The Batman Plot

Krycek looked at his boss, regarding the monitor while holding a cigarette to his smiling lips in his usual effete manner and shook his head. That old man had come up with some pretty stupid things in the past, but this had to be the topper. It was never going to work. It was too complicated.

Sometimes conspiracy got to be a sickness, just like lying. You could lie and lie until even you didn't remember what was actually the truth and which were lies you told to cover your ass, or to manipulate someone, or just, maybe, to let you get to sleep nights. Conspiracy was like that. It got inside you. Until all you could do was think in zigs and zags and never, ever in a straight line. Like a big web, or in this case, a snarly ball of string that you found in the bottom of your grandfather's desk drawer. Probably put there and forgotten sometime in 1963 because it had seemed like a good idea at the time. This was one of THOSE kinds of plans.

Krycek shook his head again. He had to say something. He could feel the acid of frustration rising in his stomach, almost like fear. This was the best chance they'd ever had. He couldn't let the old man throw it away for something as stupid as this.

"This is never going to work," he said aloud, causing his cigarette smoking boss to turn in his direction and raise graying eyebrows quizzically, a deceptively mild expression on his face.

Despite the fact that he looked like any other world-weary executive, maybe at a financial firm, Krycek's boss was one evil son of a bitch. It was a given in this line of work, but Krycek knew that he wasn't the garden variety sort of evil, he actually enjoyed what he did in an aesthetic way. And what's more, he even thought he was right, something Alex Krycek often wondered at. The old man was a believer. "And why is that?" his boss asked, exhaling a puff of smoke from his rapidly-disappearing Morley, voice as deceptively mild a tenor as his face was gentle.

Krycek struggled for an appropriate analogy. Couldn't find one in literature, Western or Russian, and settled on decadent pop culture instead.

"Did you ever catch the old Batman television show with Adam West and Burt Ward back in the sixties?" he asked.

His boss looked ever so mildly irritated, his voice becoming somewhat strained.

"I was rather busy during the sixties, Krycek. Do you have a point?"

"One of the major elements of the show was that either Batman or Robin would be captured by the guest super-villain every week. At that point, instead of killing them, like any sensible person would, the super-villain would hook them up to some elaborate sort of Rube Goldberg kind of trap. Then the super-villain would always leave the room, allowing Batman or Robin, or sometimes Batgirl to be saved from "certain death" at the last second by one of the other super heroes." Krycek explained. "That's what this whole plan reminds me of. It's too elaborate and there are too many places where things can go wrong. I'm just waiting for Batman to show up. Or maybe just the fucking U.S. Cavalry."

"We control the U.S. Cavalry," his boss said, but he seemed to be thinking. "While I must admit that your lack of confidence disturbs me. Perhaps you have a point. It will be up to you to make sure that the plan is carried out as conceived and that nothing happens that will interfere with its outcome."

"I just told you that I thought the plan wouldn't work. I don't want anything to do with it," Krycek told him.

"And since when did you have a choice in the matter?" his boss said, turning once more to look at the monitor displaying the prisoner. Krycek cursed silently to himself and prepared to grab his ankles and grin and bear it once again. The old saying was right. Crime didn't pay.

Scully couldn't sleep. She hadn't been able to make it through a single night for more than three months. She could feel it in her bones, the ache of exhaustion, the gradual frazzling of nerves brought on by living in a constant state of mild panic, waiting for the axe to fall. She'd stopped eating most of the time, too. She simply didn't remember that her body needed the fuel to carry on. She'd only notice once she'd become dizzy and nauseous from the depletion of her blood sugar, and then she had to force herself. It seemed these days she had to force herself to breathe.

And it had only been three months.

She wondered what twenty years must feel like.

And then she panicked again, turning on her side to clutch her arms around herself in her wide, cold bed. She was waiting for word that they had found him. That he was dead. She had no hope that he'd be recovered alive. It had been too long.

She'd been returned alive. But that was only because they'd wanted him. Wanted to manipulate him with her absence, goad him with her pain, drive him mad if they could with worry, with absence. They had no such agenda with her. They'd already taken everything they'd wanted and placed it in a vial somewhere in one of their laboratories, to be used in making monsters.

Scully looked at the clock, numbers glowing redly on the beside table like the eyes of some viscous beast. 4:02, it read. And she'd gone to bed when? One, one-thirty? She was doing well, almost three and a half hours tonight.

She briefly contemplated the bottle of Maker's in her kitchen cabinet. The one that was more than half empty. The one she turned to more and more to buy a few hours of oblivion, despite the aching head and reddened eyes the next morning. She had never been a drinker, but now she understood its appeal. Anesthetic. She didn't have to feel anything.

But it was already too late. And she had work in the morning. Not that she had taken a day off from searching for the past three months.

But tomorrow was Wednesday, a day when the whole world, even those not on mad, hopeless quests for the lost, had to get up and get the job done.

And Wednesday was one of the two days she took for her tour. Her trip through the city's morgues, to chat with her colleagues over their latest John Does. She made the trips each week, personally, knowing that in the state of advanced decay in which some of the bodies presented themselves, her well-meaning, but innocent colleagues might not spot the one she was looking for.

Scully was well acquainted with Death. As a forensic pathologist she sometimes felt it was her friend, an ally in discovering evil. And when she'd gotten cancer, it had almost been her lover, locked tightly to her in an unbreakable embrace. But now, it was her greatest fear, but familiar still - inevitable as the sunrise.

She shuddered in her bed, conjuring up images of what she'd find on some anonymous slab later in the day. Attempting to steel herself against it, to kill her heart now, so the pain would not stop it then. And she couldn't get warm, no matter how small she made herself, or how high she turned the furnace. She realized the constant chill she felt was partially psychosomatic and partially due to the extremity of her recent weight loss. She'd barely begun to gain it back since the cancer, and now she was heading quickly into the realm of anorexia. She knew it. But it didn't help her to eat. It didn't stop her from feeling ill when she did.

She looked at the clock again. 4:30. She might as well get up. She wouldn't sleep again now, and the hot water of the shower would help banish the chill, if only for a moment.

Krycek sat next to Krycek in the car.

He'd never imagined himself as having a split personality. He wasn't the unstable type, actually. It's what made him so good at surviving.

Sure, he had personal vendettas and grudges like anyone else, but he always knew who he was, despite any of the roles he'd had to play. He knew that the only person he was really looking out for was Alex Krycek. Except now he was playing nursemaid to himself on the biggest fool project he'd ever been involved in. And he'd been involved in some doozies in the past.

He scratched his arm. The prosthetic one.

It still weirded him out when he reached for an itch and found his fingers touching plastic instead of skin. It FELT like it was there, after all.

And, he wondered, if they were being such sticklers for verisimilitude, why they hadn't amputated the arm of the Krycek that was driving through the streets of Georgetown. Except that they weren't being sticklers.

It actually sort of amused him to see how wrong they were getting it. It was one of the reasons he was so totally convinced that the plan was going to fail. If they wanted to create a Krycek, they should create a fucking Krycek, not this animal they were trying to make. And the animal wasn't taking his assignment all that well.

And, of course, the animal's success was all on his head.

The black-lunged bastard. Mulder was right about that much.

"Do you want to tell me what's bothering you, Krycek?" he asked, as the driver turned the wheel and took them by the college.

