"Leviathan II" by Pellinor (Pellinor at astolat, demon, co, uk) ____ RATING: R for some disturbing subject matter CLASSIFICATION: CRA Very, very loose crossover with Stephen King's "The Stand". No knowledge of that work is required or expected. SUMMARY: The date has come.... and passed. Now, a new evil stalks the ruins of the world, forcing Mulder and Scully to reassess their beliefs, their future, even the very foundation of their lives. A wrong choice could mean the end, for them, and for everything. For everything.... CONTENT WARNING: Secondary characters die. ******** They would come together, riding through desolation to the sea. Two men with the same purpose, brought together by.... what? Both had dreamed of a woman they already knew. And one of them would change everything. They had met by firelight on the edge of a strange town. Wood smoke eased the stench of the death, though nothing could remove it - nothing. One was crouching; one was walking. One was dark; one was fair. "Are you going to.... to _her_?" The man who was the nervous shadow spoke from the darkness - just these words without preamble. Unwilling to trust, yet so desperate for company, his hand twitched towards his gun. He had been an FBI agent in the time before. In his own frightened mind, he still was. Going to her? Yes. The dark-haired man nodded silently, impassively. He was crouched by his fire, and flames flickered on his face, casting deep shadows in place of his eyes. It was like a skull. "Can we....?" A step forward. The man coughed, obviously aware that he had been begging. A man of some pride, then, though close to broken. "Shall we go there together?" The dark man shrugged - a gesture of indifference. "You can't cope alone." It was not a question. Something flickered on his face that could have been contempt. "I can." It was the voice of a petulant child. The man by the fire blinked, and light flashed from his eyes. "No- one can. Not alone like this." He gestured bleakly with his right hand. His five fingers encompassed the world, and a million million deaths. The other man couldn't suppress a shudder. He saw the future held in a single shadowed hand. It was too close to his dreams. The crouching man gave a bitter laugh. "Trust no-one - that's what an old.... friend.... said. Trust no-one. You have a gun." He pointed to his side. "I have a gun. We know nothing about each other, and we're planning to travel together to her, of all people." He shook his head, and laughed again. The other man's thoughts were loud as a shout, on a face that knew no guile. He tried, though, saying what he should. "Before the epidemic, when there were riots.... No-one trusted anyone, then. I think we have to trust, now." He held out a hand. "I'm Tom Colton. Special Agent with the FBI." There was pride in his voice, even smugness, belying the humility of his earlier words. The dark man looked at him with slow consideration, but showed no sign of awe. Tom Colton let out a breath. "We can't trust now." The man spoke at last, his voice bleak. "I have lived a dangerous life. I trusted once, and it nearly killed me. The worse the danger, the less you can trust, and the danger has never been greater." He was staring deep into the flames, his eyes distant. "I presume you've dreamed of _him_, too?" he said, at last, almost a whisper. Colton's eyes flashed. "Don't talk about him." Then, glancing round as if he feared a dark listener at his shoulder: "I can feel him all the time. The light keeps him away, I think." "Nothing keeps him away." It was bitter cynicism, or despair. "Sometimes I think the light is a giant signal that I'm here. This could be the only light for a hundred miles." "But you can't put it out." "No." And they had connected, for the briefest of touches. After the silence, something had changed. "It's over," Colton said, though there was a tremor in his voice. He looked like one waking from a dream. "We survived." "No." The man was still young, though his face was hard and etched. Now it was resigned to horror. "No. It's only just beginning." ****** He was in a dead man's clothes. Mulder pulled the coat more tightly round his body, feeling the strange warm chill of the fabric. To touch it was to feel the cold pain of death, and of what he had become. It was the marble face of the dead man by the roadside, his leg broken and killed by the cold in just one night. It was the heavy weight of the man's body as he had manipulated it, scarcely daring to look, pulling off the coat. It was the.... the overwhelming and abiding _horror_. Whimpering in his mind... The fabric was soft and red. A snowflake rested on the fibres, stayed a while, then melted. In his mind, she nodded, sadly. They were scavengers at the high tide line, salvaging what little remained of the wreckage, living their lives with the flotsam of civilisation. Million upon million of coats, and shoes, and books and cans, neatly stacked and futile in the houses of the dead. A tug, and the man's hand had came free from the coat, and fell onto the ground. It had looked beseeching, and frail - so frail. He had been travelling for a month, and seen no-one alive. By day he had spoken to Scully in his mind, and her answers were his imagination. By night the voice was another's, and it was real and terrible, and he feared it and he loved it. And it was putting out probing fingers into his day, now, like a tornado reaching from a black sky. "Close, now, Fox. Nearly there." He lashed his head, like one in the throes of some ecstatic agony. "Yesss...." Oh, but he was weary, and the terror of those nights, alone in a wilderness of the dead, was like a physical pain. Snow blanketed the north, burying the dead under its pall, burying his path to.... to _him_. Civilisation died, and the roads weren't cleared. Driving was impossible. Walking hurt his body, undernourished and still recovering from injury. Staying lashed his mind and soul with the agony of separation, and a raven-black voice that whispered in his dreams, reproaching him. He had walked. And now he was on the border. He could feel Fry's proximity, like the blood in his veins. He had been called, and he had come. He would fight, and he would die. "Die for me, Fox?" Here, on the border lands, the very air touched his face like the feel of Fry's fingers, or the whisper touch of a bird's wing. "Would you?" Scully's face flickered like a ghost. His trembling hand came up to his lips, remembering his last touch of her. Her lips on his, for the second time.... and the last. And then he had walked away. And now he walked. ****** She had a few square yards of peace. With trees between her and the town, and a clear view of the main road to the north, it was a place for watching. It was a place for being human. It was a place for being Scully. She had fought for this haven. A thousand shell-shocked people needed her. Like children, they needed her love, her comfort, her advice. Children with nightmares crawled into her bed and kept her awake with their sobs. Adults on burial duty came to her for permission to break down and cry. She was confessor, social worker and parent. She was their leader, and their saint. They were sucking her dry. Sometimes, she hated them. "Dana...." A small hand pulling at the hem of her coat on a star- lit solitary night. "Dana...." A man's voice, trembling with the effort of not crying. "Dana...." Identical joy, identical words, with every new arrival. "I've dreamed of you, Dana." She wasn't human. Here, in this small square of land between the sea and the road, she could be human, and could forget them - could forget that they would be gathering beyond the trees to assail her when she came out. Here, she was Scully, and she was waiting, watching.... thinking.... "Mulder," she whispered, almost reverently. She thought about him constantly, but let herself say his name only once a day, here in the place where she watched for his coming. If he came.... Part of her knew that he never would. But this time, as the sky darkened the same as it had every day for a week, and she prepared to face what had to be faced, someone came. Someone came.... ****** It was the pricking in his eyes that told him he was close. Mulder raised his gloved hand and rubbed, harshly, the freezing wool scraping his eyelids. Something hurt in his throat, tight in his chest. He stopped, froze, remembering. Eyes streaming, he remembered. He had pawed desperately at his eyes, then, coughing, struggling to choke out words. He had been so sure that he'd been about to die. A steel voice speaking through the red agony that was his vision, and rough hands binding his arms behind his back. And ringing. Scully had called him again and again, and had saved him. And another. When he had woken up in the hospital, Scully had still had Deep Throat's blood on her clothes. "Did he die for me?" he had asked, his voice a harsh rasp in his throat, and painful. "Did he?" She had looked down at her hands, twisting in her lap, and said nothing. He pressed his fingers futilely against his eyes. Even in a world of the dead, a seven year old death could still hurt, could still hurt with the deep ache of guilt. And the next step would hurt worse. He knew that; he savoured that. It would hurt like acid on his body, but soothe like balm to his soul. In the slit that was all that was left of his vision, he could see the twisted metal ahead of him, not quite covered by the blanket of snow. "Scully," he whispered, through swelling lips. "I was right, Scully. See?" He felt for it like a blind man, knowing that simply to touch it would be like the most precious of medicines. To feel the cold metal under his fingers..... To see the dead still features of the alien, and to know that it was dead. _That it was dead_..... He tore at his gloves and they fell into the snow, one, two - forgotten before even they landed. His naked fingers groped for his eyes and came away red. He was bleeding from the eyes, and his tongue on his lips tasted iron. It was hard to breathe. But it was there. He laughed, coughed, and laughed again. Blood- mingled tears froze on his face. It was there. He could barely see, barely stand. He could wrench his eyes open for a split second, then the pain made him close them. Again and again, snatching a series of dancing images, as if lit like a strobe light. A twisted body in a shattered craft, green blood long-since frozen, the face impassive in death. Hand shaking, he reached out and touched it, and it felt like fire. His own skin reddened and blistered, and flames of pain licked up towards his wrist. He held on. He laughed. He was touching his grail. They were here, and they were to be fought, and they could be defeated. Dead on the ground, it was no bigger than him, frozen forever into one of its faces. For a month, he had travelled on faith, not knowing if he should have left her. Doubt made those terrible lonely nights among the dead a thousand times more terrible. But if there was an enemy to fight.... If the dead could be avenged.... "Scully..." His strength was waning, his breathing laboured. He raised his bleeding hand and held up before him, as if swearing an oath of allegiance. The very air seemed to chuckle, whispering around his outstretched hand. With the last flash of his vision, he saw his palm, and the blood had gone. Then nothing. ****** "You!" Fury blinded her. She was onto him in a second, one hand closing round his collar, the other reaching for the gun at her side. "You! How _dare_ you come here?" Alex Krycek's face flickered. There was anger first, but then nothing. He was coiled tight, but didn't fight back. "Dana?" Tom Colton. She would kill Krycek first, and then him. She had been a saint for a month. Now she was Scully, and her gun was in her hand again. It felt good. "Why have you come?" She pressed the gun into Krycek's throat. She was dimly aware of silent shadows gathering behind her. Her people, ready to attack like a pack of dogs, should she command them. It was the only thing that could have stopped her. "Why?" A deadly whisper, this time. She didn't want an audience. Her finger itched to turn the gun on the lot of them and kill them all, then run away into the wilderness. She never had a second by herself, yet she was so alone - so alone. "I...." Krycek stopped, and, when he spoke again, his voice was almost submissive. Yet there had been fire in that first word, as if he was playing a part, now. "I dreamed of you." "I didn't ask you to." Petty, like a child. Part of her knew that she would feel shame, later. "I didn't ask to." He blinked. "Do you think I would have chosen this?" She bit her lip. She could never say what she so longed to say, hitting him with her gun while she shouted out her accusations. She said nothing. Behind her, her children - her crowd of docile sheep - were dangerous. But, "I don't trust you," was all she said, her voice shaking with what she hoped would sound like anger. "You killed my sister. You're one of them." She let the crowd hear, half hoping that they would take the choice from her and rip him apart themselves. "You're one of the people who did this." This. No other word was necessary. It was a thing so all encompassing, so terrible. It needed no words. "I haven't worked for them for years, Scully." He looked almost bored with the explanation. She remembered how he had looked when he had laughed at Mulder's zeal, looking at him as if he was a child and telling him there was no truth. "Then you're worse," she almost spat. An old broken man with a bottle, confiding his fears before he died.... "At least they had a cause they thought was right. You were only ever out for yourself." "Wasn't Mulder?" His eyes dared her to kill him. "All his noble talk of truth, and all he wanted was his sister back, and his own life to be happy." She had never hated anyone as much as she hated him, then. She hated him for being right, yet, at the same time, being so wrong. But she said nothing. To speak about Mulder would be to cry, and to cry would be to show weakness. She blinked fiercely. His mouth twitched, and she knew that he understood. "Why are you here, Krycek?" she asked again, sighing. She was so weary of all this. He had known all along that she couldn't kill him. "I dreamed of you." He gestured with a single open hand towards the dark horizon where once there would have been lights. It was the absence of the little things that hurt the most. "This.... It makes us think. Maybe I've changed, Scully." "Maybe you haven't." But she lowered the gun. He raised his chin and looked at her, slow and proud. He was daring her to kill him - to put herself in the wrong. She holstered her gun and turned her back on him, walking away without a word. For the first time in a month, no hands reached for her. Except one. ****** "Mulder?" Hands were raising him, touching him. He was cold to the core, his jubilation a mere shadow of what it had been. Something soft touched his eyelids. "Mulder?" "Scully?" he mouthed, silently, the tried to laugh. Scully? The voice was male, but the touch was not ungentle, and who but Scully touched him? There was fear and pain in Fry's caress, always. "Mulder?" He opened his eyes, winced, struggled, and opened them again. "Frohike?" ****** "You're going to him." It was not a question. Mulder swallowed painfully. "Yes." Frohike twisted his hands together. His face was tight and closed. "And Agent Scully?" "I left her in Virginia." Talking hurt. For a month he had spoken to no-one but her, and most of that silently. _He_ needed no voice.... "You left her?" Quiet. Frohike had never seemed dangerous before. His throat ached. "She felt that her.... destiny.... was there." He tried to be level, not to judge. He had understood, then, but sometimes, on those long waking nights, he had hated her for it. "_I_ had to come." "You left her?" Frohike looked broken, shaking his head from side to side, his eyes dark. "How could you do that, Mulder? How....?" And then he opened his mouth and gave a wordless howl. His fists flailed, hitting Mulder in the jaw, in the shoulder. "You.... you.... you...." He wept. "Frohike. It's okay, Frohike." Byers approached on soundless feet, his breath like a cloud. He touched his friend on his shoulder, a gentle touch that made Mulder want to weep too. He had turned his back on friendship. Frohike blinked, making no attempt to hide his tears. Before, he would have. Later, Mulder would realise that his tears were a badge - a sign that his emotion had not been numbed utterly by tragedy. He would see a thousand mask-like faces that could have been moulded in unyielding plastic. "How could you do it, Mulder?" he said, softly. Mulder rubbed his jaw. "She chose. I chose. I...." He swallowed. "We respected each other's opinions. It wasn't easy. Of course it wasn't easy." Frohike gestured into the darkening world. "Have you seen then, Mulder? Have you? Because we have. They come in by the dozens every day - people who have lost everything." There was not a trace of the old Frohike in him - not a trace. He was ravaged, earnest. "Not one of them came through with their children, their parents, their girlfriends, their husbands..... Not one of them, Mulder. They all lost everyone they've ever loved. Everyone." His voice shook. "Think, Mulder." "I...." He shied away from the thought, but of course he had to think of it. Each traumatised face would drive him on to more resistance, leading him to risk his life to save them. Pain would be his spur - their pain, and his. He would avenge it. "You survived with someone you...." Frohike raised his head, almost defiantly. "Love," he said, at last. Mulder nodded, unable to speak, unable to offer any defence for what he knew was coming. "They would sell their souls to be in your position, Mulder - yet you left her." Frohike's face was bleak. There was a strange look on his face - something close to envy, yet there was a deep grief there. He was ten years older. Mulder thought suddenly, but said nothing. Nothing more than had happened to everyone left in the world. No-one was the same. No-one would ever be the same. It was Skinner's death all over again. It was the horror in oh such little things. He had learnt how to look dry-eyed upon a city street scattered with the dead, but Frohike's lost humour made him want to fall to his knees and weep. So he made no defence, though he knew he had been right. It had nearly killed him to leave her, but, if he had stayed, he would have hated her. He would have endured every second of life with her, tormented by might-have-beens. "Why did you come here, Mulder?" Byers, and his face was guarded, even weary. There was little friendship there, either. He opened his mouth, but the word died on his lips. Just one word, but he was unable to say it. It was private, intimate. He shivered, and it was half cold, half thrill. "You've come to help _him_ fight the colonists?" And at last Frohike smiled, but there was no humour in that smile. He nodded, feeling strangely naked. "I have to. It's my.... my duty." "Are you that arrogant?" Frohike's fists were tightly clenched, but he made no move to repeat his earlier attack. "You think he needs you? You think it will all collapse if you're not here?" He swallowed. He remembered the dreams, and the feeling that he was valued, that they would be invincible. He even smiled - a secret smile that the others wouldn't see. "Frohike." Byers' voice was warning, scarcely above a whisper. "You...." "We had nothing else!" the Frohike who was not Frohike burst out, his voice desperate, close to tears. "He had her." And he felt he anger surge, hot, through the tight pain in his chest. "You want me to forget everyone else - to settle down with Scully and forget our responsibilities? Damn it, Frohike, I can't do that. How can I do that?" He blinked on sudden tears. Skinner was still a raw bleeding wound. "I saw the FBI headquarters. No- one was there - no-one. As soon as they started getting sick, they went home. They thought only of themselves. Only one stayed...." And, as laughter, for him, always had to come in the middle of a grief that was too great to face, he laughed - bitter, ironic laughter mingled with unshed tears. "The world has changed." Frohike was softer, now, but not relenting. "He's preparing for war. War; power.... It's what caused all this. We should live alone, with friends, and.... and _live_." "I stick my neck out for nobody, huh?" Mulder muttered. Byers looked away, biting his lip. Mulder realised, suddenly. <_He's_ not broken....> He felt less joy about that, than grief at what had happened to Frohike. It was a weakness he would have to change, if he was to fight. "You're with him," he said, at last. Not a question. They nodded - Frohike with something close to shame; Byers with a flicker of pride. "News came of the fallen craft." Byers spoke now. Once, Frohike's eyes would have sparkled at a mere grainy picture of such a thing. Now, faced with the reality, his face was closed. "He sent us to retrieve it." He shrugged. "Maybe he knew you were here, too. He knows things." Mulder raised his head sharply. "He spoke of me?" He was like a dog, eager, but couldn't help it. Frohike gave a bitter laugh. "He doesn't speak to _us_. He's far too busy." Mulder smiled. He said nothing. But Byers glanced at the sky and looked almost scared. It was close to dark and.... what?.... could be out there, silently watching. ****** But she didn't say it. A familiar face was a comfort, even though it was his. And, once, she had liked him. Colton's hand moved from her arm to the small of her back, as if guiding her away from the mumuring crowd. She felt their eyes on her back, and felt Krycek's, too. "Dana? I...." He cleared his throat. "The smell. It doesn't smell here." She stopped, pressed her hand to her mouth, and laughed - sudden laughter, close to hysteria. It was nothing she had expected, from him or from her. "No," she said, then was calm again, almost crying. For weeks, the dreams of her people had been one. There was the dream no-one spoke about, and there was the screaming horror of the way they had spent their days. "We buried them. Old people who'd died in the same bed; children; animals.... We've cleared out an area big enough to live in." They had been piled in great pits, all their individuality lost and merged into a single mass of death. They had had no priests to lay them to rest, and no time to say the names of the dead. It had been..... "It was bad," she said, simply. "It's over." He touched her shoulder. She sighed, but couldn't bring herself to pull away. Bereft and terrified, her people had sought each other, needing only the warmth of human contact - any human contact. Few adults were unpartnered, few children unmothered, yet all had emerged from the disaster alone. And she was human too, though the warmth she needed was not his. But she didn't pull away. ****** "Langly?" Moving to the helicopter had cemented an uneasy truce. Mulder's lungs felt scoured, and he'd needed their support to walk. For a second, he had seen a spark of the old Frohike, joking about having to half-carry him. Just for a moment.... And now he had to commit murder with his voice. "Dead." He resisted the urge to look away. He dug his fingers into his palms. "They were killing anyone who was beating it." The life in Frohike's eyes flickered and died. "When?" A hoarse croak. "We found him the morning after we.... after we last met." "He...." Frohike passed a hand across his eyes. His voice was muffled. "We were both wrong. He thought he could stay and fight. We thought we could hide until it was over, then fight." "We can." Mulder was fierce about that. It was the one thing he was sure about. It was his beacon, his only reason for living. He had lost hope, once, and it had nearly killed him. "Why can I still cry for him, after.... after there's been so much death?" Frohike's voice shook, his arms wrapped round his body. "Why does one more make a difference? Why do I care more about one person than I do about the whole world?" Byers touched his shoulder. He made no effort to hide the tears on his cheeks. "Because you're human." He had grown. He was the leader of them then. Mulder thought, with something close to a sob. Too much humanity, and all was lost. Human frailty had started this - cowards hiding to die alone; people seeking water for their child and ignoring the desperate thirst of their neighbour's. Glass had been smashed into the faces of old friends.... He would swear to Fry. He would sacrifice love to the common good. He would give up friendship and become a fighter. It was noble. It was right. It was.... But he bit his lip, and endured.... ****** ....And came. A thousand blank masks were staring at him. There was ice in his veins. "Where?" He spoke wildly - anything. It would gain him.... seconds? He couldn't begin to understand the dread that he felt. "Toronto." Byers, too, spoke as if he was wading through cold water. "Fry's headquarters." "He's...." No more. He paused on the brink, with just the toe of one boot out in the air. There was safety in the helicopter, and warmth, and old friends and.... He shivered. "Why?" He shook