reply. "Listen," she said, much later, drawing his attention to a sound she had first heard minutes before. She had listened, tense, worried as much by his failure to react to the sound as she was by the sound itself. "People." His eyes gleamed dully. "Rioting." And he touched not his gun but his breast pocket. "Don't," she murmured, warningly. "It's right." He was pulling at her hand, now, leading her. "I have to try." Then they turned a corner, and saw it. ****** Another crash as another window smashed. "Flashlights," Mulder murmured. "Look." "Not just flashlights." She tightened her grip on his hand. "Bottled water. Alcohol, of course." She ran her other hand through her hair. "They'll be alcohol-fuelled looting later." They were watching it as if it was on a screen, standing at the fringes and just observing. The crowd was a thousand strong, but... Scully wanted to close her eyes and escape. "They can't keep order," she said instead, pointing towards the police. They were few, and young - the ones who, the previous day, had been on the roads. "They're not trying." Mulder's voice was dead. "Not really. They're as scared as the rest of them. They need water, too, and light." "What do we do? Do we go on?" He laughed. "Riot. Big scary riot. Can't go over it, can't go under it, got to go through it." The smile didn't reach his eyes. "Got to?" His face was a set mask. "Yes." She tugged at his hand, briefly considered arguing, then followed. ****** A man's face pressed close to hers, his mouth open in a wordless shout. A hand reached from the crowd and pressed a flashlight into her hand, closing her fingers around it. "Mulder?" But the sound of the crowd carried her voice away. "Mulder?" She tugged at his hand. "This is stupid. We're getting out." His hand tightened on hers. it said. "Mulder!" She jerked at his hand, and, dropping the flashlight, grabbed him by the front of his jacket. "Come on! We're going." He shook his head. No. "Then I'm going. It ends here. I'm drawing the line for myself here. I'm leaving." She stood on tiptoe, put her mouth close to his ear, then found she had nothing she was ready to say. "Not for ever, Mulder," she mouthed, silently, knowing he wouldn't see, hoping perhaps that he would understand. "Please don't go on...." "I've got to try, Scully." His eyes were so sad. she thought suddenly, and shivered. He released her hand. "I'm going," she said, but stood there watching him, and didn't move. "I've...." His hands raised towards her face, then fell. She saw him clench his fists, breathe in deeply, and then there was only his back to her - his back, walking away. The crowd surged, and the gap between them was gone. Still she stood. ******* She was the still centre. The crowd milled around her, shouting, pushing, but she was still. No-one touched her. No-one spoke to her. She was still. And then she heard him. "I'm with the FBI." It was _his_ voice, amplified by the bullhorn. "Listen up. You have _got_ to stay calm. Stay calm." The crowd froze in silence, held it - one, two, three - then erupted into noise. Around her, voices rose in entwined questions: "What's happening? Why doesn't anyone tell us what's going on? You tell us why we should stay calm?" "I repeat, stay calm." He had found a pedestal of some sort, and she caught a glimpse of his dark hair, of his ID held up above him. He was several hundred yards away. "Don't panic. You mustn't panic." "Oh, Mulder," she whispered. She wanted to bury her head into her hands and weep at the dear, noble stupidity of the man. As if it could make a difference.... As if telling a crowd not to panic would do anything but _make_ them panic.... And she knew that he had known it himself. "I've got to try," he had said, and his eyes had told her that he had known the likely outcome. "Stay calm." His voice again. "The police here will arrange for you to be given what you need. The authorites will cover the payment." She began to push at the crowd. He was stupid - insanely stupid - but she wanted to be at his side, holding her ID aloft beside his. The crowd swelled again. A harsh voice carried above the others, shouting wildly about the authorities being to blame, about refusing to trust. "Stay calm." His voice was beginning to sound strained. "We can fight this. Together, we can fight them - fight it." An elbow jammed into her path and she beat at it, wildly, no longer caring who she hit. She had to get to him - had to. Somewhere, a car engine sounded. Close to him, there was a swell of noise. Angry shouts, accusing. "Authority," she heard, in a collective voice bitter with hatred, and "where were you two nights ago?" "Mulder!" she shouted, out loud, though she was too far away for him to hear. Bodies were pressed into a wall, pushing her back. She was close enough now to see his face and his shoulders, above the crowd. A hand grabbed her and she glanced away from him, shaking her arm furiously to remove it. The voice of the crowd swelled like thunder. "Calm...." A gun shot. Her head whipped round. "Mulder," she gasped. "Mulder." He was not there. Heads of all colours in the crowd, all at one level. He had been head and shoulders above the rest, and he was not there. "Mulder." She pushed forward, mind screaming, clawing at the crowd with no thought of who she was touching. They seemed to part before her. She flew. "Mulder!" The sound of the crowd was different. The anger had gone. They were blank-faced, muttering quietly. They seemed ashamed. she screamed inside. Her hand touched her gun. "What did you do?" She closed her hand round a random shoulder, and dragged the person round to face her. It was a girl of eighteen, blonde and pretty. Her face was a mask of fear. She showed no mercy. "What did they do to him? Where is he?" The girl's mouth opened. She spoke incoherently only - no clear words. Scully pushed her away in disgust. "Mulder!" She imagined that ths crowd had fallen silent - that all were open-mouthed, listening to her grief, and smiling at it. She felt as if she was in the maw of a wild animal. "Mulder!" Then she turned round a complete circle, scanning the crowd. "What have you done to him?" Silence. The crowd murmured and shouted, but it was silence to her. They said no words that she wanted to hear. And then she saw it.... An overturned box, a discarded bullhorn, and blood.... Until that point, she had not once thought to cry. "Mulder." She sank to her knees, and reached out a hand for the blood, gently, as if touching a relic. "Mulder...." He had gone. ****** end of part 1 ****** It was so beautiful; it was so terrible. As the rain fell on her hand, it quickened and began to trickle down her fingers, marking a course for her wrist. It would soak into her sleeve and create a stain like a relic, a shrine to memory. It was Mulder's blood. She ran her tongue over her lips, strangely languorous. The crowd teemed around her, but the sound seemed to fade almost to silence. It was the distant rushing in her ears of the prelude to a faint. It was the unreality of a dream, of a nightmare. It was.... "Mulder." She whispered his name aloud, and it was louder to her than a thousand voices around her. She half-shut her eyes, letting herself conjure up the lines of his face, then dashed her bloodless hand fiercely over her eyes. It was not the Mulder she wanted to remember. It was the Mulder she had last seen, his face all grim lines, his hair plastered to his brow, his eyes desperate. A car engine surged, then receded. Somewhere, a woman screamed. "Mulder." She raised her head, let the sounds of the crowd click back into focus. A small part of her longed - oh how it longed - to bury her head in her hands and mourn for him as dead, to give up the fight. She knew, though, that she could no more stop fighting than she could stop breathing. She was Scully. "Mulder." She stood up. Pressing her fingertips together, she transferred his blood to both hands, letting it mark her like some brand to show the world her resolve. She would wear his blood like he had worn her cross. She would.... She shook her head abruptly, wiping her hands on her dark coat. That thought was.... She frowned. She let her hand fall to her side, seeking her gun. She had to make almost a conscious decision to be angry, to question, to keep going, to.... "To find him," she said aloud, and stuck her chin forward. Her other hand clenched to avoid trembling. "What happened?" A woman with a wraith-like face, and she turned on her, gun in hand. The anger flowed readily after all, though there were tears in her eyes, burning. "The man who was here.... What happened to him?" The woman's eyes were on her tightly twisting hands. She was out in the rain without a coat, and had looted nothing. There was blood on her face. She coughed, mumbled, "I don't know." "What happened?" Anger burnt in her now, and the terrible desperation of being helpless. She grabbed the woman by the front of her blouse, her fingers digging into the fabric and wishing they could draw blood. "What did they do to him?" "I don't...." The woman's face crumpled. To Scully, blinking through tears, it seemed to double, to multiply, until it was all the thousand faces of the crowd, all twisted and inhuman, their eyes.... Their eyes burning. Red eyes from her dream haunted her. She shivered, and tried to forget. In her dream, _she_ had killed Mulder. And, today, she had left him to walk into Hell alone. She dug her nails into her palms. Anger was the only thing that made it bearable, and, as long as she could question, she could hope. "What happened to him?" she asked again, but it was almost a sob. She matched him, hurt for hurt. His blood was her pain, too. "Just tell me where he is." The woman raised her eyes, and they were human - a soft blue. "He was shot," she murmured. "Someone had a gun...." Shot. She had known it, yet still it struck her like an icy fist. Shot. He could be dying, curled up on the ground against the pain, trampled by the feet of a crowd who were all his killers. Blood would trickle from his mouth as he searched for her, he searched for her.... She pushed the woman away from her, not caring if she fell. "Mulder!" A wild shout. "Mul-der!" The answer was silence - no sounds that mattered. Unshed tears choked her, but still she kept her back straight, her gun level. "Mulder!" "Scully?" She whirled round, a mad smile on her face, though it was wrong, all wrong. She had a second of joy, then a disappointment all the more terrible than if she had never hoped. Afterwards, if she lived, she would be all grey, never hoping, never being disappointed. Mulder's life had been all white light and blackness, like a dreadful pendulum. He had swung from the bright hope of having found his sister, to the bitter dark despair of each hope shattered. Hoping too much had destroyed him. Imagination. She blinked, and refused to cry. It had not even been his voice. "Are you Scully?" She kept her voice level, refusing to break her resolve. "Why?" The voice was a long way above her. A tall man. She refused to turn, refused to look at him. She wouldn't let herself read false hope in his face. "There's a man who says he's called Mulder." The man's voice was soft. "He was shot. My friend's a doctor and is treating him, but he won't settle. He keeps calling for someone called Scully. I.... I just wondered if it was you." She turned, and there was fresh blood on the man's clothes. "Where?" she said, and it was the voice of a starving man offered food. "I need to see him." He nodded, and turned without a word. The rain was heavier, and the people were beginning to disperse. Glass crunched under her feet as she walked, the man a step ahead of her. "How bad is he?" Her voice sounded high, unnatural, and she coughed, trying to exert control. Silence. Somewhere an engine rumbled, idling. "Where was he shot?" She saw the man's face in profile, and it was set in stone. She tensed, and made sure of her gun. She swallowed, and tried again. Oh, she needed Mulder - needed him. "Where is he?" The man raised his arm silently, and pointed at a white van. She stopped walking, torn. Instinct cried a trap, but she had walked away from him once today, and never again. She couldn't let herself believe it, but she would risk everything on the slightest of chances. To walk away and live with an endless might have been.... So she raised her head and walked, regally, her eyes dry, towards the van. One step. Two... She never took the third. ****** That was her first thought, and she almost smiled in wonder, marvelling at a blackness that released her without leaving lingering dreams. Dreamless now, she lay in the trembling darkness, and she hurt. Her ears were roaring. Slowly, painfully, she opened her eyes, and saw only shades of grey and dark shadow. The roaring moved from her ears and became the sound of an engine, and the trembling was deep inside her, but it was outside, too. She was in a.... a van? A shaking hand to her aching head, and something sticky came off on her fingers. Blood. She traced its source and found sticky matted hair high on her temple. Head. She let her mind run down her body, assessing. Hands. She flexed her fingers experimentally, finding them unbound. Feet too. Her gun was gone, and she felt naked without it, and weak. And someone was breathing in the darkness. Soft rumples of clothing.... But she didn't say his name. If it was her captor, she wouldn't let him see her hope, wouldn't let him smile in triumph when he dashed it. Think. She pulled herself to her knees, her right hand out, ready to attack or defend. She swept it around, scanning. Half way around, and she felt a tingling in her palm, almost as if.... She snatched her hand back as if burnt. "Agent Scully." She simply could not begin to describe how she felt, then. Disappointment that it was not him, or relief that she was not alone with him, hurt, in the dark, unable to see him, unable to save him? Both, perhaps. Her head throbbed, and the fire made tears start in her eyes. "I'm not going to hurt you, Agent Scully." The clothing rustled, and she pushed herself back, until she backed up against the side of the van. Metal was cold against her hands. She felt the red throb in her head, and said nothing. "I'm sorry we had to do what we did." He sounded sincere, but she knew not to trust him. "Can you cope with light, do you think?" She bit her lip, but said nothing. She _could_ not say anything. If she opened her mouth, it would be to demand, to beg: where's Mulder? What have you done to him? Where is he? I need to see him? She would beg, and he would laugh, and that would be his triumph. To be strong, she had to show she wasn't broken. Later, she would ask. Strong and unbroken, she would ask. Not now. Not with her head aching so, and her throat choking with unshed tears, and her eyes blinking and blinking. "No," she said at last, and the control she needed for that single word, level.... Then she folded her arms around her legs, and retreated into a small dark world where there was only him, and he was smiling. ****** Once she heard screams, distant, and cries of supplication. Her hand twitched, wanting to unfold itself from her knees and reach out to them, though whether as an appeal for help, or an offer of rescue, she didn't know. Eyes closed in the darkness, pulled from reality by the pain in her head, she saw a soft white hand, small but so strong, holding a dozen others, supporting them. Her fingers dug into her leg, and she endured. Once, long after, fists pounded on the van, again and again. One struck in the middle of her back, and she had almost felt the desperate need there, only half an inch of metal distant, but a world away. Then the van jolted, as if driving over something large, and soft, and.... she heard, clear and distinct, in a voice that didn't seem quite hers. She screwed her face up, adding darkness upon the darkness, like a child wishing she could make the bogeyman disappear simply by closing her eyes. Then there was silence - for a long time, silence. The engine stopped, but there was a soft whirr of machinery somewhere, and then all sounds ceased. She felt dull inside, as if no longer fully alive. And then the door of the van opened, and she was in light again. Eyes were watching her, so she _could_ not shut her eyes. She would fight. She would be strong. She would.... Oh, but she was weary.... ****** His last words to her had been, "I have to try." They had led her down featureless corridors of some institution, an armed man on either side of her. She was free, unbound. An unsmiling man had given her an icepack for her forehead. She showed her defiance by her stiff shoulders, her straight neck, but she needed more. To beg for him would be to show weakness, but to follow, placidly, not asking the question they knew she longed for more than anything.... She clenched her hands into shaking fists. That was weakness, too. And she would rather be weak than fail him. "Mulder." It was a faint croak at first. She cleared her throat. "Mulder. Is he here?" The man on her right nodded. She fought the smile, fought the tears. "I've got to see him." Another nod, silent. Oh, but she wanted to shout, and pummel him with her fists. "Where?" was all she said. "Here." They stopped, and one man gestured to a door. "You may look." Blood pounded in her head. One hand, bunched into a fist, half rose to her mouth to press against it, ready to suppress a scream, or tears, or laughter of relief. She let it fall. Whatever was behind that door, she would endure. "Mulder?" A hand closed round her arm, firm though not ungentle. "Look." A warning hiss in her ear. "You can't go in." And then the hand tightened, and held her as she thrashed, all control forgotten, thinking only that she _had_ to be with him, she _had_ to stop them, she _had_ to die with him.... "Mulder!" One hand slipped from the iron grip of the soldier. She beat on the glass, willing his still head to move. "Mulder!" His eyes were closed. Through the glass, a lifetime away, he lay still, his body covered with blood, as men with masks and gowns and cruel metal instruments worked on him. As she watched, one cut.... "What are they doing to him?" She was all hatred, all horror. Control was nothing now - an empty word only. "What are you doing?" Behind the glass, the blood flowed. And the door was locked. ****** He was in a bubble, and safe. Twisted faces pressed up against then surface, and clawed fingers scratched as in some warped personification of pain. "Outside," he whispered, and here he was at peace, and his voice obeyed him. "Not here." Here was safe. Here was free of the pain that had nearly killed him. Here was.... "Bad." The voice was on his shoulder, like a man close behind, whispering, or a bird whispering confidences. He was silent. The safety of the bubble surrounded him like a soft blanket "It is stealing you, Fox." He wanted to buckle at the knees at the sound of that voice. It was all her had ever longed for; it was all he had ever feared. "You're running away. You're giving up." "No." It was like a moan. The soft blanket was feathers, floating into his nose and depriving him of breath. "It hurts. I.... I want to rest a little while." "No." Something tightened on his shoulder - a stab of pain, like claws. Something warm trickled on the skin. "You can't run away. You can't let this happen, Fox. You must never stop fighting - never." He couldn't speak. He couldn't breathe. Softness was killing him. "You have run away twice over, Fox. You have twice failed. You must twice redeem yourself." Delicious agony sliced his shoulder. "No!" He cried aloud with all his being, clawing at the bubble with bleeding fingers. "I'll fight. I'll fight...." And the bubble rent, and the pain rushed upon him like a tidal wave. He didn't scream. ****** There was no night and day in this place. Mulder slept within cold metal walls, his pale skin bathed in muted antiseptic light. As she sat beside him, Scully clutched her watch, needing it. It showed she was sane. It showed this was real. It showed that a day had passed, and she had no answers, no news. "Mulder?" she whispered once more, then bit her lip. He had almost recovered consciousness once before, his head lashing wildly, his lips moving in silent intensity. Blindly, he had flailed at her, smashing away her comfort. Against her will, a needle had sedated him then. Now, he slept. "Mulder...." She looked down. One fifteen in the afternoon, January 3rd, the year two thousand. Seconds ticked by, here, away from the world. In the world, she knew, each pulsing second was a new death. She.... She wouldn't think of that. She clutched tighter, and the watch dug into the skin of her hand. The pulse was steady at the base of Mulder's throat, and his eyelids were flickering. She wondered if he was dreaming. "Mulder?" She cleared her throat, and tried again. She needed to hear him. Like a sea wall lashed by waves, her defences were weakening. There was so much to worry about, so much to ask, so much to do. Too much. Clenching her fists, she had focused only on Mulder, using concern for him as an anchor to cling to in the storm of.... of.... she told herself firmly, and pushed them away. "Mulder?" And he stirred. A low moan in his throat, and he moved his head, slowly, slowly. His eyes opened, then he blinked, almost as if he was surprised to see her, as if he had been expecting.... "Mulder?" She touched his hand softly, then retreated. "How do you feel?" He swallowed. "Scully?" One nineteen. "You were shot in the chest," she said, simply, not looking at him. There were things he would never know - the shattering