"Why do they want it so extreme?" Krycek asked shaking his head and looking vaguely sick. "I mean, what's the point? If we're just trying to get rid of her, then why not just get rid of her?"

"That's what I told them," Krycek said. "But they wouldn't listen to me. And, as you know, I'm out here to back you up on this one."

"Yeah, I don't know why they think I need back up," Krycek said.

"That doesn't speak much about their confidence in my ability. I mean, she's just one woman. And a little one at that."

"I know," Krycek said. "And she's saved your life, too. More than once."

"You don't have to tell me that," Krycek answered with a concerned look at Krycek. "She even shot her partner to keep him from killing me. That was something. I.... I don't want to hurt her, Sergei. If she has to die. Why can't it be as quick and painless as possible? Like it was when that accident happened with her sister."

"You're right, Krycek," Krycek told him. "You owe her that much. If you want to do it that way, I'll tell them. I know you don't trust anyone. But she doesn't deserve the kind of treatment they had planned. Why terrorize her? Why humiliate her like that? She doesn't deserve it. I think she may be the only truly good person I've ever known."

"You're right, Sergei," Krycek nodded grimly. "I don't want to rape her. I don't want to make her beg or pretend I want information. I don't want to cut her up. Let it be assassination. Straightforward. With dignity. She deserves it. She's so brave."

 "He wants it to be artful. A work of terror," Krycek said.  "But killing something as beautiful as that. Something so good. It's terror enough for me. It would be like killing an angel."

"You're right," Krycek nodded thoughtfully. "I'll just kill her and be done with it. You're with me on this?"

"I'm right behind you all the way," Krycek agreed.

The Krycek behind the wheel looked grimly straight ahead and kept driving. Driving to her apartment. It would be painfully easy to take her there. She would never suspect it. And they had the key.

No breaking and entering. And such a clear suspect. It was the one part of the plan that had an elegance that Krycek could appreciate. The setup was brilliant. It was merely the execution that was a danger.

But he was relieved to hear the other Krycek say it. That it would be quick and painless. That she wouldn't be humiliated. That she would be left beautiful and strong. An agent going down in the line of duty. A hero.

It was what she deserved.

She'd saved him. Not once. But more than that.

And, though he knew she could never feel anything for him but contempt. He loved her in a way. For a worthy enemy is as good as a friend. And she was more than worthy.

And what was more. By helping the other one to the decision he, himself, would have made, Krycek was helping the plan. Giving it a much greater chance of success, than if he would have Krycek carry out the sick plottings of the old men. Those men didn't understand. They didn't know what it was to feel the way he felt. They didn't know him at all.

He couldn't really be surprised. He'd taken care to guard himself from their understanding. It was part of his protection. But it sometimes amazed him to see how successful he'd been. And it was very unflattering to see what they believed him to be. He wondered who else thought the same.

At one time, he was certain the man who sat beside him had shared their opinion. And he must share it now. It was they who had created him.

But, in his heart, he knew. Or, in his heart he shared Krycek's own feelings. Or, perhaps, they were both simply men who could recognize goodness when they saw it shining out of a pair of bright, blue eyes. And, perhaps, they were both men who could honor that goodness as it should be honored. With the recognition and the dignity it deserved.

And Krycek owed her. His life, and more. He owed her for the injury that had been done her as a mistake. If things had gone according to plan, none of them would be here now. So many things would not have happened. And she would have been spared so much suffering. If he could spare her now... Perhaps when he met whatever there was beyond this life, that would be there on the list of credits to outweigh some of the other things he'd done to serve himself.

Krycek smiled, unaware of how young and boyish it made him appear, and thought of her. She would never know. But he knew that she would have to approve of this one action of his, at least, though she had never liked him, even from the first.

At first he had been a mere annoyance. A thing that prevented her from being alone with Mulder, as she wished to be alone. And then, he was a traitor, something she could not stomach. But the fact was, he had never been a traitor to the one thing he'd always worked for, Krycek.

But he knew she would never see it his way. But this.. yes, in this one thing he had the moral high ground. It was a strange feeling, and a good one. Krycek allowed himself to revel in it. Moral superiority. A rarity in his business, and a thing that allowed him to set himself above the animals he worked with. It was a thing that made men great. It was a thing that his boss possessed, as much evil as he had done, because of his belief. Krycek could well understand the appeal, though he knew he could never be a believer. More, he followed the admonition of the traitor to Mulder - Trust No One. But lack of trust did not preclude magnanimity, or justice. And he could give her both. It made him smile.

They pulled into a parking area across from her building, where the lights of her apartment windows were visible from the car. It was a common car, with a stolen plate. She would think nothing of it. She would not suspect she was a target. Krycek would wait there while Krycek committed the assassination. Then, if he had not gone mad, they would both go, the assassin to be turned over to the authorities when he had worn out his usefulness, as Krycek knew that he, himself, would be sacrificed when the old men saw fit. It was his duty to make certain they never did. "Go now, Alex," he told the other Krycek, gripping his leather-jacketed shoulder with his living hand. "She isn't home yet, and you can wait for her. There are many good places to conceal yourself inside her apartment. She has a lot of furniture."

"And you'll wait for me here?"

"You know that I will," he told him. "It should be simple enough. She won't suspect anything. I'll watch out for you, though. It's what comrades are for."

"And I know how you feel about comrades," the other Krycek smiled. It wasn't a very nice smile, a mere twisting of his full-lipped mouth in sarcasm. Ah, yes, this one did know him a little. More so than the old men, no matter what they'd tried to make of him.

"Eta duvya gdezne, eh?" Krycek said with a shrug, and the other Krycek left the car, jingling the keys to her apartment in the pocket of his leather jacket.

Krycek walked calmly into the target's building. His feet followed what seemed almost a familiar trail to her front door. He even smiled and waved at an elderly woman with a poodle, who seemed almost to recognize him as belonging there.

Strange, he hadn't thought her the type to have strange men coming in and out of her apartment.

Stranger still, the thought bothered him a little.

Perhaps that was what happened when you admired someone and found they were really just like everyone else, he thought.

He let himself in with the shiny silver key. It was a duplicate, well-worn by use.

He must have come here a lot, Krycek thought. And he vaguely wondered what had happened to her partner, that they were in possession of his set of keys. But it really didn't matter. He had an important task at hand.

They both had seen too much. They both had to be eliminated.

He wished he had been able to eliminate the other one. The thought of hurting her was still bothering him, even though Sergei had allowed him to forgo the torture and the rape. He wondered why they'd wanted it. She was worthy. She didn't deserve to be treated like a piece of meat or an animal.

He looked around the living room for an appropriate place to wait. She should be coming home soon. She had been watched carefully for months, and her patterns of working late, checking his apartment, weeping there or not weeping, and returning home had been noted and scheduled like clockwork. She was a very meticulous woman.

But he could find no comfortable place where he could be both concealed and ready.

His feet found their way to her bedroom of their own accord. And his body to the chair by the door.

She would not see him there when she entered. And he knew just what she'd do.

She would take off her jacket and go then into the bathroom to prepare her bath. Then she would return to her bedroom and remove her clothing. That was when he would do it. He would announce himself, and while she struggled with her blouse, or one of those pullover sweater things she often wore with her utilitarian pantsuits, he would carry out his assignment and place her on the bed in dignity to be found like she was sleeping. He would not frighten her, or humiliate her. She would be as beautiful and dignified in death as she was in life. Or he wasn't Alex Krycek.

