Half A World Away

... pain.

Slow awareness. One (1) living human body, condition less than ideal. Scully felt like she'd been worked over with a broomstick. Pain spread across her arms and torso, hammered at the back of her neck. A cracked rib, maybe. Maybe more than one. Her forehead felt scraped and raw. Cooling stickiness that she gradually identified as blood soaked the back of her calf, tracing its way up to a prickling throb. That would be a deeper wound, a hand span below her knee.

If this was Mulder's fault, she was going to shoot him. Yes, again. He wasn't where he should be, unconscious, whimpering a little, curled up close behind her in this narrow space. If he were, she would catch his hand and hold it for a while, trace the lines across his palm. Mulder had broad hands, long fingers, had a touch that could drown out the pain in her body and the increasing terror she felt at this enclosed space.

If it could be called an improvement, at least there were no while lights, no experiments this time. Just Agent Scully locked in a dark closet and feeling like hell. Sweet Jesus. Surely by this time she rated a better class of kidnapper.

Ohhh, Dana, you are losing it.

In the closet, in the dark, hurting, no Mulder, and there were men beyond the closed door arguing. About what? Would they beat her? Rape her? Kill her? Feed her to the aliens? Feed her Aspirin? Please? God her head hurt.

Outside her tiny space, the argument stopped short. There were a few hissed words that she couldn't make out. Then a sharp, high-pitched sound cut against her ears and made her go numb for a moment. A gun with a silencer made a sound like that.

Something soft and heavy and wet-sounding hit the door in front of her and slid sickeningly against it to the floor. A body.

Oh, she was going to faint. Perfectly understandable, Dana. A blow to the head, compounded by physical shock, emotional trauma, and a high- stress situation will have that effect on even a Type B personality.

Gonna faint.

Distantly, she heard the body against the door being dragged away. Metal grating against metal released the locks and light struck her closed eyelids, reaching her eyes through the delicate translucent skin.

"Well fuck Scully."

A voice she should know. Not-Mulder. But her head hurt so much, all she wanted to do was pull up her knees even tighter against her breasts and stay like that until she disappeared. She was beyond caring about the hands that skimmed over her body, seeking broken bones. Not even the horrific pain of being hoisted into a fireman's carry could make her surface.

When Scully woke again, she smelled leather and a warm body. All of her own body ached, but vaguely, the discomfort muted by chemical painkillers. Her right arm was asleep. She was warm, partially curled up on her side and covered with something heavy enough to be comforting. The position had forced her arms up and together, close to her chin. Her fingertips brushed leather and satin.

Muffled voices swirled around her. Behind them, there were car sounds, sharp crunches of footsteps, occasional fumblings with things metal. Sharp gasoline smell.

"Your wife, she's OK?" Rattle. Clunk. Hum. Female stranger's voice, warmly middle-aged.

"Yeah. She had a hiking accident yesterday, she's a little banged up. I thought I could let her sleep on the way home." Chuckle. Oh, she should know who that was, but the identity was slipping in and out of her mind's grip and she couldn't remember. "She took Tylenol 3s with codeine this morning, hasn't moved since." A metallic thunk. Click, click, click. Rattle.

"Did you want me to check the oil?"

"No, s'too cold out here, don't bother. I'll get her something to drink, maybe, for when she wakes up."

A smile in the woman stranger's voice. "I bet she'll like that." They were moving away, Scully was losing their voices. "Have you two been married long?"

Distantly, "No. Just a little while."

"Well, she's beautiful. Think you're good enough for her?"

Laugh. "Probably not." More words, but she couldn't make them out without forcing the ache in her head to the forefront. It wasn't worth it.

She was in a car, the back seat. Outside, there was a gas station. Her eyes were covered with a sleeping mask that effectively blindfolded her, blocking out all but faint traces of the daylight. She could have pushed it off if her head hadn't hurt so much. All she had to do was reach behind her head and untie the knotted ribbon. With handcuffed hands. Underneath this leather jacket blanketing her, she was well and truly handcuffed, all the evidence completely hidden by the warm- smelling cover, and she hurt too much to move.

If these were the same clothes she'd been abducted in, it was no wonder she was so uncomfortable. All she'd been thinking of on the way home from work was how much she wanted to get out of that pantsuit and the clingy rayon blouse and the knee-high nylons that now seemed to have enough holes to let selected toes push out and that rubbed against the stubble on her skin. How many days since she'd shaved her legs, if that was bothering her?

(Agent Mulder asks, Have you ever experienced missing time?

(*Oh Mulder, where are you? I've been grabbed from the hall outside my apartment by strange men and they hit me and I hurt all over. Those men are gone now, they could be dead. I think someone killed them. A person I should know - it isn't you - has me chained up and blindfolded in the back of his car and he just told the nice lady at this gas station that I'm his wife. I'm scared and I don't know where I am.*)

She heard the car door open and felt the shift as a heavy body got in and the draft of cold air. Smells of coffee and chocolate mixed in the close space. A soft engine shook itself into life and they manoeuvred out onto what must have been a road. Almost drowned out by the sound of the tires, the driving man was breathing calmly. The salt-smell was stronger; it combined with an anonymously spicy aftershave, something unmemorable.