his head, bleakly, desperately. "Why are they just standing there?" A thousand storm-tossed survivors, all emotion scoured out of them by suffering. They were shell-shocked, or something worse. There was no humanity in their eyes as they surrounded the helicopter, silently staring. he thought, suddenly, and something make him glance sharply at Frohike. There was no colour in his face. "There's blood on the ground," Byers said, sharply. A pool and a smear, as if someone had been killed, then dragged away. Mulder licked his dry lips, still swollen from the alien blood. Part of him wanted to scream, to shout, to turn the helicopter round and fly anywhere - _anywhere_ - that wasn't here. But the right course was never easy. There was no heroism without sacrifice. He would endure. He grasped the sides of the door, and pushed forward, and.... "You're stepping to your death." Scully's voice, like the quietest whisper deep inside his mind. "And mine...." He stepped. And the crowd fell back as, on whisper-soft boots, Richard Fry came to embrace him. His mind was silent. She had gone. ****** She dreamed of blood and darkness, and _him_. The darkness was still far away, but it was reaching closer, ever closer, and the voice of the darkness was smiling with impending victory. "I have something of yours." It was a shuddering, terrible voice. "You'll never get it back, and, one by one, I'll take everything else that is yours, and then you." Eyes of darkness that didn't blink. "You, Dana. You'll kill him, or he'll kill you. Which?" "Neither." That voice of her dreams that came from somewhere deep inside her. It was her, but she hated it. She fought it - fought to ignore the dark voice. Talking to it made it real. "Neither? But it has started, Dana. I am in _your_ people now. Blood has been shed." She lashed her head from side to side, awake enough to be aware that it was a dream - that there was an escape. "They are consecrated to me by blood, Dana. It has started." With an incoherent cry, she escaped. She told herself it was only a dream. It _had_ to be only a dream. ****** Byers cleared his throat, awkward. "Mulder?" He frowned, concentrating on wrapping the bandage round his burned hands. The soft warmth of the room caressed him. "Be careful, Mulder." A hoarse whisper. "They'll envy you. They'll hate you." He paused, and looked up, but even that was a wonder. There was warmth, and the soft yellow of electric light. Civilisation. He was surrounded by a tiny living example of what he would fight to save. "Who?" he said, at last, remembering who was with him. "The others here. The others he _chose_." Byers sat on his hands on the edge of the bed. "Most of them are dazed, broken. They just wandered in, drawn by.... I don't know. Some of them he hand- picked." He understood. "You?" Byers nodded. "We came out of our bunker, expecting.... " He shrugged, bleakly. "I don't know what we were expecting. We left a world just beginning to collapse into anarchy, but we emerged to.... to _this_." He gestured with his head towards Frohike. "He didn't get sick; I did." Mulder nodded slowly. "He healed you." He felt an obscure pang of jealousy. Byers nodded. "Coming out to face that...." He rubbed a hand over his face, his voice muffled. "We lost hope. I _wanted_ to die. But he.... he valued us. He offered us hope - hope that this wasn't the end - hope that something could be saved, and that we could help in the saving. He gave me what I'd lost." Mulder shut his eyes, remembering. "I know," he said, slowly, then again, with a spark of anger. "I know." "There are dozens of the chosen, Mulder." Byers' voice was soft. "Each of them came here thinking they were special to him. Most of them are...." He glanced round anxiously, as if afraid of invisible listeners. "They're men with pasts. They're dangerous men." Byers' words hurt him like a physical pain. He had wanted to be needed, alone. He had been first in _Scully's_ thoughts, until the end. He objected. "But...." "And now you've come, Mulder. He embraces you in public. He gives you this suite. He gives you a _key_." Mulder's bandaged hand flew to his chest, touching the cold key hanging on a chain round his neck. Already, so soon, it was becoming a reflex, an instinct. Byers lowered his eyes, and his voice. "_I'm_ jealous, Mulder." "I'm not." Frohike had been silent, like a statue in the window, his fingers drumming on the glass. "I pity him." "Frohike!" Naked fear flashed across Byers face. his eyes seemed to say. He had always been the most openly readable of the three. "You needn't." Mulder raised his head, speaking firmly to the two of them. "I don't need pity, and I don't need envy. All I want is to fight the colonists. It's all that matters to me." His voice shook. It was a lie - an absolute lie - though he wished it was the truth. It hurt, needing so much to fight, yet needing so much to stay with Scully and just to live. "He's preparing for war." Frohike's voice was a hollow monotone, almost trance-like. "He justifies the death penalty by saying it's wartime - that dissenters serve only 'the enemy.' 'The enemy'.... he talks about 'the enemy' in every public speech. But he has a team out at the military base full time, and they're preparing for offence, not defence." Mulder smiled. He caught a glimpse of it in the mirror and it seemed cruel - not him. "He'll win," he said, savouring the words. After seeing Fry again, and feeling the overpowering strength of his presence, he had no doubt about it. No-one he fought stood a chance. Frohike blinked disingenuously. "Who's the enemy?" "The colonists." He clenched his fist, and the pain was good. It was a reminder. "Aliens, like that one. They did all this. They killed us." "You know that?" Yes. He nodded, preparing his words carefully. "I was told by a man I didn't trust, but I think he was right. The aliens came to colonise - to destroy the population. The men we encountered - the Consortium.... They allied with the aliens - did deals to persuade them only to enslave the population, not kill it." He laughed harshly. "Of course our friends would be in positions of power in the post-colonisation world. I can't forgive them." "The sickness?" Mulder swallowed. Even through the hatred, it was hard to think of such things. "The aliens broke the deal. Maybe they'd always intended to, but preferred to have our friends co-operating rather than resisting - I don't know. Half way through the.... the anarchy plan, they.... I don't know what they did." He spread his hands wide, gesturing at the world outside. "Some incredibly potent chemical or biological weapon? Something that wiped out everyone in a matter of hours, apart from the few who happened to be immune. "Or healed?" Frohike smiled wryly, and there was no humour in it. "Or healed." He nodded, defiant. He refused to be ashamed of the fact. "But the aliens have gone," Byers said quietly. "No." Fierce. "Why remove the population unless they want to come here? They're here, Byers. Probably only a few of them now, but they're coming. You _saw_ one today, Byers. How can you deny it?" "We saw one, dead, in the snow." Frohike's eyes were almost hostile. "He could have been there for weeks, preserved there. He disintegrated as soon as he was taken into the warmth, of course. No evidence." He raised his voice. "Will you kill me for that?" Mulder folded his arms, speaking with exaggerated patience. "So who do you think he's fighting? Who is 'the enemy'?" "I don't know." And on both their faces he saw real fear. ****** "Who?" Scully gestured towards Colton's bruised face. One eye was almost swollen shut and he was nursing his right hand gently in his left. She was dimly aware that once she would have felt nothing but concern. Now, fury was welling inside her. The shadows of her dream would not leave her. He licked his lips, his eyes defiant. "Krycek." "He attacked you?" She reached for her gun, and half closed her eyes on the image of him dead in his own blood. The old world was gone. Murderers would no longer have protection. When civilisation existed, she had let Luis Cardinale live, still bound by the teachings of civilisation, and knowing that society would judge her if she killed him. Now, she could set her own morality. Now, she could set the morality for a whole new society. She would kill him, and declare it right, and no-one would argue. "I hurt him worse than he hurt me." There was a note of pride in Colton's voice, but she barely registered him. Because _he_ was there, standing silently in a doorway, one hand against the door frame, his face impassive. Anger made her vision double, and his face became inhuman - a medley of everyone she had ever hated, and the dark man of her dreams. And a bullet in the forehead, spraying red. Her face a stiff mask of hatred, she smiled at the image, savouring it. It would be a bullet to destroy evil. So many millions had died, and what difference would one more make? Her finger tightened on the trigger, though her arm was trembling. "I should have killed you last night, Krycek," she shouted, hoarse. She heard an echo of Mulder in the way she said those words. He blinked. There was no fear in his face. "You didn't have the nerve, so you sent your friend Colton to do it instead? Is that how you rule this place, Scully? "I...." If it was Mulder beside her, his face bruised and battered, she would have pulled the trigger. But it was Colton - it was no-one. "Did you?" she said, instead, her voice an intense whisper. "I heard what you said to him." Colton raised his voice, speaking so Krycek could hear. "I heard that he'd killed your sister, Dana. He tricked me, so I travelled here with him, not knowing that. I.... I wanted him to suffer. I did it for you." She tightened her grip on the gun, but pointed it down to the ground. She was breathing deeply, almost gasping at the air. Part of her knew that, for the second time in under a day, she had almost lost everything. She heard the not-her voice of her dreams, annoying, like a wasp buzzing in her head. It made the world flicker, and the two men before her seem unreal. "No," she whispered, silently, aloud - anything to stop the voice. She raised her left hand to her head. She _needed_ to be strong and focused. Danger was everywhere, and she was the only one. "Dana?" Strong hands reached for her shoulders, fingers insistent. "It's okay. I know it's hard." "Leave me alone!" She startled herself with the force of her shout - with the naked fury that filled her. It was the voice, and the dreams. It was a world that had tempted her justify murder. It was Colton, and Krycek, and the silent audience that ringed her, absorbing all her air, making her want to gasp. It was Colton's hands, burning her shoulders as if they were acid. It was Colton's hands most of all, but they stood for all the others. "Dana." His hands fell to his side, but he was still too close. "I hate to see you hurt. I know it's been hard for you, coping with all this, but I'm here, now. You needn't do it alone." And she hated that, too. She hated leading them; she hated the thought of anyone else leading them. In that moment, she hated herself. Her arm shook and it was all she could do not to hurl the gun away as far as it would go. She swallowed hard. When she spoke, her voice was low, and the tremor in it sounded like anger - it _was_ anger, too. "Did you attack Krycek, Tom?" she asked, each word clear and distinct, like a parent talking to a disobedient child. "He deserved it. I did it for you." Her fingers were white with clutching the gun so tightly. It was shaking. Even at two feet, she would probably have missed him. "I can look after myself, Tom." He opened his mouth, then seemed to change his mind. "I know," he said, instead. "But..." "But nothing." She raised her chin, meeting his gaze. "I don't appreciate this, Tom. I'm sorry you got hurt, but I won't accept responsibility for it, and I won't thank you for it. I don't appreciate you coming in like some.... some big male champion, and...." The memory of the dream hit her like a physical blow. She shook her head, and managed to hold on. "And I don't appreciate you using violence," she said, almost defiantly. Again, a shadow flickered in his eyes. "You threatened him, yesterday, and again today." Last night, she had seen her people as a pack of dogs who would rip him apart at her command. His words _hurt_ her. Truth hurt her. "I didn't hurt him," she said, shutting her eyes against the memory. "No." Colton's voice gave nothing away. Irony, truth, or a question....? She couldn't say. "No." The gun in her hand repelled her, and tempted her. "No, I didn't." And in her peripheral vision she saw it.... A smile playing on Krycek's lips, barely there at all. In that moment, she knew that she had to kill him, or welcome him. Anything in between meant death. She looked at her gun. ****** She didn't need to dream to see the future. As the sunset faded from red to black, in her solitary place by the road, she half- shut her eyes and the images almost blinded her. How many would it take? Her gun at Krycek's throat..... That was one. Colton's fists bruising his jaw.... That was two. Her gun, shaking, aimed at his head across a cold crisp winter street.... That was three. Perhaps he planned to betray them anyway, but nothing could change that except to kill him. But if he was sincere.... If her presence in his dreams meant that he was one of hers....? How many more before they drove him away, and he went into the darkness and returned with force? A single gun, aimed but never fired, could change the future. "No," she whispered, and tried to forget him. There were orange streaks in the evening sky as well as black, and she stared at them, holding them close until they faded and were completely swallowed up in black. Right at the end, they shone. It was the smallest flicker of a time. ****** He was held down by rope, by chains, by wire, by soft leather restraints. But his vocal chords were ravaged and he could make no sound. Even to twitch his fingers was beyond his power. He couldn't even blink. His thoughts were his own, but they were muffling around the edges, slowly being smothered by a blanket. He screamed with all the strength of his fading mind. His body was on soft sheets, wrapped in warmth, sleeping. He _knew_ that. But his spirit.... His spirit was chained. For a month he had talked to her in his mind, imagining her words, seeing her face. In dreams - in the dreams that were not of _him_ - he had wandered free by the sea of home and had talked with her, held her, kissed her. There was not even the memory of the memory of her face. Without her memory, he might as well die. She was love, and life, and hope, and strength. She was a symbol of what he was fighting to preserve. She was Scully, and he couldn't find her. "Fox?" The chains tightened, and his spirit was bound, screaming, to his body, trapped forever in the here, in the now. It hurt worse than bleeding. "Fox? You're here, now. The time for dreams is over. Dreams brought you here, but now you _are_ here. No dreams, Fox." He licked his parched agonised lips. It was no more than a thought - a silent defiance. "Dreams let you escape. There is no escape. You gave her up, Fox. There is no going back." He was beyond screaming. The voice was a cruel whisper breath against his cheek, and claws in his shoulder. "I will forgive you only once, Fox. After that....?" After that....? When he woke up, his arms, his chest, his ankles were rubbed raw, and his throat was ravaged beyond speaking. ****** Seven nights, and she had heard it in a thousand different variations, always giving the same message. It was the voice that was not quite her own, growing angry, trying to shake her awake. Each time, she made herself believe it less. Dreams called her. Night-time was fractured by them; daytime was spent in a daze, trying to tell herself they had not been real. Sometimes she felt as if she was drifting away - that nothing was real. She had dreamed of people, and then she had met them, but that couldn't be true, and that couldn't be real. She had dreamed of the Dark Man, and that Mulder had gone to him, but that couldn't - _could not_ - be true, and that couldn't be real. She had dreamed that the blood shed in the night after Krycek's coming would kill them all, but that couldn't be true, and that couldn't be real. She was living a life that couldn't be real, drawn by impossible dreams to look after people she couldn't have known. They had expected her to look after them, and needed her, so she had done so. Once, her control weakened by Mulder's departure, she had admitted that she believed in the power of dreams, and that she had seen the Dark Man. Not now. Mulder had believed in dreams, and Mulder had left her. Belief had destroyed them. Her people needed help in getting the lights on, in keeping warm, and staying safe. They needed leadership, and support. Dazed, they needed a place to lick their wounds. "The Dark Man..." Colton spoke of him once, his voice scarcely above a whisper. "No-one talks about him, but I've asked around. They all know who I meant. Why don't they talk about him?" "Because he's not real," she said, sharply, struggling to focus on his face - a beacon of reality in the midst of dreams. "Remember how you were with Mulder? I thought you of all people would know that." "I...." He ran his finger up and down the arm of the chair, tracing invisible patterns. "I would never have thought... _this_.... could happen, and it did." "They were scared.... We all were." She dug her fingers into her palms. "We were facing something terrible, but it was a _thing_. It was the darkness, and then the disease. It had no face. People need to put a face to evil. It gives them something to fight." When she blinked, she saw Krycek's face, flashing against the brief darkness of her eye lids. When she opened her eyes, there was Colton's. "They saw it as a dark man," she continued, her voice tight. "You weren't here at the start, Tom, but I was. When they arrive, they all speak of him, but after they settle down, no-one says a word. He's the face of their fears, and, when they're here, they feel safe, so he no longer exists for them." "He exists." Krycek, on silent feet, a dark silhouette against the doorway. She started, tensed, but said nothing. "You know he exists. Why are you lying?" Colton inhaled sharply, but even he was still. She had expected to have to restrain him from attacking the man. "I'm not." She found the words hard to say. "What do you want? You want me to talk about him, and make my people live in terror again? They don't need that. I'd be betraying them if I did that." "Your people?" There was a strange note in Krycek's voice, as if he was teasing her, but with no humour in it. "Maybe you are." "I didn't want to lead them." She stood up, her eyes like fire. She could have screamed the words, and still meant them. "They asked me to. They needed me. I couldn't leave them, not after what they'd gone through." "They wanted a God-given leader who'd save them from Evil, Scully." Against the light, his face was dark and featureless. "You never believed that God chose you, did you, and now you don't believe in the Dark Man either. Can you say you're giving them what they want?" Colton bit his lip, but his eyes were shadowed, his brows thoughtful. "And you know what they want, Krycek?" She made no attempt to disguise the hatred. "Is that what you're here for - to whisper to them what they want, until they _do_ want it? To turn them against me?" "Does it matter if they turn against you, Scully?" His voice was soft. "Yes." It was like a bullet, sharp and cold. "Why?" She couldn't answer that. ******* And then the whispers started.... A man in the street with a gun at his side. "He said...." The bruised face of a man who'd drunk too much and smashed a window. "He said...." A child crying for her, then silenced by an adult. "He said...." She gathered them together, tense with restraint, and asked them, "Who? What did he say?" The man stroked his gun almost proudly. "He said there were too many of us, and we couldn't rely on you all the time. He said we had to learn to have our own laws, and our own law-enforcers. He said he trusted me - that you trusted me." She swallowed hard, but said nothing. The drunk rubbed his blackened jaw. "He said the law-enforcers were coming, but that, for now, he was the law. He hit me. I guess I deserved it. We're the good side, right?" "We're no side," she said, tersely. "We just are." The little girl was a child she had comforted many times after bad dreams. "The man said I couldn't come to you again. He said I had a new Mommy now, and she would look after me." The woman stroked her hair, and whispered words of comfort. She shut her eyes to steady herself, then was ready. "Who?" she asked, though, inside, there was another question. ****** "Why?" Her voice was a low hiss. She felt betrayed. She had _known_ that it would be Krycek's name on their lips. "I'm helping you, Dana." Tom Colton reached for her shoulder, but she shook him off, not caring if it looked petty and childish. "There are.... what? Well over a thousand people here? They look to you for too much. They have to learn to stand on their own feet, and fight." "It's too soon." It was hard to speak. Their eyes as they had spoken his name had hurt her deeply. "They depend on you too much, Dana." His voice was calm, patronising. "It was positively primitive - a thousand people looking to you as their leader, expecting you to do everything. We need government, law-enforcement.... We need order, and delegation. We need...." "They need to feel safe." It wasn't what she had wanted to say. "This makes them feel safe. They are learning that they can make a difference - that they needn't just be children, waiting for your command." Remembering the look of pride on the man's face as he had stroked his gun, she hated him. He was right - he was _partly_ right. His reasons were so wrong. "Why are you doing this, Tom?" she asked, suddenly. "You don't _care_ about them, do you? You just want to get in there at the start, so you can be in change. You're treating this like a case. You never cared about the victims, just about how fast you could move up the promotion ladder. Remember when we worked together on the Tooms case....?" "When I tried to help you save your career before Spooky Mulder ruined it for you?" She grasped him by the collar, face close to him, eyes flashing. "Don't you dare speak of him like that. Don't you _dare_." He held her gaze, and didn't back down. "I'm doing it for you, Dana, just like I did then. I can see how this is affecting you - the stress. They've been taking you for granted. I'm just trying to help." "I don't want your help." She pushed him away, and turned her back on him, her steps tight and angry. "I didn't want it then, and I didn't want it now. Have you ever met anything you didn't want to control, Tom?" "No." His voice was surprisingly quiet. "I like to be in control. Something like this scares me, because it's so.... there's no sense in it. I want to control it . So do you. Why are you leading them, otherwise?" She could feel his breath on the back on her neck. "I recognised that in you at the Academy." She clenched her fists. "I am _not_ like you." "You like order, control." It was little more than a whisper, like the sly sinuous voice of a tempter. "You need to excel at everything you do. You hate to show weakness. You hate things that you can't understand, and control." She bit her lip, fighting the urge to nod. "We're alike, Dana. I knew that from the start." "You...." She swallowed hard. "You want to control this - and me. You're arrogant, patronising. I.... Go away, Tom. Get out." But her voice was weary. She had no energy for a shout. "Why are you so angry at what I've done, Dana?" She wanted to press her hands over her ears and shut him out. How could he be right, yet, at the same time, wrong? "You're angry because _you're_ in it for the power, too. You hate leading them, but you wouldn't be without it." He touched the back of her neck with soft fingers. "I understand that, Dana. We can lead them together." "With you as the senior partner because you're a man?" Her voice was low and dangerous. Anger was welling up inside her, and she wanted to weep. She needed time alone to assess the truth of what he said, and to find a defence. "Does it matter?" Soft, unaware of the danger. His fingers crept forward. "I've wanted you since the Academy, Dana, but you were with Jack. I wanted you even as I hated how Mulder had.... led you astray." She licked her lips. "Wanted me?" His fingers at the base of her throat was his only answer. "Not love?" When she blinked, tears trickled from her eyes. Mulder had said he loved her, but had pulled away from their only kiss. One emotion was shallow; one was deep. She wanted both. "Does it matter?" His voice was quiet at her ear. "You've seen it in the people. Everyone finds someone. It's physical comfort and security.... maybe some passion. No-one expects love." More tears. "Dana?" And he was round in front of her, one hand pulling her face towards