horror of that first sight of him, and the conviction that the doctors were hurting him, treating him as a lump of dead meat on a slab. Hungrily, she had scanned every inch of his body, afterwards, before accepting that they had treated him professionally, though without warmth. But the initial image of his blood on the scalpel.... It would feed many solitary nightmares, later. He nodded. "Yes. I... I remember. The riot. I...." Then nothing. She had to suppress a sudden spark of anger. She had expected an apology, though, really, he had done nothing wrong. He had been naive, innocent, foolish. He had been noble, brave, tenacious. He had been Mulder. "I know why you had to do it," she said, slowly, and touched him again. Subject closed. He ran his tongue over his dry lips, and looked down at the sheets, almost shyly. "Is the.... Is the world still there?" She shook with the effort of control, then - with the struggle to remain true to herself. It was absurd. She wanted to laugh hysterically. She wanted to fall to her knees and sob. She wanted to press her hands over her ears and never let go. She wanted to.... She couldn't.... "I don't know, Mulder." And her face was composed, her back rigid. "They won't tell me." ****** He hovered on wings of pain, dipping in and out of sleep, of coherence. Hours later, he asked. "Who?" He had frowned, his drooping eyes on the doctor's back as he had walked from the room. As the door had clicked with an unmistakable sound of locking, his eyes had widened, and she had seen a fire in them that was terrible, and familiar. Five o'clock. She rubbed her eyes with her fingers, letting them dig deeply. Then she was ready. "Them." She regarded him with a cool stare. "Them, Mulder. Who do you think?" Hatred animated him like a bolt of electricity, and his face changed into something she never hoped to see. His eyes struck a resonance deep within her dreams. She clutched the arms of the chair, and held on. Whispering insane urges in her head told her to hold on to him - to hold and never let go. It was the riot all over again. She was losing him, she was losing him.... "They won't keep us, Scully." His anger was normally fire, all thrusting gun and shouting. This was icy anger, low and intense, and far more terrible. she thought, suddenly, irrationally. "We'll fight." She looked away. ****** They called for her in her dreams, and she moaned, head tossing into the soft pillow, but did not awaken. "Dana...." Two dozens hands reached for her, pleading. Their faces were tight and scared and they called her name as if she was their light. Right at the front, ahead of the others, was the girl, her arms wrapped tightly round her lion, mutely staring, calling. "Dana...." There was such anguish there, and fear. "Why have you left us, Dana?" Behind them, flames surged and flickered. An arm reached out in the dirt, but it was dead, the body abandoned on the side of the road. Blank faces walked past it without seeing. So soon, and they had become inhuman, too scared, too numb, to care. "Come to us, Dana. Come back from their light. Come back to us." Tears on her cheek, burning. They were calling, oh they were calling.... She moaned, struggling towards wakefulness, but.... She _could not_ reach it, she _could not_ escape. "Dana...." Their hands clawed at her. They would suck her dry. They would drain her. They would kill her.... ****** It called to him in his dreams, the voice. He was in an oasis in a desert, sand storms whirling all around, just out of reach. Water dripped from his hair, cool and beautiful, and the grass rippled in the breeze. It was a pocket of life in the middle of death. And it was walled. It called to him in his dreams, the voice. It called, and comfort became sharp pricking agony. "Still there?" It was heavy with disappointment. "I thought better of you, Fox." Held by sleep, he wanted to sink down to his knees, clasp his hands, and cry out his apology. Held by sleep, he could only stand and endure. Water trickled down his face. "You enjoy their comfort." It was the dark hiss on his shoulder, and the stab of claws, and blood on blood. "They give you water, and safety, and protection, and life. They would destroy the world, and yet you accept all this from them." Green grass lashed at his ankles, and the water on his face became a flood, choking him. "I...." He struggled to move, and the hurt of it, oh the _hurt_ of it.... "Of course it will hurt." The voice was soothing now, like a father. A hand touched his forehead, reaching from behind, and the water paused, letting him gasp a breath. "It will not be easy, resisting what they give you. You will hurt. You will suffer. You will lose something very dear to you, perhaps. But you must do it, Fox, you know that." "Yes." Fists clenched, he nodded. "I know." Comfort was agony to him now. He had nothing. The air pulsed with a whispering, like wings. A dark shadow passed over the sun. "Not nothing." The voice was inside him now, insinuating itself into his soul. "Win through this for me, and you will never be alone. We can fight this, Fox. We can win." His hand moved to his shoulder, and the fingers touched something soft. Wonderingly, he stared mutely at the black feather, held in fingers stained with his own blood. His lips moved soundlessly. ****** "We can win!" He was awake in an instant, eyes wide in the darkness, breathing fast. A red eye blinked at him, on, off, on, off, on, off.... "No!" He groped blindly beside the bed, his fingers clumsy. Unseen objects fell to the floor, their sound harsh and shattering in the breathing darkness. His hand closed round something heavy, and he prepared to throw it at the camera, but his fingers were weak, without co-ordination. It fell. And the red eye watched him. He stopped breathing, held it, then let it out again. He was awake. He was dreaming. He was.... where? He ran his fingers over the sheets. The voice was there again, but different. His lips moved along with it: "they give you water, and a bed, and sheets, and light. They would make you their own." The sheets burnt as if they were soaked in acid. The warm air smothered him, depriving him of breath. The light under the door was a slash of horror. "No!" He flailed, as if fighting a monster. Something gave way with a rip of pain in his hand, and pain thundered in his chest. Sheets tangled round his feet and they seemed, in the grey darkness, to be white hungry ghosts, entrapping him. He kicked, and the pain left him breathless, dizzy. "No!" And he was on his feet, seeing only the slit of light under the door that was outside, that was freedom. He was weak as a new-born calf, but he dragged himself forward by force of will. He could - not - fall. He held onto the handle, gasping, then slowly, hope pounding in his ears, he turned it. Slowly, slowly.... A fraction, then a little more, then it stuck. There was a soft click. ****** Light assailed her eyes. She rubbed her eyes, blinking, struggling to adapt from the darkness. The whispering remains of the dream faded, and she did not mourn them. "Agent Scully." A silhouette in the doorway, tall, hands on hips. His face was blank in the darkness of the room, and a red eye blinked above him. "Agent Scully." She swallowed. ****** He ran. Hand pressed against his chest as if he could hold in his waning strength by a physical touch, he ran. White corridors flashed by, wavering, as if he was in a dream, or close to collapse. When he came to a door, he let himself hold on for a moment, needing those few seconds when he did not have to support his own weight, then turned the handle. They paused, then clicked, then opened. His breath was sobbing in his throat, catching on the fire of pain. Notices on the wall were like some obscene joke: "In case of fire, know your exits." He followed the red arrows, and the doors clicked through in steady procession, but still the walls enclosed him. He glanced behind once, and saw red drops of blood on the white tiled floor. Blood. Like Hansel and Gretel in the woods, and a trail for the witch to follow. Hard-eyes doctors and soldiers with guns.... He couldn't breathe. The whiteness muffled him. His knees buckled. "No...." A moan. Fractured with great heaving attempts at breath, it was all he could manage. "No...." A door was so close, so close. Cool air snaked beneath it to touch his cheek. It was the last door - the last door to freedom. He pushed himself to his knees and crawled. His fingers touched it. His right arm buckled, but his left arm could reach it - could reach it, just, if - he - just - tried.... Then there was nothing in his vision but a pair of feet, heavy and still. It took all his strength, but he balled his hand into a fist, and prepared to strike. He would lash at the feet, and pull at them. The man would fall, startled. He would grab the gun, and.... A drop of ash fell to the floor. ****** "Agent Scully." It was cold, without inflexion. She was sitting up straight in bed, but didn't move. "They want you. Get up, and get dressed." The red eye winked. She was silent. She had seen them the previous morning - a closet-full of featureless grey overalls, like a prison uniform. She would keep her own clothes until they stank rather than wear them. "Get up." The man stepped forward, and said the one thing that could make her obey. ****** Feet shuffled behind him and there was the unmistakable click of a gun, trained on his head. "Agent Mulder." The man crouched down, breathing out smoke. He was shaking his head - a study of bewilderment. "Why?" He clawed at the ground, trying to stand up, but it was all he could do just to stay conscious. Instead, he pulled his knees up to his body and held them, and said nothing. The man would not see him struggle again, and fail. "Why?" Gentleness did not sit well with the man. It grated. "You know what's out there. Why try to return to that?" And then he saw a sudden flash of Fry's face in the hospital, white teeth in the flickering light, and heard his promise of resistance. "I rescued you, Agent Mulder." The man turned away to breathe out smoke. "You are one of the chosen." A dark man, hair black as a raven's wing. Oh, but he wanted to smile at the wild heady pride of it. He blinked, and was aware again, and threw his head back and spat his denial. "I didn't want to be chosen." The man shrugged, and smiled. "I'm afraid you have little choice in it, Agent Mulder. The date was set long ago, and now it is come. You have always been of importance to the project." "Importance?" He dug his fingers into his legs to stop them shaking. "How?" "You will be told your role in time." His eyes sought the man's gun and held it. He would marshal his strength, and then fight. How could he do anything else? The man smiled. "Agent Scully, too." "Scully." A wild gasp. He hadn't meant to show his weakness, although the man's smile showed he knew very well. his eyes were saying. He was breathing deeply. He saw her pale on a slab, her body harvested to create the new breed of mankind for the world that came after. He saw her face twist in agony as they raped her and mutilated her and used her again and again and again. But he could not speak, not when hurt, curled on the floor - not when his words would be a whimper, not an assault. His throat ached with the effort not to cry out. "Agent Scully had her uses, once. They have been exhausted." The man gestured dismissively. "I thought you would be.... lonely without her. I saved her for you, Agent Mulder. I would have thought you would have been grateful." He brought a hand up to shoulder level, and tensed it experimentally. It would take his weight, and didn't collapse. "I don't want your kind of saving." The gun shone in the light, beckoning. "You don't want our kind of saving for Agent Scully?" The man shook his head, mock disapproving. "You would condemn her to die a senseless death in the street, in a riot over a bottle of water? You _want_ that for her?" He swallowed, refusing to envisage the man's words. "I will not make a choice for Agent Scully. I make this choice for myself." The man laughed - real laughter. There was something close to pride in his eyes. "I was right all along, Agent Mulder. You _are_ worth saving. Such spirit." He reached out and touched Mulder's chin, like a buyer examining a choice racing horse. Mulder flinched, and hissed in fury. The man smiled smugly, as if he had been given the reaction he wanted. Mulder froze, torn. He saw the gun, but.... "We put you through so much, and still you carried on, still you endured," the man continued, low and confiding, as if sharing a wonderful secret. "The world that comes after will not be easy. We will need that strength." He smiled. "Oh, it will need a little..... refinement, of course. A fighting spirit is not without its problems. You have a stubborn will to keep going, and that is good, but there is the problem of your disobedience...." He tensed, seeing the future clearly. Needles and electrodes and brainwashing and the loss of himself.... It could not happen. None of it could happen. He would fight. Even though he would fail - even though the man would laugh smugly - he would fight. Pale creatures swimming in the blue.... If he stopped swimming, he would die. With a hoarse cry, he lunged for the man's gun. As he touched it, feeling the cool metal like a surge of joy in the darkness of his clouded vision, a gun exploded behind him. Pain surged red in his chest, and he could no longer see. Like a beacon in the darkness, the gun was in his hand. But he could not see. ****** Splashes of blood on the floor. Blank faced, two guards flanked her, guns at their sides. She had eyed their size, and knew she could tackle one, but that to tackle two would kill her. Instead, she walked half a step ahead of them, reading the blood as a message just to herself. She would not let them lead her. They had passed through four doors. At each, one guard had silently swiped a pass card, glancing up at the ubiquitous red blinking light of the camera. The door had clicked softly, then let him turn the handle. At the fourth, he grimaced, making the first sign of feeling, of humanity, that she had seen. He snatched his hand from the handle and held it up, palm outwards. It was smeared with blood. "Why?" She spoke dully, bitter and disgusted. "If he was escaping, how did he get through the doors?" She gestured at the camera. "Did someone on there watch him and let him through? Did they want to play with him, letting him think he was getting close, only to crush him right at the end?" The guard shrugged vaguely, but said nothing. He wiped his hand on his overall. She swallowed hard. All the questions she had refused to ask were beating at her mind. She would find him first, assess, and then ask. A gunshot sounded ahead of her. She had to bite her lip to avoid crying out. Amid everything, she was suddenly furious with him. Ditching her again - leaving her.... She didn't want to be woken in the middle of the night and coldly told, "look after your partner," and to lose all her pride by obeying. She didn't want to be the one picking up the pieces. She didn't want to bear the responsibility for someone else's peace of mind. She didn't want to..... She half-closed her eyes, and fought the unwanted memory of an unwanted dream. "Mulder?" She spoke aloud, and let herself feel what she ought to be feeling: concern, anger for those who had hurt him, comfort for him. It had never been so difficult. Even when she rounded a corner and saw him, it had never been so difficult. She took a deep breath. "Mulder?" He was backed against a wall, a gun in his hand. His head was swaying from side to side, his eyes blinking and blinking, as if he was struggling to focus. She knew him. His vision was fading. He was on the point of passing out. "Ah. Agent Scully." She drew in a sharp breath. _Him_. At the sound of his voice, Mulder dragged the gun round to face him, steadying his gun arm with his other hand. Both were shaking. "Persuade Agent Mulder that it's safer for him to stay inside here - willingly." The man's eyes flickered, drawing her attention to the guard whose gun was pointed at Mulder's head from behind. There was a bullet hole in the wall. "The next shot may not be in warning." She stood. "Agent Scully." The man reached into his pocket for a cigarette, though she saw the faintest shake to his hands. Even the devil knows fear. "You know what it's like out there. If you stay here, you will be safe until.... until it's over. I couldn't seem to convince him. Persuade him of that, would you. You don't want him to die." "No." At first, she wasn't sure what she was saying no to. She cleared her throat, raised her chin, and spoke again. "No." She saw his hesitation - just a second, before he recovered. "We saved his life, Agent Scully. Would you have him die for real next time?" Mulder's head lolled, the gun drooping in his hands. As if in a dream, he pulled the trigger. The bullet missed its target by a full three feet, and the man didn't even need to dodge, or the guard to touch the trigger. She watched him fall. "No." She met the man's eyes. "I am not Agent Mulder's keeper." The man's face clouded, darkening with anger. He took in a lungful of smoke. "I am not responsible for him," she said, firmly. "If you want to stop him escaping, stop him, but I refuse to do your work for you. I have always respected his choices, even when I haven't agreed with them." She had meant it as a strategy - a way of staying ahead of their captors - but she found that she meant it, too. She spoke with sincerity, and treacherous tears pricked her eyes. She blinked them back. The man breathed out a cloud of smoke. "His choice now is suicide. He needs medical attention." Yes. She nodded, sadly. _That_ was her duty, as a doctor and a friend. "Mulder?" She crouched by his side, letting her fingers brush across his wrist, feeling his pulse. His arms were slack in his lap, his body in a slumped sitting position against the wall. He opened his eyes, and they shone with unshed tears. "Scully." She turned round to the guard, and her eyes flashed fire at him. "Put that gun down. Somebody help me with him." "No." There was force in his raspy whisper. He raised his arm, swatting weakly at her hand. "By myself. I'll walk." He gave a faint laugh, terrible to hear. "If I have to live in prison, at least I can walk there by myself." He leant heavily on her shoulder, and his face was like paper, but he stood. He stood. ****** Wind whispered in the grass, and the water rippled. The beauty of the oasis surrounded him, but it was soft, this time. The water sustained him; the grass nourished him. Tears coursed down his cheeks. "Where are you?" Even his voice was muffled by softness. "Come back!" Silence. He was alone. The beautiful terrible voice that had wanted him, that had promised him victory, had gone. He had failed him. He fell to his knees in the grass, throwing back his head, and shouted. "I'll try harder. I'll fight. I'll try again." The sand in the desert stretched into a barren eternity all around. It was parched and heavy with disapproval. His imagination supplied the words in the silence, though there was no voice behind them. He was alone in a dead world. Alone. An abandoned feather fluttered in the wind. "I'll fight them," he shouted to the desert sky, and "I'll fight them," as he snapped out of sleep and was alone in the darkness of his bed. The sheets burned like the sun, and he tried to reach for them, to rip them off, to run for the door, and try again. Again and again, as often as it took, he would try, and he would.... Restraints held him. "No!" He screamed only once, short and sharp, then turned his face away from the camera and let himself cry into his pillow. ****** She heard him shout and was out of her bed in an instant, hand pressed against the wall that separated them. Her hand. She was still breathless from a dream of a dozen people hanging from a precipice, all clutching her hand, her wrist, her arm. The searing agony in her shoulder had told her to let go; the pleading terror in their faces had told her to hold on, but she _could not do_ it. She had let go, had felt the soft balm of comfort in her shoulder, and had heard their screams. "Dana!" A young girl's voice. "How can you leave us?" Long after he fell silent, she stood there. She wouldn't let herself sleep. She wouldn't let herself dream. ****** January the fifth. The watch fell from her tense fingers, and broke. She plastered a smile on her face, then was ready to look at him. "Mulder." His arms were round his knees, pulled up on the bed. Propped up by pillows, he was half-sitting. He was gaining strength, yet she was losing him. "What's happening outside?" He was tense, unable to settle. At least he was out of restraints now. If he tried to escape again, he was strong enough to make it until..... She sighed, grimly. Until they brought him back again. She shook her head. "I don't know, Mulder." His eyes reproached her steadily. they said. That morning, she had enjoyed her first shower, overcoming another petty resistance. As the warm water coursed over her body, she had first smiled, then cried. She would never tell Mulder of her tears. "Any new ones?" he asked, hungrily. "No." Their doors were unlocked now, and they could visit each other at will. They were still prisoners, held in by sealed doors in the corridor, but their small territory included four other empty rooms. "Cancerman came in with the doctors, when you were sleeping," she told him, softly. "He looked.... smug. Confident." "It's proceeding." His voice was heavy. "Have they