"You awake, Scully?" The recognition she needed was only a fraction out of reach. If she weren't so tired . . .

"Huh. Hurts."

"What hurts, Scully?" The car slowed and shifted towards what must be the shoulder of the road. Her memory provided glimpses of this person waiting by the door of an autopsy room at Quantico. "Your ribs? Your head? Something else?"

"Uh-huh. All that. Everywhere." The car eased to a halt and the engine died. In the autopsy room in her memory, the person was standing next to Mulder. "Hurts all over."

"Mmm. Painkillers must've wore off. Here." She heard a shift in the driver's position; warm fingers close to her lips offered her small, sterile-smelling pills. Scully pulled them out of the light grip with her lips and tried to swallow, only to gag slightly as the capsules hit a dry throat. Warm, curved styrofoam touched her lips. "Drink."

Hot chocolate, cooled to a bearable temperature by the outside air, flooded her mouth. She could remember those fingers reaching out to shake her hand when they were introduced, but she hadn't been paying attention, then, not to him, only to Mulder. With the hot chocolate in her mouth, the pills went down easily. She pressed her head deeper into the wadded up jacket under her head. Body-autopsy-Mulder-green-eyed boy-who is this boy?

"Krycek," she rasped.

"Yeah. Go back to sleep, Scully. We're not stopping for a couple of hours, yet."

Scully lay quietly on the car seat while Krycek drove silently. Occasionally, she found her ears were popping, forcing her to yawn. She remembered the service station lady whom she hadn't seen but who reminded her of her mother. She wished for Mulder to talk to her and drown out the sounds of the car. The pills kicked in.

Vaguely, she could remember being helped from the car and walking blindly into this room. She'd leaned on Krycek, not trusting her legs after lying for so long in one position and afraid of walking into danger in her blindfolded state. The jacket around her must have been concealing the cuffs on her hands.

What Krycek had said to the service station lady had been true. It was cold out. She remembered it being late May, but it might be early June by now, she'd lost some time. It should have been warmer. Either she'd lost months instead of days or they were nowhere near DC anymore. The outside air smelled of evergreens and the thin humidity that reminded her of clouds.

She didn't know where Krycek was now. He'd settled her on the bed and cuffed her to the frame, then left without saying goodbye. The television was on. She couldn't see it, but the sound was godsent. She could have been in another motel room - in Arkansas, maybe - listening to Mulder's TV through the open door between their rooms. The accent on the voice reading the news, though, was cooler than it would be in Arkansas, flatter and slightly British.

The news report broke for commercial. The jingles of snack foods and household cleaners blurred together in her ears. More often than not, though, the advertisements settled into stately, reassuring patterns. Scully laid quietly and tried to identify them before the product being sold to her was revealed at the end. Luxury car. Bank. Phone company. High-end family car. Mutual funds. One commercial didn't speak at all, only made soft, reassuring sounds, and she supposed that its message must be printed across the screen. Then a movie, something with Val Kilmer doing rough cop-speak and Tommy Lee Jones drawling a challenge. Click of a film-prop gun. *In theatres Friday.*

A few seconds' sound break was followed by chimes. "This is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. CBC television." So they were up north, that was why it was so cold. She drifted while the news broadcast shifted into "The Nature of Things." *Hmm. Apparently we're all going to die by global warming. Uh-huh. Tell me, Mr. David Suzuki, about the impact of the greenhouse effect on Reticulan aliens.*

The door slammed abruptly and Krycek flipped the television off. She thought it was him. It was certainly someone large and, from the way they moved, probably male. At the moment, if it wasn't Krycek, she didn't care. She was dirty and tired and sore and broke; she didn't think she'd make a very appealing target for the local criminal community. Her stomach grumbled, knotting up and sending a flash of nausea through her that spoke of too many days without real food. Her companion's body settled onto the mattress beside her.

"Feeling better?" Krycek asked. He had a strange voice, hard and sharp, that didn't seem to be the same one the junior G-man running at Mulder's heels had had.

"Ummm." She tried to focus. "A bit."

"Think you can sit up?" His words were slow and calm, as if he were talking to an animal.

Scully rattled her handcuffs. "Not like this."

Chuckle. "Right." She felt the bed sag as he leaned over her and released one of her hands just long enough to free her from the bedpost. An ache spread through her shoulders as she tried to move her hands down and she whimpered. "Hurts?" She nodded. "Sorry."

Massive hands eased her arms down and settled her cuffed wrists onto her abdomen, then gently lifted her into a sitting position. Fingers probed the knots in her shoulders, gradually loosening them. Scully found herself melting under the man's grip. Sharply, she pulled away, then gasped as the pain hit. Krycek didn't try to touch her again.

"Scully, if I take the blindfold off, are you going to try to hit me?"