him, the other one touching the tears. "It's okay." And she woke up. Regret and guilt vanished, and there was only fury. "Don't _touch_ me," she shouted, and lashed blindly at his arms. "Leave me alone! You're arrogant. You're patronising me. You're.... I don't want this." "You do." He grabbed her wrist. "How can I believe what you say, because you're a hypocrite, Dana. I saw it that day, when you nearly killed Krycek. You love leading them. You love the power. You knew that you could kill him in cold-blood and that no-one would blame you, and you were tempted, Dana. I _know_ you were." "Leave me alone," she hissed. She couldn't answer his accusation and still look at him. "Admit it, Dana." She raised her chin defiantly. "Maybe I was, but I didn't do it. Temptation is nothing. Everyone is tempted by things they shouldn't do. It's giving in that matters. I didn't give in." He laughed, and it looked cruel to her. "You're so sure of your moral superiority, aren't you, Dana? You're just like you were then, on the Tooms case. You were so sure that you were right that it stopped you even caring when you ruined my chances at promotion. It took me three years to recover from that complaint you filed." "And this is your revenge?" She folded her arms, her voice cold. Inside, she was shaking. "You've come to ruin what I've got here?" He closed his eyes, and, for a moment, seemed small and scared. He ran a hand across his face. "No," he mouthed, and there was no sound to it. "No," he said, again. "_He's_ out there, and he'll need to be resisted. I believe that I can organise them to resist him. I believe that my training and experience and ability gives me that.... responsibility. But I do enjoy leading, and won't apologise for it." "Or to me?" She refused to soften. His words were a trick, designed to break her defences. "No." He touched her once on the cheek, then lowered his hand before she could hit it away. "Or to you. I made my offer...." "And I rejected." Cold. She _had_ to be. He had said too much. "Yes." He smiled, strange and strained. "And you rejected." ****** Frohike's face was pale, unshaven. "He killed someone today." He passed his hand across his face as if it would erase reality. "Executed them in public." His voice was like a challenge. "Oh." Mulder didn't look up. He was twisting the key in his hand, and his head was heavy. His dreams had been terrible, but, dreamless, he was lost. He was in a limbo of waiting, caught between the old world and the new, between Scully and Fry. "No trial." Frohike grabbed his arm, his fingers digging in hard. "Don't you care? This is the.... the _tyranny_ you've been fighting all this time. You fought for your truth for this?" Mulder's lips moved silently. He couldn't bring himself to meet the other man's eyes. "He's killing everyone who disagrees with him. He kills some of them for fun." Frohike's voice shook. "He _crucifies_ them." Mulder forced a smile, though no smile was sincere, now. "Then why hasn't he killed you?" "He will." There was no doubt in Frohike's voice. "He's waiting. He knows I'm no threat. He's brainwashed you, and nothing I say will change that." He allowed himself a spark of feeling. "He hasn't." His fingers drew comfort from the key. "I'm fighting the war, not serving him." "War?" Frohike laughed bitterly. His voice was loud, now, always, as if defying Fry to punish him. "What war?" "It's coming." He closed his eyes, and longed for it. The inactivity made him want to scream. Always a smile, but a threat beneath the smile. "It's coming soon." The metal dug into his clenched fist. ****** The war began with a whisper in the darkness, and swelled for a muttering chorus. Since that first night, no blood was shed. "Scully." She stiffened. Simply hearing Krycek's voice reminded her of the temptation, and how close she had come to killing him. It was a battle not yet won. "Have you heard them, Scully?" His voice was always unreadable. At times, he seemed to watch them all with an amused detachment, though there was no humour in his voice now. "What?" Sharp. She had been sorting out medical supplies, and a bottle shook and spilled. "They're talking about him." She didn't need to ask who. "He doesn't...." "He does." He exhaled heavily, almost pitying. "They're talking about him, and they're afraid." She closed her eyes. She should have known, but she was so weary of bearing their pain, so anxious not to prove Colton right. "Oh," she said, simply, non-committally. He cleared his throat. "They're beginning to wonder why you're not doing anything about him. They're beginning to voice.... objections." "You're pleased about that." Not a question, but she couldn't let herself hate him, not with her gun close by. He paused, as if judging his words carefully. "I believe that we should do something about him, yes." "What can we do against someone like that?" she asked, quick and desperate, then clenched her fists tight. They were shaking. "If he exists." "Nothing is beyond hope, Scully." There was a strange note in his voice - something close to pride. "I've been betrayed and hurt, Scully. I've been on the run. I've faced death. But I've never given up hope - I've never stopped fighting." It hurt her like a physical ache, the similarity to Mulder. Silhouetted against the light, he could have been anyone, but it was Mulder's steel she felt. The hatred stirred again, that it was not him. She moistened her dry lips. His head was on one side, and he was watching her. She knew her face had shown more than she had wanted. "You sound like Mulder," she said, her struggling to sound indifferent. "He needed to fight. It took him to.... to the north," she finished, bleakly. Krycek raised a hand to his face as if he had a headache. "I always understood Mulder." She swallowed hard. "It might have killed him. I.... I want to forget that - what he said. I just want to fight to.... to live.... to be happy. We've lost so much. We don't need a war." "Maybe we have no choice." He stepped forward, dark against the window. "Maybe it's already begun." She resisted the urge to step back. "It's...." "It's Colton, Scully. It's him." ****** Dreams echoed the truth of her day. "Dana...." An old man, his hand pointing accusingly. "He's coming, Dana. Why have you betrayed us? Tom says he'll protect us." She lashed her head against the pillow, but the hand held her paralysed as it pointed. "I'm scared, Dana...." A small girl with blonde hair - Bethany, the first. "He's coming for me. He's coming. Why won't you stop him? Agent Colton says you don't care." The right words died on her lips. "He's coming." Tom Colton's face was arrogant and smug with hatred. "He's coming, and she doesn't care. She won't stop him, and you're all going to die. But _I_ can stop him. Let _me_ lead you, and everything will be okay." The very air seemed to laugh, and the wind sighed with the longing "yesss" of a thousand people. And Richard Fry was in Colton's eyes. ****** He was trapped - held by bonds of obligation and need. There was no water to quench his thirst. He had parted from Scully; he had sacrificed part of himself, and all for the cause. The cause. "I want to fight them." He held the key, cold in his hands. It was always cold, or maybe it was his flesh that was always fevered. His mind was. Richard Fry blinked slowly. His mouth curled at the corners in something that could have been a smile "You do?" He held tighter, knowing he was playing a dangerous game. He had never thought Fry a safe man. In this world, safe men got nowhere. "Yes." He raised his chin, held the other man's gaze. "Where are they? Why aren't we fighting them?" Fry spread his hands in a placating gesture. "We will. Spring comes late up here, but, when it comes, we will destroy the enemy utterly. Maybe they'll fight back, a little. Maybe you'll die? Can you take that, Fox?" Anger flared. "You know I can." He had accepted he would probably die, one cold January dawn. Part of him _had_ died then. He had murdered it himself. "Why wait?" Fry chuckled, his fingers closing round Mulder's chin. They were soft, almost loving, yet they hurt. "In a hurry to die?" "I...." He swallowed hard. He said nothing. Fry's eyes flickered and darkened, as if he could hear every unspoken word, but he smiled. "You want to fight, Fox?" His fingers tightened, and, for a moment, Mulder couldn't breathe. "Then I have a mission for you." He stressed the word 'mission', imbuing it with light sarcasm. "You can start killing." It was what he had wanted, but.... "But, Fox?" He smiled, his face aching with the strain of it. "Tell me how." ****** Spring came late, but it came. It was a soft morning in mid-March before she realised that the winter was over. "Okay, Colton." She was carried on the wings of her anger, striding up to him as he addressed a crowd. "You want me to do something about him?" "Dana." His face twisted with contempt. His voice was loud, speaking to the audience. "You're just saying it. I'm challenging your leadership, so you make empty promises." "I'm...." Then she lowered her voice, refusing to play his game. She found it hard to look at the crowd and see the confusion where once there had been worship. "Damn it, Colton. There's too much at stake here to play politics." "Too much at stake?" It was an exaggerated echo of her own words. "You don't believe in him, Dana. You never did." "I...." She clenched her fists. Once, she had told Mulder she believed. Afterwards, she had refused to believe. Neither had been the whole truth. "If they believe in him, then I will act upon their.... their fear. If they want something done about him, then I will give them what they want." Colton laughed, cruel and harsh. "You don't understand any of it, do you, Dana?" She had had nearly three months of dreams, and she wore a cross round her neck. "I..." Fingers tightening on the cross. "I understand." But she knew that if she let herself understand fully, she would go mad with terror. She had heard the merest whisper of footsteps in her dreams as he came for her, and it was been terrible. Colton stepped close and grabbed her chin between two fingers, pulling her face close to his. She refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing her fight, but held his gaze unblinking. "Can we win, Dana? Can we?" She raised her chin sharply, and his hand fell away. She attempted a confidence - a truce. "I don't know." It haunted her - a possibility of failure in a war she wasn't sure she believed in. It haunted her still as he turned and walked away. ****** A man in the shadows as she pulled off her coat, rubbed a hand across her brow.... "How will you act, Scully?" Her head jerked up. The dark eyes of her enemy made her thoughts crystallise into a plan she hadn't realised she had made. "I'm going north." No. He shook his head, slow and silent. "Why not, Krycek?" She still wore her gun by her side, and was intensely aware of it. He blinked. "Why?" She sighed. She hated him. He would kill her, or she would kill him. She hated him, but she respected his judgement. He had survived in a dangerous web of conspiracy. He understood things. In a strange way, she needed to talk. She began slowly. "Because...." Her fingers dug into her eyes, rubbing deeply. "I _think_ I believe in him. I need to see for myself. If we are to prepare for war against him, we need to know what we're facing." "Even if you saw him, would you believe?" His lips curled in detached mockery. She held his gaze unblinking. "I've changed since you knew me, Krycek. I'm willing to believe.... things." It was hard. It was like arguing with Mulder again. "I don't believe easily, but I can believe. But even if there was no doubt about his existence, we'd need information." Yes. Again, silent. He nodded, slow and firm. "So I'm going." There was fire in her eyes, and even hope. "No." This time he spoke, and his eyes were almost tender. she thought, tensing. "You can't go. Leave Colton in charge? They need you here." She couldn't speak. To leave their love and worship - the embrace of their community.... To travel alone and be the only one alive for a hundred miles.... Being needed was a terrible, smothering responsibility, but a comfort too, sometimes. "They dreamed of you, Scully." His eyes flickered to the floor, as if ashamed, then back to hers, defiant. "_I_ dreamed of you, Scully. I wasn't myself in my dreams. Our history together was nothing. I didn't even recognise you until I woke up. In my dream, I just felt.... safe. They still have that. They still need you." "So I'm a prisoner?" Her voice rose, sharp with suspicion. "You're using guilt to make me stay here. Why?" His sudden anger matched hers. "Damn it, Scully, you _want_ to stay. Colton was right. You _like_ leading them. It makes you feel good." He was too close to the voice of her own conscience. It wasn't wholly true, but she couldn't deny it, not completely. "You think I'm doing all this for myself - as some power trip?" He breathed out, long and slow. "No." He shook his head. "No, or you would have noticed." "What?" Sharp, wary. She reminded herself of the feel of her gun. "They're growing, Scully. They still need you, but they're doing things for themselves. They're making progress on getting the power back on. They're talking about committees, and schools. They're...." "Colton?" He shrugged. "Partly. It would have happened anyway." His sudden smile was incongruous. "If you were in it for the power, you would have noticed - you would have fought to stop it." "I..." She frowned. February had slipped into March, lost in thoughts of Mulder, and fighting thoughts of a man she would not name. The people had become a faceless mass to her, less real to her than the memory of a man she might never see again. He took a step forward. "You should notice them, Scully. You should think of them. Do you really need to see that the Dark Man exists for _them_, or for yourself?" His eyes were strange, intense. "What would you do? Prove it to yourself and come back to find it was all too late for them? They need a leader who will act on faith - who will protect them from the threat _before_ it shows itself." "Faith?" She gave a harsh laugh. It was all she could do. It was surreal - Alex Krycek as her moral conscience. "Why did they all dream of the only person amongst them who can't just _believe_? Why not....?" she finished, silently, and had to blink hard against the stinging tears that welled in her eyes. Mulder had believed so easily from the start, and had needed so badly to fight, yet he had gone. He was silent. If he had an answer, he didn't say it. She sighed, weary in every bone. "Why are you here, Krycek, really?" He laughed. "You mean, why, in this epic battle between good and evil, I'm on the side of the good?" But his voice was serious beneath the irony. "Were you with them when they started all this?" She kept her voice like steel. "I knew of it." His voice was level, without apology, without justification. "I knew it was coming, and why. I knew their reasons. Some of them I agreed with." She flashed to a memory of their old enemy, reeking of alcohol and cigarette smoke, babbling of deals to save the world from the colonists, mourning betrayal. She hadn't hated him at the very end. "Perhaps they had their reasons," she said, her voice measured. "Perhaps they thought they were doing right. But you weren't even consistent, Krycek. You changed sides. You betrayed everyone. You can't pretend you were working for a cause. You were working only for yourself. I can't forgive that, Krycek." There was a spark of real anger in his eyes. "I don't need your forgiveness, Scully. I don't need to defend myself." Then he gave a curious half-smile. "Perhaps I do. I worked for myself, Scully, but so did you - so did Mulder. He would have betrayed any noble cause in return for news of his sister, or to keep you safe. And you.... You can't pretend that you mourn the loss of all these billions of people as much as you mourn the loss of...." she snapped with her thoughts, desperate, and he stopped. She regretted it at once, knowing he had seen her weakness. "Yes." He smiled, and again they seemed to connect in some strange way she couldn't understand. She had felt occasional sparks of closeness with everyone who claimed to have dreamed of her. "Yes, I worked for myself, and I did some things that are considered wrong. I _like_ working alone. I answered to a superior once and he tried to kill me. This Dark Man.... He reminds me of him. I don't want to serve under a dictator." She tried to laugh, bitterly. "So I can expect an influx of criminals who hate authority, and you're the first? Like delinquent pupils seeking out the soft teacher who can't keep control?" "Scully." He shook his head, and it was almost fond. She hated him all over again for that. "Why are you here, Krycek?" She tried again, folding her arms on her chest. "Why are you here today? To stop me from going? Why?" "To go myself. To go north as a spy, and see what I can find out about him." For a moment, she couldn't breathe. Her face was a mask, but inside she was astonished. "Why should I trust you?" she said, at last, and her voice stayed level. "You can't," he said, simply. "You have to." "Why?" She didn't relent. His face flickered, as if he was almost hurt. "I can't tell you. The arguments need to be your own. Anything I say, you'll want to believe the opposite." "You want to go?" She pressed her face into her hands, her fingers digging into her brow, then lowered them again, all outward composure. "You've been here.... a month? I know you've been watching people - listening. And now you want to go to him." He nodded. His eyes dared her to stop him. ****** She went to him, alone in the night. Her gun was in her pocket. He would see an empty belt, but she wouldn't - couldn't - let herself trust him utterly. "Go," she said, simply. Krycek's face was pale in the moonlight. "Now." "Yes." She had dreamed again, and seen _him_. When she had wakened, her heart beating fast, there had been a black feather on her window sill, and the memory of terror in her heart. "Why?" She closed her eyes. "I don't trust you, but I have no choice." The feather was still there, black against grey. She hadn't been able to bring herself to touch it. "I think he knows all he needs to know about us. I don't think there's anything you could tell him that he doesn't know. _If_ he exists...." He laughed, but she could hear the tension in it. "Always the doubter, Scully." "I...." She let herself see again, and his eyes were bright points of light, reflecting in the dark. "You have the most chance of fooling him. If he knows our history, he'll believe what you tell him." "That I was only here to betray you? That you threw me out? That I know your weak spot and how you can be defeated?" She shivered, and nearly reached for the gun and finished it right there. "Would you?" He paused. "I can make something up," he said, at last. "I will hope not to meet him. I think...." His feet padded softly on the floor. His voice was slow and thoughtful. "I think that if I meet him, I will die." She nodded, glad that he couldn't see her face. "You'd like that, Scully?" And suddenly he was closer than she had thought, his voice dangerous, his breath audible. "Is that why you're sending me? I'm the expendable one, and, if he kills me, he'll be doing you a favour?" She tried not to think of Melissa, dead in the hospital. She tried not to think of the part of her that had wanted him dead - that, even now, made her finger itch to feel the trigger. "It's part of it, isn't it, Scully?" Soft. He sighed, sounding more subdued than angry. She raised her chin. "Not all." ****** He left, alone, into the night, and she did something she had never expected. She wept. ****** "Where have you been?" Tom Colton's voice was high and tight. He was framed against the moonlight in the window of her bedroom. He was twisting something round and round in his hands. Scully ran the back of her hand across her eyes. Instinct was to say nothing, but he would find out soon enough. "Krycek's gone," she said, and tried to sound angry. "He was making trouble. I told him to go." "With your gun?" She could hear the sneer in his voice. "The way you could threaten to kill him yourself, but thought I was wrong just to hit him?" "He's gone, Colton." She pulled her coat closely around her body. Even in spring, the nights were still cold, but it was not for warmth that she did it. "He was.... stirring things. We don't need that - not now." He stepped forward - almost pounced. "Is that a threat?" It _had_ been, in a way. She said nothing, letting him read the truth for himself. She felt drained dry by the emotions of the evening, and he wasn't worth the effort. "Are you sure you didn't just kill him?" She could feel his breath, and smell it. He had been drinking, though he was being himself. He wasn't drunk. "Though he'll die out there by himself, won't he? At least _he_ cares for his people." She closed her eyes for a moment, steadying herself. "Maybe you should go to him, if you feel like that." And he came out of the darkness, sudden and unexpected. One hand clamped round the back of her neck, holding her, while the other cupped her chin. His lips pressed against hers in something that was all anger, not at all love. For a moment she stood, not fighting, not responding. Part of her had felt detached from reality for.... "Dana," he sighed, into her mouth. The hand behind her neck moved higher, the fingers twisting into her hair. His body pressed close against hers, hard and insistent. His strength was pushing her towards the bed. She needed to fight; she couldn't let show fear. With cold anger, and a strange absence of fear, she pulled her head back, fighting the hand that resisted. "No," she said, her voice like a stone, cold and hard. But she let her hand run down his body. It was trapped between her body and his, unable to move away. She did what she could, and moved downwards. He sighed. It was almost a moan. "No," she said, again. She found what she was looking for, and twisted her hand, sharp and sudden. "I've got a gun, Tom." It was all cool soothing metal in her palm, and her finger was on the trigger. "Kill me." He laughed, and she felt something wet drip onto her face from his. "Kill me. I'll have won." "I will." It was like some terrible warped lovers' embrace. Still he held her, but her head was pulled back, her eyes like fire, a gun pressed against his body. "Look at yourself, Dana." She knew what he meant. "I said no, Tom." Her voice was cold, though inside she was shaking. "It counts as assault. It would be self-defence, even in the.... even before." "I...." His shoulders seemed to heave in the darkness. He was crying, though she refused to soften. "Let me go, Tom." It was an icy whisper, and she pressed the gun into stomach. "I've killed before. You know I have." And his hands left her. "Go." She was glad of the darkness. Her face couldn't disguise her feelings, not any longer. Fear, revulsion, and dread. The world had made it so easy to commit murder with impunity. There was no law, now. The rulers of the old world had become the worst murderers of all. It was easy - tempting - to say that one more death made no difference. She hated what she saw in herself. "It's not over, Dana." His steps dragged, but his voice was defiant. "This isn't over." And she knew there was no way it could end well, for any of them. ******* "Mulder?" A hiss at his shoulder. Fingers white on the long guns flanking him. "Mulder? Let's go." He opened his mouth, but couldn't speak. He was frozen in time, kneeling in the snow, watching. His blood felt like ice, though the gun in his hands burnt him. "Mulder?" Angry. There were a dozen men with him, placed under his command. They were waiting for his order, and his order.... His order.... The words - his conscience, or Fry's voice - hurt like a slap. Ignorant of their impending deaths, the small group of people huddled. The hum of their conversation came in snatches in the wind, though no words could be made out. There were six of them, settled in a small town's hotel. He could tell they were joined by the unbreakable bond of shared tragedy and fear. When one of them moved away, the others stiffened, as if lessened somehow. "Close." The man beside him chuckled, whisper-quiet. "Shall we kill them one by one? Let them suffer each other's death?" Mulder bit his lip. "They'll look human, Fox." Fry had handed him his gun personally, like a king honouring a favoured knight. His eyes had been solemn. "They'll looked scared. They're aliens - morphs. They know we're coming for them - that we'll kill them." "Back of the neck?" One hand on the gun, the other on the key. Fry had paused for a moment, frowning slightly, then had shaken his head. "That was their warrior caste, their bounty hunters. These are the ordinary colonists. They can be killed just as...." A smile - maybe a threat. "Just as you can." "But their blood is still toxic?" He'd rubbed his eyes. They still ached sometimes, in full sunlight, though a month had passed. Fry's eyes had flashed fire, sudden and terrible. "Are you scared, Fox?" "No." He'd