stepped in yet to take control, or are they still watching it collapse - helping it?" She clenched her hands into fists, tightly. "I don't know." God, how she wanted to sink her head into her hands and weep for them. They were fragmented, brittle. she cried, silently. But she didn't know how to stop. "Scully. Dana." He reached for her arm and held it, and that was nearly the end for her. The need in his eyes reflected hers. His voice was soft. "What did they say to you to make you accept?" She snatched her hand away. "I haven't." She gestured at the blue bruise at her hairline. "They took me, too. I didn't consent to this." "Then why don't you fight?" His hand closed round her wrist, and it was almost his old strength. "You know who's keeping us, Scully, don't you? It's the people who are behind everything we saw out there. It's the people who want to destroy everything we've ever known. It's the people who want to rule with the aliens over an enslaved population." Once she had been a different Dana Scully, and would have laughed at that, dismissing it as science fiction. Part of her longed to be that woman again. Knowledge was responsibility, and responsibility was terrible. She rubbed her eyes, and no tears fell. "How can we fight, Mulder? You know, maybe they're right - maybe the Gunmen were right. Maybe the best thing we can do is stay safe until the disorder settles, and take it from there." He snatched his hand back as if it burnt him. The look in his eyes was of betrayal - like when she had told him, the previous day, that she had been the one who had requested restraints, sure that he would die if he tried to escape again. "How can you say that, Scully?" His voice was low. "How can you believe it?" But she was silent. "Do you think for a moment that they would let us out to _fight_ them?" He raised both hands to his face, spreading his fingers and pressing his fingers into his brow. "Electric shock therapy, Scully. Brainwashing. He as good as told me. I know you think I'm crazy, but I want to keep my mind intact." She wanted to reach for his hands and pull them away from his head, and just hold them. She bit on her lip, and said nothing. "Scully." A change of tack. He was gentle, caring, hard to resist. It was his silent concern that had her weeping in his arms after Donnie Pfaster. "What do you know, Scully? What scares you so much about.... outside?" A dozen pleading hands falling to their deaths.... Faceless ghosts following the flashlight.... "Scully?" She raised her head. "I'm not afraid." He blinked. "I am. How can anyone not be?" She was silent. His voice was barely audible. "You do care, don't you, Scully? You're not.... not one of.....?" He swallowed, and didn't - couldn't - finish. She rounded on him then, her eyes blazing, her fists clenched. "Don't you _dare_ accuse me of not caring, Mulder. Damn it - I have family out there. My _mother_ is out there. _I_ have every reason to care." "So have I, Scully." His voice was small and so cold. "My mother's out there, too." The pain in his eyes hit her like a slap. She knew the gaping wound that was his relationship with his mother, and yet she had said.... she murmured to herself. "Yes." She breathed out, long and slow, and rubbed her eyes with both hands. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that." He looked away, as if her apology, by showing that she knew his hurt, weakened him. "Mulder." And this time she reached for his hand, and wouldn't let go. It was time for building bridges. As the world fell around them, they would have each other. "We're different. We both feel this. We're.... we're _different_. We've always agreed to differ before." He was silent for a long time, and she listened to his still-laboured breathing, counting the seconds by the sound. "Yes," he said at last. He looked at her, and there was apology in his eyes - apology for what he was about to say. "I know that, but...." He looked down. "I find it hard to accept your reaction." She didn't blink. "I find it hard to accept yours, Mulder. I think you're hoping too much. I think you're setting yourself up for a disappointment - or to get killed. I find it hard to accept, but I know it's you." He frowned. "But yours is not....." Then he stopped. She stood up. ****** Hand pressed against his chest, he crouched down painfully, and reached for the object he had seen half under the bed. A watch. He held it in his palm and looked at it, consideringly. Scully's watch. The glass was cracked, but it still marked the time. Just after ten o'clock on the morning of January the seventh. For four nights, his dreams had been silent. He had awoken every hour to the childhood terror of being alone in the world, the only one left alive. Half-asleep, he had stumbled to Scully's door and stood there, hand cupping his ear, scarcely daring to breathe, until he'd heard the soft rustle of her sheets as she'd turned over in bed. He'd wanted to bury his head in his hands and smile, and weep. An hour later, on soft silent feet, he had done it again. And again. And again. Morning.... He rubbed his eyes and frowned. The night was a dim memory in the morning, leaving him unsure what had been a dream. If Scully ever heard his visits, she said nothing. And he said nothing about the fact that, once, he had been sure he had heard her crying, and murmuring "no". A shuffle of footsteps.... The watch fell from his fingers. Forgetting his injury, he groped for the door handle and ran into the corridor. Four men were clustered just inside the sealed door, and they weren't guards. He swallowed. He had been so eager, so desperate, to hear the news, and now it was here, he could only feel dread. Some truths were too horrible. Ignorance could be a comfort, as long as you were blessed with no imagination. "You came from outside?" he started, tentatively, then the thirst to know the truth even if it was poison took hold of him. "You came from outside?" He grabbed the nearest man by his arm. "What's happening out there?" Scully's door opened and she stood there, fist pressed to her mouth, silent. "The plan." The man's clothes smelled of acrid smoke and there was a rent in his sleeve. "It's going according to plan." He grimaced. "Not pleasant, but then it was never meant to be." Another one looked at Mulder assessingly, as if noting his awkward stance and the marks of the IV in his hand. "You didn't make it in time either?" He shook his head sympathetically. "We were supposed to report two days ago, but travel's impossible out there. It all collapsed faster than anyone dared hope." "Hope?" He heard Scully's repeat the word in a terribly rising whisper, then the click of her door as she shut the men out. A few days ago he would have felt anger. Now, perhaps, he understood. She would be crying behind that closed door. The first man looked at his feet. "There are dead unburied on the streets, now. People kill for water. The lack of sanitation is causing widespread infection. The police and local government tried to come forward, but were attacked for not being able to solve everything. The people killed their only other chance at order. It's...." He passed his hand across his face. "It's not pleasant, but it's a small price to pay." "For what?" He grabbed the man by the collar, his other fist raised. He longed to smash it into his face, to see the whole plan dissolve into a bloody pulp. "What can be worth that?" Six hands pulled him back, holding him, and he could not fight them. Oh how he tried, but he could not fight them. His chest hurt. "You know." Cool eyes appraised him, and there was true bewilderment in there. "You know, or you wouldn't be here." "Getting sentimental?" An elbow snaked around his neck, and a fist patted his kidneys - a warning only, not hard enough to hurt. "We're all part of it. We made that choice. We knew what it would be like." "I'm _not_ part of it." He flailed his arms and broke free and rounded on them, breathing fast, a fighter fending off four attackers. Something brushed at his hand. "I never will be - never." They shrugged, and turned their backs. He raised a fist, a challenge half out of his mouth, when a hand caught his and held it. Scully, her eyes wide. He hadn't heard her come out. "Don't," she mouthed. He tried to wrench his hand away. "Don't stop me, Scully," he hissed, low and intense. "No." She held tight, and squeezed, and smiled sadly. Then he remembered the touch on his hand when he had stood and fought, and knew she had been beside him then, too. And there, at the end of everything, he smiled. ****** Her dreams were silent, now. Alone, she wandered through an empty world, and part of her relished the fact that she was alone, that she was responsible only to herself. Silent. But part of her wept, and wanted them back, calling her, needing her. When she woke, face damp with tears, she would press her hand against the wall between her room and Mulder's, and wonder why, in all her dreams, there was never _him_ by her side. ****** He had spent years seeking answers from men he hated, needing them even as he hated them. He felt like a fly caught by a spider. He hungered for the newcomers' news, though he never wanted to see them again. It was the fourth time he had gone to them in two days. "Why are you prisoners here, too, if you're part of it?" He held onto the door frame, feeling that it was the only thing holding him back from pummelling the man. The man frowned. "Prisoners? It's for our own protection. The great ones have too much to think about to have to worry about us. They'll let us out when the time comes." Another voice spoke behind him. "It's to keep the rest out, not to keep us in. We had to fight through crowds when we came here. They hammered at the van. They nearly pulled us over. The guards at the entrance were having to shoot them." Mulder shut his eyes. It was a nightmare memory of frantic aliens, clawing at the small hole that led towards safety. It was rushing cyanide gas, and the papery crunch of bodies beneath him as he fled from fire towards fire, burning in the desert. He moistened his lips. "Where are we?" "Underground." The man in the room narrowed his eyes. "Like I said, you should know this." He ignored him. "You don't like it." He gestured with his hands, intense. "Everything you saw out there.... I can tell you don't like it. Why do you just accept it all?" He was almost trembling with intensity. These were the first. If the project succeeded, and if he escaped intact, there would be a million million more to convert, urging them to resist with his voice alone. These were the first. "Accept?" The man in the room raised a doubtful hand to his head. "What else....?" "We were chosen for this," the man behind him said, a note of pride in his voice. "Chosen because you were sheep?" Mulder spat out, derisively. He took a step forward, his hands itching to shake the man inside until he saw things for what they were. "Chosen because you would mindlessly following orders? Were you born stupid, or did they make you this way?" "Mulder." Scully's voice behind him, low and warning. "Look, Scully." He whirled round and grabbed her wrist, holding it tightly. He wanted them to see with one pair of eyes, to feel the same. "Look at them. This is the future." He raised his voice, shouting to all of them, his eyes pricking. "Would you kill if they ordered you to? Would you?" His eyes focused on one. The man nodded slowly, but his eyes said, "of course." He bunched a fist, but remembered Scully, and slammed it into the wall instead. Fire licked his knuckles. "You..... you disgust me." He shook himself free, and walked to his room. ****** "Mulder?" She walked tentatively. He had been withdrawn for the last day, edgy, burning inside with an anger that was close to consuming him. He was coiled tight as a spring, crouched beside the door in the corridor. His eyes flickered at the sound of her feet, but he didn't look up. "Mulder?" His fingers were woven together. As she watched, they clenched, then unclenched, the knuckles white. "The guard comes through that door with our food," he said, dully, not looking at her. "I'll be waiting." She let out a breath. "Mulder." She placed a hand on his shoulder, half pulling him back, half supporting him. "What can....?" "I have to try." She swallowed hard. Last time he had said that, she had almost lost him. There was the same heavy air of fatalism about him. Doomed, she had thought then. "You know, Scully...." He gave a brittle laugh, his eyes burning dully. "I always thought they would kill me in the end. I never thought that they would want to turn me into a.... a mindless drone, doing the work of slave masters." "Maybe they won't." Again the laughter, as if he had gone beyond.... beyond _everything_, and could only laugh. "He told me, Scully - Cancerman. Everything.... It's all been some sort of test. They've been watching me, testing my spirit." He shook his head. "I guess it's one test I wish I hadn't passed." She dug her nails into her palms. "Why would they test your.... your spirit, if they wanted to make you a 'mindless drone'?" He laughed, and she wanted to shake him, to hold him. He laughed, and pressed one hand against his forehead. "Then they want to make me a leader, and that's worse, Scully - far worse. I _can not_ live with that." She shook her head sadly, and shivered. "And now I'm wondering if any of it was ever real." There was resignation in his voice, and a bleak despair. "I've been nine years on X-Files, Scully. It was my life. I thought I was close to the truth, but nothing prepared me for this. Was it _all_ a lie - a test?" She searched for comfort, but found none. It would demean him to lie, to treat him like a child. "I don't know. I shouldn't think so. You had them scared at times. You found some truths - we found them." He looked at her bleakly. "But it's nothing now, Scully, can't you see? I'm looking at a future controlled by the people I most hate. I have _got_ to hope, Scully. I've got to fight. Right now, it's all I have." He put his hand to his face, covering his eyes. He was hiding from her, but she knew from his voice. He was crying soundlessly - tears without sobs. "If I stop fighting, it's because I've stopped hoping, and if I stop hoping, I die." She didn't want to touch him. He needed comfort, but she was not the one to give it. She was not supposed to know about his tears. She cleared her throat, and blinked back tears of her own. "You could accept their position, and fight them from within...." It sounded hollow even as she said it. She had expected a storm of denial, but instead he just shook his head, slowly, so slowly. "I hate them, Scully. I could never join them. It would be like.... like allying with the Devil." She shivered. "So." He looked at her, then rubbed his eyes. It was a moment of confidence, she knew. He was showing her that he had been crying - telling her that he trusted her enough to know. "So I fight, Scully." He gestured at the door. "This is my way." She knew him better than to object. Instead, she touched him gently on the shoulder. "It could get you killed, Mulder." He nodded, but said nothing. ****** A keening noise woke her - distant, like a whine. "Mulder?" She pushed the covers back and stood up, bare-foot upon the floor. There were no dreams heavy in her memory, now. Sleep was as empty as her days, though by day she had Mulder. Except once, he had never appeared in her dreams. "Mulder?" She opened the door and stood there on the threshold, watching him. Earlier, she had watched him sleep, slumped against the wall, his chin slumped forward on his chest. She had watched him awhile, then softly returned to her room, feeling the strange privacy of the moment. Asleep, he was as if naked, stripped of all his defences, child-like. "Mulder?" He was kneeling now, every muscle alert, awake. The side of his face was pressed against the door and his eyes were closed. She swallowed. "Mulder?" "Scully." Slowly, he opened his eyes, and for a second she had an insane urge to stop him - an insane conviction that she would see something terrible. Eyes burning like coals. "Listen, Scully." She blinked, and his eyes were rich brown, but old, so old. "It's an alarm, Scully." There was a terrible hunger in his voice. "It's happening. It's started." Then, before she could breathe, he whirled round and pounded a fist once into the door, hard. "And I'm in here," he shouted. His fist opened into a flat palm, pressed against the door, and, as she watched, it trickled down like water, until he was sitting on the floor, hands slack at his sides, head slumped forward. "And I'm in here, Scully," he almost sobbed. Somewhere, like the scream of a dying world, the alarm continued. "Maybe...." And then she stopped. But he knew it, anyway. "There always was a degree of escapism in your refusal to believe, wasn't there, Scully?" His voice was dull - resigned, not angry. "It's safer to shut your eyes to what's happening. You want to live in a cocoon, refusing to let the truth shake your little view of the world." She clenched her fists, fighting the urge to hit him, to silence him. His words _hurt_. "It's safer to hide, isn't it, Scully?" His eyes held her, and there was something strange in them - almost longing. As if part of him wanted so intensely to be able to retreat from the truth and hide in some beautiful unreality, some fantasy world. Some soft white-paved prison.... Some wild impossible hope.... "Don't." She swallowed hard, her eyes stinging. His words hurt, but..... "Maybe we each have our cocoons, Mulder," she said, softly. How could her voice stay so level? "Perhaps we need them to survive. If I'm hiding, then you are too. This.... this hope of yours, that you can somehow save the world.... You said it yourself, Mulder - you need hope to live, however implausible that hope is.... Can't that be called a refusal to face reality, too?" She half-closed her eyes. The picture of Samantha that he carried everywhere.... He had never needed to face up to the sad remains of his life, clinging onto the hope - the insane hope - that just to see her smile would magically heal everything. Hope like that could be a crutch. He would cling to the crutch while his limbs atrophied, just like now he was clinging.... "No," she murmured, aloud, aware that she was being unfair. They had both been unfair, though not untrue, perhaps. He gave a strange harsh laugh. "Reality sucks, huh?" Then, before she could answer, he bunched a fist again and held it up. "I want to change reality." Silently, she shook her head. Instead, she touched his shoulder. "Don't hope too much," she said, once more. "What can you do alone?" "Not alone, Scully." A stillness fell over him. "Never alone." She let her hand fall, afraid. If he meant her, she wasn't sure she could do it. If he meant someone else.... His eyes meant someone else. ****** "Why don't they come, Scully?" High on the ceiling, the red eye blinked. "Why?" He wrapped his arms round his knees and rocked, tense almost beyond the point of endurance. For two days he had waited beside the door, ready to attack, ready to fight. He needed only to put a face to his hatred. It was so hard to fight soft white sheets, and warm water and clean clothes. He could fight only by denying himself, and that was absurd. Once, late at night, he had almost torn his clothes off, refusing to wear what they gave him, to do even this for them. Then he had imagined them laughing, seeing him reduced so low. "They're watching you," she said, at last. She seemed to hesitate always, now, before speaking to him. "They know you're waiting. You're only hurting yourself by this.... this resistance." he read in her eyes. "Or they're busy." The alarm had long since fallen silent, but sometimes, through the door, he heard running feet. "Taking control, or losing it." He smiled cruelly. "I hope they're losing it." "If _they_ can't assert control, who can?" Her voice was soft. She gestured at the four men, a blank leaderless huddle in a doorway. "If what they say is true...." "Tyranny or anarchy? To live as slaves, or die free? The choice is yours." He gave a bitter laugh. Oh, but he wanted - he needed - to bury his head into his hands and weep, calling for her. And her receding footsteps sounded in his head like the hammer-blows of that thought: We haven't a chance. We haven't a chance. We haven't a chance.... "No," he said aloud, and raised his head to stare at the camera. "I refuse to accept that." ****** And someone came, and death was with him. Someone came, and Mulder slept. ****** A hand at his throat, heavy and coarse. From a sleep in which he was weeping, searching, Mulder half awakened, swaying his head from side to side, a low moan in his throat: "no...." The hand pressed down, the thumb pushing into the hollow at the base of the throat. In the desert of his dream, he collapsed to his knees, unable to breath. Half mad with loneliness, he almost welcomed death. "Mulder." He was awake in an instant, eyes open, body still. Hand on his throat, cold blue eyes observing him. The man's clothes smelled of smoke. "Ah, Agent Mulder...." "You." He lashed the man's arm away, then let his own hand move to his throat, protective. Scully was wrong. His resistance _was_ reasoned. He would bide his time - wake up fully before attacking. "I was making sure you were still alive." The man's voice was bitter. Alcohol mingled with smoke on his breath. "I've wanted you dead; I've mourned you where you _were_ dead. Why have you got that power over me, Agent Mulder? Why?" "I...." He pulled himself to a sitting position against the wall. He was