She snorted, regretted it as pain lanced through her head. "I don't think so," she managed.

His fingers tangled a little in her hair as they worked at the knots at the back of her head. When the mask loosened, she brought cuffed hands up to her face and lifted it away.

It was a motel room, of course, and so anonymous and old that it could have been picked out by Mulder himself. The usual greenish colour scheme had been replaced with muted greys, but the same wood veneer furniture lined the walls, and the television looked like it must weigh two hundred pounds. Two beds, a dresser, a table and a couple of chairs, a door that must lead to a bathroom and another leading outside.

Shaded green eyes studied her cautiously. If she hadn't known they were green (how did she know Krycek's eye colour?), she would have assumed that they were brown or black. Scully faced a man she had only met three or four times in her life. His face was a strange one: almost brutally Slavic, now that she looked, and intensely sweet. He looked like a frightened child.

Krycek let her take him in silently for several moments before he got up. One blunt-fingered hand extended to her.

"Come on," he said. "I'll help you stand."

Scully glared at him from under lowered eyebrows. When she made no move to take his hand, Krycek leaned forward and slipped his right arm under both of hers, bracing her stiffly with his left. Cautiously, he lifted her into a standing position and held her there until she gained enough balance to support herself. When she seemed steady, he made to let go of her, and almost immediately her knees buckled. Reflexively, her hands shot out to clutch at his forearms, and he was holding her again. Green eyes regarded her sympathetically.

"That bad?" Scully nodded. "Damn. Tell you what. Can you walk if I support you?" She nodded again. "OK, good. I'm gonna help you to the bathroom. I think hot water'll help some with the hurt, if we can get you into the tub." He backed up a little and she followed him, stumbling slightly. One foot, two feet. There were at least fifteen more steps before they would hit tile. Scully staggered.

"Damn it, Scully! Help me here." Krycek snarled. "I'd carry you if I could, but I can't. Come *on*!"

"I'm trying!" she snapped. Rage boiled out of her exhaustion and she stepped towards him, pushing the man facing her roughly backwards so that he had to scramble for a moment to retain his balance. He kept a steady grip on her so that they were braced forearm to forearm as she walked.

As Krycek settled her down on the closed toilet seat, Scully noticed his hands were still gloved. He turned away from her and pulled the right glove off with his teeth. The bared hand dipped into the water pooling in the bathtub and swirled it absently a moment. The liquid rising around his bare skin looked faintly and rather appealingly green, though it might only have been reflections off the tile. Eventually, he raised his hand from the water and twisted the taps off.

"Scully," Krycek said softly. "I'm going to take your cuffs off. Do us both a favour and don't try anything stupid. I know you're tough, but I'm stronger than you are, and you're hurt. And I don't wanna wrestle in the bathroom tonight." He smiled a strange, teasing smile that didn't quite seem to belong to him. "You can get undressed by yourself, right?"

"Of course." Because the alternative was unthinkable.

Krycek nodded and unlocked the cuffs, laying his left wrist heavily across her arms to restrain her while he did so. When he withdrew, she massaged her arms and watched him. He grinned. "Right." The bathroom door shut quietly behind him.

If she was ever going to have a look at those injuries of hers, she supposed this was as good a time as any. Scully stripped, wrinkling her nose a little at the clothes she had been wearing for far too long. The close, steamy bathroom was at least warm enough for her to be comfortable naked. Seated, she could see clearly only that the bandage wrapped around her calf seemed to have successfully halted the bleeding there. She needed a better view. She pulled herself into a standing position in front of the mirror.

Her first realization was that the blindfold had been meant as much to make her unobtrusive as to keep her disoriented. Both her eyes were puffy, and the right one had a pool of black below it. She couldn't remember having been hit so hard in the face, but the bruising might have originated higher on her forehead and gradually settled into the hollow of her eye socket. To know any more, she was going to have to strip the bandages off her ribs. After so many hours of poor circulation, her fingers felt thick and awkward, so that she fumbled with the knots. When the fabric finally gave way, she let the elastic strips fall without assistance.

What faced her in the mirror made her draw breath sharply through her teeth. To say she was black and blue would be putting it mildly. In places, the bruises couldn't be covered with both her hands.

(Agent Mulder says, Hey, Scully, did you know that the expression *black and blue* comes from the Middle English phrase, "blayk und blud"? Means "pale and bloody." The way you look in that second between being shot and going down.

(*Oh God, Mulder, look at me. It's no wonder my body aches if I look like this. I don't think my ribs were cracked badly enough that they aren't already healing, but I'm going to be bruised for weeks. I'm scared, Mulder, this is bad. I can't even imagine what shape I'd be in now if Krycek hadn't bandaged me.*)

Oh. He'd seen her naked like this already, then. She didn't want to think about Krycek's hands on her body. (He killed Melissa. That bastard killed Missy.) The mirror had steamed over to the extent that she couldn't see herself clearly anymore. She eased her way across the room and lowered herself into the tub.