raised his head, stood his ground. It was true. To die fighting didn't scare him, though some deep strange dread was keeping him awake constantly, eating away at him like a cancer. Since he'd stopped dreaming, sleep had stopped refreshing him, and the world had grown strange. "Then go." He'd nodded, and come, and he _could not do it_. "Mulder?" A jab in the ribs. The men under his command were dangerous - all of them. One boasted of having been 'liberated' from prison where he had been serving a life sentence. His lips moved silently, desperately. He wanted to weep, to shout at the sky. "Mulder?" A click, and he knew that at least one of the guns was turned on him. "They're going in. It's got to be now." Bullets from nowhere, scattering them. Their fear as their friends died, then pain as they did. Their fear no less real for all their green blood.... A million million people, coughing blood, and dying. A girl without a mother; a wife without a husband. A world decaying, unburied, because of _them_.... It would be in cold blood. It would be murder. Slowly, slowly, doubting even as he did it, he laid his gun down in the mud-mixed snow, and shut his eyes. All around him, guns cracked, and the air was thick with screaming and the bitter smell of powder. He sank forward onto his hands, and they were wet. It was snow and mud, but he knew it should be blood. Green or red, both. He had failed. ****** "You failed me." Quiet, Fry's anger was terrifying. It was like the gentle caress of a knife blade on his spine. Mulder nodded, offering no defence. He had no reason he could be proud of. He believed that fighting was right, but he had failed to fight. "What was it, Fox?" Fry circled him slowly, like in a dance, winding closer and closer. When he got to him, he would.... what? "An attack of conscience?" "No." He jerked his head back abruptly, the word snapping out like a reflex, as if conscience was something to be ashamed of. "Cowardice?" A sinuous whisper, behind him now. He shook his head. "I...." He reached for the key - his instinct of comfort - then snatched his hand away. It's icy touch could burn, sometimes, and now it felt heavy as a lead weight, its chain digging into his skin. It had ways of telling him when he didn't deserve it. "I just thought there were other ways," he said, at last. "Telling me what to do now, Fox?" Fry's voice was dangerous, but still his eyes glinted with something that could have been humour. "I can hurt you." "I know." He nodded, licked his lips, then nodded again. His mouth was dry. "I want to fight...." He clenched his fists, his right hand feeling empty without gun or key. "I can kill them in battle, but that was murder. I can kill them, but I can't enjoy it." Fry shook his head fondly. "Enjoyment is a luxury, Fox. Remorse is a luxury, too. Morals have their place in peace time, but this is war." "You want me to become an emotionless automaton? I can't _do_ that." It was a revelation, of a sort. He had been trying. For a month, he had been trying. Like a snake shedding his skin, he had tried to leave his emotions with Scully. "It wins wars, Fox." He almost sobbed. "I'm fighting for humanity. I want to stay human." Fry's breath stroked the back of his neck. "You are the sacrifice, Fox. You accepted that." He breathed deeply to avoid falling. "I sacrificed humanity to serve you." He wasn't sure if it was a question or a statement of something he had always known. "I sacrificed love." "You will forget all feeling, so that others can feel." It was like reciting a litany, solemn like a mass. "There is no room for remorse, or mercy, or squeamishness. You will do things that will haunt you forever. You will lose the ability to feel.... and to be happy. You will do it all so that the enemy will be defeated." "And everyone else will be free to live, and love, and be happy." Tears were pouring down his face, but there was only the faintest crack in his voice. He felt half in a trance, as if the words were not his own. "I am the sacrifice." "Yes." "But...." It was almost a physical effort to pull himself away, to object. In that moment, with some premonition he couldn't understand, he fully expected to die. His words were strangled, and it was hard to breath. "Hope," he managed. Only, "hope." An emotion. It had been a desperate need, an almost physical hunger. Emotion had drawn him to Fry as much as emotion had tried to keep him bound to Scully. Hope - his grail. Fry shook his head, his eyes sorrowful. "Not for you, Fox." He tried to think of Scully grieving, but couldn't find her face. "You're killing me for failing?" Fry laughed, and, like everything about him, it was terrible yet beautiful. "Not this time, Fox. You won't fail me again?" He raised his hand slowly, palms towards him. He still felt that they ran with blood - red blood. "Not morphs, then. Collaborators," Fry had said, shrugging it away. And he shook his head, but still he dared. "Not you. I'm doing it for...." he thought. "The cause," he said, knowing that the smile in Fry's eyes made it sound tawdry and hollow. "Not you." And he smiled, and, even though he expected to die, he felt liberated. ****** It would be her last day alive. Tom Colton smiled, and nestled the gun closer into his lap. Spring grass was growing long in the once well-tended park, and he was well-hidden. He could see, and not be seen. Perhaps he would let her see him before she died. He would stand alone, and would take control. They would listen to his bullets. He would be recognised. He would make a difference. It was what he craved; it was what she deserved. He laughed, ashamed to find it was closer to tears. She had excluded him from his rightful place in the Bureau, betraying him for Spooky Mulder, and now she had excluded him from his rightful place in the community. She had excluded him from warmth, and friendship. Wanting her, there had been no-one else for him this last month. His nights had been lonely and racked with dreams. The dreams no longer scared him. The Dark Man's features had been terrible, but now they were strong, and they were welcoming him. Killing her, though, was his own idea. At the end of one life and the start of another, he would be master of his own destiny. Alone in the grass, he waited. ****** The feather haunted her. Colton's parting words to her. But she hadn't seen him, not for nearly a week, now. Others had seen him, but not her. She tried to tell herself that he'd decided to let it go, but.... The morning after his assault, she had found the black feather, lying where he had let it fall. Standing in the window, he had been twisting something again and again in his hand, as if mesmerised. The feather. ****** She was in a group of people, her hair burning in the sunlight, her face set. He hesitated but for a moment, then: Screaming, crying - anything but the calm reason he would have wished for this moment.... "I'm in control now...." Incoherent words, hoarse and shrieking. "Me...." And then he raised the gun and let it fire on her group, again and again, until there was nothing in his ears but the never-ending crackling roar of the bullets. He didn't hear them scream, but he saw the blood, and saw that, in the end, no-one was moving. His eyes could barely focus, but he saw _that_. Face streaked with tears and powder, Colton walked away. Part of him knew that, if he let himself see her dead face, he would regret, and it was no time for regrets. He had won. But he wept, still. ****** "Scully's dead." It was without preamble. Afterwards, when he could think at all, he thought there had been malice in those ever-changing blue eyes. It was all he could do to stop falling. He groped for the support of something solid, found it missing, and staggered. For a moment he flashed on the memory of her still form in a hospital bed, but he still couldn't find her face. "How?" He didn't question how Fry could know this thing. He would deny the reality and the rightness, and scream to the sky with his denial, but he wouldn't doubt the truth. "Murder." "Who?" His face was a mask. Inside he was drowning in a black void. He had been shot before, and the pain had drowned all rational thought, all attempt to pin the pain down to a single spot. It had been everywhere, and everything. He was shot now. "An old enemy." "Who?" Hatred was his one light, and the need for revenge. He had known that he might die, but _she_ had been safe. He had wept, on that long journey, at the grief she would suffer if he didn't return. "A man." Fry's thumb ran down Mulder's cheek, tracing the course of the tears he should have been shedding. But he was without tears. Why? "He's coming here." Fry's voice lowered to a whisper, dark with intent. "He's on his way." He stepped back sharply. "You'd accept him? A murderer?" "We need all the hands we can get in war." Fry shrugged, with no sign on shame or apology. "We have murderers already. They kill the enemy with fewer qualms. They serve the...." His lips curled. "The cause." His hands were shaking. "I serve the cause." The word felt like sweet-tasting poison. "It's to.... to avenge murder. It's to make the world safe." "Noble." Fry shrugged, as if dismissing him. "Stupid. Naive. You're like a hero from a comic book, Fox." "I...." He blinked, half expecting the burn of tears, but he didn't even have to fight them. He was dry - dried by a month of waiting and forcing himself not to feel. "I don't...." "There's a man coming." Fry's voice was oh so casual. He turned his back and walked away, pouring himself a drink. "I want you to intercept him. I want you to do what is necessary." A man? He clenched his fists, nails driving into his palms. Hatred was the only refuge against despair. "To do what I like?" "What is right." Amber liquid shone in clear glass. ****** Slowly, the man turned, his hands raised above his head. Mulder felt the comfort of a dozen armed men behind him, but this kill would be his own. "Mulder." "Krycek." Hatred blinded him. He swung his fists in a wild haze of fury. Some found their target and some did not. He had thought to find joy in hurting him, but no amount of blows could ease the pain of loss. Bereft, though, he carried on hitting him. He could see no other way to act. Nothing would make it better for him, or bring her back, but he could make her killer suffer. He paused for breath, gasping great painful heaves of air, his knuckles stinging. His gun lay fallen in the road, cast aside as he had run. He had wanted to _feel_ the man's death against his naked hands, not entrust it to some impersonal piece of metal. "I'll kill you, Krycek." "Mulder." Krycek licked his lips, smearing the blood there. "Do you come from him?" He nursed his fist in his hand, gathering strength. "Did you kill her, Krycek? Did you kill Scully?" A shadow passed over Krycek's face. He licked his lips again. "Would you believe me if I said no?" He grabbed Krycek by the collar, pulling him close, twisting away his breath. "Are you saying no?" Krycek nodded slowly. He was having trouble breathing, but showed no pleading on his face. "What's that supposed to mean?" They were face to face - light to dark - and one would die. Part of him had known, ever since, dazed with drugs, he had held the other man at gun point, that it would end like this. It had been like a dance - two men coming together again and again, holding each other at gun point, hurting each other. One of them was always going to die. "I didn't. I was with her until a week ago, in Virginia." Mulder relaxed his hold enough to let the enemy speak. Krycek swallowed painfully a few times, then continued. "Are you sure she's dead?" He nodded. He clung to the anger as an anchor in a sea of grief. Without it, he would have nothing. "I'm sorry." Krycek's lips moved - hollow words Mulder knew he didn't mean. He didn't question how Mulder knew. "Colton." "Tom Colton?" He swung his hand, catching Krycek across the cheek with the back of his hand. It was a blind blow, without thought, and it stung. "Why are you here, Krycek?" Krycek blinked, and raised one hand to his cheek. "You come from him?" he asked, again, but didn't wait for an answer. "Then he knows." He let out a deep breath, and seemed to shrink. There was defeat in the slump of his shoulders, though his eyes were still proud, defiant. "Tell me." A low growl. "Why are you here?" Krycek gave a strange laugh - the laugh of a man who has nothing to lose and who, dying, can only laugh, or despair. "What can I say, Mulder? If I tell the truth, you'll kill me for him. If I say my lie, you'll kill me for her." Then all laughter fell away, and, for the first time, he looked truly scared. His voice was hollow. "_He knows._" "I don't." Krycek's eyes flickered past him for a second. Following his gaze, Mulder saw his own gun, lying discarded on the road. For the first time he wondered if Krycek was armed, too - if he had a gun, or a knife, concealed in his pocket. One of them would die. He hadn't doubted that it would be Krycek, but.... He swallowed hard, and turned back fiercely to his enemy. "I'll kill you anyway, Krycek." He memorised the position of the gun, ready to reach for it in an instant. They could both die. It would be fitting. "Or he will." Krycek knew his death was coming. It was visible in his eyes, in his voice. He was a condemned prisoner, determined to die well. "But you, Mulder?" He smiled, wryly, incongruously. "I'm a spy. I came from Scully to find out his strengths and weaknesses, so we could learn how to destroy him. I was a spy. I've been living with Scully, observing her strengths and weaknesses, and I came to tell him, so he could destroy her." He recited it on a monotone, without emotion. "One is the truth. Which will you kill me for?" He smashed his fist into Krycek's face, deriving no pleasure from his grunt of agony. "You're lying," he hissed. "He doesn't.... He was never fighting her." Krycek's face seemed to shed layers. The bravado fell away, and the show of facing death without caring. What was left was scared, intense. "Wake up, Mulder. _Wake up._" Mulder pounced like a snake. In an instant, the gun was in his hand, and was pressed into Krycek's stomach. He sought the trigger and found it, his finger trembling. "I'm going to kill you, Krycek." Krycek swallowed. "Who for? For him? For her? For yourself?" He shook his head, but there was no pleading in his eyes. "Not for her, Mulder - not for you. This would be for no-one but him." Mulder moistened his lips. "For myself," he said, then felt a stab of shame. It was not for himself. Any pleasure he would derive would be guilty, even obscene. Killing the enemy was a duty. "For the world," he said, at last. Krycek laughed. Even in the face of death, he laughed. "Still naive, Mulder - still the hopelessly idealistic fool. You would always do anything, follow anybody, if they as much as whispered your magic word 'truth'. Do you want to save the world, Mulder? Was that it all along?" He tightened his finger on the trigger, face twisting with anger. "Shut up!" For the first time he was aware of the ring of silent watchers, guns trained on.... what? Krycek's head? His head? It had gone too far for him to be sure. He had failed Fry before, and this could be his punishment. Krycek's voice lowered to a whisper. "If you kill me you'll.... It won't make any difference to the cause. I can't pretend I'm that important, and...". He nodded over Mulder's shoulder. "And they'd kill me anyway, if you didn't. But would it make a difference to you? Would it change you?" "My soul, Krycek?" He laughed, recognising the sound as closer to tears - tears he hadn't yet shed for her. "As if you cared...." "She would." "Don't...." Tears blinded him, and his chest convulsed. One strong emotion fed another, and hatred spilled over into grief. "Don't.... Don't use her. Don't you _dare_ use her...." He pulled the trigger. ****** He had lost her first. Afterwards, as he stared, through eyes that could barely see through tears, at his own unmoving blood-covered hand, held up like some warped exhibit in a museum, he knew he had lost himself. He had done what he had been sent to do, but he had failed. He had failed. ****** End of part 1 ****** An injured man by the road-side. His body was broken; his vision pulsing between mist and darkness like some nightmare vision. He couldn't move his head. He saw one thing, and one thing only. A tree, and a bird. There were no leaves on the tree. Bare branches like fingers reached for the cold blue sky, and no birds sang. Silent on a branch, a single crow watched him. Tom Colton's dry lips moved slowly, encrusted with blood. "He's coming." His left arm could move, and little else. He reached with one finger, stroking again the gun. On the bike, he had carried it in the crook of his arm, nursing it like a baby. As he had flown through the air, he had had time to see it, arching as in graceful slow-motion against the blue sky, and had heard it land. He blinked, and passed his tongue over his lips, tasting iron. "He's coming," he murmured again. "He won't leave me." He had always known he was important. In his dreams at the end, the Dark Man had welcomed him, smiling, promising him glory. He had killed Scully.... "I killed Scully." It was the pain in his body that spoke, and the pain that made him weep. As tears melted the dried blood on his face, the crow opened its beak and gave a single harsh cry. It chilled him. The gun again. He ran a shaking fingers along its barrel, tracing the course to the trigger. In his mind were two images - Scully falling, and the gun, gracefully somersaulting through the air to land, as if guided, by his hand. As if guided..... The gun was a choice. It was days of pain, and a slow death, hidden in the undergrowth by a road in a country full of the dead, or it was.... what? Escape? He pushed it away with all his strength, though the effort made him want to scream. "He's coming." This time he found a voice - a hoarse croak. It was the most important thing. "He's coming." He was important. The Dark Man would come for him, and save him. If he ended it now, he would be as bad as Scully was, denying his importance. It would be admitting defeat. It would be admitting that no-one cared enough to save him. He had killed Scully for that belief, and now he would live for that belief. "I'll live." He smiled, a skull-like smile at the empty air. "I'll live for him, and he will come." A shadow passed over him, then was gone. He heard the whisper sounds of a bird flying, and then nothing. He saw one thing, and one thing only. A tree, with naked branches clawing the sky, and nothing alive on it at all. Nothing. ****** Dana Scully had seen the face of her murderer. In the split second before the sound of the first bullet, something had made her look up, and she had seen him, his eyes wild with hatred and madness. If it was a premonition, it was a poor one. She hadn't even had time to reach for her gun, to fire back. "He killed all of us," she said, suddenly, the morning after that unforgettable March noon-time. She raised her hand to her aching head. "Something's died. We can't be the same." <_I_ can't be the same> she added. She had changed so much in the past three months, and they grew no less painful each time. He had thrown her past into question, as well as the future. "We've lost our innocence," the man beside her said. John Prior, his name was. He had been one of the first to arrive in their community, but she had seldom noticed him. Only Krycek and Colton, the people from the time before, had seemed real to her. He passed a hand across his eyes, as if wiping tears. "We thought we were safe here. We thought evil was something else - something _not here_." She had fallen with the rest, struck on the forehead by a chip of stone, and her vision had sheeted red. Yet she had lived. A miracle, some of them were saying, but how could it be a miracle when four had died, and three more had been injured? Prior leant forward, his eyes pleading. "Did he do it for _him_? He did?" She hesitated, then decided. "Tell them that." It was easier that way - easier to believe that Tom Colton had been in serving the Dark Man - but she knew the untruth of it. He had been afraid, jealous and full of hate, and she, perhaps, had pushed him over the edge. His was the evil inside everyone. The people would learn that soon, if they lived. They would have to face crime, and murder, and hate. It was inevitable. They were human. Prior exhaled, long and weary. "We thought nothing could touch us, here. We thought the dying, the suffering, was over. We were the survivors, bound together by dreams. It was like.... like an idealised sixties commune, to us. We were like children." "I let you be children." She sighed. It was strange, talking like this to a stranger, but they had all gone through for concealment. "I took on too much. I resented it, but I did it anyway. I think I needed to be a martyr - needed it. It made me feel in control. This...." She gestured with her hands, encompassing the world. "This was beyond all control. I could be a victim, or I could lead." "You gave us what we needed." She nodded, accepting it without pride. "Not what you need, now." She grabbed his wrist. "I was wrong. About Colton and the Dark Man.... Tell them the truth. They need to know." He smiled, sadly. "They need to grow up?" She nodded ruefully, still hating the responsibility she had for these people. "Lead them, John. Organise elections. Set up a governing committee, and laws." She touched her gun, remembering. "I could have murdered - I was tempted - and no-one would have punished me. That can't be allowed to happen." "And you?" His voice shook. She closed her eyes. She had seen it in a dream, and known what she had to do. "I'm going north." He slammed his fist into the arm of the chair, hard. "Why? We need you. After the shooting.... They're lost, upset. Colton wanted to take you from us. If you leave, he's won." It was strange how, after everything, Colton had been the one to make her see. "You can't need me. You have to learn to look after yourselves. I know you've been beginning - you, John. You've been organising people to work on the electricity? That's why it's you, here, now." His knuckles clenched white. "We're scared of.... of _him_." "I know." She shook her head slowly. "But you'll be stronger without me. Most of them have just sat there, waiting. They used me as a crutch. They knew I would look after them, so they didn't need to look after themselves. It was our _weakness_, John - mine, too. For a few weeks, perhaps, they needed it. I didn't see when it was time to step away. Part of me _liked_ it." She swallowed hard. "But if Tom had succeeded.... If he had killed me....? What then, John? Was there _anything_ that could take my place?" "We'd have been lost," he said, simply. She could still be glad at that, and feel pride. She had done more than the others. She had refused to become a victim, or a mere survivor. She had acted. She leant forward and took his hand. She would have this same conversation with others afterwards, preparing them all. If she left just one, he would be seen as her deputy, and everything would continue as it was. "Make sure they aren't lost, John," she murmured, her voice intense. "Why are you going?" There was a note of anger in his voice, and he pulled his hand away. "Is it just because you want us to grow up? Or are you going to him?" She nodded. Her mouth was dry with dread at the very thought. When she had woken from the dream that had shown her the way, her throat had been raw, as if she had been shouting, screaming, her rejection of that fate. "I think...." She moistened her lips. "I feel it's the right thing to do." "Why?" The anger was unmistakable now. She took a deep breath. She had never believed in the power of dreams, but so many had turned out to be truth undeniable. "I dreamed it," she whispered. There was still enough of the old Scully in her to feel almost embarrassed at the admission. It had been the old familiar voice of her dreams - the voice so close to her own - the voice she both loved and hated. It had told her too many truths she didn't want to accept. "Go to him, now," it had urged her. "Go alone, trusting only in God. God will provide. He will provide for the humble, and those who have faith." As she twisted her cross, now, she smiled wryly at the irony of it. She had neither humility, nor faith. She trusted the dreams enough to act on them, but she had her own reasons, too. Colton had poisoned this refuge for her now, and Mulder was in the north. She had refused to go with him, held only by her belief that the people needed her. It was spring now, and things had changed. She was no longer held by obligation. And she would fight, too, to the very end. "You can defeat him?" Prior seemed serious. His infinite faith in her brought tears to her eyes, sudden and unexpected. "Me? Alone?" She shook her head sharply to drive away the voice. "I don't think so...." And, for the first time, she wondered what she was hoping to achieve. It seemed so right, but it was so foolish. It was Mulder walking into the heart of a riot, needing so desperately to try to