cautious, thrown by this sudden frailty in his inhuman emotionless enemy. Like this, he was harder to fight, harder to hate. "I don't know," he said, at last, his mind racing. "You always fascinated me." His hands were shaking. The smoke in his clothes was too acrid for cigarette smoke. "I've hated you; I've envied you. At times, I've almost loved you. Mostly, I've hated you." He didn't want to hear. He _understood._ He didn't want to understand. "You opposed what I thought was right - what I knew was right - what _is_ right." The man slumped beside him. They were like drinking companions - best friends side by side against the wall. The reek of alcohol was unmistakable. Mulder clenched his fist. For three days he had waited.... Oh, but he wanted to pummel the man's face into an unrecognisable pulp. "Scully!" he called, a pained croak. "Scully!" Her cool assessing eyes as he hit Roche. With her watching, he would not lose control. "Order." The man reached into his pocket and brought out a small flask. "Order. Control. Survival. You went against that. You were like a child, not knowing what you meddled with, not knowing the price." "The price? You should have told me the price. You should have told me the truth." He gave a short laugh, brittle. "_If_ it mattered to you like this...." "We should have killed you." The man took a large mouthful of drink. "Only sentiment stopped me. Your parents.... You could have been mine. I could have been you." He wanted her. He wanted then to hear it together, to feel it together, to see it as one. "I should have killed you. I will _not_ let you see what's out there." A soft hiss. "What's out there?" He was shaking with control. He would hear the truth before beating him into silence, but this time he would not walk away. The man's words had charmed away his gun twice before. The man took another mouthful. "Betrayal." And Scully was there, still as a ghost. Her eyes were wide, as if she could not believe the surreal nature of the scene before her. He marvelled at how _he_ had accepted it. He had opened his eyes, blinked, and then adapted. Her presence eased him. He let out a breath. "Who by? You? You con the people by offering them order, and then enslave them?" The metal flask shone. "We would have saved them, Mulder." It was a cry. "How?" Scully. She stepped forward, as if drawn to the man. He didn't turn round. "You think we chose this, Mulder? Do you? You think we hurt people because we _like_ it?" Yes. He nodded, but was beyond speaking. "They would have done worse." Another swig. "Much worse." "They?" Scully's arms were wrapped round her body. "Aliens, Agent Scully - not that you will believe me." He laughed. "They chose you well. Someone loyal, but too blind to see, while Mulder saw, but was not believed, and missed the point." "Which is?" She leant forward - her icy interrogation look, ignoring words that hurt. "Aliens." The man blinked several times, then rubbed his eyes harshly. "They came. They were so superior to us, technologically. They wanted to colonise. _They_ set the date, Mulder - not us. They had no more respect for us than a man has for the.... for the worms in the soil he digs for his foundations. " "Respect?" he spat out, contemptuous. He clenched his fists tighter, and trembled. "We did what we could, Agent Mulder. We salvaged control." He twisted the flask in his pale lined hands. "Their coming was inevitable. We initiated hybridisation projects to persuade them that mankind could be utilised - that they needn't start afresh but could use the existing population. We appropriated what technology we could so they would respect us, listen to us. If their coming was inevitable, we would at least salvage what we could." He wished he had his gun. "You expect us to believe that?" "Yet you have believed lies - beautiful lies." "Prove you're not lying." Rapid as gunfire. "Careful, Mulder. I could still kill you." The man breathed out and raised the flask, almost lazily. "You expect us to believe that everything you did was for our own good?" It was surreal, like a nightmare. He wanted to laugh hysterically, or scream. "Some must suffer for the rest to live." It was dull, as if he was quoting. "Desperate diseases require desperate remedies." He smashed at the man's flask, spilling amber liquid on the tiles. It was a spreading stain, and dark. His fury could not be expressed in words. "It was an awesome responsibility, Agent Mulder." The man grasped the empty flask, clutching to it as if it was an anchor. His speech was becoming slurred. "We held the fate of the world in our hands. If people knew...." He gestured vaguely upwards. "You saw what it's like out there, Mulder. You've seen what panic can do to civilisation. Order is our hope." "So, what? You promised them that you would hand over a population nicely softened, ready for them to take over?" Mulder invested his voice with a heavy sarcasm, not letting himself believe. "In exchange for what? They promised that you could be their commandants, if you co-operated?" The man's mood shifted again. Melancholy, he nodded. And he saw the truth in the man's eyes. "But it's not working, is it?" He smiled, even laughed. "It's all going wrong for you....." "For all of us." Scully had fallen to her knees beside them, her hand on her chest. "How?" she breathed. "We're not ready for them yet, and they've come." He grabbed Mulder's wrist and squeezed, his eyes intense. "Did they ever intend to keep to the deal, do you think? Did they just agree to buy time while they prepared for this? Did they intend to betray us all along?" He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. The man's eyes made him breathe fast with hatred, his chest heaving. The wound still hurt. "What's happening out there?" Again, it was Scully who spoke, asking a question he had wondered, a few days ago, if she even cared about. He had accused her of hiding, but she had more strength than that - of course she had more strength than that. "Betrayal." The hand squeezed tighter. "Death. Disorder." The man shuddered. "Disorder...." Mulder trembled. He wanted to scream, to break, to shout.... "The disorder is the worst." And he broke. "You made it!" Face twisting with rage, hot tears on his cheeks, he launched himself at the man, pummelling blindly. "You...." Strong hands on his shoulders, pulling. "Mulder." Scully. He couldn't see. Fire burned in his chest and he was gasping for breath, his arms heavy. There was blood on his fist. "Mulder...." Vision sheeted red. He was sobbing, shouting - grief and fury. The man's fists fought back, striking with the unpredictability of a drunk. One smashed into his cheekbone, leaving him reeling, and another into his chest.... Like interference in a radio signal, the world froze for a second, then continued. For that second, there had been nothing but pain and the need to breathe. "Let me out!" _His_ hateful voice with an edge of fear. Scully's white hands closed round his wrist and held him back. A trickle of blood marred her fingers. Her eyes held his, then flicked back over her shoulder. The four men circled them, their eyes grim, their fists raised. "Scully," he gasped. The door opened, and outside was an unimaginable world of freedom. She held him - God, she _held_ him - as the man pulled himself to his feet, steadied himself against the wall, and stepped forward. Two booted guards covered him with their guns. "No!" He snaked a hand out for the man's ankle. He would pull him down. They would be on the same level. They would.... A booted foot slammed down on his fingers. He let his face show the hurt of it. "Worms, Agent Mulder." Through the closing door, the man's voice sounded. "We're worms to them - just worms." And then he laughed, high and hysterical. He laughed, and then there was silence. ****** Reality had shifted. In the world that came after, silence held them. Limp in her arms, Mulder was breathing fast, and she could hear the pain that each breath caused him. Her hands were on him but they were still, now - no longer holding him back, but not stroking, offering comfort. Then he turned to look at her, and held her gaze, unblinking. "You believe him." It was not a question. "I...." His hands scrabbled, pulling himself away from her until he was supporting himself alone. It earned her a second to prepare her answer, though what could she say? "I think it is possible that they believed that they had a.... a responsibility. I think it is possible that they believed that the things they did were the best way forward." "They were saving the world from aliens?" There was naked hurt in his eyes. "Eight years, Scully, and you could never once bring yourself to say that you believed in them - not once, when you knew how important it was to me. And then _he_ comes...." She tensed, her voice low. "I have come to believe more than I used to, Mulder." She was not proud of it. She didn't want the four silent listeners to hear. "But that man...." Fierce. He gestured at the door. "The things he's done to us. How can you believe _anything_....? He's manipulated me - he's said so. This is more of the same. It's going wrong, and he's already starting the apology." She held her ground. "He believes it - part of it, anyway." "Why? Because he's drunk? Because he shows his feelings, and all at once you feel sorry for him?" His words were meant to sting like a whip. He was coiled and dangerous, one step away from lashing out blindly. "Believe me, Scully, I have _seen_ this before. My father...." He passed a hand over his face. "After Samantha.... He drank. He cried. He seemed broken. Who would have thought of blaming him? I certainly didn't." She knew the hurt he bore there, but it wasn't the time for it. She lowered her voice, intense. "If it's falling apart out there.... If they caused it, and can't control it.... If they thought, rightly or wrongly, that it was for the best.... Responsibility can be terrible, Mulder." And then, suddenly, she had to reach for the wall, steadying herself. She felt faint inside, almost unable to bear the dreadful resonance of the word. There were so many things she didn't want to think about. "They caused it." She didn't recognise him in his eyes. "They. I hate them. Nothing else matters." She could find no way of saying it that didn't sound trite, inadequate. "They're losing control out there." He smiled grimly. "It's not going how they'd planned. There's hope that we can fight back. They're losing, Scully." It was not Mulder. The hope in his eyes was all from hatred, from enjoyment of their misfortune. It seemed alien to him, yet not so alien, as if she had seen it before but not recognised it. She wondered when he had changed - when he had moved from fighting out of love, desiring only to find his sister, to fighting out of hate, desiring only to destroy the ones who had taken her. And Melissa had said once that she had seen the same conflict in his eyes, once - the same war between the light and the dark of his quest. Melissa.... At that moment, knowing that the world as she knew it was in ruins, she only wanted to weep for the poor dark shadow that was Mulder's soul. ****** He was running his fingers slowly over his bruised knuckles, again and again. "Mulder?" She tightened her grip on the door. It was twelve hours since he had last spoken and the thought of seeing into his mind scared her. She feared it would be dark beyond imagining. "Mulder?" His head nodded, then jerked sharply, as if he had fallen asleep for a second. For the merest instance, his face blanked with.... fear? She took a step forward. "Mulder?" His lips moved - two almost silent syllables. "Footsteps?" She froze, listening, but heard nothing. "Where, Mulder? Who?" "Him." Dark and thrilling. He wrapped his arms around his knees. "He's coming." It was an icy finger on her spine. ****** No hands reached for her now. In her dreams, she wandered through a barren world, and her solitary tears burned like acid. "You hid." It was the voice in her head - the voice that was her own, yet not her own. "You could have saved them, but you didn't." She flashed on the ghostly memory of the little girl. "They could have been your children." "No...." She fell to her knees, her face twisting. "I can't have children." The voice ignored her. "And now, instead of you, they have _that_." And a nightmare kaleidoscope of images.... Blood in the streets; a million people coughing; flaming buildings as the only light in the night; and him.... Him. Red eyes in a face that _was_ evil. White teeth that flashed in a smile, and made birds fall from the air like stones, dead. Blood dripping from his raised fists. Eyes that withered grass and could strike a growing child with a cancer. Horror like a miasma from his aspect and his eyes. Him. "I'm scared of the bogeyman." She heard the little girl's voice, clear in her memory. "Save me from the bogeyman, Dana." Him. Red eyes.... And slowly, though part of her knew, somehow, that he was not here at all but a long way North, he turned towards her, his eyes searching.... And his eyes fell on her, and blinked, and they were blue and beautiful, like a polished gun is beautiful. "He knows I'm here." Terror coursed through her, though still she stood, and didn't lower her eyes though she was quaking inside. "He knows I'm here, and he's coming. Help me, God. Help all of us." And he walked. ****** His hands were at her neck. Blood pounding in her ears, she jolted awake. Arms entwining her; a face pressed against her throat. "Mulder?" She heard him in the darkness, and heard the catch in his breathing. He withdrew, and she thought she heard the soft exhale of an apology. "Mulder?" She ran her fingers over her neck. He had been kneeling on the floor beside her bed, bending over and holding her. His hands had been on her shoulders, his face pressed into the turn of her neck. Her skin tingled with the feel of his breathing. But she bit her lip and said nothing. He swallowed audibly. His breathing told her the truth - he had been crying, and, crying, had needed her. Once, a lifetime away, she had lain as one asleep in a hospital bed and heard him cry like this, afraid to let him know she had seen his weakness. She had never told him. "Mulder?" Soft. "Scully." His trembling hand reached for hers and pulled it upwards, as if pointing. "Look." She frowned. "What? Nothing...." "No." He took a shuddering breath, tight with the effort of control. "Nothing. The camera..." "They're not watching us any more." She had hated that camera, wanting only to feel free. "No. What if....?" He paused. "What if there's nobody left alive to watch us?" "Mulder." Sharp. She reached for the light switch, then stopped. She would give him warning - time to wipe his eyes and put on his mask. "I'm putting the light on, okay?" she said, softly, and part of her knew that she would never turn it off again, never tolerate full darkness again. The switch clicked, but nothing happened. ****** Blinded by darkness, they took the blankets to the corridor and sat there, pulled close to each other for warmth and comfort. Sometimes his head was on her chest; sometimes hers was on his. She saw no weakness in that. "If they're all dead...." She twisted a corner of the blanket. "If no- one comes....?" "Then we start eating them." She felt his movement as he gestured back at the four silent rooms. "Fillet of sheep." If she half closed her eyes she could see them, all four of them sitting quietly on their own beds, hands folded loosely in their laps, waiting for.... what? But she smiled, sadly. It was a spark of the Mulder she knew. "If they're dead..." His voice was heavy. "Then the aliens have won. I... I always wanted to prove that they existed, but this is taking it a bit far, isn't it, Scully?" She was silent. He shifted position. "It might be only them, Scully," he began, diffidently, but as he spoke he gained confidence. The wild hope was back in his voice. She found she had missed it. "It might be. If Cancerman told some truths.... Imagine it - the aliens break their agreement with our friends the Consortium. They want to colonise the world on their own terms, not hand-in-hand with.... with _them_. The Consortium has become their enemy, not the people. Everyone else might still be alive." But she said nothing. The echo of her dreams stayed with her, and the irrational clawing fear of what was _out there_. Not alive, and not people. "If we could just get out...." She shivered. And then, strange and sudden, a thought from nowhere - a thought she could not believe: But, as if they were washed by cool soothing water, her fears fell away. She saw herself standing in green fields, and it felt right and true. But Mulder.... She twisted the blanket tighter as the fears returned like a swelling wave. He was outside, apart. She saw no green fields for him. ****** Footsteps sounded in his dreams, soft and distant. "He's coming." He spoke aloud in the blackness of his prison, and thrilled with the hope of it. "He's coming for me." And he smiled. Half-closing his eyes, he let himself imagine. Fry's blue eyes smiled: "Did you think I'd leave you, Fox. Did you think I'd forgotten you?" An open hand with a crow's feather in it, which, as he watched, clouded and changed into a dull black key. "I was angry with you for being taken, but I have forgiven you. I will release you from all that is gone before, Fox. Take this key. Accept it." Not yet, though. Not yet. Kneeling on the hard ground, he waited, and listened. And the footsteps were closer. ****** Footsteps.... Before he was fully awake, he was on his feet, hope surging. He pressed his ear against the door and still he heard it. Footsteps. "Scully?" He crouched down and reached for her, but found only a discarded blanket. Breathing sounded in the darkness, fast and tense, as if she had backed away against the wall and now crouched there, terrified. Every breath caught, almost like a whimper. "Scully?" Soft. Even amidst the hope that was almost joy, he felt his eyes prick. He had never seen her terrified before. She had always been strong, and endured. "It's...." "Someone's there." Her voice was high. "I dreamed...." "You dreamed about him too?" He found her wrist and held it. She gave a small cry. He wanted to hold her and weep with relief, that they were together in this, but when he tried to speak of it, he could not. The dreams were personal. There was even a bitter stab of jealousy that she had shared them too. "I....," she began, then swallowed. The footsteps shuffled, and there was a full choking cough. A guttural voice swore. "It's not him." Black disappointment mingled with relief. "It's..." And then he was pounding on the door with painful fists. "Let us out! Unlock the door! Let us out...." Silence. Scully edged forward. Her hand moved over him, feeling for its resting place at the small of his back. And the door opened, and they were staring into a wavering light. "Yes." The voice was hoarse. The light wavered again and became a flashlight in the man's hand. His face was white, and blood trickled down his chin. He held a gun in his other hand. Scully's hand pressed into his back. Mulder took a step forward and her hand fell away. He felt suddenly that he was being drawn forward, that she was being drawn back. "Stay with me, Scully," he murmured, then half hoped she hadn't heard. She would bridle at it, and go her own way. "Yes," the man said again, and a strange noise issued from his gaping mouth - half laughter, half coughing. Droplets of blood shone in the light. "Yes. You can come out. Why should you escape? Now you'll die too." She was back by his side, and her hand closed round his. "I'm a doctor," she murmured, but there was no hope in her voice. "A doctor?" The guard laughed harshly, then a fit of trembling took him like a spasm and the flashlight fell from his hand. It rolled on the ground and then settled, still shining. It was as if he was standing knee-deep in light, while his face was in darkness. "A doctor?" his invisible mouth mocked. "It's too late for that. _They_ came." "They?" Mulder stepped forward. "What happened?" The guard didn't answer. His knees seemed to buckle and he collapsed towards, grabbing at Mulder as he fell. The two of them froze, locked in some deadly clinch, shaking with the effort of staying upright. The man's eyes held him. "Mulder," he gasped, eyes widening with recognition. "You. _You_ deserve to live least of all." He took a deep breath and spat in Mulder's face. "I'll live." Mulder lowered the man to the floor, groped for the flashlight, and straightened up. He rubbed at his face and it came away red. "I'll fight." He stepped over the man's body and walked through the door, letting the light shine down the corridor. It fell on one grey lump, then another, then another. Three bodies, not moving. His hand rose to his mouth, half in horror, half in.... protection? He stepped and stepped, and it seemed suddenly as if his footsteps were the only living thing in the world. He wanted - needed - to run, to rip open doors and search, crying out, "is anyone there? Is anyone still alive?" "Mulder?" Scully. Slowly, he turned round to face her wide eyes, her pale face. She was kneeling on the floor, bent over the guard. Her lips moved, but his reeling mind couldn't hear her, didn't need to hear her. Dead. All dead. ****** "No." The blank-faced sheep spoke as one. Mulder wanted to weep. "But...." He grabbed an arm - a random one. He had never bothered to ask their names. "The doors are open. We can go back home." He was dimly aware of Scully in the background. She was twisting the dead guard's key-card