He checked his gun again, and listened carefully for her key in the lock.

Scully was so tired.

She had dragged herself around the circuit of death, visiting all those poor souls who flowed like water through the hospitals and morgues of the nation's capitol. Dead, or dying, alone and unknown. None of them were the man she sought.

At the end of her day, she'd stayed late in his office, the one that had now become more hers than her own, finishing the work she had neglected in her rounds of searching. She had driven through a burger place on her way to his apartment to feed the fish, but had forgotten the food in its grease-spattered bag nearly as soon as she had purchased it. Her car would smell disgusting in the morning.

When she'd taken care of the scaly pets, she'd lain on his leather sofa and had closed her eyes. But even that gave her no comfort now. It no longer smelled like him, though she'd taken care to change nothing since his disappearance. Perhaps she'd lain on it once too often, forgetting in her search for comfort after his initial absence that she might need it even more at some later time, for when she pressed her face into the cushions all she could sense was the faint after-image of herself.

She'd risen then to wander aimlessly through his apartment. Almost a ghost, amid the silent things that had been his. She imagined packing them all into boxes, as she would have to do once she found him and sending them...where? She was certain his mother wouldn't want them. And he had no one else. Perhaps the Gunmen would take some things. They were sentimental that way.

She'd wandered into the bedroom and had sat on the neatly-made bed in which he never slept, looking into the closet with its meticulously hung and dry-cleaned suits and tie rack full of ugly silk. The man was far from neat, but he was careful with his clothes, even the shoes and socks neatly mated and matched and all put precisely in place. Perhaps it was an after effect of being color-blind. Was it more difficult for him than for her to tell the navy from the black, the dark brown from the gray? Did that explain why he so often wore black or gray when on his day off? Not risking a clash?

He seemed to care so little about clashing in the rest of his life. Sometimes she thought he sought out conflict just for the sake of being an iconoclast.

Scully lay down on the bed for a while, wondering why he never slept there. It was very comfortable.

She woke hours later, still feeling tired, and cold, too. She'd turned the heat in the apartment down low because there was no one living there.

She rose from the bed, and smoothed the comforter once more, erasing the imprint of her body.

It was full dark outside when she returned to her foul-smelling car. It took her some time to identify the take-out bag as the culprit, and she left it in a dumpster behind his building, rolling down her window to erase the nauseating smell as she drove the short distance from Alexandria to Georgetown and home.

She was so very late.

While the hard chair was growing increasingly uncomfortable as time wore on, it wasn't the physical discomfort that troubled him. He had waited in far worse situations than this before, both here and in Russia. He knew that Sergei would be with the car when he returned, so he didn't fear abandonment after he did his duty. No, it wasn't that.

It was the nagging fear that kept creeping about the edges of his mind like a spy prying into his consciousness. What if something terrible had happened to her?

What if, even now, she lay in a ditch somewhere, the victim of a horrible car wreck? What if some madman had snatched her away? He knew it had happened in the past, and now, with her partner nowhere to be found, she had no one to look out for her. What if there was someone out there doing the terrible things to her that he refused to do? What if she was screaming, and there was no one to hear or care? Or worse, what if she was not screaming, because her fragile body was too ravaged and broken to allow such a sound to issue from it?

He sat still in the chair while his mind conjured hideous visions of her broken in a multitude of ways. He was nearly at the point of leaving his chair to go and search for her, when he heard the homey sound of a key in the front door lock.

Now she would begin her nightly routine. He closed his eyes and listened, for he knew it by heart.

First the sound of her laptop case carefully lowered to the floor next to the coat rack where she could either unpack the computer to use that night, or have it at ready to go out with her again in the morning. The soft rustle of Scully removing her long coat and another as she hung it neatly on the rack.

Her next move was a variable. Two soft thuds. She was tired tonight. She had taken her shoes off immediately. That meant the answering machine was next.

She moved across the room to where it rested on her desk. She pressed the button.

"Please erase this message as soon as you pick it up," said a distinctive, high pitched male voice, made slightly tinny by the cheap speaker on Scully's machine. "Langley, Byers and I have just obtained some very interesting information from a hacker friend of ours, involving the movements of scientists with very specific specialties from the former Soviet Union to this country. We have reason to believe that it may in some way be connected with Mulder's disappearance. Please call us at your earliest convenience."

"Oh, Frohike," he heard Scully say to her machine as she erased the message according to his request. "You think everything has to do with Mulder's disappearance."

It was the only message, but she didn't move from the machine for a time. Finally she let out a long breath, not quite a sigh, but he could think of no other word that would adequately describe the sound, and her footsteps told him she was approaching the bedroom at last.

He sat very still. His gun in his hand, lying at ready on one long thigh. He was ready for her, prepared for the job that lay ahead. Or so he thought, until he saw her.

Scully shuffled tiredly into the room, barely lifting her feet off the carpet to move herself along. She was clad in a camel-colored wool pantsuit that he knew he had seen her wearing before, but it looked different somehow. It wasn't until she removed the blazer, laying it neatly at the foot of the bed so it wouldn't wrinkle that he realized the problem with the suit.

It was hanging on her like it was several sizes too big. And he knew that it was not too big. In fact, she'd bought it when she'd been ill, losing weight drastically as a result of chemotherapy and illness itself.

Panic clutched at his heart and wrung it in his chest.

If she was ill again, he didn't know what he'd do. She couldn't be ill! He wouldn't allow it. It was too soon after the last time.

He'd made no sound, and Scully carried on with her routine, oblivious to his presence. She unbuckled the belt of her slacks, and unbuttoned the button at the waist that now sagged out several inches from her shrunken form. She unzipped the zipper and pulled the hem of the navy blue, short sleeved sweater she was wearing out of the slacks as she headed for the bathroom to draw the water.

He didn't know what to do. If he didn't speak now, she would carry on, and have the sweater over her head, leaving him the easiest of kill shots. But it seemed hardly sporting to shoot an unarmed and obviously sick woman in cold blood. Especially when that woman was Agent Scully.

Krycek stood up, the chair creaking slightly and his leather jacket and jeans rustling as he changed positions.

"Wha... who's there?" Scully said as she whirled around to face him, her blue eyes wide in surprise and disbelief.

"It's me, Scully," he said, turning his gun on her before she could move to take hers out of the holster. "I've come to kill you." She looked even worse from the front, if that was possible. Her face was gaunt, her neck seemed almost wizened, and her eyes showed circles beneath them that could not be concealed with cosmetics. At first she had seemed nearly glad to see him, but then she had heard his words and now she appeared only confused.

"Wha...What did you say?" she asked.

"I said I've come to kill you," he told her honestly.

"Who sent you?" she asked him.

"You know," he smiled at her. "He's an old friend of yours and Agent Mulder's. And old friend with a rather dirty habit."

"So you're working for him now?" she asked, the look of confusion quickly replacing itself with one of stoic despair.

"I've always worked for him," Krycek smiled and the despair in her face deepened until he almost wished he could take it back. "Of course we've had our disagreements, and an occasional falling-out. But our real goals have always been the same."

"H...how long?" she nearly whispered, no longer able to look him in the eye. She was staring at a spot on her carpet to his left, but he could tell that she wasn't really seeing anything at all. He wondered why that was. She wasn't afraid. He knew her that well.