(*I have an X-File for you, Mulder. I'm having someone else's dreams.*

(Agent Mulder says, I'm not surprised, Scully. People have reported dream-sharing for thousands of years. In the Middle Ages, it was usually considered to be a sign of witchcraft, although there are two or three reported cases of it presented as evidence for the beatification of fifteenth century mystics.

(*I believe in miracles, Mulder, but somehow I don't think this is one.*

(Agent Mulder smiles ambiguously and answers, In its modern manifestations, dream-sharing usually takes place between individuals in high-stress situations. No one knows why.)

Scully dreamed of walking through a warehouse after Mulder. Her hands were covered in someone else's blood. Behind her, somewhere in the dark, there was a corpse that looked to have been shredded by a dozen knives. Oh God, this was hideous, she was going to be sick. She was scared.

Mulder was out of sight; she was following the sound of his voice. Low, steady voice, calming someone she couldn't see. She stumbled in the dark, reached for the heavy object under her foot, and saw it was Mulder's gun. He'd put it down. He wasn't carrying the second one, he hadn't acquired it yet. This was long ago and far away. Mulder was talking to a killer and he had nothing to defend himself but his own voice. Mulder was *insane*. She was his partner; she had to protect him.

She stepped into the light and saw an enormous black man perched in front of open double doors, five storeys above the ground. Mulder stood a body's length back, pleading with Augustus Cole to step away from the edge. *Come back, help us find the men who did this to you.*

But it was all supposed to stay a secret, her brain screamed.

Jump, you sonofabitch.

Cole had a gun. She must have made a noise at seeing it, because Mulder turned to look at her. Cole raised a hand to shoot her partner. She fired. The body toppled back into the room. She was on Mulder in a second, but he wouldn't look at her, only crouched over the body. When he raised his head, the look in his eyes was reproachful. There was no gun. Only a dog-eared bible and one of those goddamned paper crosses inside it.

Waking in the night.

Scully tried to register what she'd heard, but all that came to her was the cold, fearful sensation in her chest. The Doppler effect of a car approaching on the highway cut sharply through the room. The door was cracked open, that was why she could hear it. Krycek was gone.

There it was again. A brief, high-pitched sound like air rushing, and a thud.

Scully pulled herself up in bed and wrapped an arm around her bare knees. The t-shirt Krycek had given her to sleep in had sleeves that brushed her elbows, but it did little enough to keep her warm. The bones in her right wrist grated against the metal cuff that held her chained to the bed.

The clock between the beds counted off twenty-five minutes before Krycek came back. Scully had long since lain back down and curled herself into a sleeping position. He slipped in, pulled a gun (Smith & Wesson 9mm, Dana) from his jacket pocket, and threw it on the chair next to the clothes she was supposed to wear in the morning. Scully couldn't imagine what her expression had been when he held out the jeans, asked, "Size six, right?" and threw them to her. He'd watched her so neutrally, offering a cellophane-wrapped sandwich and tea that he'd somehow coaxed out of the rickety motel room coffee maker.

It occurred to her as Krycek started to strip now that he didn't realize she was awake. He moved differently when he thought he was out of her view. His studiedly casual pose had gone the way of the over-eager puppy. The man opposite her displayed a mass of raw nerves and energy. Thick muscles stretched tight as he bent to unlace his boots and pull them off. Scully thought idly as Krycek shed his jacket and the zippered sweater beneath that if he were ever to reach a healthy body weight, he'd mass close to two hundred pounds. At the moment, he wasn't nearly that. He looked like a hungry animal, muscle and nerve without body fat stretched over heavy bone. It was intimidating. And extremely sexy.

When he'd come back from Russia, Mulder had told her a story that seemed four tenths myth and five tenths imagination. The spies and stone mines and scenes of whip-wielding men on horseback had felt more like something from a turn-of-the-century novel than a trip to investigate a biohazard in Siberia. Most of it she'd put down to Mulder's rage at losing both his prisoner and his answers. She couldn't believe that senior Russian officers came to North America for the simple pleasure of being treated like sewer rats.

Krycek continued to disrobe in the darkness. Scully only realized what was wrong with him as he struggled out of his t-shirt. His left arm wouldn't raise properly. He pulled the garment off with his right hand and eased it over his left shoulder with conspicuous care. The marks where the prosthetic arm's straps had cut into his skin showed black. His right hand moved in a practised gesture to release the buckles and lift the artificial limb off his body.

She must have made a sound, then, because Krycek spun sharply round and stared wide-eyed at her through the darkness. There wasn't any way to disguise the fact that her eyes were open. Somehow in the last few minutes she had pulled herself into a half-sitting posture that left her entirely visible. The green eyes he turned on her were electric and the faint light slipping in below the curtains was more than enough to show her that he was blushing. It was a strange effect, one that kept her perfectly still as he moved towards her.

If Krycek reminded her of Mulder at moments, this was not among them. He was using his bulk in a gesture of purely physical threat that drove her back against the pillows without ever touching her. He looked like he was bleeding just beneath his surface. He looked like pain. He looked very, very young.