between her hands, looking at it as if it was the passport to death, not the passport to freedom and hope that it was. He raised his voice, speaking to her as well as to the nothing-men. "What is there to keep us here? We know they're dead down here. Out there...." "Out there?" Scully whispered, then she shook her head abruptly and put the key-card into her pocket. "It's safe in here." The man's voice was hollow. His eyes were red- rimmed and.... he realised, suddenly. "We were ordered to report here. They would keep us out of danger until it's time to...." "Damn it, it will _never_ be time, not now." He grabbed the man's overalls, forcing him to look at the guard's body. "Can't you see? _Can't you see_? There's no-one here to keep you safe any more. Out there...." He almost smiled. "Out there is.... not here." The man ran his hand across his face, and looked almost human. "Perhaps we'll get what that guy had. Perhaps we will die here, but it's.... it's easier, you know?" "Easier to give up?" He remembered the guard, and almost spat in disgust. "They had no chance, did they - no chance at all? They based their hope for the future on men like you?" "Leave it, Mulder." Scully sounded so weary. "Let's just get out of here." But something in her voice made him pause. "You agree with them?" He shook his head, wondering. "You want to stay here too?" She raised her chin, and the fear in her eyes was well mastered. "It's the Devil you know, Mulder. It's always easier. It's.... it's hard to face.... We don't know _what's_ out there, do we, Mulder?" He thumped the flashlight into the cupped palm on his other hand, rhythmically, again and again. "So we can hope," he said. A whimper of doubt was starting up deep inside, but he knew he must not listen to it. "We hope," he said, louder. He saw himself in green fields in a restored world, and it felt good and true. He believed in premonition and fate. She didn't waver. "And fear, too, Mulder. It's only human." The whimper became a scream. Beyond speaking, he nodded. Like a priceless diamond held in cupped hands, he clung to the image of the green fields, and clung to it still as he walked away. ****** Hand in hand, they headed for the light. Doors opened to a touch. After half a dozen of them, Mulder had almost broken down. "It was open all along, Scully, ever since the cameras went out." His voice had cracked. "I didn't try hard enough. He was right. If I'd _really_ wanted to fight...." "Not now, Mulder." Sharp. All along, it had been all she could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other. She felt she was walking into a dark cloud of evil that would attack her very essence. Even a dark underground prison full of death felt safer. He coughed, but said nothing. She imagined a line on the floor and walked on it, eyes wandering neither to the right not to the left, mind closed to what might lie ahead. "Scully." Sometime later. She didn't look at him. "Scully. Cancerman." For a moment, she let reality in, and saw him. He was slumped over a monitor, an empty bottle near one hand, a pen and paper near the other. Mulder's hand shook as he reached for the paper. It crackled as he raised it, brittle from dried blood stains. "Scully?" Almost fiercely, she forced herself to focus. "'It's coming. He's coming. We were so wrong'." Mulder read aloud, jabbing his finger at the paper, and he was smiling. "Listen, Scully. 'He will destroy us all. He's coming for us.' Good." She sighed, and closed her eyes again. Just a crack to watch her feet and follow her invisible line. "Hand in hand," she murmured. A long-forgotten line came into her head, and with it the memory of a serpent-smile. "Hand in hand with wandering steps and slow, through Eden took their solitary way.... Paradise Lost." He snatched his hand away. "You think this prison was Paradise? Like.... like _them_." Once they had opened a door to find a cluster of a dozen people, all blank-faced as the four they had lived with. They had refused to move, and, while she was Scully and would fight, she had understood. "No." She shook her head wearily. Before she had tuned them out, they had seen dozens of bodies, all of whom had died coughing blood. As a doctor, she had not even begun to theorise on what killed them. "But I'm scared of what we'll find out there," she said, truthfully. He nodded slowly, and for a moment she saw a truth that even he wasn't aware of, perhaps. She squeezed his hand. In that moment she feared what the truth would do to him almost more than she feared the truth itself. If "out there" was.... was _bad_.... If he saw it and accepted it, then he would break down utterly, while she.... She had to bite her lip not to cry aloud, and the pleading hands of her dream again haunted her. But she held on tighter. ****** He reached the light alone. Scully had fallen back, standing a few paces behind, her eyes on the ground. He could feel her hands clasping and unclasping, tense and scared. He coughed, out of breath from the stairs, then coughed again. Scully made a sharp noise in her throat - perhaps even his name. His lips moved silently. "I'm here. I'm...." His hands were shaking. Scully was right - he had hoped too much. He would stay on the verge forever, one hand on the shattered outside door, and preserve the moment for ever. he would smile. Stay here and savour the moment, drinking in every minute of it. He would live forever on the penultimate page of a story, enjoying the confident knowledge that the ending would be happy.... Never having to face the dreadful fear that the ending might be sad. He coughed again, covering his mouth with his hand. Red pain lanced through his chest with every cough. "Scully?" "Mulder." Her fist was pressed against her mouth, her eyes full of dreadful knowledge. "Oh, Mulder...." He coughed again, and the pain made him reach for the support of something - anything - solid. The door moved away from him and opened an inch. He shut his eyes. "Mulder?" Her hand reached for his, then she pulled him forward and held him, her face pressed against his shoulder. Under his hands, her back was shaking, as if she was crying. He was, too. "Scully...." He coughed again, and had to push her away simply to get the room to breathe. And her eyes.... He wiped his eyes. "Quit staring at me, Scully. I'm fine...." And slowly, slowly, he turned for the door. ****** end of part 3 ****** He'd fallen silently, and without warning. He hadn't called her name. Afterwards, as she wiped the blood from his unresponsive face and watched the laboured movements of his chest, she tried so hard to remember the sound of her name on his lips. Perhaps he _had_ called for her, and she hadn't heard.... And what did that make her? And if he hadn't called for her, then why not? Why, dying, would he choose to retreat from her and collapse in utter silence? "Mulder...." She touched his face. Nothing. An hour ago, they had emerged from the darkness into the merciless beauty of a blue winter afternoon, and a dreadful screaming silence. A discarded newspaper had fluttered in the wind - soft whispering noises against the ground. Five minutes of watching, and Mulder had broken free and stamped on it fiercely, breathing heavily, his eyes wild. She had understood. The silence.... "Mulder?" Her voice was the whisper of the newspaper. Utter silence could be dismissed as hallucination, but that single sound made it real, amplified it. It was as if her voice was echoing up to the sky - the only living voice on the planet. Hand in hand, they had stepped across the twisted bodies, heading for the shattered gate of the compound. His hand had trembled and had tightened on hers whenever he coughed. Her eyes had flickered to his face, finding it impassive, though she'd known he had to be close to breakdown. He had hoped so much.... "All dead," she had whispered. "All of them. How?" Hand pressed against her mouth, she had focused on a movement that could have been a hand, could have been the wind touching a curtain. She had found it painful to swallow. "Mulder?" she had begun. "Is that...?" When she'd turned back to him, he'd been unconscious on the ground. He'd fallen silently, and without warning. He hadn't called her name. ****** Two pillows or one...? She held them in her hands, testing the weight assessingly. They were large pillows, and soft. She had carefully selected a dark colour, unwilling to see the stark contrast of blood on white cloth. A dark blanket was draped over her shoulder and a small pack of supplies hung from her forearm. But two pillows or one...? She frowned. One would be easier to carry, allowing her to carry more food, but if he then asked for two and she had to come back.... If she had to leave him again and he died while she was away.... Almost fiercely, she jammed the two pillows under her arm, and turned towards the door of the half-shattered store. Already, picking her way over bodies had become almost habit, done without thought, even without horror. She was wrapped up in cotton wool, and numb. She had always been fiercely practical, and part of her knew it was a coping mechanism, shielding her from the full horror of the loss of everything she had ever known. It was too vast to feel. Any horror she felt would be inadequate, and so she felt none. But Mulder.... Out in the too-silent street, she swallowed hard. All along, she had known, perhaps, how it would be with him. He had let himself hope, fiercely, implausibly. He had emerged from their underground prison expecting a war he could fight - a war he could help turn into a victory. Instead, he had found a graveyard - a silent battlefield bathed in bloody sunset. He had seen his hope become nothing. And now he was dying, and he didn't care. ****** "Mulder." He didn't open his eyes - didn't try. Why? "Mulder?" Her hand on his shoulder, shaking gently. "I'm back." He opened his mouth to speak, but a cough seized him. Raising a hand to his mouth needed a strength more than he could muster, so he turned his head away from her voice. Warm liquid trickled down his chin. "I've got a blanket for you, and pillows." She paused. "Do you want one or two?" But he said nothing. "Mulder." Her voice came closer, intense. "There's a house just over there, and its door's open. If I could get you on the blanket, I could...." "No." He opened his eyes, surprised at the strength he could put into that word. "I told you. I'm not going inside. They're other people's houses. It would...." How could he make her understand? "It would make me like _them_." "They're dead, Mulder. All of them, somehow." Her voice was soft. "We don't know yet how far it extends, but it's reasonable to assume it's not just here. If we're to survive, we _need_ to take things from other people's houses, and stores. We have to adapt." His vision doubled with tears. "It's... it's like grave-robbing, Scully. They wanted to destroy civilisation. I... I don't want to die condoning that." She exhaled sharply. "Damn it, Mulder, you're killing _yourself_." He coughed again, and this time his eyes were open to see the blood on his clothes. "They killed me, Scully. You've seen all the bodies. I'm dying of.... of whatever it is they unleashed on the population - they, or the aliens. First the anarchy to weaken us, and then.... what? A gas in the atmosphere? A virulent plague?" He tried to smile. "It's funny, Scully. I thought it was going to be bees...." "You are _not_!" She slammed her fist into her hand. "You're killing yourself. You're not trying to fight. You're rejecting everything I.... " Her hand closed round his shoulder. "I'm a doctor, Mulder, and you won't listen to me. You.... " He shut his eyes and remembered the Scully of the past two weeks. Daylight had transformed her. "You were the one who told me not to fight, Scully," he said softly. "You were the one who wanted to stay down there." "I...." She swallowed, and there was a strange note in her voice. "I was.... I was afraid of what we'd find. I was afraid of what you expected we'd find - that the contrast between your expectation and the reality would be too great for you. I was afraid of.... of _this_." He coughed, and curled his knees up towards his chest. It gave him no relief. He felt she had been patronising him and treating him like a child, but could feel no anger. It was too late for that. "You might not..." She inhaled sharply, and there was a desperate fierceness in her voice when she spoke again. "You're not dying, Mulder. It's the stress, coupled with a chest injury that's not properly healed yet. It can't be the same as they all died of - can't be. If it was, we'd have both seen exposed to it, and _I'm_ not sick." The desperation in her voice.... She was doing what she had accused him of doing, clinging to a wild hope in a hopeless situation. It was.... it was _human_ and he loved her for it, and grieved for her because of it. When he died.... And then he couldn't stop the tears. "I'm sorry, Scully...." "Don't." She pressed a finger to his lips, and it was clumsy and trembling. It hurt him. "Don't start saying your farewells. Don't." She was where he had been all his life, still hoping for impossible miracles. He had moved on and embraced the darkness, understanding it for the first time. He had found his truth, and his truth was nothing. He coughed again. "You're right, Scully," he murmured, when he could. He was crying openly now, knowing he was too close to death to need to conceal. "The contrast between expectation and reality.... Wasn't that my life, Scully? I thought I was looking for something that would change the future, but all I was looking for was something I hoped would change the past. Nothing - nothing - could have given me what I wanted. Nothing I did could make any difference. Every small gain made it worse, in a way...." She touched his hair, but said nothing. She made no sign of understanding. He _wanted_ her to understand, here at the very end. "Every small fact that I gleaned about what I called the 'truth', Scully...." He grabbed her wrist. Her pulse was rapid beneath his fingers. "I knew I was a step closer, but I just felt further away. My childhood, my life, was still as it always had been. Nothing that I found out made me happy. If anything, it made me less happy, since each time I had allowed myself to hope that it _would_ change things." "Mulder...." "You were right, Scully, that night before they took us." He wiped his face with his hand, and it came away streaked with blood. "The truth doesn't make me happy. I... I hoped too much. The truth is that there is no hope - that nothing can be changed." "Damn it, Mulder - things can be changed." Her voice cracked, though her eyes were dry. "You're talking as if you believe in fate. _I_ don't. I believe that we have choices. I believe that we can control our.... our destinies. And I believe that you could fight this... this respiratory problem that you have." He shut his eyes and searched for the image of Fry, but couldn't find him. "I hoped we could fight," he said, scarcely above a whisper. "A man gave me that hope. He led me to believe..." Tears choked his voice. "I was wrong," he said, when he could speak again. "We can't fight this." Above him, the sky reddened. Clouds passed over his vision and he let himself drift. Drift.... ****** He had despaired. Arms wrapped tightly round her raised knees, she watched him sleep, knowing that she had already lost him. He had despaired, and he was no longer Mulder. Mulder had always burnt with a fierce flame of hope. It had sustained him, driving him through false leads, danger and pain, nourishing him when he had nothing else. Face set, eyes intense, he would have walked through fire, willingly suffering the burns and the fear, on the slimmest of hopes that there was some clue beyond the flames that would lead him to his truth. He had been a man created on hope, and without hope he was.... he was terrible. She let herself cry, then. Even if he lived, he had already died. ****** Close to death, Fox Mulder wandered in dreams.... On cold desert stone, he lay beneath the stars, hands folded softly on his breast as if laid out ready for burial. A cold star in the west increased and swelled like a sun, until he was bathed in silver light. He was dimly aware that he _had_ hurt, and that the touch of the light meant that he hurt no longer. The pain was like a dream within a dream. he thought, wonderingly. And then, out of the light stepped a figure. A silhouette against the light.... It was the willowy alien from the night Samantha.... It was the alien in Puerto Rico that had witnessed his panic and his failure. It was the figure of his nightmares.... He opened his mouth to scream, tried to drag himself away, but he couldn't move as much as a finger. he moaned, trapped in silence. <_This_ is death....> Death as an eternity of his worst fear, with no soothing healing light. "No, Fox." A low chuckle. "Not death. Life for you." And the figure stepped forward on soft leather boots and became the smiling face of Richard Fry. "You came." Tears tricked down Mulder's cheeks. Hope swelled in his like a sunrise. "I thought..." "No." The man's face looked grave, but there was a smile behind the surface, invisible yet somehow there. "I forgave you for letting yourself be taken. I couldn't come for you before. I've been away in the North, fighting...." He gestured at the desolation of the desert. "Fighting all this, Fox. Trying to stop it. Trying to rebuild." It was like water to a drowning man. He found he could raise his head. "There's still hope?" "Yes. A little, Fox, and only with me." "But..." And something of the outside world intruded - maybe Scully, moaning a little in her sleep, or the touch of the winter night on his face. "But I'm sick. I'm dying." "Are you?" On silent feet, Fry stepped forward and crouched beside him. He reached out, and one hand cupped Mulder's chin, while the other he laid flat upon his forehead. His eyes shut. "Are you, Fox?" he said again, and laughed, full and rich. The laughter released him, and he could stand, swaying a little but being reborn by the second. "Hope." He moistened his lips. "I will...." "Yes." Fry nodded. "We will be formidable, Fox. Whatever you see, you must never despair. There is always hope." "Yes." Mulder sighed. He shut his eyes and bathed in pure joy. After confinement, the first breath of fresh air is always the sweetest. When he opened his eyes, Fry was gone, and the air was whispering. ****** "Mulder!" She jolted out of sleep, fear crawling in her stomach, cold and painful. She had dreamt.... what? Already, the image was fading, but the terror was still there, like a physical pain. Hammering in her head, again and again. She passed a hand over her face. "Mulder?" "Scully." He was propped on his elbow in the moonlight. He breathing was slow and steady, his eyes reflective. His other hand had reached for the blanket and was clutching it convulsively. The moon was where it had been. If she had slept, it had only been for a few minutes. "Mulder?" She hardly dared touch him. Her hand was almost on his face, when suddenly he smiled, his teeth flashing white and unexpected in the moonlight. She snatched her hand back, her heart beating fast. "Scully." He frowned. He looked as if he was warring inside, torn. "I'm..." His hand moved to his forehead, his fingers shaking. "Did he come?" "No-one came." She was sure of that. She had slept for a little, dreamt a nightmare, then awoken. He passed his hand over his face. "I'm.... I'm not sick. I'm not sick. Why?" "I..." Wanting so desperately to smile, she cried instead. She touched him unreservedly. "I don't know. Maybe it doesn't matter." "It does." His face darkened and she felt an obscure pang of fear - fear for him, and fear of him. "It matters." ****** The blanket was draped across her shoulder, and she held it, hands clasped together at her chest. As moonlight turned to dawn, she watched him. "Mulder?" she tried, but no sound came out. Even if she has shouted, she doubted that he would have heard her. He was absorbed, as he always was with everything he did. His clothes still specked with blood, he had stood up, not waiting until dawn, and prowled away from her, intense and silent as a panther. Wonderingly, she had followed him back to a building they had passed shortly before his collapse - to a small police station. Now, surrounded by the dead, he was stockpiling weapons. "Mulder?" She settled the blanket tighter round her shoulders. "Stop, Mulder." Then, louder, "stop!" "There was rioting." His tone was dull, showing no sign of listening to her. "They had to take their guns with them. They died out.... out there. At the end, some must have seen how it was going and hidden their weapons, keeping them safe from looters." Coldly and dispassionately, he slammed a bat into a metal locker door, then raised it as if to do it again. "There's good weaponry here, Scully. We can be armed." "Why?" She passed a hand over her face, and the blanket fell away on one side. "So we can fight them," he almost spat. "Who?" She gestured behind her, at the empty streets. "There's no-one left." "We don't know that, Scully." He held the bat in one hand, bringing it down rhythmically in his other palm. Something inside her shivered at the sight of it. He was like a mugger preparing to attack an innocent. She had seldom seen the latent violence inside him, and never been its target. She.... She massaged the bridge of her nose, driving at a headache she hadn't been aware of before. She swallowed. The thought that Mulder had been about to attack her.... "....okay, Scully?" His voice was low, his