stop the unstoppable. It was Mulder walking away to the north, alone. It was what she wanted to do. "Have you read 'The Lord of the Rings'?" Prior twisted his hands awkwardly. "The Dark Lord expects his enemies to send armies against him, and that's what he's looking for. It never occurs to him that they would be brave enough, or foolish enough, to send two small hobbits, on foot and almost unarmed, right into his kingdom. He thought they would use the Ring, not sacrifice it." She smiled fondly. "This isn't a book, John. It doesn't always turn out the way it should." "We can make it," he said, fiercely. "We're next to a naval base. We can work on the ships - make him think we're going to fight him that way. He'll send his armies down here. He won't notice when you walk in, unarmed, and...." She snatched at her gun, almost hungrily. "Not unarmed." It was part of her. It was the symbol that she could still fight. His eyes were on fire. He was barely listening to her. "If you think it's best," she said, softening towards him. "I trust you. Do what you need to - what the committee votes for. But don't provoke him unnecessarily." He held her gaze for a long time, then nodded, accepting. She wondered why he didn't argue more about her going, but she knew the reason, really. They had looked upon her as a saint, and heard her words as if they came from God. They had more faith than she did - a hundred times more. They thought she could perform miracles. She blinked hard. It was time to finish it. "I'm going today," she said, softly. He swallowed, but remained in control. "You'll come back?" He needed reassurance so badly, but she couldn't give it. She opened her mouth to speak, failed, then tried again. "If I can." ****** A punch was the start of it, and the end. "What are you?" Mulder hit the ground, blood trickling from his mouth. He scrabbled with his fingers, preparing to push himself forward, preparing to stand. Frohike nursed his fist in his other hand. There was blood on his knuckles. "What are you?" he asked again, his voice cracking. Mulder was breathing deeply. The clothes stained with Krycek's blood were still in a pile on the floor, and he glanced at them, almost defiantly. "He had to die," he said, again. He had told them everything, before, though he knew he had convinced them of nothing. "He was one of the enemy." Byers shifted from foot to foot, his voice soft. "How do you feel about it? Really?" Frohike's eyes flickered briefly, then were dull, as if he knew what answer to expect. Mulder clenched his fists, turning his back on the two men. They were from the past now. "Guilt," he said, scarcely above a whisper. "I feel like a murderer." Then he whirled round, raising his fists in a desperate, futile gesture. "I shouldn't. I've failed. I...." "You shouldn't?" Frohike's voice was like ice. He raised his fist again. "You shouldn't? You think killing him was right, but the feeling guilty about it afterwards is the wrong part?" Mutely, Mulder nodded. He knew how it appeared. Frohike let out a long breath. He sounded defeated, disgusted. "What are you, Mulder?" "We have to fight." He shut his eyes, and saw Fry's eyes in the darkness, piercing blue. "To ensure the survival of the human race, we have to fight. We have to fight the aliens, and anyone who collaborates with them. We have to overcome fear, and remorse. We have to fight. It's all that matters. We have to....." "Stop it, Mulder." Frohike's voice rose in a shout, verging on desperate. "Stop it!" "Damn it, Mulder - listen to yourself" Byers, and he sounded so cold. "You're like a broken record. It's all the same with you, always. They're _his_ words, aren't they? You're speaking like a recruitment poster. You're like a.... a robot. You've stopped feeling." "I'm...." He blinked hard, and stopped the tears from falling. "I'm doing it for....." "The world?" Frohike gave a harsh laugh. "You think you're so noble. You think you're sacrificing _so_ much - your own humanity, Mulder - so you can save the world. Naive, and arrogant, too." "We've spoken about this." "Not enough." He felt both of them, closing. Byers stepped in front of the window and the light dimmed to his shadow. "You really feel that you've failed the 'cause' you believe in, just by feeling guilt at what is virtually murder?" Byers' voice was soft. He spoke the word 'cause' as if it was poison. He could barely speak. "Yes," he whispered. He felt like a criminal at a murder trial, asked to state how he was pleading. Frohike came close on his other side. They were wolves, closing in for the kill. "And this is the sort of 'cause' you want to belong to?" He nodded, silently. It was a confession of faith. It was important beyond everything - important enough to leave Scully for. Byers again. Tensing, he wondered if they had prepared this. "You believe Fry is powerful? You believe he can fight his enemies, and win?" He nodded. "Without you?" He dug his nails into his palms. "Probably," he said, slowly, hating the word. "Yet you stay." They both had hands twisted in the material of his sleeves, pulling him first one way, then the other. He was held by their voices. Their eyes spoke to him with memories of old friendship, and warmth, and Scully. He opened his mouth, failed to speak, then tried again. "You stay." "We've kept our souls." It was hollow-voiced, like something from a bad melodrama, but Frohike wasn't laughing. "We're still human." "I..." It was so hard not to let the tears flow, but the accusation needed a defence - _needed_ it. But, "I need it," was all he could manage. He shut his eyes. His lips moved again, silently. "I need." His eyes were wet. A soft touch on his shoulder, whisper-soft. It was gone before he could see who it had been. It spoke of friendship despite everything, and his chest heaved. "I know you need to fight," Frohike said, his voice low. "I know. Maybe you're nobler than I am - you know me." He shook his head. "But is fighting for someone who allows you to feel nothing but hate a fitting way to remember all those who died?" "It's the only way." His voice shook. "Then maybe the human race _should_ end. Maybe we.... we scattered debris of survivors should be the end of it. If your way - if _his_ way - is the only way to survive...." "I don't want to live like that." And Byers smiled, sudden and incongruous, as if a long battle had just been won. "I wanted to, at first. I joined him. But we spent the last ten years fighting people like him. You did too, Mulder." "I don't want to live like that." Frohike made it into a confession of faith. "Whoever his enemy is, I won't become what he wants us to become." It was so hard to speak. He knew they would hate him - knew also that he shouldn't care. "I.... I want...." He passed his hand across his face. "I can't live without hope," he said, at last. "Fighting gives me that hope. Regret is my failure." he added, silently. Once he had had a tiny secret fantasy that he had never even dared whisper silently to himself. The fight would be won and he would live, and stumble, frozen beyond feeling, back to Scully. And then she would hold him, and he would learn again how to live, and smile, and love, and to see hope in a blade of grass and a drop of rain, and not just in death and burning. He opened his eyes, and they were looking at him - long, silent, searching looks. Then, deliberately, first one then the other turned away, dismissing him. He was alone. ****** Her fingers brushed his throat, but found no pulse. Tom Colton was dead. The undergrowth scratched her legs. Scully blinked, looking first at the dead man's face, and then at the sky. She had travelled barely an hour before she had found him, alerted by some sense she could no longer deny. There was the faintest residual warmth beneath her fingers, and she knew he had been dead only minutes - knew, too, that he had been alive like this for over twenty-hour hours before the release of death. Emotionless, she ran her hands over his body, studying him like a specimen. She had been hurt before, and seen countless bodies, but she had never before been faced with the death of a man who had hurt her so personally, so intensely. Part of her needed to hate him, but.... She swallowed. She would see how he had suffered before deciding how to feel. And so she was almost detached as she observed the shattered limbs, the internal bleeding. Like an audience at a play, she saw the lines of pain etched on his face. She saw the gun, close to his hand but not fired, then passed it by, considering. Then, moving slowly, as if in a dream, she stood up. A naked tree cast its shadow over her, and she shivered. She couldn't hate him, not unsullied by pity. She couldn't pity him, not unsullied by hate. It would have been easier if she _could_ hate, she knew. Hating him made him a scapegoat. She could pin everything that had gone wrong on him, ignoring the deeper causes, and, when the future went wrong, it would be his fault too. He would become her Dark Man, and she would be blind. And she wanted that - oh how she wanted that. Sighing deeply, she covered the man with fallen leaves, knowing it was little protection, but it was some. She knew she had to move beyond hatred. Hatred of the dead would poison her mind, and she couldn't move on. And there was a future to face, somewhere, though she couldn't begin to imagine how she would face it. ****** Mulder rested his head in his hands. He rubbed his fingers into his eyes, deeply, deliberately hurting. He was all too aware that he had had trouble seeing clearly. His feet ached, and his head was pounding. All day he had walked, as if in a dream, hiding in the shadows. He had followed broken men about their daily business. He had listened, and observed. He had learnt. Footsteps whispered behind him, one, two, then stopped. He could hear their breathing. He no longer knew whether to expect Fry's trusting kiss on his cheek, or the stab of a knife between his shoulder-blades. He didn't look round. "Mulder?" Frohike. Mulder said nothing. He lowered his hands to his lap and balled one into a fist, nursing it as a secret. "Are you....?" "Leave me, Frohike." He spat the words out with a sudden, intense fury. He knew that if he looked at the man, he would hit him again and again, pounding his face into a mass of blood, and yet would feel no joy for it. Frohike brushed a finger on his shoulder. "Mulder, I....." He swallowed. "What have you seen?" "Nothing." His clenched fist shook "Nothing. I...." And then the dam broke. "You made me look at things, Frohike. I _knew_ what was right. It.... It gave me hope. Why couldn't you leave me alone? Why couldn't you...." He was close to breaking down into sobs, and cut off his words, knowing he couldn't go any further. Frohike sat down beside him on the bench. "What did you see, Mulder?" He looked at the skyline - at the darkening sky, and the empty towers, and the world beyond that was devoid of people. He was silent for a very long time, not wanting to think. He hated the man beside him. "Mulder?" He took a deep breath, and then another. "More than I wanted to," he said, at last. "What?" He closed his eyes, though memory was a torment. There were images as if branded onto his retinas, and they hurt. "I saw...." he began, then bit his lip, unable to go further. "What, Mulder?" The sky was a rich dark grey, and his breath was a cloud in the cold air. Spring was late. He wondered, now, if it would ever come. He passed a hand across his face. "The truth." It rose at the end, like a question. He pulled his coat closer around his body, and swallowed hard. He barely heard Frohike's cry as he blindly stumbled away into the night, his face wet and cold in the evening breeze. The lights of the city were cruel to him now. They taunted him with the death of hope. He knew there was only one thing to do, and that it would kill him. ****** "It's wrong." Mulder raised his head, his arms held stiffly by his side. "I believe that what you're doing is wrong, and I won't do it any more." "Oh?" Fry raised one eyebrow, almost teasingly. He was sitting in an armchair, legs stretched out languorously, fingers steepled in front of his face. "I looked, today. I saw things. You're ruling them with terror. I don't want to be part of it." Fry blinked slowly, deliberately. "You already are." Mulder didn't lower his gaze. He raised his hands and lifted the chain over his neck, removing the key. It shone dully in his hands, and the sight of it was another pang of loss on top of the aching void inside him. Fry studied his nails. "You want to fight the colonists, don't you, Fox?" Mulder swallowed. His hand shook, and the trailing chain of the key whispered its soft metal noises. "Not the way you want me to." "You think you can fight them alone?" "No." He half shut his eyes. Krycek's blood on his hands.... He wondered if he could ever fight again. He took a deep breath and steadied himself. If he was going to die, he would die in control of himself. "No. I don't think anyone can fight them alone. That's why I joined you." "Then you're a coward." It was not phrased as a question. "You want to hide somewhere, and wait until we make the world safe for you to come out again. You're a little child, Fox. You want to save the world, but you haven't the stomach for it." "And I'm not ashamed of it." And it was true. He hated it, but he wasn't ashamed of it. "If this is what it costs to save civilisation, then...." He wavered, remembering the screams of the executed man, then recovered. "I don't want to be part of it," he said, his voice strained. "I want to die. I would rather die - even live as their slave - than live every day knowing that I had become less than human." Fry raised his eyebrows. His eyes sparked. Mulder clenched his fist tighter around the key, letting it dig into his palm, painfully. He knew he should drop it, reject it, but.... "At the Bureau, I saw into the minds of monsters," he said, wondering why he felt the need to defend himself, unless it was to himself - unless he was still not quite convinced. But Fry's eyes held him, and the words ran from his mouth like pouring blood, unstoppable. "I had my own guilt to bear, but I always knew that I was better than they were. It was comforting, in a way. It showed me that, however bad things seemed sometimes, I was one of the good guys. I knew true evil, and knew that I wasn't. I...." He swallowed hard, and held on - just. "I want to be able to know that still." Fry frowned. "I'm evil?" Mulder licked his dry lips. "Yes. I don't know if you're the Dark Man Scully spoke about, but what you're doing is wrong." "The danger is great, Fox. It requires.... firmness." "Not cruelty." Ash on his soles, and a splash of blood on his clothes. "I believed you for a month. I tried to suppress all feeling except hatred. It was wrong." Fry stood up, the soft leather of his boots squeaking. Hands clasped behind his back, he walked over to the plate-glass window. "I didn't do that to you, Fox. It was in you already. You have been fighting out of hatred for years." He saw images in his head, involuntary and relentless. He saw a time when he had wanted only to see his sister again, and hold her, and set things right. But then he had darkened over the years and lost his way. He saw his gun held at the face of an old man, several times. He saw frightened eyes of men with secrets as he hit them and threatened them, demanding answers and hitting them before they could answer. He saw how revenge had begun to supersede the need even for answers. He had heard his sister say she was happy with her own family, and felt nothing but hatred. He saw the truth. "Then I was wrong." He held his head high. "If that's what I did.... With you, I've seen what I did taken to extremes. I was wrong. I can stop it, now." "Redeem yourself?" Fry gave a harsh laugh. His back was to the room, and his eyes flashed dangerously in his reflection in the window. But he said nothing. "I can hurt you, Fox." Fry's voice lowered and took on a cold edge. He had finished toying, and the time was come. "I can kill you. You saw how traitors are killed. You will hang with all your weight on nails in your hands, Fox. Or shall I hand you over to your friends the colonists? I hear they need some more test subjects. They will flay you and probe you and cut you and use you, and you will be conscious all the time. Like your _real_ sister...." He saw every word as a vivid picture, and heard her screams. He opened him mouth, but was without words. "You'll die, Fox." Fry whirled round, and his eyes were like fire. "I know." He had to force the words out, but the sound of them restored his confidence. "I know," he said, firmer now. "I knew that when I came here." Walking through the darkness towards Richard Fry, he had felt strangely at peace. He would die doing right. It was better - far better - than life without hope. Fry smiled, and suddenly the key became burning hot. Blinding pain shot up his arm, like white fire sheeting across his thoughts. He could smell his own burning flesh, and he _could not drop it_. He fell to his knees. Blood filled his mouth, but he did not make a sound, neither pleading nor of pain. Fry leant forward, his eyes like ice. The key, cold again, fell from Mulder's nerveless fingers, and he fought the instinct to cradle his hand and nurse it. He fought dizziness and stood, shakily yet determined. He would not break. "You'll die, Fox," Fry whispered. "Or maybe you'll wish for death, before it is over. Maybe you, and your troublesome friends.... You've forced my hand, Fox. I'd have left them untouched if it wasn't for what you've just done." "It's not them." "No." Fry shook his head in mock regret. "You want to die a martyr, doing what you think is right? Is betraying your friends right?" He swallowed, still tasting blood. The pain was making the room spin, and Fry's voice swelled like waves on shingle, in and out, in and out, in and out.... "If...." He managed to speak at last. "If I stay with you, you'll let them go?" When Fry nodded, all certainties fell away once more. He was lost and hurt, without a guide. ****** A crowd gathered at noon. Some were drawn by curiosity; others by fear. There were children there, and some of their faces were ferocious with ghoulish anticipation, while others were white masks of recently dried tears. Men with guns stood at the back of the crowd, reminding them of their duty. In a clearing in the middle of the crowd was a cross. A man was going to die. He was screaming now, his cries bursting out from the rough hands that were clapped over his mouth. He would twist and escape for a second - "Help me, please! Help me! Don't let his do this to me! Fight him. This is _wrong!_ Fight him!" Then the words would fade away as the hands pushed harder into his face, cutting off his air for just long enough for his eyes to widen with pain and panic. A woman in the front row pressed her fist against her mouth. The man lashed his head again, and thrust the hands aside. Fingers clawed at his head from behind. A thumb dug into his eye, and fingers sank into his cheeks, twisting his face into a grotesque parody of a human being. But still he fought; still he shouted. "Tell them." He flailed with his hands and managed to point into the crowd. "I can see you, and you, and you. We've worked here together. Tell them that I'm not a traitor. You know me. Tell them." He named no names, but three men shifted awkwardly on their feet. One lowered his eyes, but the woman next to him nudged him sharply. He knew the message. No weakening. No sign of distaste, or disapproval. He raised his head again. "I don't know you," he whispered. The words would haunt him in his nightmares ever afterwards. "I don't know you," he said again, louder. "This man tried to defect to the enemy." The officer in charge's voice was solemn "The penalty for treachery is death by crucifixion." A strange sound swept over the crowd. It was a collective gasp of horror, then a collective effort to stifle it. It was like a ripple of breath - nothing more. The officer raised his hand, then lowered it sharply. "Nail him." The six guards moved in and surrounded the man. He was knocked to the floor, held down, and.... The crowd saw no more. They saw the backs of the guards, and they heard the man's screams, and the dull thud of the mallet as it drove into the nails, and the..... "God, it hurts. Oh God, it hurts. Oh God, Oh God, Oh God...." As if bored with it already, the officer turned away. He appeared deaf to the man's screams, unmoved by the death he had presided over. He walked away, his steps measured and controlled, his one burnt hand gently nursed in the other The crowd hated him. Some despised what he was doing, while others were intensely jealous. Men would kill to have the favour of Richard Fry. No-one saw his face as he walked away, but they imagined that he would be smiling. ****** They found him at the bench in the darkness. They split up and approached him from either side, leaving him no escape. "We saw you, earlier." Mulder nodded. There was nothing but darkness in him now. "You were in charge of that.... that murder." Frohike's voice was bleak. There was no emotion in it but hatred. "Yesterday, I thought..... I thought you'd changed." He had been intending to lie. He couldn't. "I have." He nursed his burnt hand. "I went to him, and told him. He...." "He threatened you?" He barely listened to who it was. He heard only the words, emerging from the faceless darkness. "He threatened you," he said, dully. "That man would have been executed whether I did it or not. If I'd refused, it would have been you as well. I thought it was the right thing to do." "Damn you, Mulder." Anger from the darkness. Byers, he thought. He spoke desperately, without intonation. "I never thought that leaving him would make any difference to him. It was just for me. I wanted to be able to feel that, at the end, I had done what was right. No _more_ people will die if I stay with him, but you...." "Damn you." A fist slammed into the back of the bench. "Who are you to decide that?" He felt lost. "I did it for you. I felt it was the best thing." They moved round so they were in front of him, but wouldn't sit down. They looked at him as if too close a proximity would poison them. "Sell your soul for us?" Byers' face twisted in distaste. "We don't need a martyr. I don't want to have to live with that." "Did you _really_ do it for us, or for yourself?" Frohike stepped forward, relentless. The moon cast deep shadows on his face. "It's easier this way, isn't it? You stay with him, but you can salve your conscience by telling yourself it was all for us. I'm with Byers. I don't want to have to live with that." He raised his head. They told him nothing new. He had decided, when walking away from the execution, and knew what he had to do. "You won't have to. He said you can go, tonight, now. He won't pursue you." He wondered if any of them believed it, really. As he had seen Fry's smiling eyes propose the deal, even as he had accepted, he had known it was hollow. Byers and Frohike were doomed, whatever he did, as was he. But there was the tiniest glimmering of a hope, and he had had to try. "And you?" Byers voice was softer now. Mulder shifted position. His burnt hand stabbed intensely up his arm, and he drew in a sharp breath. "He did that to you?" He nodded. If there was the smallest glimmer of hope for the Gunmen, there was none for him. "I'm not following him any more." "Come with us." Frohike flashed a sharp glance at Byers, but Byers continued. "It's been hard for all of us. No-one's known how to act. Come with us." He heard the unspoken subtext. He smiled wanly, shaking his head. "I can't." Byers tensed. "You have a plan?" He nodded. The leaves rustled, and he knew there was a chance that spies would hear, but simply uttering the plan would give his death dignity. "The airbase at Trenton," he said, slowly. He had considered it all day, and it remained a wild and desperate plan. "It's important to him. He has teams out there all the time. He's not so strong that he can win whatever war he's fighting without hardware." In the moonlight, Frohike's eyes shone. Byers gave nothing away. He continued, the words coming easier now. "They don't post guards at night. 