"Always," Krycek smiled. "But you knew that from the beginning, didn't you, Scully? Or almost from the beginning."

When she looked up again, her blue eyes were glittering with unshed tears. She shook her head, and looked away from him, and he realized it was because she could not bring herself to speak. She looked so beautiful and so tragic. Like the Madonna of a pieta or a character in a Russian play.

"I don't know what I knew any more," she finally managed, her voice harsh with pain. She waited a long moment while they both said nothing. He was content to wait and allow her to say what she needed to say. It was part of the dignity he owed her. And all he wanted to do was look at her some more, anyway. Terrible and ill as she appeared, it made him feel better just to look at her - to watch her breathe, the flutter of eyelashes as she blinked, the fall of her auburn hair upon her collar.

"You were part of it all along," she said, her voice dull, her eyes lifeless now. "Part of everything. Of everything they've done to me."

"No," he said his voice rough and baldly honest, knowing in his heart what she was thinking. What she was blaming him for. "Not that. Never that. I never wanted you hurt, Scully."

"Yet you say you're here to kill me," she laughed, only it came out more like a sob, and she still couldn't look at him.

"Yes," he said softly. "I could never hurt you, Scully."

"So why don't you do it, then?" she asked taking a step nearer, raising her pain-filled eyes to lock into his own gaze. "Why don't you kill me without hurting me?"

"Don't come any closer, Scully!" he said harshly, as she took another step toward him, quickly closing the remainder of the gap between them.

"Why? Don't want to get dirty when you do it?" she asked sweetly, not that she could mask the pain or sarcasm in her voice. "You don't want my blood on your hands?"

"You still have your gun," he replied, attempting to fall back into cool professionalism.

"This?" she asked, removing it from her holster and placing it on the floor to her left. Then she removed the holster. "There, you know I don't carry any other weapon. Why don't you do it now?"

"You'd think you wanted me to," he said, with a rather shaky laugh. But she was scaring him, and he didn't like the wild despair he saw so clearly in her eyes. Something was horribly, horribly wrong with her, and he didn't want to, but he needed to know what it was.

"I do. I want it," she said stepping up to him until his gun was pressed into the taut muscle of her midsection. "Do it. Do it now."

His eyes were locked to hers, and hers were empty of everything but pain. He had to know what was hurting her before he could end it.

"Why, Scully?" he almost whispered. "Why do you want to die?"

"What's the matter, isn't this good enough?" she asked, and took his gun in both her hands and placed the muzzle over her heart instead.

"Is this better? Will you do it now?"

"Why?" he cried, gripped with panic that she could ever seek death like this. Not when so many had feared for so long and sacrificed so much of her safety. Not after the agony that her illness had been for them. Not after all they'd suffered. "Is it your cancer? Has it come back? Tell me, Scully! Why?"

Scully took the hand that held the gun once more. She raised the barrel toward her full, pale lips.

"Maybe this, then? If I do this, then will you..."

He snatched the gun from her hands and flung it away across the room to clatter against the baseboard, while crushing her to him in a violent embrace.

"Scully tell me!" he cried in agony, his heart twisting in his chest, the pain of it so great he felt as if he were going to split in two.

"What is it? Tell me! What's the matter with you?"

He'd turned her world inside out and upside down and he wanted to know what was the matter with her? How could he? She thought. But she felt her arms going around him and clutching him to her as tightly as she could, feeling the life in him, making certain of it. As if any of it made sense.

"I just want it all to stop! I just want it all to go away. I can't take it any more," she felt herself saying as the hot tears she'd been suppressing began to fall in force. "Please, make it go away!"

Then his mouth was on hers and she could tell him no more with words.

But so often it had seemed that their best communication had been without them. A look across a room, or over the head of someone who didn't get it. A touch, of reassurance or support. The companionable silence that existed between two people utterly comfortable with the presence of the other. Those had been the ways they'd shown one another how they truly felt.

Or it had been the way she'd shown him.

From what he'd just admitted all of his looks, all of his touches, all of his silences had been lies.

And yet...

For some strange reason her actions had driven him to the breaking point. She had seen it in his face, the madness and despair, and had hoped for one wild moment that perhaps she could drive him to end it for them both. To stop her suffering and to redeem himself. But it seemed he had other ideas of how to end their suffering.

And she was past caring. About anything. She couldn't feel any more than she already did. And all of it was pain.

But she couldn't stop him, or herself from responding to him. For somewhere in the darkest recesses of her soul she knew it had to be, even it if had to be like this.

He couldn't stop himself. He had to touch her. He had to save her.

He had to drive out the strange madness that had possessed her and made her want to destroy the light that she was in the world. Didn't she know what she was to him? Didn't she know what she meant?

He had to show her, because words could not express what he needed to say. He only hoped that it could be enough. That what one other person felt might tip the scales one way or the other.

He covered all of her exposed flesh with kisses, running his hands up under the hem of her navy sweater to stroke the warm softness of her back. He couldn't help but suppress a shudder when he felt her ribs, pressing through the satin of her skin, but he would fear that later. Now he had to show her.

He crushed her to him, rougher than he'd ever dreamed of being with her, but it was necessary. He had to leave his imprint on her. To force her. To make her take the life she needed, the will she needed as if by osmosis from his very flesh.

He pressed his mouth to hers again, forcing it open under his own, almost more a demonstration of strength than of passion, a matching of will rather than physical being. He pressed his tongue inside, as if he could in doing so lend her his need, his strength as well. He had to get as much of himself inside her as he could. That he knew. He had to give her what would make her live again - the will, the strength, the desire.

He gripped the cloth of her slacks in both hands, shoving downward.

He had to get them together as soon as possible, to join them so his will could become hers. He was ready, pressed tightly against the softness of her belly, held in by the fabric of his jeans, but he had to make her naked first. To make her as ready as he was. And she was helping him. He felt, rather than saw her step out of the limp fabric of the slacks as it pooled around her feet. She was wearing nylons, damn it, but first, the sweater. He took hold of the hem and pulled it off over her head, allowing almost no time to pass when he wasn't pressed tightly against her.

He kissed her again everywhere he could reach, reveling in her small gasps and the trembling that he felt wherever he touched her. He moved her backward, toward her wide bed, glad it was as close as it was, or he'd have taken her on the floor. And she deserved more than that, good angel that she was.

Then he felt her pressing at the shoulders of his jacket. He'd forgotten he was wearing it. So many clothes. What must it have felt like to her? The well-worn leather dragging across her silken body after the rough caresses of his hands. He shrugged his shoulders and dropped the garment onto the floor. It was followed in quick succession by his shoulder holster and his black turtleneck.

The feel of her small body against the bare skin of his chest was a sensation too overwhelming to be adequately appreciated. If this had been about sex, he would have been hard pressed not to lose control right then. Before she'd ever touched him. Before he'd even gotten his jeans off. But sex wasn't the point. This was about life. The most important of lives. Scully's life.

He kissed her mouth again, deeply, his tongue sliding inside, next to hers, beneath it, drawing himself inside her once more. His hands ran over her body, her back, her breasts, her bottom, pulling her against him, as if he were the one taking her inside and not the one being taken. He hooked his fingers in the waistband of the nylons, damning the person who'd invented them for the time it cost him to remove them. He pulled them downward, peeling them off her slight form, her underwear following along with the stockings. As he rolled the damned things down to her feet, he followed the trails made by his hands with kisses. First at her waist, then her belly, then down to her thighs, her hands taking up residence in his hair as her breath came in desperate pants.