hand on her sleeve. The bat trailed at his side, neglected. "I'm fine." She nodded, weakly, and shrugged. "It's... It's hard...." "Yes." The grim look was back, and, even this time, she found it hard to look at. There was another question she needed to ask. "It's hard, Scully, but we have to fight. Just because.... because _he_ was dead back there doesn't mean they all are. Somewhere, they could be gathering. This could be only the beginning." "The beginning?" She laughed. Grief and laughter were so close, sometimes. "Whatever they did killed all these people. It's no disease I recognise, and it must have been so fast acting, so.... universally fatal. They must have engineered it, Mulder. They wiped out.... Is it the whole world's population, Mulder?" "The date is set, Scully." The bat was back in his grip like a weapon. "The date is set, and now it has come. Colonisation - that's what they told me. If Cancerman was right and the aliens broke the treaty and did it their own way, then they should still be here, somewhere. They..." "Aliens?" Her voice was wan. This was surreal, terrible. "Aliens. Hybrids, perhaps." He shut his eyes briefly, as if to steady himself. "They must be somewhere. They will have a.... a base for their colonists. Why wipe out the population unless they intend to move in, to take over?" She covered her mouth with her hand, shaking. Just hours ago, he had been despairing. Her laughter might push him back into the darkness. "You want to save the world from alien invasion, Mulder," she asked, softly. When she said it, it was tragic, insanely heroic, but there was no humour in it - none at all. "You want to save the world with a baseball bat and a few automatic pistols?" He didn't smile, didn't falter. "No. Not just with these." She shivered. The cold grey of morning came through the windows, but outside was all silence. God, but she had to break the silence. She would ask, and face the consequences. "Mulder?" He didn't flicker. "Mulder? Why?" She took a deep breath. "Last night you were.... you were so different. You were despairing. You saw no hope in anything. You... Damn it, Mulder, you wouldn't even come inside, and now you're stealing dead men's guns, and stepping over their bodies without even seeming to care." A shadow passed over his face. "Last night, I.... I thought I was dying. I was in shock. You're right - it was so different from what I had hoped. I... I wasn't myself." He gave a half smile, shy and troubled, as if he was trying out his old sense of humour, testing how appropriate it was to the situation. "You have no idea how dying can cramp your style, Scully." She didn't smile. Her eyes ached with unshed tears. "You're not yourself now." His eyes levelled, dark and intense. "I am, Scully. You know that. You know me." Yes. Slowly, sadly, she nodded. She couldn't speak. He had always been focused, driven, casting aside all convention if it impeded with his quest. But if this was the Mulder she had always known, it was a Mulder stripped bare of his usual compassion, his fears.... even of his emotion. The one true emotion she had seen was hate. "They're dead," he said, his voice low. "They don't need their guns now. We can't bury them - how can we bury the millions of people in DC alone? To even attempt it would be madness. You said it yourself, Scully - if we are to survive, we will have to adapt. We will have to become callous towards the dead. It's too late for them, but it might not be too late for...." "Callous?" She wanted to slap him, hard. "Is that what you think I meant last night? Is that what you think I meant when I wanted to stay underground? If we have to be callous to survive, then I'm not sure I want to survive." He winced as if she _had_ slapped him. "You said...." He swallowed hard, licked his lips, and tried again. "You took the blankets. You told me I was wrong when I didn't want to." She bit back an angry response, but still held her ground. "Yes, Mulder. Yes I did. There's a difference between taking things because you have to, knowing that it's wrong, and taking things without caring. Reluctantly acting out of necessity is not being callous. It's.... " She gestured towards her chest, towards herself. "It's like the difference between a pathologist performing an autopsy, and a killer who mutilates his victims after death, for pleasure." His throat was moving convulsively. "I'm not... I'm not a killer." She grabbed his wrist. Words were pouring from her and she was unable to stop. She had repressed so much. "Do you know why I didn't want to come out of there, Mulder, really? It's because I was scared - I was scared of... of finding _this_." She phrased it like an accusation, angry. She had to. "Do you know why I went in there and got you your blankets - why I spent five minutes wondering how many to get you, when people were dead at my feet? No? Well, it's because...." And she nearly broke down and wept. Nearly. "It's because, if I let myself mourn even one of them, I... I don't know how I would ever stop crying." He touched her shoulder. "I know." It was the merest whisper. She couldn't bring herself to look at his face. Her eyes flashed fire. "So don't ever say I'm callous, Mulder - ever." "No." And she looked at him at last, and there were tears on his cheeks - tears that she couldn't let herself shed. His face was scoured with grief and horror. "Mulder." And she almost smiled, understanding. His words had been as much to convince himself as to convince her. He had swung on a pendulum, from despair and hopelessness, to a cold and hate-fuelled hope. Neither were truly him, and now he was whole. Despair and hope had merged, and he was her Mulder again. "Mulder." She touched his face, one hand cupping his cheek, and words came out that she had never intended. "I'm... I'm glad you didn't die, Mulder." He shut his eyes. "Being alone in this world.... It would be so cold, Scully." She took a deep breath. "We're not alone." She pulled him close and held him, her head resting on his shoulder. "No." When she looked up, he was staring intensely into the distance, though his hands were on her hair. ****** At his sides, his hands clenched and unclenched convulsively. Inside, he repeated the words that had become his mantra, his only source of strength: He bit his lips. His head swayed from side to side, despairingly. "It's so hard...." His lips moved silently. "So hard...." Their underground prison had been only a few miles from the FBI Headquarters. Silently, both thinking as one, they had walked there, weaving their way through the congested tangle of metal that was the cars on the roads. Driving would have been impossible. he had thought, fiercely, stepping over a body in the street. And, then, seeing dead staring eyes from the window of a crushed car: And now, beside him, Scully's chin was high, her lips pursed. Perhaps being a pathologist had taught her to distance himself from death, while he.... He swallowed hard. As a profiler, he had learnt the art of Victimology, teaching himself to identify with the victim, to see as they saw, to feel as they felt. He was glad that he hadn't eaten. His stomach felt full of poison, and his chest hurt. Part of him felt that it had all been a dream, but part of him - most of him, perhaps - knew that he had been chosen. He had been healed, and reborn, but still had to prove himself worthy. If he could survive the horrors to come with his mind and body intact.... If he could fight his way through to Fry's side.... It was a test.... And he was failing. "God," he whispered, out loud. "It's so hard." "Yes." Scully, her voice low. They stood in the park where it had all begun, the grass still beautiful beneath their feet. There were few bodies here, but no life. Like wounded animals, most people had crawled home to die in their beds. Or at their desks.... The corridors of the FBI had been silent. Dust had settled on the desks, and Christmas decorations hung limply in the offices. Even in a crisis, they had chosen not to die at their posts, but to.... "They should have fought." Blinking through tears, he had slammed his fist into a desk. The dust had made him cough, and Scully had glanced at him sharply. "Did _anyone_ fight, Scully? Or did they just stay at home at the first sign of trouble?" She had moistened her lips. "We didn't come in to work either, Mulder," she said, softly. "You wanted to fight it your own way." He had refused to feel guilt - not for that - not that he hadn't tried. "We tried, Scully. All the others..." He'd gestured angrily at the decorations. "It was so easy for Them, wasn't it. They didn't need to buy the loyalty of the whole FBI, or the police. Just a few at the top, perhaps, and everyone else.... They were bargaining on everyone being selfish, and thinking only of self-preservation. They knew no-one would care enough to take things in hand - to restore order the proper way. We destroyed ourselves...." But some had stayed; some had fought.... And failed, and died. "I want to bury him," he had said, at last, minutes after they had entered the office. There had been weapons and supplies on the floor, and plans of campaign on the desk. But he had died without an army. Scully's hand had been on Skinner's still neck. She had looked up and nodded slowly. "Yes." She had been almost trembling with the effort of control. "Just him." He had held tight to the doorway. "Let him stand for all the others." "Yes." Again just that single word. And so they stood in the park where it had all begun, the grass beautiful beneath their feet, freshly turned earth moist and shining. His chest ached badly with the effort of digging, and with more than that. He reached for her hand. "Scully..." He bit his lip and managed to steady himself. "Scully. It's not callous, but...." "No, Mulder." She shook her head, her eyes straight ahead. "It's not. We _can't_ bury them all. We can't.... We mustn't let ourselves feel this as we.... as perhaps we should." "Scully...." Her eyes were dry. He was screaming inside, crying that they were both wrong - utterly wrong. She was repressing things, refusing to cry. He was.... what? Clinging to an impossible hope, deliberately making himself cold inside. They were _both_ making themselves cold inside, he realised, suddenly, looking at her marble face. he wanted to cry. But the other agents at the empty desks... They had given in. They had died. It like a cracking whip, driving him on, and he knew he had to endure, he had to fight. It was his duty. ****** "Dana!" Her head snapped up. Hand in hand, they had stood beside Skinner's grave, lost in their own thoughts. The sun was high, the day beautiful. And now someone was calling her. "Dana!" Beside her, Mulder drew a sharp breath, and he reached for his gun. She shook her head, wonderingly. The voice was striking resonances deep inside her - places she didn't want to go. "Dana! You came back for me. You didn't leave me. I thought everyone was dead. I thought you'd left me...." She saw the stuffed lion first, bedraggled and dirty, peeping around a tree. Small fingers clasped him, and a matted strand of blonde hair whipped in the wind. She stepped forward, then remembered that she had never learnt the girl's name. "It's.... you." She crouched down, stretching her hand out. "It's okay. You can come out." Silence. The girl stepped out and stood, arms wrapped tightly around her body, the lion clutched to her chest. She was dirty, traumatised and clearly scared, but her face was alight with.... joy? "You okay?" Scully forced herself to smile. Inside, she was the closest she had come to breaking down, but the girl's needs came first. "You know, you never told me your name." "Bethany." The girl's eyes flicked briefly towards Mulder, and there was a shadow in them - of fear? Her lower lip was trembling. "I'm... I'm okay now. You'll take care of me." "Bethany, this is...." She hesitated, her eyes never leaving the girl's, then decided. Fox, or Mulder - neither sounded normal. The girl wouldn't know any different. "This is my friend Mulder. He won't hurt you." The girl gave a small shrug, as if dismissing Mulder utterly from her consciousness. But she stepped forward. "Dad died yesterday," she whispered. Her face was the very picture of a little girl trying so hard not to cry. Inside, Scully felt that she mirrored that face. "All the others, too." Scully touched the girl's hair. "Don't...." "They died." The girl's voice was almost fierce. "Everything got.... scary. People were shouting and throwing things. Then they all got sick. They started coughing." She blinked, and tears flowed down her cheeks. Scully had never seen a child cry silently before. "You're the only person left." "Scully...." She pulled the girl close and stroked her hair, turning almost angrily towards Mulder. "What?" "How do you know this girl?" His eyes were.... hungry? Wary, too. She knew the girl would represent hope to him, while to her... She whispered, reluctant to disturb those silent sobs. "I met her outside the Gunmen's place, just before...." She swallowed. "Just before the end." She said nothing of the dreams. "Bethany?" Mulder crouched down. When he wanted to, he could be charming to children. "How did you find us?" Scully bit back her angry reply, putting it instead in her frown, her eyes. She didn't like the eagerness in his voice. He was on to something - or thought he was. The girl made no reply. But the question rankled. Her dreams.... She had never been wholly successful in her attempts to silence them, to forget them. She needed to know. She needed a prosaic answer - needed an answer that could let her survive this as Scully. "How did you find me?" she whispered, her mouth close to the girl's ear. "I dreamed, of course." The girl's reply was but a breath of a whisper, spoken into Scully's hair. "You went away, but then you came back. You told me to wait for you here. You said you'd look after me, and you will." For a long time, she did nothing but breathe her fingers entwining the girl's hair. In her mind, the girl's voice doubled, trebled, and became a dozen voices, male and female, old and young, all crying out to her. And the girl was the first.... "Scully?" She jumped physically at Mulder's touch. She had been.... where? "What did she say?" She opened her mouth, then shut it again. "Chance," she said, at last, firmly. "It's so quiet here, she heard us. Voices travel." His eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. For a moment, he seemed to her as a killer eyeing his prey, planning to rip the girl from her, but then it passed, and he was Mulder again to her. "Bethany?" The girl gave a low moan and clung tighter. "Bethany?" Her only answer was breathing, deepening into sleep. ****** Even in the sunlight of afternoon, she slept. Bethany's head was on her lap, her own hand in the girl's hair. The silence was lulling, when it was not terrible. In the silence, she slept.... And on whisper-quiet boots, he came to claim her - to snatch her children from her one by one, and.... "No!" She jerked her head up, crying out loud. "No!". Then, before she had time to reassure herself that it was only a dream: "Mulder?" He was crouching beside the bench, one hand stretched out for the girl's neck. A gun was in his other hand, and his finger was on the trigger. The look in his eyes was hope - hope that could turn into hatred in an instant. "Mulder?" Her hand moved smoothly to her own gun, though she made her voice low. "What the Hell are you doing, Mulder? She's just a little girl." "I...." He blinked, and for a single insane moment she thought that his eyes would reopen red and inhuman. But he was still Mulder, his eyes shining with tears, and desperate. "I have to know, Scully." It was close to a sob. He made it hard to feel the anger that she ought to feel. "What if she's a hybrid? What if she's a.... a trap?" Her voice was a deadly whisper. "And you were planning... what, Mulder? Shoot her in the back of the neck just to see what happened? Take her blood while she slept? Damn it, Mulder - she's just lost everything. She can't be a day over seven." His hand remained still, shaking a little. "I wouldn't hurt a little girl, Scully. You can't think that of me." But, for a moment, she had. She understood the shadow in his eyes, now, though part of her sometimes resented how carefully she had to tread with him, sometimes. He had never outgrown the past, but wore it like an albatross around his neck. It was.... difficult. "She's not a clone, Mulder." She sighed, and pointed to the girl's hand, still curled tightly round her lion. A half-healed cut had dried red. "She's human, and she's scared, and she needs me." "You?" His hand fell to his side, tightly clenched. "She's not Emily, Scully." It was scarcely above a whisper. He knew he was going to hurt her. "Don't...." "Do you think I haven't thought of that?" Hard and fierce. The wind whipped hair across her eyes, and she snatched hold of the lock and held on tightly. She needed something to grip. "I came to terms with that. I don't think motherhood is all a woman needs. I.... I was getting by okay. If I look after her, it's for her sake, not mine. This is not some attempt to fill my own thwarted maternal urges." She invested the words with bitter sarcasm. "She - needs - me." He winced, and shut his eyes for a moment, as if steadying. "If she's survived, there will be others." It was the crux of the matter. As soon as she had seen the girl, emotions had battered at her like a storm-swollen river at a dam. She had kept them under control - just. She had assumed that everyone above ground had died, not daring to let herself think otherwise. But if the girl had survived.... She bit her lip, her throat convulsing. She hadn't dared even think the word - not once - not since before coming up into the light.... "We'll meet someone else who can look after her, Scully." He looked tentative, reaching out a hesitant hand to her face. "I see in her the same hope as you do.... But we have to fight, Scully. We can't take a child into battle. We can't get attached to her." "You mean _I_ can't." Her voice was cold. "I might not want to fight - even if there _is_ an enemy to fight. Fighting and power play created this...." She gestured helplessly, seeking the right word. "This," she said, at last, firmly. The single word covered all horrors. "Perhaps we should salvage the little we can, settle down and just live." She stuck out her chin defiantly. She knew she didn't mean it, though part of it almost rang true with her. He looked at her silently, shaking his head, and suddenly she saw straight into his mind. Before his eyes flickered away from hers, she almost hated him. "Mulder...." She sighed, and rubbed a hand across her face, weary and drained. They had lost too much to lose each other. "It's just one girl. We can't leave her alone." He was silent for a very long time. "No," he said at last, and breathed out. He looked defeated, and she wondered what battle he had been fighting with himself. Probably his usual one, between obsession, and.... and everything else in his life. Sometimes, his obsession had been at odds with _everything_. She softened. "Mulder..." His hands clenched convulsively. "It's just her, isn't it? You won't be picking up a whole family of waifs and strays?" If it was meant as a joke, there was no humour in his voice. "No." She looked at the sleeping girl." I can mother a single child. I have no desire to lead a...." And she flashed onto a dozen screaming faces, dangling from a cliff, and almost cried aloud. He frowned. "Why not?" He raised his head. He looked like a soldier swearing an oath, declaring his intention to die for his country. "Why not, Scully?" She couldn't answer. ****** Smiling demons came from the past at moments when they were least expected. In a park, on a winter afternoon at the end of the world, he had seen the calmly smiling face of John Lee Roche, and had remembered. His finger on the trigger.... Kill him, and risk losing Samantha. Spare him, and risk losing another girl - a stranger to him. His finger on the trigger; his mind torn. He had lived for his quest, and it had inflicted many casualties. His own life, a life of mere shadows; physical pain, his career.... Unwittingly, he had let it hurt others, too: Scully, Deep Throat, Melissa.... But never willingly. In waking nightmares, sometimes, he had wondered what he would do if he had been faced with a direct choice - murder an innocent in order to save Samantha - if, to gain his quest, he would lose all humanity, all compassion. And, as a girl had counted aloud in a ravaged bus, he had learnt, and it had nearly destroyed him. Either solution would have scarred him. Today, he had seen Roche in Scully's eyes. He needed to fight - needed to win through to Fry. Fry was his new Samantha, though part of him knew that he was a symbol only, and perhaps only a memory, now. Fry personified resistance, the way an eight-year old girl had personified happiness and innocence. Just to hold a gun and fight.... To struggle on and not give up and die.... He had been reborn, and given a second chance. But.... Remembering, he let his head fall into his hands, sitting on a bench alone, as Scully and the girl were absorbed in each other. She had made him choose. The girl was hope. She was a sign that the world could still be saved - that there _were_ survivors. She was like water to a parched man, showing him that there was something to fight for, and a token in earnest of success. But she was also the road in the other direction. She was the girl between him and Roche's knowledge. She was a burden, a