*fuck you don't you pity me*

*I don't I don't have pity left for anyone except myself*

If he stayed this close to her, she was going to touch him, and there was no way she could justify it.

Krycek pulled roughly away from her and crossed the room to his own bed. With his back to her, he snarled, "Go to sleep, Scully. We're leaving at dawn."

The Edmonton 'Journal' was doing respectable sales when she followed Krycek into the service station. The triple murder in Prince Rupert, British Columbia was most of a week old; top billing was reserved for the two men found dead east of Jasper, Alberta the previous day. The lone suspect for the latter deaths was a Caucasian male, aged 25 to 40, accounting for a few hundred thousand people in the province of Alberta alone. The earlier killings had yielded no fingerprints and no leads. The RCMP requested any information the public might have on any of the murders.

Krycek was being charming. The girl at the till looked ready to elope with him. Privately, Scully marvelled that so few people registered the 'Hired Goon' sign that practically hung from the man's neck. Yes, he was handsome, but he dressed like spy, moved like a thug, and twitched like a junkie at the slightest noise. But maybe all the girl saw was the beautiful body of a man who was somehow attached to the frail red- haired woman hovering in the doorway. In jeans and wearing a t-shirt and sweater that belonged to her captor, Scully felt younger than she did with her professional persona drawn around her. And with her arms hidden in the body of the zip-up sweater to conceal the handcuffs still locked around her wrists, she looked more mutilated than Krycek.

In the car, she asked him, "It was you, wasn't it?"

Silence.

She hated this. She was trapped with this brutal stranger in the middle of a more-or-less foreign country in which she had no power at all. If she even knew where they were going, that would be something. She wanted to hurt him enough to make him give something away.

"You killed those men," she said.

Silence.

"Did you enjoy it?" She kept her voice flat and calm, as if making a routine scientific inquiry.

Silence.

Rage. "Tell me!"

"Yes, I killed them. No I didn't enjoy it. The three in Price Rupert I shot when I came to get you. The other two got away from me until the night before last. They were coming for you. They were carrying knives. I shot them in the parking lot and I dumped the bodies back of the motel." And she had heard his silencer in the night. "I think that was all of them."

God, he was so brittle. But so, when you came down to it, was she. They had started the trip hurt and exhausted, and it had already gone on too many days.

Krycek asked, "What do you really want to ask me, Scully?"

Pause. "Where are we?"

"Yellowhead highway, twenty minutes east of Vegreville, Alberta. In Canada."

"Where are we going?"

"Montana."

Scully turned her attention to the car radio and began twirling the dial. At this distance from a major town, the only clear signals were a country radio station and the CBC. Chamber music intercut with soft- voiced interviews filled the space between them.

Abruptly, she demanded, "Why did you come for me?"

"Are you in love with Mulder?"

That stopped her. "I don't know," she said.

"Well neither do I."

She was vaguely aware of being in a moving vehicle, of it being dark outside and very late, and of being nearly asleep. The highway was congested with semi trucks and headlights. Scully drifted.

She dreamed of oil and ghosts. There were flashes of dark rooms and Mulder's face and a city where all the signs were written in Chinese. Hong Kong. Mulder handcuffed to a dead woman who was still in the hallway. She jumped out the window and ran.

They were in the airport and Mulder was beating her. He had a gun pressed to her belly.

There was a long period in which she was almost asleep and something else controlled her body. She woke vomiting diesel fuel and feeling black iridescent sludge pouring out of her eyes. She laid for a long time, choking and sobbing, before she realized what she was lying on and hurled herself away from it. The concrete space was nearly black; she could only just make out the shape of the alien ship that pulsed like a living thing. Above her, it was dark, and the ceiling was so high as to be invisible.

When she understood that she'd been sold again and left in this place to die, she started to scream.

Later, so hoarse she thought her vocal cords must be bleeding like the fingers she'd used to claw at the door, she curled up on the floor and shook. The ship whispered hideous things to her.

Eighteen storeys up, North Dakota settled in for winter.

In a motel room on the city limits of Saskatoon, Krycek stopped leaving the handcuffs on her. He took them off her when he came in late in the evening with a plastic shopping bag gripped in his artificial hand. It didn't strike her at the time as strange that he should settle behind her on the bed and run a warm, unusually soft palm over the back of her neck, or that she should accept him with this kind of comfortable silence.

"How are you holding up?" he asked.

"I'm fine."

He drew her back against his chest and ran human fingers through her hair. "Mmm. The patented Scully, 'I'm fine.' Does anything still hurt?"

"No."

Krycek pulled a glove off with his teeth and used the bared fingertips to trace the fading bruises around her eye. "It's going to be all right, you know," he murmured. "I'm not going to let anyone hurt you."

She could have taken almost anything from him except this strange compassion. She was more than prepared to wrench away when he reached around her body and released the cuffs. Then he moved away, the motion so abrupt that she nearly crumpled without his support.

"Hungry?"

"Yes."