The incredible smell of her arousal hit him like a mallet, intoxicating and bewitching him. It was as though he'd never known a woman before. The realization that it was her. That it was Scully naked before him, desiring him, was almost too much to bear. He buried his face in the wonder at the apex of her thighs, kissing, tasting, nipping her in his unbridled desire to make her feel something besides pain, something warmer than anguish.

He pressed himself against her with the same violence, the same need as before, and he could feel her trembling increase as he ran his tongue over the swollen flesh of her clitoris. Scully moaned low in her throat, her incredible voice uttering a sound he'd only heard before this in his wildest dreams. He rose up for the briefest of moments, pressing fevered kisses into the center of her belly and exerted a gentle pressure on her hips to ease her down upon the mattress. He didn't want her wasting her concentration on remaining upright. He only wanted her to feel, to desire, to live.

Scully knew she had gone mad. It was the only explanation for what was happening. All the long months of waiting for Mulder to return had driven her quietly around the bend, so far that she hadn't even been aware of the change, thinking she was merely sad. And here she was, giving him anything he wanted, when he'd admitted he was a traitor, had always been a traitor, and had come to kill her. And that was exactly what he was doing, but not in the way she had thought he meant. And the presence of the gun suggested that it wasn't the way he had meant either.

Scully wondered at her ability to have a semi-coherent thought at all with his tongue and, Oh God, now his fingers inside her. She didn't like to think about how many times she'd imagined just this. She didn't want to admit it. Even now. Not even to herself. But what did it really matter? Whether he killed her or not, her world as she knew it had ended with his admission that he'd been a part of it the whole time. He claimed not, but had he been one of those who had taken her away?

As soon as she allowed herself to think it, she knew it wasn't true. From what her mother had said about his behavior in the time she had been gone, that was one part of their plans he had not been in on. No one was that good an actor.

Which brought her back to the obviously unfeigned desire he was feeling for her now. This was no acting, either. He wouldn't have been so wild. And it was not feigned wildness, meant to excite her, it was an obvious lack of control on his part, as if he was unable to stop himself - like a starving man gorging himself at a banquet, or a drowning one, gasping for air.

And, though Scully could view it mentally with detachment, it wasn't as though his ministrations to her body were not having their desired effect. She could feel herself coming close to the brink of orgasm, but she was mentally very far away, as if watching someone else. Some other woman with Mulder's face between her legs. Some other woman writhing and gasping and clutching at the bedclothes. Some other woman who didn't feel the emptiness of knowing that the one she trusted most had betrayed her time and time again, while he had smiled and said he'd loved her with everything but words.

Mulder's tongue and fingers had established an almost too pleasurable rhythm, leaving her hovering just on the edge of release, muscles tensing, back arching forward to press herself more firmly against him, all the while wishing she were dead already.

Scully didn't want to know. She didn't want to know that she still loved him. That he could still do this to her, even when she knew him to be a liar, a traitor, no better than Krycek. She didn't want to see this in herself, or feel this one truth in him, because it was the only one left.

Abruptly Mulder changed the rhythm of his ministrations to her body, and that was all it took. She heard herself cry out his name and that of the Deity he denied, and allowed herself to stop thinking if only for a moment.

He didn't pause until the last contraction rocked her small body and she began to return a bit to rejoin him in the bedroom. Moving his mouth higher once more to her soft, flat belly, he kissed and nibbled at the tender skin while removing his confining jeans at last. In a masterwork of multi-tasking he was able to rid himself of the clothing that remained on the lower half of his body, without once interrupting the attentions he was lavishing on his partner.

Climbing on the bed to join her, he took them both farther up from the foot, where they could lay together entwined, as they should have been for five years past. She was so tiny, and so very, very thin. He was almost afraid to do what needed to be done. To do what they both needed, at last.

He kissed her on the mouth again, holding her fully against him as if he could bring her inside his skin to live with him there, as she already lived inside his heart. And as this was not about passion, or losing himself in the moment, he looked at her as he kissed her and saw that she looked sad.

He kissed her harder, but he was filled with dread. What they did was supposed to be a thing of life. It was supposed to save them by reminding her how to want, reminding her how to feel. He knew how well she could dampen down the fires within her until there was nothing left but ash. He'd watched her do it through the cancer, as she begged him to sacrifice her to save himself. His career. He couldn't let her do this. He couldn't let her rob them of what it meant to be like this - together.

As he touched her, he could feel the return of desire, but she still felt cold, her response merely physical, mechanical. Press button "A" and light "B" turns on. Lick nipple "C" and moan "D" will occur.

He couldn't let it be like this. Empty. Barren. It was bad enough that there could never be children from their joining, that they'd been robbed of even the chance of that, but the union alone should mean life. And he could feel no life from Scully. It wasn't that she was merely lying there. She was participating, but it was hollow, soulless. And he knew it was her soul as much as her body that he needed to touch, to draw away from the abyss of her despair.

With the mightiest effort of will, he drew himself away from her, unlocked his body from hers, and retreated to the far side of the bed to look at her. To see if anything made an impression at all. If his love couldn't move her, perhaps his absence could.

She appeared confused. She opened her glorious, azure eyes. "M...mulder?" she said, rising up on her elbows. Her whole body a question.

He wanted to look over his shoulder to see who she was talking to. Her partner wasn't there. There was only him. Krycek. And then he caught sight of something in the mirror of her dresser placed opposite the bed. What was reflected there made no sense to him.

There was a naked man on the bed with Dana Scully. A man clearly still in a state of extreme arousal. A tall man with brown hair on his head and greenish colored eyes. But that man wasn't him. That man was Special Agent Fox Mulder.

Krycek wanted to laugh.

He'd been wondering what was taking him so long, so he'd snuck up the fire escape of Scully's building to see if he was choking, cracking, or if she'd somehow managed to get a gun on him and he merely needed help. It was easy enough for a young man in good shape. Even one with a prosthetic arm. And his arm was one of the good ones, with a hand controlled by the flexing of muscles in his stump. In his somewhat less bitter moments he jokingly called it his "Kung Fu Grip." It was a joke Mulder would appreciate, but Mulder was no longer Mulder.

So there he was, gripping the fire escape with both real and artificial hands and peering in the window to see if his erstwhile subordinate was having trouble with his assignment, and there they were - fucking.

Or rather, there was Mulder with his face buried in Scully's crotch introducing his prominent nose to her ovaries. "Hi there, I'm Fox Mulder, nice to meetcha." And she didn't seem to be minding one bit.

If this was what Mulder thought assassinations were supposed to be like, Krycek hoped to hell Mulder'd never be sent after him. And then Krycek looked at Scully's face and realized there was something wrong.

Mulder wasn't raping her. It was obviously consensual, so he hadn't gone back to plan "A", the one devised by the assholes who'd sent them, but for all that she was obviously enjoying what her former partner was doing to her body, she looked... wrong somehow. Sadness, despair, and horror were as clearly written on her face as ecstasy, and Krycek looked around the room to see Mulder's gun lying against the wall and Scully's lying neatly on the floor beside her holster, and he realized that something had gone down in that room that had eventually led to this.

He wondered what to do.

But he knew.

He turned his back and sat down on the fire escape.