responsibility. How could they fight with a child in their care? And how could they leave her? If he went to join the battle with Fry, leaving a child alone and crying by the roadside, then he had lost already. He had to keep his humanity: he had to keep his hope. But the two were.... "Scully...." He whispered her name aloud, needing her, though how could he have told her? Either way, he was scarred, diminished. On the back of her head, her hair shone in the sun. ****** "I want to go south," she said, at last. Her eyes were rimmed with red, but if she had cried, she hadn't let him see it. She swallowed hard. "The roads are blocked in the city, but.... My family was in Florida, in Jacksonville, at the base there." He nodded, and said nothing. She tucked her hair behind her ear with a hand that shook. Curled against her, the girl's face was blank and accepting, like a kitten held in the safety of its mother's mouth. "I have to see, Mulder. You understand, don't you?" "Yes." Even speaking was hard. He was losing everything. She took a deep breath. "Your mother? Do you want to...?" And he almost wept, that he had thought of her so little. When he had buried Skinner, he had thought to bury the past, to forget everything but the hope of the fight that was to come. He cleared his throat. "Yes. She's north." "We could split up." A small voice. Her hand was round the girl's shoulder, stroking. He was away from her, on the next bench. "No." He spoke fiercely. He had failed Fry once that day, and would fail him twice rather than lose her. Nothing was worth _that_. "We'll go south first." The south felt grey and bland, while the north.... the north.... He felt drawn there, feeling the lure almost like a physical hand, drawing him. He didn't even know how he knew. He stood up, utterly bereft. He was turning his back on the thing that had nourished him and given him life. He was hiding in the past, not fighting for the future. He was.... At the sound of Fry's voice in his head, he let out a breath in an audible sigh. Just to hear him speak.... Even displeased, he was like food to him - delicious poison. "But I have Scully." He was beyond caring if he spoke aloud. "I have Scully, and I am still human." "I can't.... I can't leave her." And his knees buckled. Hands clenched to his head, he fell to the ground and wept. ****** They covered barely twenty miles before darkness. Arms folded loosely around her knees, Scully stared into the fire. Bethany lay sleeping close by, but she did not touch her. She had given so much of herself to the girl, protecting her. Now was the time for reaction - a time for herself. She had always thought of herself as fiercely independent, accountable to none, and accountable _for_ none. Even when she had striven for nothing as much as her father's approval; even when she held Mulder's happiness in just one breath... Still, she needed time alone. She needed to be Scully. The girl moaned a little in her sleep, then settled. She didn't wake. The flames flickered. Scully blinked hard, fighting the tears that she refused to shed. She started at the clear voice in her head - a voice that triggered some elusive memory that she couldn't pin down. It was like her own voice, but alien to her, and apart. "Scully?" Mulder's eyes flickered open, though he was still half in sleep. "You okay?" She swallowed. "I'm fine." Then, silently: Since collapsing in the park, he had been subdued, distant. He had clung to her like a shadow - like a second child to protect - but, when he had spoken, he had been almost surly. She had glanced sideways at him as they had been selecting their motorbikes, and seen his jaw set and trembling with tension. As if only willpower was keeping him from screaming.... "Mulder?" She touched his shoulder, now. "You don't want to go south, do you?" "South? No. It hurts." His voice was slurred. By rights, he was still convalescing, and was exhausted. "North." "To see your mother?" She shut her eyes briefly. There was the almost certainty of _that_ grief to come, and a pang of guilt, too. He was half-asleep, not guarding what he was saying. To ask him now was like an assault, of a sort. "To fight. They're fighting in the north." The flames flickered, and his eyes seemed to glow. "I wanna fight the aliens, Scully. I... I always have." "Yes." She bit her lip. "But..." He was coming out of sleep. "But we're in it together, Scully." His eyes flickered on hers, then away. He gave an awkward laugh. "I've given up ditching you for my New Millennium's Resolution - didn't I tell you?" He didn't fool her for a moment. "Mulder." She was strangely touched, and once more on the verge of tears. She knew she was playing a dangerous game with him - that if he sacrificed too much, it could kill him. "Thank you. I.... I just need to know. In a few days, we can be...." She shrugged, helplessly. Mulder's "north" was an illusion - a state of mind. "We can be wherever you want us to be," she finished, weakly. And then, when they arrived in the north and it was as lifeless and devastated as the south, she would help him pick up the pieces, if she could. ****** The dream whirled, flickered. Half an image of flames; a hand raised in entreaty; a flash of gunfire: whispering leather boots... And then it settled, with an almost audible sense of decision. A cold-faced killer stood tall, red blood lapping around his ankles. His face expressionless, he bent down and heaved a still-gasping form from the lake of blood. "Not dead yet?" he said, his voice cold as a knife. "There." A quick stab to the back of the neck with a shining blade. "Can you die now?" The body fell limp, and Mulder shivered with the memory of an agonising aching cold. "More?" The alien scanned his surroundings, and it was as if the camera panned back, showing Mulder the countless millions of bodies that littered that bloody field. "Any more still alive?" There were dozens of them, and they strode through the blood like giants, crushing the dead beneath their feet. Their heads were high. The date was set, and they had come to colonise. "Yes." The voice was like a roar of hope. From behind a rock, a gun cracked. "Yes. We're still alive, and we will stand." The alien fell, and the bloody pool absorbed him. "Got him. Next?" He couldn't place the voice. It was.... It was _everyone_. It was Byers and Frohike. It was a stranger in the street who had never before handled a gun. It was an orphaned child. It was.... Fry. The bullet shouted again, and another alien fell. the bullet told him. He swallowed a sob. "I care. I care about Scully, too." Tears scorched his cheeks, and he _could not_ answer. Afterwards, lying awake in front of the darkening embers of the fire, he still could not. ***** And she woke up screaming.... Afterwards, heaving great breaths to re-establish control, Bethany's large eyes intense upon her, she made herself forget the horror of that dream. She would not remember. ****** Half way through Virginia, Scully stopped the bike. Bethany's arms tightened round her waist, and she could hear the girl's heart beating against her back. Sometimes, when the girl touched her, she felt more. "Scully?" Mulder came back to her side. He was concerned for her, but the lines in his face looked eased, somehow. All morning he had looked as if he had been fighting a strong wind, pulling against the current. "It's...." She touched her forehead with her fingers. How could she explain even to herself? "There's a man back there. He's not.... I think he's not dead." "Not dead?" His eyes sparked, then faded again. "How do you know?" She dug her fingers into her palm, and lied. "I saw him move." But the movement had been like a tickle in her mind, unwanted and painful. It had grown with every second until she had _had_ to stop, or go mad with the screaming horror of it. She knew that, unless she went back and checked, she would never sleep in peace again. ****** Her hand was so close to the man's neck, but she could not bring herself to touch him. Even to look at him caused pain. "Scully?" She put on her mask, breathed in deeply to steady herself, then turned round to face him. "He seems okay. Exhausted, probably, and cold. He looks as if he's been here for hours." Not yet reached by the sun, there was still frost on the ground around him. As he lay there, he had an aura of melted frost around him - exactly around him. Part of her refused to acknowledge that this meant he hadn't moved at all. "Scully, he...." He frowned. He was thinking, she knew. she thought suddenly, and was surprised at how bitter she felt. It was _Mulder_. She sighed deeply. "He needs to be taken care of, until he's stronger." "Another one for you?" "What the Hell does that mean?" she fired at him. She was dimly aware of her hand, shaking. Bethany was a silent shadow by her side. "We talked about this. I'm a doctor, Mulder. This is my duty." Yes. He nodded heavily, but didn't speak. And there, insistent and unwanted, was the ache in her mind that wouldn't go away. The man's unconscious face.... Fiercely, she touched the man's neck, and swallowed hard. She was a doctor doing her duty. She could touch him. She was not scared of him. She was.... "Dana?" It was a cracked murmur, barely perceptible. But she snatched her hands away as if burnt. "Dana?" Like an army battered at a locked door, memories assailed her, and the locks were splintering. She saw pleading hands reaching for her. She saw faces crying to her as they fell from a cliff. She saw.... She saw Bethany, and the man, and many others, their faces too human to be mere imagination. She didn't once see Mulder. "Dana? You came." Almost harshly, she held the man, one hand on each shoulder. "How do you know my name?" The man frowned, bewildered. It was the look Bethany had given to the same question. "I dreamed, of course," he whispered, just for her. "You went away, but then you came back. You told me to wait for you here. I got here early so we wouldn't miss you." She didn't move, but her eyes were searching wildly. But she had to ask. "We?" It was little more than a croak. "Two of us from the same town - would you believe that? He's back in the house." The man sat up, wincing at his stiff muscles. "Last night we got talking, and it turns out we'd both been dreaming about the same lady - about you." "I..." Oh, but she wanted to bury her head in her hands, like a man in a story someone had told her once. "Strange...." The man smiled. "Before all this happened, I would never have believed things like this. But now...." He shrugged. "We just accepted that the dreams were real. It doesn't seem strange to me that we are talking now. Something like this.... Somehow it makes all things seem possible. Old beliefs don't seem to apply." "Mine do," she said, firmly. It was essential to what she was. "Something like this only makes it more imperative that we think practically, and rationally." But her voice shook. As the man had spoken, he had been unmistakable. She had seen him, and maybe more than once in dreams she had refused to remember. "Maybe that's why he chose you," the man said, softly. Behind her, Mulder drew in a sharp breath. "Maybe he knew that, to lead us, we need someone practical, not a dreamer." "He?" Sharp. Her blood was pounding in her head. "God." The man opened his palms, as if it was all so easy. "God has chosen you to lead us. By sparing us, He chose us all, but you are His chosen leader. Why else would we both have dreamt of you, and be drawn to you?" She was beyond speaking. Even without shutting her eyes, she saw a boy with blood on his palms. For a moment, then, she had believed. The man was like a teacher speaking to a child. "He chose you to keep us safe from the Dark Man." And something clicked inside her - dreams and fears and fragments falling into place. It was right. It was terrible. It was right. It was.... "No." An inarticulate cry of rejection. She clapped her hands to her ears. "I _will_ not listen. You're crazy. You're..." She could say no more. ****** They sat in a circle, surrounding her like vultures, silently watching. "Scully?" He leant in close, his voice low. "Is it true? Do you dream?" They were.... God! They weren't even trying to listen. Their faces were serene - the two men and the girl. They knew she was theirs already. She hated them, then. "No." She clenched her fists. "A little. Nothing.... nothing like what he says." He looked at her like a penitent, confessing to his priest. "I do. I dream of.... things. I dream of things that I think are really happening, in some way. I.... Two night ago, I dreamt of being healed, and I was." "I dream...." She closed her eyes. Oh, but she was weary. "I dream of being responsible for people. I hated it when I dreamt it." He gestured at the silent watchers. "You dreamed of them?" She shook her head, but could no longer lie to him in words. "Do you...." He swallowed. "Do you dream of.... of _him_." He invested the word with an almost magical awe, and a tangible fear. Him... Feet whispering from the north, coming for her.... She needed several breaths to exert control. "If I dream of some personification of evil, then it's only to be expected, Mulder. We have...." She paused, then decided. The situation existed, even if she didn't say it. Putting in words didn't make it real. "We've lived through the end of the world, Mulder." "Evil?" His throat worked convulsively. "It's not evil to fight them. It's not evil to care." She shook her head impatiently. She was surrounded by madmen, believing dreams. "I don't believe in this Dark Man, Mulder. How can I protect them from something that doesn't exist?" He touched her hand. "I think you believe more than you admit to yourself that you do." "I...." Anger flared, but he had struck a chord. "I don't want to come through all this to be a mother to a group of adults. I don't want that responsibility. I didn't ask for this." "Perhaps you _were_ chosen," he said softly. "You were chosen _because_ you didn't want it - because you wouldn't believe. He knew you would think fully about it first, not jump in blinded by your own pride." "You don't believe in God, Mulder." Her voice was bitter. She remembered how he had scoffed, that other time. It had been important to her, then. "Not God, but there are other.... powers." "Chosen by the Devil?" She gave a harsh laugh, then shivered involuntarily. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?" "No." He took her hand and held it, his eyes intense. "What if a man... knows things? What if he can send psychic messages, and uses this skill to gather together the survivors to fight the colonists? What if...?" So close to tears, she laughed. He was crazy. He was her Mulder. "I believe this, Scully." His voice was low, thrilling. It was a statement of faith. She swallowed. The fear which had made her scream in the night was like a cold finger on her spine. "And the Dark Man?" "He's the alien, Scully. He's all of them - Cancerman, the morphs, the colonists. He's the... He's all this." He gestured at the silent world. "He's the symbol. He's the enemy." It wasn't real - none of it. She was in a dream, more terrible than any. She did all she _could_ do, and smiled. "Maybe they're right, Scully. Maybe you've been chosen, too. You've been chosen to take care of those too weak to fight, while the rest of us go into battle." "You think _you're_ chosen?" How could her voice stay level? He put both hands on his chest. "I was healed." She was more afraid for his sanity then than she had ever been. He was an intense-eyed cultist, swallowing poison at the word of their loved and feared leader. He was a believer with a simple faith, unswayed by reason. He was.... Mulder. She rubbed her eyes with her hands. He was being true to himself. He was believing. Like a man laying his head on the block, baring his neck for the headsman's axe, he was offering up his beliefs, simply - exposing himself to her contempt. His voice in a motel room in Oregon.... Her vision doubled with tears. "I need to go north, Scully," he said, quietly. "I need to see my family." He bit his lip, wary. "Perhaps it's fate, Scully. Perhaps this...." He gestured at the girl. "This is my new family, so I can forget my own?" Her eyes were ice. "Unlike you, Mulder, I would never sacrifice the people I love to an.... an idea - an illusion." His eyes shone. "I'm here, Scully, aren't I? I came with you." She hated herself, then. He had angered her, but she had been unforgivable. "Mulder." She put her apology in her eyes, her hands. "I don't believe in fate. I will care for the girl, I will treat those who are hurt, but I will _not_ forget who I am." "No." He touched her face, and smiled through the hurt in his eyes. "This is who you are." And all the time, they sat in a circle, surrounding her like vultures, silently watching.... ****** By evening, Mulder was nothing. He could have been a ghost. "Dana..." The fourth of them had come in blistered feet, in shoes too small for her. Her matted hair had framed her dust-streaked face as she had stood in their path, hands held out in supplication. He had glanced sideways at Scully's face. It had been closed. She had refused to look at the newcomer, refused to acknowledge her. Fascinated, his eyes had lingered, and at last seen her flicker a quick look at the woman. Then her lips had parted in some silent moan, though she had said nothing. he had thought, and almost wept for her, that she could be so afraid to let herself believe. "Dana...." The fifth had been an old man, his face dark and leathery. Almost blind, he had reached for her, wanting to place his hands on her cheeks and feel her, like a pilgrim would touch a sacred relic. As he had watched, she had flinched, almost pulled away, and then enduring. The man's fingertips had brushed her cheek, then paused, feeling the silent tears that had escaped her eyes. She had remained silent, but she hadn't pulled away. "Dana...." Two children, hand in hand - an older boy and a younger girl. They had held onto each other tightly with the fierce love born of catastrophe. He had doubted if they were truly related - if death would be that kind. Scully's lips had quivered, but she had reached out a shaking hand and touched the girl's hair. The girl had smiled. "Eight of us now, Dana." The first girl, Bethany, had snaked her hand into Scully's, jealous, perhaps, and fearful of being supplanted. Scully had frowned, blinking, as if pulling herself back into reality. "Nine," she had said. She'd smiled distractedly, and pointed to the group, one after another. "Nine, Bethany." "Eight." And, behind Scully's back, the adults had looked at him, their eyes cold. they had accused, silently. "Sc..." He had opened his mouth to call to her, then stopped. He'd raised his chin, and thought of his hope, his destiny. But their eyes haunted him.... He was nothing to them. At dinner, eaten round a fire in a house of the dead, they talked, but it was not the talk of traumatised survivors. Already, they were a unit, talking like old friends, anticipating each other's thoughts. They were one, while he.... He clenched his fists tight enough for then to shake. The north called to him, and every step away was killing him. "Scully." A low whisper. She didn't look up. Head bent low, she was turning her drink round and round in her hands, a world away. "Scully...." And, inside, he laughed and cried, the two together. Maybe he'd died and was already a ghost. Maybe he'd lost her. ****** On silent feet, she had searched, and now she had found him. And, now she had found him, she couldn't begin to think of what to say to him. "Scully." His voice was dead. He didn't turn around. He was leaning from an open window in an attic bedroom - leaning out too far. The back of his neck was white in the moonlight. She swallowed. "Mulder." "You've accepted." It was not a question. His voice was so flat, so hopeless. "You're staying with them." "No." She was all fire. "I haven't accepted anything." "I should be glad." His voice was anything but. "It means I can go north." "Damn it, Mulder." She was beside him in an instant, her hand closing round his wrist. "I haven't accepted anything." She took a deep breath. "But I have to face it - I've seen all of them before, in my dreams. All of them." As she said it, she felt a feeling almost of peace. She had been afraid to believe, but refusing to believe was.... God, it had been so draining, repressing things, living with that conflict. She had accepted what part of her had always known, but had been fighting, desperately. And nothing had changed. She had dreaded it so, but she was still Scully. As she said it, she smiled. "Do you believe what they say, Scully?" There was a desperate need in his voice, though she couldn't read him. Did he need her to say yes, or no? She raised her chin. "No. I... I have to face that we are bound in some way. It was..." She smiled, wanly. "It was hard, Mulder, accepting that. I'm not ready for the rest." "But if it's true?" She reached for the support of the window frame, leaning beside him to feel the cold air. "I need to see my family, Mulder," she said, quietly. "I can't take on all this. I need to think of...." She shook her head, at a loss. It sounded selfish, but it was only human. "I need to think of my own needs, too, Mulder. If I led them just because they wanted me to, I'd end up hating them." "No man is an island, Scully." She jerked her head up sharply. "If you left them, wouldn't you end up hating yourself?" And there was a darkness to his voice, and she knew he was talking about himself, too. "Yes." She rubbed her eyes, as if _that_ would make