He gestured at the shopping bag on the table. Scully crossed the room and settled down in a chair to sort through its contents. Did Russian officers go grocery shopping in suburbia? (No, of course not, Dana. They have secret underground caverns where they buy their peanut butter.) The Skippy was open; it looked like he'd been eating it with his fingers on the way over. She might have guessed he was a peanut butter rat. Digging deeper, she found oranges and retreated back to the bed, rolling one between her palms.

His eyes imitated her motions of eating. Peeling her and tasting the juice that leaked out of the skin. Her hands were sticky and his eyes were clinging to her. Nearly colourless liquid ran in droplets towards her elbows. She sat cross-legged on the bedspread and segmented the fruit, pulling it apart and sucking at it gently a moment before ripping out the centre with her tongue. Krycek's expression was mild, but she was soaking wet all over and his eyes were blazing and the whole room smelled like oranges.

Scully dreamed that she was outdoors, somewhere with thick trees and years worth of musty leaves covering the ground. The air was icy. Close to her, there was a campfire. Its smoke smelled good; she could feel the scent gently penetrating her clothes and hair and settling into her body. She was sleepy and relaxed, fading in and out of awareness of the scene.

She could remember all the colours of the day. Where she was was beyond "rural" or "countryside." This was a kind of wild forest, coloured in deep shades of green and red and brown, and it felt amazingly old.

Distantly, she could remember a fenced place and the terrible cold and fear that went with it. She remembered crawling under the razor wire, chasing after Mulder. Why the hell had she followed him to Siberia? She must have been insane. She could not for the life of her remember what she had sold to escape that place; she suspected that it didn't bear thinking about. She could remember impacts and pain and running through the forest like a hunted animal. Babbled explanations in a language she didn't speak, then this camp with its warmth in the midst of the deep Siberian late-autumn cold. She was amazed that it hadn't snowed yet. Maybe tonight or tomorrow.

There were men moving around her in the firelight. Scully could remember them saying that if she was who she said she was, then they were her friends. Their bodies cast strange, lopsided shadows, and if she hadn't been so tired and so frightened, she might have questioned why each of them only had one arm.

She only registered that fact, really, when they moved as a group and pinned her to the ground. There were hands on her chest and knees on her shoulders and bodies weighing down her legs to keep her still. When the knife came out, fire-hot and coming for her, she started screaming.

"Scully!"

"Bastards!" No. No no no nono nononono.

"Scully!"

"Let me *go*!" The weight of their bodies kneeling on top of her, holding her down.

"Dana!" And then the body holding her down pulled sharply back and flipped, dragging her over and on top and jarring her fully awake on impact. All her limbs were there. Tepid halogen street light slid through the motel room curtains. Distantly, there were cars accelerating as they headed towards the highway. Alex Krycek lay under her, his legs tangled with her own. "Jesus, Scully, what the fuck is wrong with you?"

"I - "

"And where the hell did you learn to speak Russian?"

"Russian?" she whispered.

"You were screaming in Russian."

"I don't speak Russian."

Silence. He was naked to the waist and holding her painfully close. With her face twisted to his right, she couldn't see the damage they had done to his body.

Hoarsely, she whispered. "Tunguska."

"What?" The hiss of his breath shot across her cheekbone.

"It was after Tunguska, what they did to you."

"Shut up, Scully."

She was shaking hard. "In the forest, by the campfire. It was so cold. You had a grey wool army-issue blanket . . . you were wrapped up and sleeping on your hip and there was something hard, like a stone or a tree root, pressing against it and it would have been easy to turn over, but you were so tired . . . and, oh god, they had a knife in the fire and . . ."

She would never have believed that he could slap her with their bodies so close together, but he did. The blow knocked her back, so that she was only half-sitting. So that was what it meant, to see someone and say that they had murder in their eyes. Furious green and coming towards her.

"Shut *up*, Scully."

"Oh Alex, I'm sorry."

"Bitch. Are you making fun of me?"

"No."

"You know shit, Scully."

"I know you didn't deserve it."

"Fuck you." He settled forward into the street lamp illumination and she could see it. His left arm ended a palm's width below his shoulder. They must have had to cut through the bone. With a knife, in the forest. She couldn't believe he hadn't died.

*don't want your pity Scully*

And then what? He lived. He spent weeks in a Russian hospital where even the best doctors had limits because they had only stone age tools to work with. God, she could feel it like it was happening to her body. Fever, screaming, crying, someone distantly reading to him to take his mind off the pain.

*hate you Scully*

Impossible to explain where she found the nerve to bend and kiss the scars. Her lips rested against his mutilated shoulder a moment, then she pulled her chin back, ran her nose along the smooth, shiny skin, and rested her forehead against the remains of his arm. And stayed there until his right hand reached across his body and tilted her head up to face him.

He kissed her hard, holding her in place without the benefit of hands, forcing her head back so that her shoulders ached and trembled. His tongue scraped the roof of her mouth, lashed over her teeth and dragged them back towards his own mouth. Trying to hollow her out. Scully had opened her mouth for him in the first second after he had come down on her. If she was fighting him now, it was on his terms, and it rather looked like he was going to win.