He had to let them work it out.

He had to allow them to express what they needed to express to one another in whatever way they needed to express it. Because this was one of the real things, one of the truths that Alex Krycek had never experienced but could recognize and respect when he saw it. This was about love. And love was sacred.

And when they were done, he would simply kill them both and let them be together forever in the other truth that was death. And, oddly, this almost was better for the plan. Forensic evidence all over the place. Mulder all over Scully, Scully all over Mulder. A perfect scenario for a murder/suicide. The old men might lose a tool, but they'd all be safer once it was done.

Krycek wished that that knowledge made him feel better about it, though.

"What's the matter, Mulder?" Scully asked him, as he stared at the reflection in the mirror, trying to wrap his head around the disparity between what he saw and who he knew he was.

Was he really Mulder, imagining he was Krycek? Or was it the other way around? He closed his eyes and looked for Scully. That would tell him. What did he remember about Scully?

Before he could get a good look at the contents of his own head, he heard her moving on the bed, approaching the end where he sat, and where her gun was. She seemed so composed, even now. She was so untouched by what they'd just done, that he feared she might be going for the weapon. He opened his eyes and took firm hold of her arm as she reached out.

"You're hurting me," she said calmly, looking at his hand as it held her arm.

"I don't mean to," he responded automatically.

Scully laughed bitterly.

"You think that that's going to solve anything?" she said, tossing her head back and indicating the bed behind her. "Do you really think it makes up for all the lies you just admitted to, for your part in everything they've done?"

"Who am I, Scully?" he asked, looking deep into her eyes.

Whether Mulder or Krycek, he knew Scully was the one person he could always depend on to tell him the truth - no matter how much it hurt. "Am I who I look like, or am I who I am?"

"That's a question only you can answer, Mulder," she told him, and then she looked at his hand, where it still held her small arm. Then she looked again, harder. Then she reached up her other hand and turned his arm slightly so that the inside was facing the light from the overhead fixture.

He looked down and saw what she was looking at. There was a small bruise on the inside of his arm, just where the skin folded into the elbow. A small bruise and what looked like a partially-healed puncture mark.

"What have you been taking?" she asked, rubbing her hand down the slightly distended vein in the arm. It felt incredibly good to have her touch him like that, despite the confusion and her obvious anger at him.

"I haven't been taking anything," he laughed harshly, a mere outlet of breath through his mouth. "Like I need drugs."

"You've obviously been taking something intravenously," Scully said.

Sometimes you could really tell she was a doctor. "Have you been sharing needles? But, of course, seeing you're here to kill me, I guess I don't need to worry about that, do I?"

"Look, Scully," he said, covering her hand with his. "I don't even remember how this happened. I don't remember taking anything."

"Even better," Scully said, voice dripping with disgust.

Was this the same woman who'd been moaning under him only a few short minutes ago?

"What is your problem?" he asked, more than slightly affronted.

"Oh, I don't know," Scully said, her blue eyes ice. "My partner disappears without a trace for months, lets me half kill myself looking for him, shows back up sitting in my bedroom in the dark, tells me he's going to kill me, tells me he's been part of the conspiracy that's ruined my life all along, goes down on me, and then asks me who he is and can I explain everything for him. Why should I have a problem with any of that?"

He looked at her. She was working up for a big one, but he couldn't get over how fabulous it made her look, her eyes flashing and color rushing to her flawless cheeks. He guessed it was one way of getting some life back into her, anyway.

"Have I ever told you that you..." he began with a leer, only to be cut off as she shoved him roughly backward and almost tipped him off the bed.

"Don't say it! Don't say it, Mulder, I'm warning you!"

Mulder picked himself up and decided it was about time to finish what they'd started a few minutes before. Providing she would go for it. But he was pretty sure she would. After five years, he could tell when she was being angry because that was the only emotion she thought it was appropriate or safe to feel. But he was tired of being appropriate and safe, at least with her.

With something rather like a growl, he took hold of her arms once more and used weight and momentum to push her back toward the head of the bed, where she'd started.

"Don't, Mulder!" she said, struggling in his grasp as he laid her back against the pillows. "Stop!"

"Don't stop?" he said, batting long lashes at his partner, an evil look in his greenish-hazel eyes. "Why I had no intention of it. Perish the thought."

She was planning to protest again, he could see it building behind blue eyes, but he stopped it before it could come out of her mouth with a well-placed tongue and skillful hands. She still struggled a little, though. She had to do it, just because of face issues. She'd have to justify her submission later, and it couldn't be because - her God forbid - she'd wanted to submit. She wouldn't admit it, of course, even as she pressed her hips tightly against him and moaned beneath his mouth. No, it would be because he needed it, even as she clutched him tightly to her, as if for dear life.

But that was ok with him, really. Sometimes being a psychologist didn't suck. It gave him a clue at least when it came to dealing with Scully and the many interwoven layers of her repression. He was a master of repression, himself, but hers was even more complex than his own. She had a whole helluva lot more "Thou shalt not's" in her little psyche than he did. His was mostly only one. "Thou shalt not let her in".

But he'd broken that one long ago, of course, maybe the moment she'd run inside his room in that dumpy motel in Oregon and stood before him half-naked and hopping up and down in her anxiety over three small mosquito bites. Now he had to make certain Scully broke most of hers as well. It didn't matter if he let her keep the little ones, the white lies to save face, as long as the big ones were a great huge pile of shattered pieces in the trashcan of her soul.

Mulder knew she wanted it as much as he did. Even if she didn't know what to think, he knew she still trusted him, or she wouldn't be allowing him to touch her like this. Five years' habit was too long to break over the confession of someone who didn't know who he was. But he knew now. And he wanted Scully to know, too. He wanted to hear her say his name again as she came and to know that it was him that was making it happen, because no matter what happened to them later, he'd have that to remember.

It was taking them a really long time.

But then it had taken them five years to finally get around to it in the first place, so what did he really expect?

Krycek was getting rather stiff from sitting on the fire escape, but he couldn't bring himself to look back in the window and risk catching another glimpse of Mulder at full staff. Porn was bad enough, even though it was the women you were concentrating on, but someone you knew... That was really, really bad. Someone you'd kissed on the lips yourself... Horror. Don't go there Krycek, it's way too sick even for you, and you have a reputation as a heterosexual man to uphold.

Think of Marita.

Except that next to the natural beauty of a Dana Scully, the affected, bleached and coifed Marita Corvarrubius, just left him cold. If it had just been Scully, he would have had no problem peering in the window until the cows came home. But he had no interest whatsoever at peering at anything until Mulder came home. But he really wished he'd do it more quickly. It was dangerous sitting out here. And he wanted to catch the Redskins home game on tv and he was going to miss it if they didn't get a move on.

Krycek looked at the watch he kept on his prosthetic wrist. They'd been going at it for a straight hour so far. He was going to have to interrupt if it went on much longer, despite his attempts at magnanimity. He wasn't about to risk getting caught outside Scully's apartment just so Mulder could get laid.

Scully was angry now. She was angry and she was tired and she was incredibly, incredibly frustrated despite being engaged in what was definitely the most amazing sexual experience of her life.

She was angry at him, of course. But she was angrier still at herself for wanting him. For allowing him to do what he was doing. For responding to him like she was the wildest nymphomaniac that had ever fucked the starting lineup of the varsity football team.