'Why should we do that? The enemy's in the south,' they said, when I asked. They take girls out there. Fry doesn't mind as long as the work is done." "Fuel....Matches..... Boom!" Frohike's eyes were wide, and he laughed harshly. There was a hint of the old Frohike about him. "Yes." He nodded. "Will it make a difference?" Byers leant forward. He was kneeling on the ground, his hands on his knees. His eyes were cautious. He shrugged, trying to keep his voice level. he kept telling himself. But, "maybe," he said, aloud. He could give them hope, even if he had none left for himself. "Nothing's gone wrong for him yet. They think he's omnipotent. Maybe, if something went wrong, it would make people think." A bird called in the distance, then again, closer. A crow, perhaps. Byers visibly shivered. "Will he know? He knows.... things. The dreams...." Mulder shut his eyes. "He might. I have to try." "You want to die?" Byers grabbed the wrist of his uninjured hand, his voice low and intense. "Is this suicide?" He opened his eyes, blinking hard. His eyes were stinging. "I see no reason to live," he said, dully. "This is right," Frohike said, suddenly. Mulder nodded painfully. "Yes. It's right. It doesn't _feel_ right. It doesn't make me happy. I can't like it." "Why not?" Frohike asked fiercely. "I like it. I..." Byers reached a hand for him, and stopped him. Their eyes exchanged a message Mulder couldn't read. And, all of a sudden, he needed their understanding, and the absolution that was not there's to give. "I left Scully for this." He gestured at the city, and its lights. "He represented hope to me. I thought that, by joining him, I would help avenge what was done to the world, and even stop what was going to happen. Colonisation. I.... The only way I could bear it was to believe that I could be part of the _fighting_ it. If I'd stayed with Scully I'd have hated her, soon, for keeping me from it. I'd have hated myself for not trying." They were silent. He felt their eyes on him in the darkness, and the lights of the city were a thousand other eyes, watching him. "The lights...." he said, hoarsely. He cleared his throat. "When I arrived and saw them, I.... I used to dream of them on the way here. I saw them as a symbol that we were refusing to give in - that we were fighting. I once stood in my window all night, just watching them." Byers touched his shoulder clumsily. "It's hard, but I think it's right." He felt the cold hollow anger rise inside him. Even his anger was bleak, without fire, without real feeling. "Don't tell me what's right. You don't know what it's like." It sounded weary, as if he was drained of all else. "I believe it's right, but I hate it. I'm.... I'm renouncing the only thing that gave me hope - the _only_ thing, now that Scully's dead. I'm going into the darkness again. I'm losing everything. I'm doing it willingly, but....." He could say no more. He heard the rustle of their clothing as they looked at each other, and the soft murmur of their words that he didn't listen to. If Fry had swept down from the sky and killed him on the spot, he thought - he knew - that he would have welcomed it. He.... "Mulder?" He hauled himself back to reality with difficulty. "We're coming, too." ****** She was close now. Her journey had started with a body, and now it was ending with a body. "Krycek," she whispered. She had never thought she would weep for his death, but it moved her deeply. He had gone before, and now he was dead. She, alone, just like he had been, would probably die the same way. She felt a small tightening of fear in her stomach, but surprisingly little. Something had changed for her on the journey - something she was still struggling to understand, let alone fully express. "Krycek," she said, again, then felt the need to whisper, "I'm sorry." He had hung by his neck, tied by a noose to a post by the roadside. In a flash of almost-detached observation - she was a trained pathologist still - she noted that it had not been the hanging that had killed him. A second later, she noticed the gunshot wound in his stomach, she realised. Her vision blurred. There was a noise in the distance that could have been approaching vehicles, could have been the blood pounding in her head. She no longer cared. Seeing him, she realised the inevitability of her own capture, and her own death. The strange elusive hope that she had felt upon departing was like a forgotten memory. Now she could only hope that she would not shame herself, and that she would die well. It was almost a comfort. It was something to aspire to - something that she _could_ achieve. All other hopes were impossible in a world such as this terrible World After. She was barely aware of what she was doing, now, thinking only of what was to come. Sharp pain in her fingers made her look down and she was surprised to notice that she had started clawing at the cruel knotted twine. There was blood on her fingers - some wet, and hers; some dry and flaking, and his. With whisper-quiet wings, a large black bird swept out of the sky and settled on Krycek's shoulder. Her mouth was dry. she thought, suddenly. There was intelligence in the bird's eyes, and malevolence. She tilted her head on one side, considering. Her hands were clutching and unclutching with fear, but she had to analyse it like a specimen - had to. It was what she was. she wondered, trying to relate it to the terrible faceless face of her dreams. Once, she would never even have wondered. As the noise of the vehicles came closer, the bird just sat, and watched, and watched. ****** Frohike laughed. He had learnt to keep it silent, but nothing could stop him. He was jubilant. Every few minutes, he laughed. "Frohike." Warning, but Byers smiled, too. Mulder felt immeasurably old. He was apart from them. He felt the return of their old camaraderie only in the most distant, detached manner. He felt as if he was closely swaddled in darkness. As the fuel drained from the canisters, bathing the floor of the hangar, he felt something vital drain away from himself. It was sucking him dry of everything. "I like this." Frohike struck a pose, one arm curled as if to show his muscles. "I missed my calling. Women would have loved me. Melvin Frohike - Action Hero." Mulder smiled with Byers, but felt none of it. He could welcome Frohike's restoration, but shared none of his exhilaration. "He's going to kill us for this." Frohike sobered suddenly, then his face shone with a smile again. There was something close to hysteria in it. "I don't care." Byers paused, half bent over a fuel tank. "I fear it." "So do I," Frohike replied, frankly. "But then it'll be over. These last months.... It's been closer to being dead, sometimes. I feel alive, now. I feel closer to what I used to be, before." And Mulder wanted to weep for a world in which a man could feel rejuvenated simply by that fact that he was about to die. Byers smiled. "Not the same. No bad jokes. No show of cynicism. No sexual references." "I was always like this, underneath all that. My soft and sensitive core." Frohike's face was innocent, but it was probably a joke. Byers chose to take it seriously. "Something like this forces us all to come out from behind our masks." Mulder thought. He wished he had hidden, more. He had laid himself before Fry, naked, and Fry had used his deepest hopes against him. If he could do it all again, he would wear a different mask - wear it until his hopes and feelings became one with the mask - until the inside matched the outward appearance. Until he stopped hoping. "Don't hope too much," Scully had said, and now he faced the death of hope, and the knowledge that he was the one to kill it. It lay in a pool around the planes. It was the feel of matches in his pocket. It was the hollow sound of the empty canisters. It was the image in his mind of the aliens sweeping in over the burning wreckage of the only force that could have stopped them. If, at the very end, he was helping the only enemy he had ever fought, what did that say about his life? There was nothing left - nothing. "Are we ready?" Byers asked softly. They trusted him, deferred to his judgement as leader, pretending that he wasn't damned. He nodded. It wasn't a thorough job, but it was enough. No-one had stirred, and they had met no-one along the way. For the whole journey they had stiffened at every noise, expecting to see Fry's grinning death's-head face. By the end of it, he had been aching with tension and his hand had been throbbing relentlessly. "Ready," he said. He groped one-handed for a canister, but Frohike stepped forward. "I'll do it," he murmured, then he reached up and embraced Mulder, holding him tightly. He said nothing. No words were necessary. Then, head held high, Frohike walked slowly towards the door, leaving a thin trail of fuel behind him. It shone on the ground behind him, like a king's train. Walking behind him, Byers reached for Mulder's hand and squeezed it briefly, then held it. Outside, the stars were shining. "You do it, Mulder." Frohike put the canister down. There was no trace of laughter in his face, now. He was a participant in a ritual - all three of them were. Like a robed priest, seen as a priest first, and as a man second, Mulder felt inhuman. He was playing his part, but the man inside was whimpering with loss. Slowly, slowly, he drew out the matches. They had discussed whether to flee, afterwards. They still didn't know if they would stand, defiant, and let themselves be taken, and die well, showing no fear, or if they would run. Both ways they could fight. They could fight by showing no fear, or they could fight by running to their last of their strength, even as bullets ripped into their bodies from behind. As he pulled a match from the box, he thought he knew. He would stay, but the others would run. He had seen in Frohike's smile that he still thought there was something out there worth running to. There were tears in his eyes as he drew the match back, ready to strike it. "Now," he whispered, more to himself. It would be the end of everything. "Now." He looked at Frohike, and saw his wild smile, then saw it switch in an instant to horror. "Mulder! Gun!" His mouth open wide in screaming alarm. And then a huge weight crashed into him, knocking him over. His burned hand hit the floor and he couldn't think - he couldn't think.... "Drop it." A whisper close to his ear. Who? "The match. Drop it...." And the world erupted into light, and the chaos of Hell surrounded him, and he _could not think_. ****** "Mulder. Mulder...." It was like a mouse, gnawing at him - a small irritant again and again. "Mulder. Get up, Mulder...." He opened his eyes, and saw Byers. He licked his lips. "How long?" "Seconds." Byers' head was a silhouette against the blossoming flames behind him. The heat made his skin smart. "Get up." He dimly remembered a weight pinning him down, but it had gone. He pushed himself up to his elbows, wincing at the pain in his hand. "Run, Byers." "No." Byers glanced over his shoulder, urgently. "Get up, now. They're nearly here. Don't let them drag you up. Stand for them." "I...." He pulled on Byers' hand, and got to his feet. The heat was like a physical wall in front of them. It was scarcely bearable even here. "They're coming?" he said, though it wasn't really a question. Dark shadows approaching from all sides, guns shining in the starlight. They were walking slowly, confident, knowing there was no escape. But Mulder smiled - a faint wan smile, yet it felt like a release, of sorts. "We did that." He pointed at the fire. Byers nodded sadly. "And Frohike." Mulder struggled to remember through the confusing mass of images - a shout, a blow, and a whisper....? A still form was slumped on the ground beside him, unmoving. He hadn't thought he could feel again - not like this. "Dead?" he asked. He had accepted his own death, and had accepted their choice in coming with him, but part of him had never accepted that they would die too. Byers nodded. "One of them shot at you, to stop you striking the match. He saw it. He pushed you out of the way. It hit him instead." He stated it like a bald, emotionless fact. Mulder knew he was too ravaged to let himself feel right now. Mulder swallowed. "He died for me?" It made him feel like nothing. It made him.... he realised, suddenly. "It's not all about you, Mulder." Byers voice was weary. "He died for...." He shrugged, bleakly. "He's probably the lucky one. _He_ died quickly, and he was happy, right at the end. You saw it." Their footsteps were audible now, and, softer than all of them, came the whispering footfalls of a man they both knew. He seemed to step out of the flames, and his eyes were fire. "Fox," he hissed, his words like flames. They seemed to reach into his mind like agonising fingers. Mulder raised his chin, and endured. He would stand. Whatever happened, he would stand. "Fox...." A ripple of noise in an arc around them. It was like swathes of material falling to the ground. When Mulder looked again, the dark figures of the approaching soldiers had gone. They lay on the floor, as motionless as the man they had murdered. Fry smiled, in mock regret. "I warned them yesterday that you would come. They have no excuse." He gestured at the fire, all outward calm, but his hand was shaking slightly. Anger, Mulder realised. When all was going well for him, he didn't need to feel anger, but could laugh at the futile efforts of his enemies. But he felt no triumph. There was only relief, somewhere deep within him. They had struck a blow against him; they had fought. They had done what they could and could now face death, knowing that, in the end, they had done something worthwhile. "I knew, of course." Fry was all smiles again, but Mulder cherished the memory of that small lapse, that small show of anger. "I've known everything from the start. I chose to let you carry on. It seems more effective to let you get your hopes up - to crush you right at the moment of your victory, does it not?" Mulder pointed at the fallen soldiers. "They thought so too. See what happened?" He imagined they had been watching them, laughing, waiting until the last minute. "Too late." He smiled. Fry was on him in an instant, smashing him over the face with the back of his hand. Mulder tasted blood and saw sheeting red across his vision. He was dimly aware of Byers hand, firm at the small of his back, and he stood. Fry took a deep breath, and turned away. He appeared to have tired of them, though Mulder knew better. He flashed a quick glance at Byers, and saw understanding in his eyes, too. Then, ever-changing, he turned again, and was all smiles. "I can forgive you, Fox." He draped an arm round Mulder's shoulders. "We could have been something great together, you and I. We still can be." He was silent, listening. "I know you only want to fight the enemy, Fox." The fingers crawled on his flesh, but the voice was hypnotic, seductive. "While you were away, we captured one of their leaders, here on a spying mission. I would like you to kill them - not for me, Fox, but for yourself. I know what it did to you, fighting me. I know you think you've lost everything. Give yourself hope again, Fox, for _your_ sake." "No." He pulled away, though the fingers dug like claws and blood ran down his shoulder. "No. I may have give up my hope, but I've regained myself." He thought they were noble words to die with. But then, as the distant engines drew closer and he saw the men who had come to take them, he wondered if they had meant anything at all. The day ahead would be beyond imagining. ****** The clash of metal on metal. "You've got the night ahead to think." Fry's voice was a dagger swathed in silk. "Think about your death. Can you imagine it?" The key turned in the lock, and his soft footsteps whispered away. The silence. The silence..... "Byers?" he tried, desperately. He liked to think that he could face death, but to spend the last night alone.... "Mulder?" And it was a twin echo - Byers' voice, far away, and another. And another.... ****** He cried for her, alive, and he had never cried for her dead. "Mulder." She stroked his hand through the bars. They were in crude holding cells, bars all round, more like cages. "It's okay." And then there was laughter, mingling with his tears. _She_ was weeping too. "Okay? We're going to die, Scully. Hardly okay." He heard her soft intake of breath. Her fingers paused in their stroking, just for a second. "Yes. We're going to die." Then she made a small sound, almost shy. "I'm glad we're together for it." There was nothing about love in it, though that would come later. It was comradeship. It felt right. He wanted Frohike and Byers there, too, so they could all hold hands together. "And Krycek," she whispered, and he knew he had spoken aloud after all. "He died, Mulder. I could never like him, but he.... he was important, I think." He pulled his hand away, knowing she would hate him, and knowing that, in an instant, he would find there were worse things than being alone. To be hated by the one you love.... "I killed him," he said, simply. In the near-darkness, he could see her nodding. It was too dark to see the expression on her face. "I'm not surprised," she said, wonderingly, her voice rising like a question. "When I shot you....? I always thought you might end up killing him, one day." He squeezed his burnt hand, shooting pain up his arm. "It wasn't fate, Scully. I had a choice. I chose to.... to murder him." He heard her moving closer, pressing herself up against the bars. He could almost imagine that he could feel her warmth. "I trust you, Mulder. After eight years, I know you. When you chose to follow the Dark Man, I understood your reasons. You were choosing to follow someone evil, but I there was nothing evil in your reasons, Mulder. I trust you. I...." A deep breath. "I love you." "I love you." He said it simply - a confession of faith. "I thought you were dead. I thought it was Krycek. But Fry told me to kill him. Did I do it for him?" "Did you kill him for me?" He could tell from her voice that she didn't want to answer to be a yes. He would face death with honesty, but he wouldn't give her that extra guilt to bear. "I don't know," he said, then found it was the truth after all. "I don't know.... I think it was my own choice, but I don't know. He was.... He was a symbol." "Of what?" Soft. "Them." It came out harsh. Even after everything, he hated them worse than he hated Fry. There was glamour in Fry's smile, still. "The aliens. The people who did this to the world. The colonists. He was the only one of them left." He heard her nod. If she objected, she didn't say anything. "I've fought them all my life, Scully. I saw the enemy as images, and the images in dreams." They flashed upon his memory even as he spoke, familiar and painful. "There was Cancerman, and the figure at the door when Samantha was taken, and the Bounty Hunter, smiling in the Arctic. And then there was Krycek. Their faces _were_ the enemy." "The enemy? Oh, Mulder...." She was breathing fast, almost as if crying. He swallowed hard. "If felt that, if I didn't fight them, I'd be accepting all this as right. I felt it was right to kill Krycek. If I didn't kill him, I felt I'd be..... I'd be betraying...." He couldn't finish. It sounded so tawdry, yet it was still so important to him. "The whole world?" she said, softly. She reached for him again, and found him, her fingers soft on the back of his hand. "Skinner? Your mother? Langly? Me?" He nodded, unable to do anything more. "You still feel like that?" Her voice was strange, even wary, as if afraid for him. "Yes," he burst out, fiercely. "I believe that the aliens and their human allies did this, and that they're here - that they're coming. I've lived on nothing but the hope that I can join the fight against them - that we can stop it. I believe that Fry is the only one strong enough to stop them." Each declaration of faith was like a knife in his stomach, hurting desperately, reminding him of what he had lost. "But you...." She hesitated, and he could feel her awkwardness. "The smell of smoke on you, Mulder...." "I tried to sabotage his war effort? Yes." He breathed out, weary almost beyond bearing. "I came to believe that his methods were wrong. I came to believe that a victory won by Richard Fry was no victory at all. I came to realise that I shouldn't fight _against_ something, but fight _for_ something." He felt naked before her silent judgement. Squeezing her hand, he was grateful he couldn't see her face. "Civilisation? Humanity?" She gave a curious half laugh. "Love?" "I'm not Superman, Scully." He tried to respond with a joke, but found he couldn't smile about it. Scully had said it, earlier, and Fry, too. He _had_ wanted to save the world. "I hated what they did to the world, and I hated them," he said, slowly. "I came to think only of the hate, and to forget why I hated them. Hate was all that mattered to me. I was becoming as bad as they were, and I thought that was good." "It must have been difficult," she murmured. "I know how important fighting was to you - important enough to leave me, then." It was said without malice. They both knew what it was like to be alone in this world, and knew how important they were to each other. "You gave up what you.... you most longed for, on a principle? You sacrificed....?" He couldn't understand why there were tears in her voice. "Mulder?" He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand, answering her with a touch. She was silent. ****** She was awed by the reality of his sacrifice. For as long as she had known him she had known how his whole life had revolved round the intense, burning hope that he would find his sister again - that finding her would, somehow, set the past to rights. She had seen him walk alone into a riot, sustained by the desperate impossible hope that he could stop it, and, with it, a whole world of riots. She had seen him desperately unhappy in the soft protection of an underground bunker, wanting only to get out into the world and fight. She had seen him walk alone into the darkness of the north, guided by hope, and hope alone. She had seen in his eyes then that he had expected to die. And now, she knew, he had given up the thing that he had lived for. By opposing Fry, she knew, he believed he was accepting that Samantha's abductors had won - even that they deserved to win. In his mind, he had rendered his life's quest illegitimate. She cleared her throat, and tried again. "Mulder?" She couldn't begin to predict how he would react. He was slow to respond, but at last he nodded. She could feel the movements of his shoulders through the bars. "Do you really believe in the aliens, Mulder?" His head snapped up. He drew in a sharp breath, almost as if in pain. "I thought we were together at last, Scully." She was tense inside - shaking. "I believe many things that I didn't believe before, Mulder. Dreams.... Evil.... I believe there were aliens. I believe what Cancerman said. I...." "I saw one, Scully." She wrapped her fingers round a bar, squeezing tightly. "In Virginia, they all think he's coming for them. I.... I thought they were just putting a face on their fears, but now.... I believe that, Mulder. I believe that we - that they - are the enemy he's preparing to fight." "Aliens." His voice was hoarse. She was relentless, hating herself for it. "Have you seen any, since you've been here? Have you heard anyone else talking about them?" His silence was her answer. She could feel his pain as he struggled to refute her. She was sure that others had been lured by talk of the Jews, or the gays, or the foreigners. Fry would give the 'enemy' the face each person expected to see. "If they're not here, what happened to them?" She shrugged. "Cancerman said they were going to fight back. Maybe the two sides destroyed each other, and the human race was caught in the crossfire?" She could almost believe it now. If she had been going to live, she knew she would find ways to forget it, afterwards. There was a comfort in not knowing the truth. "They'll have a home planet. If their invasion force was wiped out, they'll be back, and this time they won't fail." She wondered, almost fiercely, why he needed to badly to believe that, though she knew, really. "Maybe," she said, simply. "He manipulated me," he said, slowly. She had expected to have to argue, and had half expected him not to believe at all. For the first time, she realised that his intense need to believe in the aliens had perhaps been because he had always had doubts. 