Scully found herself laid back against the pillows with her pyjama t- shirt pulled over her head and off. Immediately, Krycek's fingers were on her, squeezing a breast painfully tight, then massaging it back into feeling. His kisses were deep and rough and deliberate, never deviating from her mouth. Against his thigh, her panties were soaking wet, reacting to the jean-clothed erection ramming against her hip with each shift of their bodies.

Sweet Jesus, she couldn't remember ever wanting someone this badly. Krycek's fingers caught at her underwear and pulled it savagely away from her. But that couldn't possibly have been what made her part her legs for him, what made her beg and pant into his mouth and wish he would do something, press that hard mouth to her breasts or caress her even momentarily.

Krycek whispered, "Spread for me, Scully." He was braced against his left shoulder, half-covering her body with his own. It was from that position that he pulled her knees up and apart, exposing her completely to his view. He dipped one finger briefly between her legs and raised it again so she could see her juices gleaming on him to the first knuckle. "So Scully wants me." Half to himself. He wasn't meeting her eyes.

The touch had been incredible, just brushing her labia and making her want to spread wider for him. If he held off any longer she was going to be begging. He'd said something. What was it. That she wanted him. "Yesssss."

"Unbelievable." She had a momentary glimpse of his eyes, the colour almost lost behind dilated pupils, and then he descended to lock his mouth on her neck. And perhaps three seconds after that, he drove a thick, dry finger into her vagina.

Oh God, oh Jesus, she was going to wail for him. Her muscles had clamped down the moment he entered her; she could feel every movement's friction even through her slickness. She had to be all but gushing into his hand.

"Fuck you're tight, Scully." She was. His hand, one finger in her, two others gripping her clitoris, felt impossibly large. "Come on, loosen up for me."

Scully thought she might faint when Krycek worked a second finger in. It had been so long since she had done this, she was almost virgin- tight, and he was already stretching the tiny opening. The burn sending jolts of pleasure up her spine was close to registering as pain. Two fingers, coated with her juices, fucked her in and out.

Krycek had withdrawn his body a little. He was watching her, his mouth close against her ear. "Open your legs wider for me, Scully, come on now." He pressed a third finger in. This time, she did wail. "Do you like that, Dana?"

"Yes." In a tiny voice.

"Mmm." He curled his fingers around and stroked the walls of her vagina, then straightened suddenly and thrust deep inside. "That?"

"Oh yes."

He bent and kissed her, more softly than before. "What do you want me to do, Dana?"

For a few moments she writhed against him, then stilled as he refused to do anything further. "Krycek -"

"Alex."

"Alex, oh God. Fuck me, Alex. With your fingers. Hard."

He kissed her again, this time with his eyes open, and allowed their gazes to meet. An electric moment between them as their mouths locked, hard and sharp. Then the shock as he roughly broke the circuit between them and his green eyes turned opaque. Ironically, "Your wish is my command."

The first thrust pushed her back against the headboard, the second worked a brittle growl out of her. Gradually, he increased the speed and force until she was in full vocalization, screaming and begging while he drove his fingers deep into her and spread them to stretch her unbearably and touch the points inside her body that ached and throbbed from waiting. The thumb against her clit pressed hard and snapped down, sending hot waves to and from her brain. His teeth locked onto the juncture of her neck and shoulder, jerking softly at the thin skin with each thrust.

She understood why men called it beating off. He was pounding his hand against her and into her and she was spasming already, shrieking and moaning, and he drove his fingertips so deep she thought he might be going to rip out her lungs or heart, scraped his fingernails briefly against the flesh he found there, and Scully screamed and came. Distantly, while she alternately begged *yes* and tried to remember a name she could call out, she heard him speaking to her, low as an animal. "There's my Scully, that's my pretty Scully, oh she's a beautiful girl." He pushed one final time into her and she collapsed against the pillows, aware now that she was fully naked and exposed to his view, and too exhausted to do anything about it.

Scully felt more than saw him withdraw his fingers and move to sit cross-legged at the foot of the bed, watching her. Her nerves were still firing randomly, but she regained enough gross motor function to raise her head. His face was detached and cold. He held up his hand to her view and she saw there were traces of blood under the nails.

"Liked that, did you Scully?"

At first she couldn't focus. Her brain cleared more slowly than her eyes, so it was a long time before she recognized that Krycek was still erect and straining against his jeans. When he caught her eyes locked on him, he ran the heel of his hand suggestively over the bulge. His face was expressionless.

*want this?*

*don't know oh God*

*do you want this?*

*yes*

"Turn over, Scully, and spread your legs again."

She was still trembling; he had to guide her, had to settle the pillow around her face so she wouldn't smother. Distantly, behind her, she heard him shed the jeans and push them away. Then more closely behind her, she felt his body heat, hovering a half-inch from her exposed back and buttocks. Three long, damp fingers ran the length of her spine. On the curve of her buttocks, they flattened out into a caress. She felt what might have been a kiss touch the tattoo on her lower back.