Scully had never made noise during sex beyond a few ladylike gasps and moans. It was undignified. It was cheap. And what was worse, it let him know what he was doing to you. You could not maintain plausible deniability while screaming a man's name in ecstasy. You could not pretend he meant nothing to you when the lightest touch of his skin against yours made you moan and tremble and clutch him to you like a precious gift.

She had thought she'd been in love in the past. But the ladylike facade had been so easy to maintain, even during what she had to admit had been rather lukewarm orgasms, that she knew now she had mistaken them all. This was love. This infinite need to be closer, to be one. One body, one thought, one soul inextricably entwined. Love.

Or was it? Could this intensity, this all-consuming obsessive need for someone really be love, or was it merely madness? She both loved and hated Mulder with a passion that seemingly knew no boundaries at all, it washed over her like a tidal wave, sweeping all her life before it away and replacing it with what? Destruction. Obsession. Redemption.

Scully had truly been the Ice Queen before she'd known him. Her feelings had been tepid at best. And now her hate was stronger, her anger greater, her fear more unsettling, and her love... it knew no limits. There was no separating herself from her loved ones, no matter how she tried. No matter how many times she said, "no, thanks, I'm fine" and tried to shut them out. She didn't feel fine any more. And she couldn't really keep them out of her heart, even if she didn't always reveal to them what she felt. It was the not revealing her feelings that was now the act, not the pretending to have feelings that had always been the act before.

Mulder was lavishing the intensity of his attention on her, and while it was nearly as frightening as being the ant under the proverbial magnifying glass, she found she wanted to burn. She wanted to be burned by him. Anything for them to be together. His hand was once more between her legs, his fingers inside her, but it had to be more. She had to have more of him. It was another of the things he'd taught her.

Enough was never enough. You had to push on and on, to the point of insanity, or you couldn't be sure you'd found the truth. His mouth had left hers for the moment, tracing soft wet kisses down her neck to her left breast, leaving her own mouth free to gasp for air, or to speak.

"Mulder," she said, her voice strained with desire. "Mulder, no."

Mulder's entire body jerked at the sound of her voice. He raised his eyes from her body in cold fear at what he'd see when he reached her eyes. But he had to know. Curiosity had always been one of his consuming traits.

Scully's eyes were wide, pupils dilated in arousal.

In the long second before she spoke again he died a million deaths, each more agonizing then the last, all of them ending with him alone - without her.

"Mulder," she nearly whispered. "Not that. I want this to be for you, too. I..."

He knew what she was going to say, and what it would cost her to say it. So he pressed his lips to hers once more and silenced her words, at the same time replacing his fingers with the head of his engorged penis.

She gasped. But it was a good gasp, and he moved farther inside, encouraged. He didn't smile despite the fact that he was insanely, incredibly overjoyed to be doing this at last. To be with her, inside her, where he belonged. He didn't smile despite his happiness because he didn't want it to be misinterpreted, as it sometimes was, as Mulder sarcasm or Mulder flippancy. He supposed he deserved such misinterpretations. God knew he worked hard enough at being sarcastic and flippant most of the time. But not now. Never now. Never with Scully.

Eyes never leaving hers, he began moving them together and apart. He waited, but he moved. He left it up to her to make it an end or a beginning. He watched her face and wished that it was true that the eyes were the windows to the soul, because he wanted, he needed to know what was in Scully's. Because if she felt even a quarter of what he did, he had no fear that they'd be together like this forever. But if it was merely death...

But she'd said she wanted it to be for him.

But she hated when things were about him.

He needed to know what she wanted, but she just lay there looking at him, and holding him close. He could feel her all around him, but it wasn't enough. You'd think it would be enough. But he'd done it alone often enough to know that physiological release didn't need to come from profound emotion. He needed to hear it, or something at least, so he could be certain it was real and not just his own need, his own wish for them reflected in the blue of her eyes. He put his lips to hers, gently, brushing them lightly as he kept up a steady rhythm with the rest of his body.

"Scully..." he whispered, struggling to find a way to say what was in his heart.

He looked deeply once more into her wide, blue eyes, and he knew. He could see into her soul. And what was more, she could see into his. She could see what he felt, what he needed. And he could see that she was willing to give that much, despite the walls she'd spent a lifetime building up.

"It had to be this, didn't it?" she said softly, running her glorious, full lips down the left side of his face to find his mouth again, fiercely. She took his lower lip between her small, white teeth and bit gently while pressing herself up urgently to meet his increasingly uncontrolled thrusts.

"Yes," he said, between kisses. "It's always been this. It will always be... this."

"So what do we call it, then - fate?" she smiled.

"Ice tea would have been fate," he smiled in return. "I think this is a little more serious."

"Oh," she answered, still smiling. "So what would you call this?" Scully clutched him to her with all her muscles and he thought he was going to lose his mind, and his last measure of control, but he managed to ride it out without becoming completely catatonic with pleasure.

"Don't make me one-up you on the first date," he breathed, attempting to waggle his eyebrows suggestively but only succeeding in looking like he was having a migraine.

Scully smiled wider, one of the genuine smiles that was like someone turned a light on. And she did it again. She pulled him even closer if it was possible.

Mulder gasped, but he knew a challenge when he felt one. It would have been amusing if he'd allowed himself to think about it. How their rivalry carried on even here. Each trying to prove to the other that they had control.

But it was time they lost that control. That they both lost it. And Mulder took his efforts up to a new level, sliding his hand down between their bodies to find just the right spot. Scully gasped and her eyes began to glaze over. It was good, because Mulder was incredibly close himself despite his feigned bravado. She was making little sounds deep in her throat, halfway between a sigh and a scream, so Mulder moved his fingers and brought them together again - hard.

She was coming again, for the second time in less than an hour, and while the look on her face was probably the most beautiful thing Mulder had ever seen in his life, he was too far gone to appreciate it like the work of art it was. Because he was coming himself.

He buried his face in her shoulder and shut his eyes, because even though he loved and trusted her more than anyone on earth, he didn't want her to see that he was weeping. He was afraid that she wouldn't recognize it for what it was - pure joy.

Krycek was growing more nervous with every passing minute. He was actually tempted to bite his fingernails, not an attractive habit, nor one with which he was normally afflicted. They were still at it and he felt incredibly conspicuous on the fire escape despite the darkness and the fact that no one in a city as devoid of tall buildings as Georgetown, ever looked up. He had to admire Mulder's staying power, though. But, then, he was with Scully.

Krycek just stopped thinking about that and went back to worrying about getting caught. He knew he didn't have a chance in hell with her, and thinking about that just made him feel bad. He had enough self-esteem issues with the arm anyway. He didn't need to go beating himself up about some woman who thought he was the devil incarnate. Or, at least, the minion of the devil incarnate.

He checked his watch and decided he'd give them five more minutes. Then, finished or not, he was going in and putting bullets in both of them and getting the hell away.

Krycek crouched back up against the wall of Scully's building as an unmarked white van, just the kind favored by his masters when they were up to no good, pulled into the street. He wondered if he wasn't the only one who was keeping an eye on Mulder, or Scully. It could really have been for either of them.

Maybe someone had noticed how long it was taking. But, then, it would have taken a lot longer if Mulder had tortured her according to plan so that couldn't be it.