'I _want_ to believe....' She was cautious. She nodded, but said nothing. She wanted to comfort him, but he would not appreciate being lied to. "Damn him!" He slammed his fist into the metal in a sudden fierce movement. She didn't flinch, though it was close to her face. "Like Deep Throat, or X.... They think I'm stupid. They just say 'alien' and I drop everything and follow them. I _am_ stupid." "We're all vulnerable to certain things." "I thought I.... There _was_ no hope. Everything I've done has been wrong." She could feel him withdrawing from her. He was drawing inwards - a ball of guilt and self-hatred. She shouldn't have said anything. It wasn't the way he needed to die. Yet she didn't want to die lying, patronising him, treating him as a child by hiding the truth from him. "No," she said, firmly, and she believed it. She would offer no comfort that was anything other than the truth. It would be demeaning to both of them. "Everything you did was right. You did what you believed to be right, even though it hurt you terribly. He's evil; you're not." She blinked against her tears. He had done wrong for the right reasons. She, perhaps, had done right, but for the wrong reasons. She felt no pride about the way she had led her people, or for her motives. "You know, Scully?" And, suddenly, surprisingly, he gave a harsh laugh. "I felt noble, at the end. I felt I was sacrificing my hope for what was right.... Even that's gone, now. I was sacrificing nothing. My hope was nothing." She smiled. She was so proud of him, and had never loved him more. "You didn't know that, Mulder. You thought it was aliens, but you still opposed him. Feel noble, Mulder, because you are." "Nobility?" This time the laugh was awkward, even embarrassed. "Good and evil.... Saving the world.... Nobility.... How things change, Scully." In the time before, people would have been embarrassed even saying the words. But now.... Now they were living in a time of myth - or had to pretend to be, to give things meaning. Maybe it was easier to believe she had been chosen by God to lead the side of "the Good". If it was just a random band of chance survivors, struggling just to live, then it felt meaningless, impossible to cope with. But, "yes," she said, and nothing more. Then, with a sudden intense smile, "be proud of it, Mulder." "I made no difference." It was a cry of anguish. She thought about it for a while, and knew it was the heart of it, for both of them. They had come on different routes, but they _were_ together at the end. They would die together, believing the same, fearing the same, and closer than they had ever been. "I have the same fears that you do, Mulder," she said, quietly. She had no desire to hide from him any longer. She had spent years pushing away his concern with an "I'm fine," believing that it made her strong. She realised now that true strength lay in being unafraid to admit fear, and that true love demanded honesty. She took a deep breath, and continued. "I think it was hardest for us, Mulder. We're fighters, both of us. We're FBI agents, trained to believe that we can make a difference. And then we've been through so much. Most people, when something bad happens, call for help, but we came to believe that there was no-one we could trust to give us that help. We did it ourselves. We took on every enemy; we tackled every problem. We lost some, we won others, but we made a difference in all of them." He was silent, listening. She had had time to think on her journey north, but she was speaking without preparation. The words seemed to flow, and she found that she understood things. "You said it when the darkness started, Mulder," she continued, then shivered at that memory. She had been so sure, then, it would be all be over within days, but there had been a million million deaths since then. "You said that the people were scared, and just wanted leadership - someone in control. The people who came to me in Virginia.... the people here.... The crisis happened, and they.... " She smiled, ruefully. "They just called 911 and waited for help to arrive. They're lost and scared, but they feel no responsibility because they're.... they're not used it. There's always someone else to call who will handle things." "We're not like that," he murmured. She shook her head. "I've spent half my life trying to prove that I can handle everything that happens - that I can control it." "I lost Samantha," he said, simply, and she was moved by it. "_I_ lost her. I wanted to be the one who found her. I failed to act, then. I wanted to.... I never wanted that to happen again." "No-one could stop this." Through the bars, they held hands, chastely. "Before, maybe.... It was the result of decisions made, and treaties signed. But after it had started.... We couldn't have done anything, Mulder. It's bigger than anything we ever faced." "I couldn't believe that." And then there was a spark of fire in his voice, terrible to hear. She was rueful, and she thought he had been the same. "I can't believe that," he cried. "I can't...." She offered no false comfort. "You clung to your hope that you could drive the aliens away, while I.... I clung to my belief that the survivors would die without me. We were both trying to salvage something from the wreckage. We were both trying to.... to find ways to make this bearable." "And there's nothing." He was so bleak. He didn't phrase it like a question. "We're going to die. And the world....?" She squeezed the bars so tightly that her arm shook. "I don't know. I.... I think the only way we can fight this is to accept it." "I can't." Fierce. "I refuse to become a passive victim." She felt a spark of anger rise inside her. "For God's sake, Mulder, you _know_ me. It's my greatest fear - you know that. I wouldn't...." It washed out of her as fast as it had arisen, until she was just sad, and bleak, and filled with a feeling of unreality. "I mean, for us." He pulled away, saying nothing. She swallowed hard. "When I was fighting my cancer, I felt.... I felt like a victim. I wanted so badly to fight it, but it seemed like no enemy I _could_ fight. I think.... I don't think I could have coped with that. And then I realised...." She prised her hands from the bars and rubbed her eyes. Although he couldn't see her, she thrust her chin forward, her shoulders back. "I realised that the way to fight was to refuse to let it beat me. It was to get on with my life, even to be happy. It was to make my last months worth living." His fingers reached for hers, and she felt the tremor in them. "We only have hours, Scully." "It's the same, though. We'll die.... _We'll die_, Mulder. I think the only way we _can_ act is to accept it - accept that it's happened, and that we've tried. Be content. Let him know that he can kill our bodies, but our souls are our own." She shrugged. "Maybe the only victory we can ever really win is over ourselves - to do our best, and to do what we think is right." His doubt was audible. "I didn't...." She was firm about that. She squeezed his hand. "You did. We both made mistakes...." She sighed, wishing they could have their revelations together. He had always been one step ahead of her, or she one step ahead of him. She wanted - needed - them to end on the same page, truly together as they died. "I can't tell you this, Mulder. You need to believe it." His reply surprised her. "I did, earlier. I didn't fight, when Fry came. I accepted that I would die, and that I had done what was right, although it gave me no pleasure." "And now?" Her words were scarcely more than breath. He sighed. "I don't know." And in the dark, she prayed for him - prayed that he would find peace before he died. For he _would_ die, as would she. She felt, now, the strange comfort that comes from inevitability. They would die. ****** Death came to their cells the next morning. Mulder rose to his feet without being dragged, and stepped forward without being pulled. Two soldiers flanked him, their fingers digging into the muscles of his upper arms. He blinked calmly into the cold blank face of the soldier in front of him, and then down at the collar and chain in the man's hand. As the soldier fastened the collar round his neck, he didn't flinch. He stepped forward when the chain was jerked, anticipating the pull. He licked his lips, allowing himself two words only. "Scully? Byers?" "Mulder." They were held as he was. Her face was the mask he was aspiring to. "If you accept your death," she had said to him, as the booted feet of the soldiers had approached, "then accept mine. I don't want to think of you dying in pain.... in emotional pain because of me." But it was hard - it was so hard.... He understood, though. They owed it to each other. "Come." It was a surly monosyllable. The soldiers' faces showed no sadistic pleasure, no cruelty. They were the emotionless robots he had sought to become. Or maybe, silent, they could pretend that they executing things, and not humans. "It might be you next," he said, almost casually. Fingers tightened on his arm, but nothing was said. "I was like you. He kills everyone who even _thinks_ a word against him. Is this the sort of government you want to live under?" He felt Scully's warning eyes on him, but couldn't not try. He had accepted most of what she had said, but it was too much part of him, fighting the odds. Like an unquenchable fire, no bigger than a candle flame, there was the ever enduring hope that things could still be changed. "Will killing us make a difference? When will it end?" His fingers were tingling, the circulation half cut off. He allowed the flame to burn brighter. He had no hope that he would survive, but the tiniest hope that his death might make people think - that it would be the start of something. "All we can do is to be true to ourselves," Scully had said. Perhaps she needed acceptance, but he needed to hope the impossible, and to believe that, perhaps, it wasn't impossible after all. It had been his whole life. "We're different, Scully," he said, out loud. Even with the listeners, he wanted her to know. They were too close to the end for false pride, or concealment. "We cope in different ways. Accept it. Please...." She smiled at him. "I do, Mulder." Her eyes seemed to say but she had nothing to apologise for. If she had lectured him during the night, he had needed it. He had been lost, and she had helped him find his way back. And then they were in daylight, and death was ahead of them. ****** A thousand blank eyes stared at him. There was music, and balloons, and streamers. Their deaths were being made a festival for a numbed people who could no longer laugh. "Fire, Fox." Fry leant close, making a show of checking the bonds that were already too tight. "Burnt at the stake.... Fire - your greatest fear." He swallowed hard. "Not my greatest fear. You don't know me." "Your greatest fear?" Fry tilted his head to one side, as if considering. "Ah, yes. The same as your friend Scully's. To die a meaningless death. To encounter a situation you can no longer see hope in. To lose control. To find something you can't fight." He tugged at the chains. "I can't see you controlling this, Fox." "No." He looked not at Fry, but at Scully, tied close enough to hear. There was anxiety in her eyes. he thought, almost angry, but then he understood. It was concern, and no less than he would feel for her. "No." He raised his chin. "We are." And something flickered in Fry's eyes. He liked to think it might have been doubt. he thought, with a secret smile. For he knew, in a flash of insight that was tantamount to certainty, that they would not break. They had passed through the dark night of the soul, and had emerged into daylight. They would stand. "Fighting?" Fry was back, his eyes a cruel blue. "How?" But he said nothing. Scully was right. He was at peace with himself for the choices he had made, and saw no need to defend himself to a man such as this.. "Scully?" he said, suddenly. "Byers?" A line came into his head from a half-forgotten novel. He had never understood it until now. "Scully?" But he could find no words of his own, so smiled instead. "Enough," Fry growled. His smiled switched on, and he turned to the crowd. He was like a skilled showman, his words nothing but manipulation, his voice nothing but charm. "I've called you here today to witness the deaths of three traitors - three traitors who were working with the people who did this to the world." he thought, and smiled ruefully. He was too close to death to feel guilt that he had succumbed to the same type of argument. All he could feel was thanks that, in the end, he had fought free from Fry's snares and seen clearly. He would die free. "One of them, I loved and trusted like a son." Fry's face darkened with pretended grief. "Another led the enemy in the south." He whirled round, pointing. "This woman! I was betrayed - the cause was betrayed. They were lovers, and he came as a spy. His words were like serpents, and he corrupted two of his friends from the time before. One is dead; one will die." Mulder laughed harshly. "You believe that?" he shouted, his voice hoarse. "Mulder...." A warning whisper. He saw her frown, considered, then subsided. She was right. Fry had all the arguments, for now. If he fought, he would only look foolish. So he bit his tongue and scanned the eyes in the crowd, looking for seeds that could grow into future rebellion. In one or two eyes, he thought he found something. It was enough to make him smile. It was enough to let him hope. "You want proof?" In a single swift movement, Fry was onto Scully. One hand pulled her head forward; the other snatched a knife from his belt. It moved in the light and sunlight flashed, dazzling Mulder. When he could see again, there was blood on the knife, and blood on Scully's neck. "See?" Fry held his palm above his head. There was no way of seeing if there was anything there. "There was an implant in her neck - some sort of listening device. She was relaying messages back to the enemy even as she stood here." Mulder lashed his head against the collar. "Scully?" he mouthed. "Scully?" She swallowed hard. The blood had reached her collarbone. "I'm fine," she mouthed, the smiled, wryly. "Really." Her eyes grew serious. "Remember...." Remember to accept her death as he had accepted his own. Behind his back, he dug his nails into the palm of his good hand, and managed to smile. He knew it would be the hardest test - seeing each other in pain and being unable to do anything. "Do you have one, Fox?" A voice in his ear, and the knife blade pressed against his throat. "Maybe one your loving parents put there when they sold you to the aliens. How disappointed they were when the wrong one got taken." He clenched his teeth against the pain as the point of the knife twisted and exploring, and against the pain of the words. He knew they were meant to break him, but knowing that made them no less painful. "Mulder?" It was her turn to worry about him, as the blood trickled down his chest. He turned his head, though the movement pushed the knife further into his flesh. He showed it only in the smallest hitch in his breathing. "I'm fine, Scully," he mouthed. "No?" Fry laughed. "I'm tired of you, Fox. Burn them!" The soldiers moved forward and Mulder felt fear crawl across his skin like insects. There was no way he could _not_ feel fear, though he had chosen this death, and didn't regret it. Fry raised his fists above his head, the knife in one, the supposed implant in the other. Blood escaped from between his fingers and trickled down his wrists. "Behold our victory!" he shouted. "Watch them die!" They had been soaked in fuel up to their thighs, but no higher. It would be a slow death, and a painful one. As the cold-eyed soldier approached him, his last thought was something akin to pride. He was proud of Scully, her face unmoving, as if it was cast in stone. He was proud of Byers, and Frohike. And he was proud.... he thought, as he braced himself for the flames. And then he swallowed hard. He felt frozen in time, burnt in searing white light. Time was nothing. The soldiers were like marionettes, arms rigid, moving jerkily. Reality crumbled. His thoughts, though.... Coherent at the end.... Coherent. And then he laughed, not recognising himself. His thoughts were mystical, profound, yet he had wanted to live his life with a joke on his lips, laughing at fate. And so he laughed into the light, and cried, and raged, and felt peace. Light engulfed him. ****** "Mulder?" Her throat was hoarse, as if ravaged by screaming, though she remembered nothing. "Mulder? Byers?" "Scully?" Mulder was blinking as if awoken from a dream. He looked like a different man from the one she had known before. "What....?" "He went." Byers' eyes were wondering. "I saw him. He was silhouetted against the light, and then he..... he wasn't." "He's gone." She swallowed. Quick and urgent, she called for the stupefied soldiers. "Untie us." Accepting the inevitable was one thing, but she would not commit suicide needlessly. "He was abducted." Mulder's words were slightly slurred, and she wondered what he had seen at the point of death - what he had felt. "He had the implant in his hand. They were watching. They used it to track him. He _was_ their enemy." He shook his head wonderingly. "I know he was our enemy too, but...." And there was light in his eyes again. "It was God," she said, without the usual shyness she had about her religion. Her belief was an much part of her as Mulder's belief in aliens was part of him, though she had denied it for so long. She realised now that at least part of it had come from her refusal to accept that there were any problems that she couldn't solve herself. "It was...." Byers looked deeply moved. "It was something profound. We all feel it." Mulder gazed upwards. "It was...." "Leave it, Mulder," she said, suddenly intense. "Accept it. I don't think we'll ever know. We can torment ourselves forever, trying to explain it, or we can just accept it, and move on." He sounded half in a dream. "With faith restored...." She nodded. ****** Mulder's eyes were half-closed, and he ran his finger absently up and down the arm of the chair, tracing invisible patterns. "Maybe it would have been better if we had died." "No." She was fierce about that. She grabbed his shoulders, forcing him to look at her. "Don't think that. Never think that." He smiled ruefully, shaking his head. "I'm not suicidal, Scully. It's just...." He breathed out, long and slow. "How do we go back, now? How can we care about.... about what to eat each night, and... and about what appliances work and which ones don't, and...." "We care." She moved her hands up and clasped his face, her thumbs of his cheeks, her fingers on his neck. She could feel his pulse, fast and intimate against her skin. "We care because we _can_ care, now." She did believe that, in a very real way, Evil had been vanquished, though she knew he shared only a little of her faith. "We would have had no choice, under him." She smiled. "Every day, every choice.... every little thing.... It's because he's gone. We've got to make the most of life, or the victory means nothing." "Victory?" He closed his eyes, but wouldn't elaborate. She didn't ask him - not yet. "It will be hard, Mulder - of course it will be hard." They had gone through death, and emerged on the other side. None of them could be the same again. "We'll do it, though," she said, firmly. "Where?" She stiffened. "I would like us to stay together, this time," she said, softly. "I don't want to stay here." It was sudden, and closer to a sob. "It's too close." Close to his hopes, and the ever-present reminder of his failures. She understood. "I don't think it's too wrong to leave?" He phrased it like a question, needing reassurance. She considered. "I don't think so," she said, slowly. "You've given enough." The people were leaderless, shell-shocked. Few of them were bad people, she knew. They had been drawn by the promise of light, and warmth, and a leader who would take all responsibility for them. Now, they were scared beyond feeling, and lost. There were enough men there with the will to lead them - ex-criminals who would lead them badly, with harshness and fear. For the survivors in the north, the victory was far from certain. "I'll stay." Byers' voice was firm. Scully let her hands fall from Mulder's face, feeling a sudden pang of guilt. Three of them had faced death side by side, though, to her, it was only Mulder. But they had been three. "It will be hard." She made no attempt to dissuade him. He nodded, accepting. "I know. I.... I won't try to lead them. I hope I can persuade them to lead themselves. They're not bad people, Scully." His voice grew warm, defensive. "They're scared. They want the same as anyone wants - to feel safe. I.... I want to try." They had been three. She stood up and, walking over to him, silently embraced him. "It will be hard," she said, again. "I know." She felt his hands twitch at his sides, as if unsure whether to embrace her back. "I want to." He pulled away, and wiped a hand across his brow, his fingers half shielding his eyes. "Frohike said...." He took a shaky breath, and tried again. "Frohike said the only way we could give this.... this thing meaning was by just living, by being happy with the small things. He said it was arrogant to think we could change things, but in the end, I think, he realised he was wrong. He died while trying to change things. I.... I owe this to him." She smiled sadly. "You don't owe it to anyone, Byers, but if it's what you want...." He uncovered his face, speaking the words like a statement of faith. "It is. I.... I have nothing else," he said, simply. "I was married once - did you know that? We were separated. I expect she's dead now." He spread his hands, palms upwards. "I loved Frohike, Scully - and Langly. They were my friends, and now they're gone." She offered no comfort, knowing there was none to offer. There had been so much loss for everyone. There were few people left alive who had not lost everyone they cared about. "I need this, Scully, for myself." Byers blinked. His eyes were moist and shining. "But I'll put them first. I.... I want to try." She nodded slowly. "And I need to go south." She turned towards Mulder, but he said nothing. His eyes were distant, and he was holding Fry's key, turning it slowly, reflectively. There was loss in his eyes. She cleared her throat. "Mulder?" "It's gone," he murmured, as if half in a dream. "Gone.... There's nothing...." And then he shook his head abruptly, as if becoming aware of reality for the first time. The key slipped from his fingers, and fell against his chest, held by the chain round his neck. "I took it off last night, before...." He swallowed hard. "I found it here, in my room, waiting. Why....?" "Leave it, Mulder," she said, firmly. There was a small flutter of fear in her stomach. Maybe he had found it, but it had been his choice to put it round his neck, and his choice to wear it now. "Let it go." "I...." Then he smiled at her, quick and sudden. "I'm coming with you, Scully." But he put a hand against the key and pressed it to his chest, and held it there. ****** She drove, facing fiercely into the sun, heading south. She wanted to feel liberated, saved, but she felt she was driving from one shadow into another. She cleared her throat. "Mulder?" He was silent beside her, and preoccupied. Once, when she glanced at him, he would be nursing his burnt hand against his chest; another time he would be holding the key between his fingers, twisting it. "Mulder?" Once she caught his eyes, shining with unshed tears. "Mulder?" The moment came when they stopped for the night, sheltering in a dead man's house. It was strange, she thought now, how what was at first so abhorrent was now so normal. They would build their future on the relics of the dead. "Mulder?" She touched his arm. It was too late to mourn the world. She would accept it, and concentrate on things she _could_ change - Mulder, and herself. "Mulder? What's wrong?" He shifted position, awkwardly. "He's gone," he said. "Has he? We didn't.... It wasn't us." His face was all greys and whites, lit by moonlight. She smiled, surprised at how happiness could seize her at the strangest moments. Once, she would have had to fight for hours to get that answer from him. Many things had died in the world, but perhaps some things had been born. They were confiding, sharing, as never before. She needed to see the hope in such as that. He gestured at the key, but didn't touch it this time. "Whatever else he did, he gave me hope. He made me feel that I could make a difference - that I could change the future. I hate him, but he gave me something I needed." "I know." She nodded, thoughtfully. "I needed it too. It's why I stayed there, in Virginia. I thought I could help them, lead them.... save them. I thought I could make a difference." "You did," he said, almost fiercely. "You led them. I did...." He looked away, though not before she saw his face, frozen in a snapshot of grief and regret. "I did nothing, Scully. Everything I did was for the wrong side. I.... I hoped I could redeem that in the end. I hoped destroying the planes would make a difference. I even thought dying could make a difference." She clenched her fists by her side, unsure of how he would react if she touched him. "We knew that could make no difference." She chose her words carefully. "We knew that the best we could hope for was.... was to ourselves." "You did." It was almost bitter. "I never stopped hoping. I thought they would see our deaths, and.... and something would change for them. I hoped that more and more people would oppose him. I...." He whirled back on her, a terrible mocking smile on his face. "I wanted to lead a revolution from beyond the grave, Scully - imagine that?" She breathed in and out. "We won, Mulder," she said, softly. "No." She couldn't tell if it was laughter, or tears. "He lost. We didn't win. He just.... went. Everything we did, and suffered, and hoped.... It was all for nothing, Scully. Nothing." "He went," she repeated. "He's gone. That's what matters, Mulder. That's where the hope is." She had no idea what to say to him. The way he felt was so familiar to her. For her whole life she had always wanted to handle things herself, and win her victories by her own efforts. But, somewhere between Virginia and the prison cell, something had changed. Some situations were so big, she realised, that no-one could hope to handle them alone. She and Mulder had been like three year-olds, so determined to reach that shelf that was twice as high as they were, hating the fact