her see more clearly. "I don't believe them, but _they_ believe it, and that gives me a responsibility towards them. I..." Suddenly furious, she called a fist and slammed it into the window frame. "I _hate_ it, Mulder." His throat was working fast, as if fighting something. "Perhaps it's not for us to have feelings about it, Scully. Perhaps its fate." "I don't believe in fate." But then, unable to stop: "What's my fate?" "Maybe...." He shook his head, despairingly. "Like I said, maybe it's.... this." He gestured downstairs, towards her sleeping people. "Perhaps it's them." "To protect them like a mother while my man goes off to fight?" She tightened her grip on the wooden frame, voice rising. It was a sharp whisper, icy in its intensity. "Is that all you think there is for me? I'm just a woman so I can...." "No." He whirled to face her, and there was naked pain in his eyes. "I don't mean that. When _they_ come, the leader of the survivors will need to be strong, full of fire - a warrior. It needs compassion and courage." He held her by the shoulders, his eyes shining. "I can think of no-one better suited for it than you." She looked at him through slits of eyes. "I won't have my life dictated, Mulder - not by you, not by anyone." Then, unable to stay any longer without crying, she walked away. ****** He was stretched out on wooden boards, arms spread wide, and cold - so cold. Slowly, painfully, he opened his eyes, and a crow was looking at him, unblinking on the window sill. He blinked. It was not a dream. The crow in the desert of the World After.... It was an old dream from before the beginning, foreshadowing this moment. Scully was drifting away, and the world had died. Scully was leaving him.... He swallowed hard. _He_ had never dreamed of her, expect once, and then she had killed him.... He was alone on the bare boards of an attic room, and there was the crow, and its dark eye seemed to be smiling. And there were footsteps.... His throat was paralysed. He couldn't speak, couldn't make a sound. The bird's eyes seemed to narrow in contempt. On whispering wings, it flew away. he though, as if flew away from the moon. He longed and feared to follow it. "Mulder?" A hand on his brow. "Mulder? You're cold." He fought, lost as to which was a dream, and which was real. "Scully?" Her feet were bare. She passed him, and there was the sound of a closing window. "You take this aversion to beds a bit far, sometimes, Mulder." Her laugh was shaky. "Scully?" He pushed himself up on one elbow, then to his knees. "What's wrong?" "Nothing." The moon made shiny tracks on her face, as if she had been crying. "Why should anything be wrong? I've just learnt that my whole life has been written." It wasn't Scully, but he heard the pain beneath her sarcasm, and understood. "What do they want me to be, Mulder - their saint?" Her voice was frightening - brittle and so unlike her own. "I have to forget my own needs and think only of theirs? Why should I do that? And what does it make me, if I refuse?" But he said nothing. She would think he was patronising her, but he had never respected her more than in that moment. She was admitting her fears, and that was hard. "I don't want to be believe in fate, Mulder." She knelt down in front of him, and took his face between her two hands. Her eyes were shining with tears. "Sc...." he began, but could not speak. "Why weren't you in my dreams, Mulder?" she said, almost cried. "Through all of this, it was only us. I don't want that to end." "Neither do I." His throat was choking on unshed tears. A dark knowledge inside him - a knowledge that spoke with the voice of the crow - told him that it would be his last night with her, unless.... And nothing could keep him from crying out - a quiet, despairing cry. "Why should our lives be dictated, Mulder?" Her thumbs caressed his neck. "From the start, they used us, and manipulated us. Can't we escape that?" "I..." "No...." "We _can_" Her eyes were fire. Fiercely, almost harshly, she pulled his face towards hers and kissed his lips, then his closed eyes. "Scully..." He responded to her, kissing her back. Panic fluttered against her thumb on his neck. "I love you, Mulder." Her hands slid down his neck, plunging deep down his shirt. Her fingers dug into the flesh of his back, pulling his body towards hers. "Scully...." She pulled a hand out, rapid and almost painful. Blindly, she struggled with his buttons, opening first one, then another. Her head lowered to his chest, her lips seeking his skin. His mind was screaming. "Scully." He grabbed her - held her wrist with a hand that shook. "No." "I'll be careful." A soft finger circled the bullet wound. When she touched it, gentle and caring.... He was on the precipice then - the closest he had come to giving in. She was his Doctor Scully he had dreamt of when hurt, when sick. Warning. "No." He pulled her hand back, trying so hard to stay in control. "Not like this." She bit her lip. "I...." "I know." And he did know - oh, how he knew. "I love you, but not like this." It was if he had slapped her. Her face froze with rejection, then, in an instant, was controlled again. She was his Scully - breathing deeply and fast, but still his Scully. She shook her had, accepting. No. "Don't do it because you're angry. Don't do it because you have something to prove." He smiled, and touched her face. "We know, now, but.... not like this, Scully." "No." She raised her chin, and there was a grim defiance in her eyes. "Never think it was just out of anger, Mulder." "I...." And then, on impulse, he confessed something he had not even realised himself. _She_ had exposed so much of herself, her soul as naked before him as her body might have been. "They all ignore me. It makes me feel.... " He gave a weak laugh, wondering if he could disguise it all as a joke. "I'm jealous, Scully." Her face quivered, fighting fresh tears. "I wish I'd dreamed of you, Mulder." There was a "but" in her voice. Afterwards, he would wonder if it was in that moment that it was decided, and in that moment that his life ended. ****** But they moved to the bed and slept in each other's arms, clinging together like two survivors of a shipwreck, needing each other's warmth. And, on soft whispering feet, Richard Fry came to them, as on the wings of a crow. ****** He opened his eyes. "The colonisation is proceeding, Fox." There was something close to compassion in Fry's eyes. He was a man of a thousand moods, and now he was gentle. "There are thousands of survivors - hundreds of thousands. If the colonists can be stopped at source, there is hope - only then is there hope. You care about the world, don't you?" Mulder moved his head. Beside him, Scully was asleep, her face a mask. "Or would you put one woman before the whole world?" "I..." His voice choked in his throat. "I'm fighting everything you've ever hated, Fox." A hand on his brow, and he flashed to a kaleidoscope of images. Samantha disappearing into light; Scully on a metal slab; his father, dead.... "_They_ did this, Fox. We can still salvage something." "Yesss..." It was a soft sigh, a longing moan. Tears trickled down his face. "Then come. Leave her now. Walk away into the night. It will be easier...." He bit his lip and sobbed, as, beside him, Scully slept. ****** She opened her eyes, and saw the grinning face of death. "No....!" Hands ripping at her face, she screamed in naked terror. Beside her, Mulder slept, his face pale and peaceful. She half moved to waken him, needing someone to share the horror with, then stopped. She was Scully, and she would stand. "Dana...." It reached for her with its claws for hands, sharp, like a birds. "No...!" She curled up in a corner of her mind. "No...!" And she recognised the old familiar dream voice, and knew it for the first time. It _was_ her. It was the part of her that lived in dreams, and believed them. It was the part of her she had been refusing to listen to. Somehow, she knew that - the same way as she knew the other survivors. "Dana...." Lip quivering, she looked, and knew him, and understood. And, as she understood, he winked away, leaving her alone with Mulder, who slept on. ****** One hand on the window, she fingered her cross. Outside was the beauty of another winter morning. She was beginning to hate the sun. It made it worse, somehow. There were so few left alive to enjoy the beauty. "Dana?" She sighed. "Bethany." "Two more people have come, Dana. They want to see you. One of them is hurt." She sighed, and took up her burden. It was heavy and if chafed, and it gave her no relief, but it was right. Oh God, it was right, and she hated it. ****** She buried her head in her hands, rubbed deeply, then looked up. "He can't travel." There was blood on her hands from the newcomer's broken leg. Water was still a luxury. She knew that, wherever she chose for them to settle, it would have to be near a river. If they hadn't poisoned them.... She gave a wry laugh. Mulder was watching her silently, and she was desperate - desperate - to delay what she feared would be the end. "He fell just outside, you know. If he hadn't walked through the night to come to me, he'd be all right." His hands were clenched together. "So, you're staying - here, with them." It was not a question. Nodding was the hardest thing she had done, yet something felt right about it. She had expected weeks of soul searching, but it had been the merest second in a dream, and the knowledge that part of her had always known it. She had been dreaming about these people before it had even started. Resisting the dreams, fighting the responsibility, had torn her apart. At least now she was whole. It had been not an earthquake or a fire, but a still small voice of calm. Once more, she touched her cross, fiercely glad that she had never stopped wearing it, even when she had sometimes forgotten what it meant. "There have been nine in two days, Mulder." She shrugged. "How many more will come? I can't take all of them to Florida. When we're settled somewhere, maybe I can go myself." He shook his head, lost. "You're accepting them?" "Yes." It was a confession of faith. "I've been dreaming this all along, Mulder, though I didn't realise it." She swallowed. "You know the real reason I didn't want to leave the bunker? Part of me knew they were waiting for me. I was scared of what they meant. I was scared of the responsibility." "And now?" "I'm still scared, Mulder - how can I not be?" She took a deep breath. "Once I dreamed that they were hanging from my hand over a cliff - all of them. I couldn't hold them." "You can." He reached up a hand and touched her face. "I trust only you, Scully." They were speaking farewells without saying the words. She wondered how long they had known - if last night was a last desperate rebellion against the future they had always known they could not avoid. Doomed, she had thought of him before. Doomed. "And you?" But she knew his answer - she saw it in his eyes. "If you're following your dreams.... My dreams tell me differently, Scully." It was time. "I know." She clutched her cross tight enough to hurt. "Is it Richard Fry that you dream about - the man in the Gunmen's office?" A veil fell across his face, and she couldn't read him. She took it as a yes. "I saw him last night." She held her head high, refusing to lower her gaze. "It was him, but it was.... He was evil, Mulder. I think he's the Dark Man." "He's...." He shook his head, struggling. He did not have to words to describe what Fry was to him. His hope, and his damnation, perhaps. She tried to hard to keep pity from her eyes, knowing she would lose him. "He's not who you think he is, Mulder." "You don't know him!" Quick and fast. He was hurt and defensive, like a child who has seen his hero attacked. But there was enough doubt in his eyes to give her hope. "And you do, Mulder?" she asked softly. "He's fighting aliens, Scully." He balled a fist and slammed it into his other hand, hard. "Before, he fought _them_." And she had to bite her lip to keep from crying. There was so much she needed to say to him - so much she couldn't say to him. "I can't, Scully." And then she wondered how much she _had_ said aloud, not meaning to. "It's what I am. Without it, I'm...." "Different." She caught his flailing fist, and held it tight. "The world's different now, Mulder." He pulled against her. "I need to fight...." "What if there are no aliens?" she asked, relentless. She was hurting him, she knew, but the alternative was losing him. "What if _they_ did this, and it all got out of hand? What if the Consortium and the aliens destroyed each other in the end?" She had accepted so much. The existence of aliens seemed so tiny, now - an indulgence. "What if _he_ has already destroyed them and is building an army to attack...." She paused, then laid all her cards on the table. "What if, by helping him, you're killing me?" He looked as if she had shot him in the stomach. "I do not accept that, Scully." Cold and desperate. "I saw him last night. He's evil." "I saw him last night. He's my hope...." His face twisted, in grief and bitter anger. "He told me to come to him then, not even saying goodbye. He said the cause needed me. I stayed, Scully. Once more, I betrayed him for you and now...." He took a deep breath. "You're destroying everything that keeps me alive, Scully." She tried to pull him close. "I'm trying to keep you alive, Mulder." "I won't have my life dictated, Scully - not by you, not by anyone." In a dead voice, he echoed her own words back at her. "But you are." Desperate. It was life and death, now. "You always have. You've always cared so deeply about what you've been searching for.... Mulder, anyone just has to come to you and offer you some information, and you follow them through Hell. Even if you don't trust them, you listen to them. If there's the slightest chance that they're right, you act, even if it might kill you." "Yes." He was shaking his head, puzzled. He could not comprehend what was wrong with the picture she had painted. He knew no other life. She swallowed hard. "Even if it might hurt me to lose you." His expression froze, then he sighed, and touched her face. "I can't let this go, Scully. I hear what you're saying, but...." He gave a wan smile. "Maybe he _is_ evil. Maybe there are no aliens. Maybe you're right.... Can't you see, Scully? I _have_ to find out. I can't live with a constant not-knowing, wondering if there was something I could have done. I've lived with that for twenty-seven years, and believe me, Scully, it's not something I want to go through again." She made no effort to stop the tears. "I can't go with you, Mulder. Like you, I can't let this go. If I leave them now, I'll always wonder...." "I know." Silence. With tears on her marble face, she pulled him close and kissed him, gently. It was almost chaste - nothing like the previous night - but it was somehow deeply sensual. "I'll come back," he whispered, his hands in her hair. "If you're right, and it doesn't work out.... If _I'm_ right and we win.... I'll come back." She nodded. Afterwards, her eyes dry in the night, she would wonder if either of them truly believed it. "If you're right, Scully...." His face clouded, and suddenly she remembered a younger Mulder, beautiful and untroubled, overjoyed to see an "alien". he had said. She shook her head abruptly and was back in the present - back to a Mulder who saw an alien as a nightmare horror, not as a thing of wonder. "If you're right, Scully...." He was trembling, his breathing fast. "You understand, don't you?" She smiled through her tears, grieving for him, and pitying. Admiring, too. She had never loved him as she did then. "You're not evil, Mulder, even if he is. I know you're doing it out of love. I know it's because you can't bear to give up on the old world." "While you have?" His tone was unreadable. "No." Fierce. "I've.... I've adapted. It doesn't mean I like it. It doesn't mean I don't mourn what is gone. It's just.... " She shook her head, at a loss for words, then struck into her past. "Mulder, when I lost three months of my life, I just had to forget it and get on with my life. For my own survival, I needed to do that. You understand, don't you?" He was silent. "This...." She gestured around her at the house, at the distant voices. "This is something to put my back up against. I fought it, but I think this will help me cope." He swallowed hard. "You think I'm a child, looking for impossible miracles?" "I think you're Fox Mulder." She reached for his hand and, chaste and companionable, held it. "You're my partner. You're the only one I trust." Oh, but she felt old - far older than him. She didn't like it. She wished she could see life through his eyes - to be so driven, so sure of who to hate. And there, at the end of everything, she felt that they had gone full circle. He was the man she had always known, while she.... What was she? ****** That night, he slept alone. He was cold, so cold, and he wept. He was alone in a desert of the dead, and the night was a smothering blanket. He was alone... "Scully," he whispered, and pulled the blanket closer. But the face in his dreams smiled, and it was not her. "Fox...." He moaned. "Sc...." "No." The voice was like a slap. His head slammed back against the ground, and his face smarted. "No. You have chosen, Fox, and you mustn't weaken now. I need strength from you now. "Strength...." Scully's hair like fire in the sunset.... Claw-like fingers dug into his chin. "We will stand, Fox, and we will be formidable." "Yesss...." ***** "Dana?" She stood alone, watching him, though he was hours gone, now. She was alone, but he.... "Oh God!" She spoke aloud. To be travelling alone in this world was more terrible than she could imagine. "Dana?" She sighed, and put on the mask that she would ever afterwards wear. Then, ready, she turned around. "Bethany." "Dana. Two more have come in. They want to see you." She shouldered her cross, and made herself smile. There was hope in the little girl's face, and safety, and that was a start. That was where the hope was. ****** END ****** End? Well, let me know. Of course, there are questions to be answered: Who is right about the identity of the Dark Man? What will Mulder find in the north? Will he grow disillusioned - and what will Fry have to say about it if he does? Are Byers and Frohike in the north, too? What about Scully's family? And so on.... Also, while I know that I have quite a record for writing sad or inconclusive endings, this is an ending I am NOT happy with leaving. I want the answer to the above questions, and I want to write them. There are, though, a few problems with it (such as how to destroy ultimate evil without resorting to cliche or contrivance), so, as I said, please let me know. (I am also, as I've told several people in email, willing to accept bribes regarding the fate of the remaining Gunmen....) ____ Other notes: The title, comes from a political tract by Thomas Hobbes. While some other writers were claiming that society without government would be a lovely paradise of caring and sharing, Hobbes thought that the natural state of mankind, without government, was truly hideous anarchy. In the end, desperate, mankind would willingly sacrifice their liberties and accept an absolute ruler, since safe slavery was preferable to anarchic freedom. "Leviathan" is the word he used for this absolute sovereign power - and is exactly the theory that "They" were working on in this story. "The Stand", for those who haven't read it: Briefly, "The Stand" tells of a plague, accidentally unleashed after an accident at a military installation, and quickly spreading across the world. Only a few people are immune, and the book follows these survivors. As the world collapses, the survivors start having dreams - of a very old lady called Mother Abigail, and a terrifying "Dark Man." Guided by these dreams, the survivors manage to group together around Mother Abigail, and begin to rebuild some sort of life for themselves. However, there are also some survivors to whom the "Dark Man" seems exciting, and powerful. His name, at the moment (though he has had many names, and always beginning with the same letters) is Randall Flagg, and equal numbers of survivors group around him. After a period of consolidation, the stage is set for a confrontation.... And I won't say any more, since the second half of the book will be my model for the sequel, should I write it. Of course, this story only follows the broad outline of the book, as described above - basically just the fact that _something_ happened to destroy most of the world; that the survivors were having dreams; and the Dark Man himself. The crow imagery is also from the book, and one or two scenes - most strongly, perhaps, the scene in part 1 when someone is killed by the army while on air on the radio. The immediate inspiration for this story, though, was an article on the Millennium Bug, and the first sentence of "The War of the Worlds". HG Wells set his own near end of the world at the turn of the century, which made me start thinking.... I had been planning nice Sunday in bed reading that book, but ended up starting writing instead. And how it turned out.... Well. I have never written a story without a single written note. I have never written a story with kissing in it. I have never written a crossover. I have seldom written a long story in which the angst came from the plot, rather than the angst being the initial inspiration, and the plot being constructed around it. I have never written a story that I enjoyed more - or which disturbed me more. I had _dreams_ about this one....