The damned van was stopping across the street from the building, though. There was no way he could move on the metal fire escape without making a noise and calling attention to himself. He just hoped it was a delivery man or someone checking the phone lines or the water heaters.

Of course, being Alex Krycek, he wasn't so lucky. The van parked. The driver shut off the engine and he and the passenger riding shotgun exited from the vehicle. The bespectacled man from the passenger seat, walked back to the sliding door of the van and pulled it open.

Then, much like Spicoli in the teen classic film "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", out of the van's side door rolled a short, froglike being clad in jeans and a leather jacket, clutching a silver metallic briefcase in an attitude of extreme paranoia and glancing constantly to his right and left as if fearing attack. The bespectacled passenger, who sported long blond hair and a t-shirt advertising Windows 98, with "Sucks" written on it in red permanent marker, and a neat-looking brown haired man in a suit joined him in his surveillance. They all threw piercing glances in all directions as they made their way to the outside door of Scully's building. Krycek breathed a silent prayer that they wouldn't look up.

He knew they were associates of Mulder's, but he'd never met them before. It was going to make it harder to do the kill, but at least these guys would get Mulder and Scully to break it up in the bedroom. At least he hoped they would.

The outer door of Scully's building required a resident key, but it apparently didn't mean anything to Mulder's friends. The blond haired man in the t-shirt threw a few furtive glances about and quickly had the door open without Krycek seeing how he'd done it.

Obviously geeks, but at least they seemed to know a few useful things.

Krycek changed his position on the fire escape, standing up with his back to the wall next to the bedroom window. He was prepared to climb in as soon as Mulder and Scully went to get the door. Then he could wait for the company to leave and take them both down.

Mulder was awakened by the sound of knocking. He was momentarily startled, thinking they'd done something bad to the bed and it was Scully's headboard against the wall. But then he realized they weren't really doing much of anything anymore and that the sound was coming from outside the bedroom.

"Someone's at the door," Scully said, giving the still- groggy Mulder a small shove to get him off her.

"Who is it?" he asked, complying somewhat reluctantly and looking around for his shorts. He could see them on the floor, still tangled in his black jeans.

"How should I know?" Scully said, getting up and hurrying to her chest of drawers to get something to put on. "No one comes here at night except you."

"I should hope not." He said possessively, winning himself a somewhat embarrassedly sarcastic smile from his partner.

Mulder followed her example and started to untie his clothes knot to get himself decent. He watched sadly while all the attractive Scully nakedness quickly disappeared beneath panties, a loose t-shirt and shorts.

Scully was on her way down the hall when the second round of knocking started at her front door. As he slipped into his jeans, Mulder wondered who it was that would be quite so persistent at this time of night. And then he remembered who was waiting for him in the car and ran like hell to stop her.

"Scully! Scully!" he cried, but it was too late, she was already opening the front door.

Mulder leaped, knocking his partner to the floor in the middle of her living room, well past the front door and the clear shot anyone could take at her there.

"Have you lost your mind?" Scully said angrily, trying to untangle herself from her partner, who seemed to be attempting to act as a human shield between her and the Lone Gunmen who stood in the doorway of her apartment wearing looks of utter consternation.

"It's probably an after-effect of the drugs," Frohike said, stepping inside Scully's apartment followed by Langley and Byers, who shut the door quietly behind them.

"What drugs?" Scully asked, rubbing her back and behind where she'd crashed to the floor under 180 pounds of flying half-naked Mulder. "I know that I could really use some. Preferably the pain-killing kind."

She glared at Mulder, who just got up and ran back to the bedroom without another word.

"Is he freaking out or something?" Langly asked, pointing a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the bedroom.

"It certainly looks that way," Scully said, picking herself up off the floor and following her partner down the hall, the Lone Gunmen a few steps behind.

They were just reaching the door, when the bedroom light clicked off.

"Mulder?" Scully asked again, starting to get worried. She looked in the door for her weapon, and saw that it was gone from the foot of the bed, where she'd placed it.

"Shh! Are you trying to get shot?" Mulder hissed from somewhere inside the darkened room.

"What the hell are you talking about, Mulder?" Scully said in frustration, unable to spot him in the sudden darkness.

"Krycek," he said, appearing suddenly in front of them and leading Scully back down toward the living room, while handing her her gun. "Alex Krycek is what I'm talking about. He was with me when I came here tonight."

"What were you doing with Krycek?" Langly asked.

"You hate that guy," Frohike said with a frown.

Byers just swallowed realizing something very serious was going on.

"He was my back-up," Mulder said, placing his back to the wall of the hallway, so he could peer toward Scully's living room windows without placing himself in the line of fire. "To make sure I killed Scully."

"Then you really did come here to kill me," Scully said quietly. Then, "What made you decide not to?"

Mulder gave her an undefinable look, it might have been embarrassment, it might have been disappointment, it might have been something else entirely. Sometimes she wished her partner was a little less deadpan.

"I don't know how they did it, but they had me believing I was Krycek, and that he was some friend of mine named Sergei," Mulder said. "I could even understand Russian. Or at least I thought it was Russian. Maybe they were speaking in English and just told me it was Russian. I don't know."

"That would fit in with what we found out from our contact," Frohike nodded.

"Is this about the message you left earlier?" Scully said.

"Yes," Frohike told her. "A friend of ours has tracked a certain group of Russian scientists to the United States. These were men who during the Cold War were involved in secret behavior modification experiments to design deep-cover operatives to infiltrate resistance movements."

"These were people who had to change their behavior and thought processes so radically, that they had to essentially become someone else, while still maintaining their goal for Mother Russia," Byers explained. "Their mannerisms, their speech patterns, even their ways of thinking about themselves had to change."

"They had to use a lot of drugs, hypnosis and behavior modification techniques so arcane even you probably haven't heard of them," Langly said. "But they had some remarkable successes, some of the only ones of the war in Afghanistan were based on information obtained by these deep-cover operatives. But most of them were even worse failures."

"Our Cigarette Smoking friend learned about these men and their project somehow, probably from some Russian counterpart of his, and brought them here," Frohike explained. "Then they grabbed Mulder and.... I guess he's the only one who can tell us the rest."

"There isn't much to tell," Mulder said, taking another glance at the windows. "I thought I was Alex Krycek. Or at least the Alex Krycek they wanted me to be. But, I think maybe I know him better than they do in some ways, because they were trying to make me do things that Krycek would never do. Things that don't appeal to him as part of the job. Things that seem a lot more like his smoke-sucking boss than weaselly, murdering Krycek."

"And you say he's waiting for you outside?" Scully asked.

"I doubt he's waiting any more," Mulder explained. "Unless it's to kill us all."

Five against one are not good odds.

Even if three are unarmed and probably more likely to hide behind furniture than attack anyone.

Krycek briefly pondered going out like an outlaw in an old Western movie, but then he immediately thought better of it. More amusing to leave them all crowded in Scully's hallway waiting for the axe to fall.

Because it would fall.

Eventually.

And he was due back at the ranch to put his own neck on the block. He didn't like the thought of the consequences of letting the Caped Crusaders escape in the final reel, but what was a villain to do when that was the way the plot was written?

And he had warned them, after all.

Krycek took the better part of valor and went back to his car.

But boy was the Joker going to be pissed when he found out another of his elaborate schemes for their destruction had failed.

Too damned bad.

Alex Krycek was alive and well, and that was all that mattered to Alex Krycek.

They could all go to hell.