that there was something - anything - that they couldn't do alone. She smiled secretly, knowing that she couldn't say it. But it was no criticism. She had been a child all her life, so insecure in her own strength that she had to assert it at all points, like the little girl proving to her father that she was the equal of her brothers. He sighed. "I know I'm being self-indulgent, Scully, but I needed to believe that I'd contributed to his defeat." He was sitting on the floor, arms wrapped round his knees, rocking to and fro with the rhythm of his self-hatred. "When we were about to die, I could allow himself to hope that things would change after my death. But it's over, now. It's over, and I did nothing." She took a deep breath. While she welcomed his sharing, there were some things she preferred to keep private, not even understanding them herself. "Maybe you did," she said, scarcely above a whisper. He raised his head, stiffened, but said nothing. Outside, the first fingers of cloud passed over the moon, and she shivered. "I had a dream, before I left Virginia." There was a tremor in her voice. She breathed in, and out, but couldn't steady it. "Someone told me that God would provide for the humble and those with faith. I think...." She was fumbling in the dark. After her initial certainty, when still half blind with the brightness of the white light, that it had been God, she hadn't let herself think of it. "I think that, by willingly accepting death, we were...." She dug her nails into her palms. "It's an ancient belief, found in many cultures, that the gods will intervene only when they are given a sacrifice." "We sacrificed ourselves?" His voice was wary. "You believe that?" "I don't know," she said, honestly. "I believe in God, yes. I... It's tempting to believe that he intervened because of what we did, but I don't think I can let myself believe that." She leant forward and touched his face, suddenly needing the contact. "I'm proud of what we did, Mulder - for us, for our own integrity, I'm proud. I want to carry on believing that that's the most important thing." Then she balled her other hand into a fist, slamming it into the arm of the chair. "If God needed a sacrifice before he would save all those people, then He's not the sort of God I _want_ to believe in." "How can you believe?" he asked, suddenly. His face was intense, as if the answer was important to him. She blinked, and forced herself to feel calm again. She didn't understand, and showed it in her face. "You've always been so independent, Scully. I've always admired your strength. How can you believe in something so.... so big - in something that dwarfs your own efforts?" "I find comfort in it." She half-closed her eyes, remembering. "I believe that people have to earn his.... his support. He's like a father. My father loved me unconditionally, and I knew that, but I still felt that I had to strive every day to prove that I was worthy of that love. It drove me. In many ways, it still does." He looked at her for a long time, and she saw sympathy in his eyes for her tears, but also a shadow. It was beyond her comprehension, she knew. He too had striven to prove worthy of a father's love, but had never known the security of knowing that he had that love in the first place. He had never known the comfort, the security, of unconditional love. And her tears changed, and became for him. "I can't believe that," he said, quietly, and his eyes showed a desperate need. He was jealous of her faith, she could tell. "I can't believe that we contributed to what happened, and I can't stop wishing that we had. I... I guess I'll _have_ to stop." After they had been cut down, he had said that it would have been better if they had died. She understood, now - or was beginning to. It was hard without faith, and his faith - his hope - had been taken away the moment he had seen Fry for what he was. she thought, as she wiped her cheek with the back of her hand, looking at his closed eyelids. In every flower, in every smile, in moment of daylight, she saw a reminder that Fry was gone, and life could continue. "What do you see, Mulder?" she whispered, stroking his hair, though her words were not really addressed to him. His lips moved silently. "Shadows," he mouthed. "Only shadows." ****** She drove slower, the closer they got. Five miles away, as another dusk was turning into another night, she stopped. "Scully?" As if in a dream, she reached for the door and went out into the cool spring evening. The air was moist with a day of rain, but it was clearing for the night. "Mulder, look." She spoke without turning around. She could hear the rustle of his clothes and the sound of his breath, and knew he was behind her. "Look." "Lights." He swallowed audibly. There was a strange note in his voice. They had seen no artificial light since leaving Toronto, and seeing Byers, his arm raised in farewell, silhouetted against the light. "Lights," she repeated. She wanted to smile; she wanted to cry. She'd been with them for over two months, and away for only a week. "They got the electricity working while I was away." He touched her shoulder, as if understanding something of her reaction. "Shall we go?" And she realised suddenly what she needed to do. "No," she said. She wrapped her arms around her body, holding herself tight against the cold. "I'm not going back." ****** Another night, and another house. She wondered if she would ever find a home again, though she had hopes. "They'll know I'm okay." She pressed her hand against the window, watching the lights across the curve of the bay. They shone through the gaps in her fingers, and, as she moved, seemed to wink off and on again. "They'll dream it, I think. They saw what he was doing in the north. It came in fragments, not quite clear. I think they'll know that they're safe, and that I'm not coming back." "Are you sure it's what you want?" He hadn't tried to argue, not for his own sake. She knew he had had no hopes of a home there, himself. He would have been aware, always, that he had been the only one there not to dream of her. In his own eyes, he was an outsider, and a traitor. She pressed hard into the glass, her fingers white. "I think so," she said, carefully. "It's what I need, anyway. It's what they need." "Why?" His eyes were intense, reflected in the window. He seemed hungry for every argument about how to face the future. "I tried to lead them. I...." Her voice was tight. Much of this was new to him, she knew. In the prison, she had already begun to be at peace with herself, and they had spoken about _his_ doubts, _his_ fears. His need had been greater than hers, then, and she didn't resent it. "I tried to lead them." She cleared her throat, and tried again. "They needed me, at first, but I needed them, too. Part of me hated the responsibility, but I needed it, too. It's what you were saying last night, Mulder. I wanted to feel that I was in control - that I was contributing something to..... to saving what could be saved." "If you need it, Scully, you should go." There was an intensity to his voice. It was as if he felt that his own despair was inevitable, but that she still had a chance of being happy. "It's not like that, Mulder." She turned around, seeing his pale bleak face. "I came to realise..." She smiled, wryly. "Tom Colton showed me that, after a while, my leadership wasn't what they needed. They were relying on me too much. They needed to learn how to look after themselves. I.... I think I'd have noticed that before if I hadn't been leading them partly for myself. I don't want to make that mistake again." "You can still shape the future, Scully." She noticed that he never once said 'we'. She shrugged. "Perhaps. Perhaps they don't need me, and I can help shape it for the worse. Perhaps they'd take me back, and I'd have to live every day with the fear that I'm not doing it for the right reasons, and the hard work, and the responsibility. Perhaps...." And she said it casually, though she was beginning to realise it was the most important thing of all. "Perhaps it's not what I want." He was silent, but his eyes seemed to argue with her. "I'm not sure if I ever wanted it." She felt weary to the bone. These last few days had forced her to look at herself as she had never looked before. "Yes, I have always needed to be strong, and in control, but it was.... I think it was an internal thing, Mulder. I didn't want to change the world, or control it. All I wanted was to stand up to whatever I faced, and stand my ground, to be strong inside. I wanted to stick to my principles, whatever the cost, and never give in." She smiled. "Be true to myself, Mulder. I feel I've achieved that." There was real envy in his eyes - a desperate hunger. Not for the first time, she wanted to cry for him, wondering if he could ever be content. "We've faced death, Mulder, and we were strong, Mulder - _we were strong_." She held onto his shoulder, pulling his face close to hers, speaking in an intense whisper. "We have nothing to prove, Mulder. Whether we had a role in his defeat, or not.... Whether we helped them get the lights on, or not.... It doesn't matter, Mulder. We've won. It _was_ our victory." He opened his mouth, but was beyond words. He swallowed hard, and again, and tried again. "I.... I wish I could believe that," he said, his voice choked. "I hope you can, Mulder," she murmured. He walked away, and now it was him at the window, her behind him. His face was only a reflection to her now, his feelings hidden. "I hoped...." He swallowed hard. "You say you didn't want to change the world - that your strength and happiness come from within.... I'm not like that, Scully. You know that." She nodded, silently. She knew. He ran his fingers across the glass. "My childhood was miserable, Scully, after Samantha.... went. I had to believe that everything would be better again if she came back - had to. My life has been about seeking answers. I've always believed that the answers would make me happy, and, when I get an answer and it makes things worse, then I tell myself that the _next_ answer will make me happy, and the next, and the next...." She moved close, let him know she was there, ready to hold him if he needed it, but said nothing. "I got no happiness from learning how to be content with what happened - how could I have?" His arm was shaking with the pressure he was putting on the window, and she felt a sudden spark of fear for him. "I hoped, I hoped.... Everything would get better when she came back. Everything would get better when I joined Fry. Everything would get better when we started fighting the aliens. Everything would get better after I died. Everything would get better when I came south with you...." She needed to clap her hands on her ears and simply not hear him. Her own acceptance was so precarious, but when fighting his misery too.... "You see, Scully?" And he did something she had never expected: he laughed. It was a bitter sound, without humour in it. "I _did_ want to change the world. I could always tell myself that happiness would come with the next discovery." He sighed deeply, and there was a tremor in it. "It would never have come, would it?" "I don't know." But she thought - her real answer. He knew it, too. "Do you remember Trepkos - the Firewalker case?" His voice was distant now, as if talking to himself, lost in memory. "He said something to me I've never forgotten. 'If you found that answer,' he said. 'What would you do with it?' Would it make me happy, he meant. I know now that it wouldn't have, but I can't stop wishing that it had." She touched his back, softly, between his shoulders. "Can't stop?" "I hoped the impossible, Scully." He continued as if she hadn't spoken, showing no sign of feeling her. "Samantha's return couldn't have given me back my childhood, or given me a happy family. Fighting the colonists couldn't stop what had already happened. I know that now." He shook his head from side to side, despairingly. "It's hard, Scully. My work.... You know what it was all about? I thought I could change things - that _I_ could change things. I would find Samantha. I would stop the Consortium. I would stop the aliens. Deep down, I really hoped that I could do these things." She kept her hand on his back, but he was beyond comfort, now. His feelings were real, and there was nothing she could say. Time, she hoped, would make it better, but she knew it was a regret he would carry always, like the silver scar on his shoulder. Instead, she said quietly, "Will going back help, Mulder? Working with survivors? Doing things?" He hesitated for a long time. "I don't think so. Maybe. I.... No. Not yet. It's too soon. I'd hate the fact that I couldn't do anything - anything _real_. Their families would still be dead. Nothing would change." "No." She stepped closer, giving him the comfort of her warmth, and deriving comfort from his. "Perhaps it's selfish not to, but I don't think so. We both have too many emotions invested in it at the moment. We.... we need time." "We can go back in the future. We can help change things. We can rebuild." His voice was bleak, but she knew he was already fixing on that as his hope - a beacon in the dark, a grail. He would never change, and neither should she expect him to. "We can go back," she said, quietly. "We've been through a lot, Mulder. We need to heal. We need to sure of what we want. We need to be sure that we'd be going back because it's best for them, not because it fulfils some needs of our own. They're people, Mulder, and they're scared. It would be unfair to view them as...." "A surrogate Samantha," he murmured. "No..." He turned half round, letting her slip in beside him so they were side by side by the window, looking out to the light beyond the darkness. "I wanted Samantha back for my own reasons, Scully. It was to make me happy. I never really saw her as a real person." She snaked a hand round his waist. "I didn't mean that, Mulder. I...." She blinked back tears. "We both made mistakes. We both acted in ways that.... that we thought were for others, but were for ourselves. But I mean what I said, Mulder. We have nothing to be ashamed of in the end. Whether you believe in God, or sacrifice, or.... or whatever else you believe in.... We _did_ triumph, Mulder." He made a small sound in his throat that could have been agreement. Could have.... ****** Gulls were diving into the sea, screaming hoarsely. The setting sun made their summer plumage shine almost golden against the mirror-like sea. Mulder twisted a piece of grass in his fingers, following one young bird with his eyes as it swooped and soared and shrieked. The birds were another thing he was unable to explain. For months there had been none, all killed by the same thing that killed the people. Now, in June, they were back again - a few. A few birds had survived, perhaps, and, scared, had hidden until their young were old enough to fly. And the young, with dirty ruffled feathers, seemed to laugh with the joy of flying. "Scully?" he called softly. He had heard her footsteps behind him on the grass. "Yes." She understood without further words. Some times they talked without a break for the whole day; sometimes they seldom needed to talk at all. He was glad. He had pulled away from their first kiss, afraid that they were confusing the comfort of being with someone from the time before with real love. "Is it so hard for you to believe that you're loved?" she had asked, surprising him. Tears had shone in his eyes. he'd thought. "It's not...." "No." She had pressed her fingers against his lips. "Never fear that, Mulder. I love you. If it was just the comfort - the security - of being with someone I knew, I'd have gone with you when you left to go to him. I love you; I want to be with you, as long as that's what we both need. There's security in it - I think there always is with love. It's not blind passion, or romance, Mulder. We're friends, partners.... It goes way beyond that." He had been unable to stop, pouring out his late-night fears. "When I decided to rebel against Fry, it wasn't for you, Scully. I didn't choose you over him. It was for my.... my conscience, I guess." "I know." She'd held his face between her hands, her face solemn, her eyes welling with tears. "I wouldn't want it any other way. It's you I love - you. I want you to be true to yourself." And she had kissed him again. "The young," he said now, pointing. They had discussed it. If only a few people had been immune to whatever it was that had been introduced into the air, or the water, then what about their babies? If the children died, then it really was the end, and no-one could hope again. She smiled. "Maybe. I hope so, Mulder." Of all places, they had chosen Martha's Vineyard for their home, sailing over on one calm spring evening. He knew she had feared how he would react, surrounded by places that reminded him of past pain, but he found it strangely comforting. The happy memories were the worst. Every now and then he would pause mid-step, struck by the curve of a hill, or a creaking sign on a house, and would remember. Samantha running through a field, braids flying.... Splashing through the sea with school friends, not yet seven.... The happy memories were the worst, reminding him that everyone he remembered was dead - that a whole way of life was dead. "Is it over?" he asked suddenly. He still wore the key close to his skin, and thought, perhaps, that he always would. "Has he really gone?" On the way, they had met a few survivors, some travelling north, some travelling south. All had the same story: their dreams had stopped. They had been drawn to their destination by radio broadcasts. "Guy called Byers," one had said, gesturing to the north. "He said he was the leader of the governing committee up there. He said there was a place for us there." And their dreams had stopped..... She took a deep breath. "I think he's always here, in some form, but, yes, I think that, in _that_ form, he is gone." He considered, and nodded, understanding. It was different with her, he knew. She believed that Fry had been a spirit - true Evil. He, though, still wasn't sure what he believed. All he knew was that part of his happiness had gone with him, but that, if he could do it again, he would have opposed him just the same. "It's harder now, without him," she said, suddenly, almost fiercely. He blinked, but said nothing. If she wanted him to know, she would tell him. In these past few weeks, they had both stopped hiding from each other in so many ways. "When he was here...." She pulled at a grass stalk, breaking it with a snap. "He was a scapegoat, in a way. Back in Virginia, we could believe that all evil was.... was _him_. We were so secure in the knowledge that we were the good side. We didn't even consider that bad things could come from ourselves as well." "Tom Colton?" he asked. She had told him about him, and Krycek, though he suspected there were still parts of what had happened that neither of them were ready to tell, not yet. "It's easier when there's an enemy." Her voice was reflective. "We'd survived when everyone else had died, so we thought death was in the past. We thought Evil was in the past, or far away, in the north. But people are people. It will be hard for everyone when they realise that. There _will_ be crimes. There are so many weapons lying around, just waiting to be picked up." "Contentment," he whispered. He touched the back of her hand. "Remember?" It was a difference between them. She still claimed that they had won their battle and that the best way they could salvage something from the ruins of the world was to be content, and learn to be happy. Sometimes, when he saw the birds, or the sun on her hair, he could almost believe her. Just to live was a victory in itself, as a cause for hope. Sometimes.... It was hard, though - so hard. At times he lay awake long after she had fallen asleep, fingering the key and feeling nothing but bleakness and loss. he would think in the darkness. Fry could be out there, coming back any moment. The aliens could be on their way back, or already colonising, spreading out their fingers from the west, or overseas, or anywhere. And then part of him would wonder if he was hiding here, not because he agreed with Scully, but because he was afraid to let himself hope again - afraid that he couldn't bear another disappointment. And now she shrugged, giving a strange half-laugh. "I know, Mulder. Contentment...." She leant forward suddenly, intense. "I don't really feel everything I say I ought to feel, Mulder. I try to be content, but I find it hard, too. It's just that...." She took a deep breath. "If I allow myself to feel anger at what happened, or mourn it too badly, I don't know how I'd survive. There's nothing at all we can do about the past. I _have_ to move on - you know that. I'm not just being a passive victim. I have to show myself that I can overcome this, just as I've always tried to overcome any obstacle I've met." "I know." He held her hand, knowing that they both drew comfort from the touch. "I.... I have different obstacles." "You're trying." It rose at the end, like a question. He was suddenly acutely aware of the feel of the key against his skin. "I'm trying." He nodded, sombre. "I hope we can be happy." And then he laughed, almost bitterly. "It's ironic, huh? I've spent all my life trying to find the magic ingredient that would make me happy, and it takes the death of millions to bring me even close." "It redefines happiness. It's like what you said about having a peg leg, once. We can count ourselves happy just to live - just to see a reason to get up each day, and not just to let ourselves die. I'm sure many initial survivors did that, Mulder - just let themselves die. We lived." She smiled into the sunset. "We survived, Mulder. There's hope in that, isn't there?" He couldn't answer. Instead, he remembered. "Remember our wishes for the new Millennium, Scully? I wished that you'd live; you wished that I'd be happy." Her hand moved to the back of her neck, and he knew it was the one fear that neither of them had dared speak about. If Fry had really removed the implant.... "I dreamed that I'd killed you," she said, instead. "Right at the start.... We were on opposite sides. I didn't, did I?" He smiled, shaking his head. "We were never on opposite sides, Scully. We both wanted the same thing - to save what could be saved." And he believed it, too, although he knew that he had been blind, and that there were some things he could never forgive himself for. The sun touched the sea, and the water shone red. "We can live, Mulder." Her cheeks shone with silent tears. "We can survive, and love, and be happy. I think that's the greatest fight, and the greatest victory." As a seabird screamed, they kissed. He felt immeasurably old, and the kiss was chaste, devoid of passion, yet all the more valuable for that. Passion would come later; for now they needed mutual support, and friendship, and hope. As the sun set, the wind chilled the tears on their cheeks, and the birds were white ghosts against the water. ****** END ****** NOTES: Well, I'm finished. While the first story was very easy to write, this one was _hard_, though I was still inspired. There are deep emotional issues here - I hope. I was just feeling proud about having done my first happy ending, when I was informed that it is, in fact, sad. Well, I suppose it's a bit of both. I don't feel we _can_ have happiness at the end of this. Some things are to great to recover from. I hope there it at least optimism there, if nothing else. As well as "The Stand", I must also credit "The Lord of the Rings", by JRR Tolkien. I never set out to include it, but it just crept in. I referred to it explicitly once, quoted it, uncredited, another time, and the whole of the last section of this story was inspired by the mood of the end of that novel. Frodo ends that story, sadly toying with the white jewel he's been given, knowing that Evil had been destroyed, but able, personally, to take no joy in it. Through the glamour of the Ring, his own hopes and joy had been too closely tied up with that which had to be destroyed. There can be no true happiness for him in the world after. I've always found it unbearably sad, but I hope that Mulder has more chance of finding at least some happiness in this world than Frodo ended up with. As for the crossover part, this story more closely follows "The Stand" than the first one, since I went and killed off the Consortium, the FBI, and much of the X-Files world in that story. Those who know "The Stand" will recognise Tom Colton as Harold Lauder, even down to the manner of his death. Scully has the Mother Abigail role, but is no Mother Abigail. Krycek is.... Well, Krycek surprised me. I've never written him before, but became very fond of him, and cried when I killed him. I had to, though. I'm sorry. I don't think anyone else has direct parallels of characters, though - oh, except for Randall Flagg himself. And is Flagg/Fry really gone? Well, let's just hope so.... So, how long till that Millennium Bug? FEEDBACK is always welcome, and will be replied to