Whispered, "So. You aren't perfect, are you, Scully?" She shook her head a little. "Good. You were making me nervous." Soft laughter; she realized the remark had been meant as a joke. The fingers dipped between her cheeks and brushed her anus. Scully sucked air in through her teeth. "Won't hurt you, Scully."

Whimper.

"Good girl." A slick finger worked into her. He couldn't still be that wet from her body, but she couldn't imagine where he'd found the lubricant. In the night table, maybe, next to the Red Cross road map and the Gideon Bible. Krycek twisted the finger a little and she stopped thinking.

He stretched her quickly, relying on her relaxation in the aftermath of orgasm to do most of the work for him. Scully moaned as his fingers withdrew, then hissed as she felt the thick head of his cock press against her opening. Still whispering, he said to her, "Relax, Scully. I don't want to hurt you."

"No."

"No-stop?"

"No. No you won't hurt me."

"That's my girl." His right hand slid under her body and tilted her hips up a little. Once she was positioned, though, he left her, and she felt his shaft pressing against her asshole. Scully forced herself to relax and accept the intrusion, trying to ignore the burn as he stretched her far beyond what his fingers had done. Once the glans was buried in her, he moved quickly, rocking in with quick, almost brutal movements. By the time his balls came to rest against her buttocks, she was crying out almost continuously, and he paused long enough to let her catch her breath.

"Hold on, Scully, babe, I can't touch you while I do this." A statement of fact, a simple question of his balance, as cold and scientific as her inquiries about the murders, and as hurtful.

It was fast and hard, Krycek driving into her ass, then withdrawing and penetrating her slowly, refusing to build a rhythm until the very end. Finally, bracing herself on her shoulders, she worked one of her own hands between her legs and stimulated herself to come moments before he did.

The second orgasm was crushing. Scully barely moved as Krycek withdrew and left the bed. Nerves in her body were signalling one another without the influence of her brain, and there was a hard burn under the pleasure. The strangeness of anal penetration coupled with Krycek's rage was profoundly frightening. She wanted the room to be dark, to be able to disappear and not have him see her. She had registered a few gasped words as she came, Krycek's voice growling, *Gonna take good care of you.* She wouldn't be able to bear having him take care of her. She wanted to be out of his reach.

But when he came back into the room, the eyes he raked over her were impersonal and he climbed into his own bed as if he hadn't any claim on hers.

Scully dreamed of antiseptic smells and pain. She had impressions of coarsely woven sheets, of blue-painted walls and windows caked with ice. On the table opposite the foot of her bed, hard pears ripened in a ceramic bowl. The Siberian hospital room was terribly cold.

Someone she couldn't see was sitting on her left, reading aloud to her. In glimpses, she could see the book, a cheap paperback that would have come out of one of the filthy Soviet pulp and paper mills.

*As we get older we get honester, that's something. And the objective changes correspond like a language to me and my mutations. If the way I see you now is not the way in which we saw you once, if in you what I see now is new it was by self-discovery I found it.*

She growled, "Shut up."

"Shhh. Be quiet, sweetheart. I know it hurts. There's nothing I can do."

*I love your stubborn purpose, I consent to play my part. But now a different drama is being acted; For this once let me be.

Yet the order of the acts is planned And the end of the way inescapable. I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees' hypocrisy. To live your life is not as simple as to cross a field.*

She was nearly crying. "Leave me alone! Get away from me! It hurts." Falling to a whimper at the end. She couldn't follow the words. In her weakened state, her scream degenerated into hyperventilation. It wasn't right or fair for her to be this weak. She couldn't stand it.

Warm hands like her mother's settled on either side of Scully's face and one palm covered her mouth, forcing her to control her breathing. A woman's voice, softly comforting in its middle age, dropped into a minor key lullaby. The hands moved to stroke her forehead and her sweat- plastered hair.

Beyond the dirty, ice-ridged windows, masses of snow were breaking up the light. On the windowsills, onions grew in jars. The old-fashioned metal syringe on the night table had been boiled and re-used unnumbered times. They were past disposables in everything but people. Her life wasn't worth the price of antibiotics.

South of Saskatoon, the landscape opened up and suddenly two thirds of the view through the windshield was sky. The colours were dry and stark: red and gold grasses, trees with silver leaves, a sky that was high and heavy and purpling with clouds. Barbed wire fences ran along both sides of the highway. The wind cutting through them made a high, keening noise that rose higher and louder and cut off abruptly, only to begin again a few seconds later.

*Spooky,* Scully thought.

(And Mrs. Spooky, murmured Agent Mulder inside her mind.)

Krycek drove as if the deserted highway demanded all his concentration. His more human right side was toward her, his face turned slightly away so that she couldn't meet even the corners of his eyes. Scully wondered if it was possible for him to curl any further into himself to hide from her. Bracing the wheel on his knee, he reached out and turned on the radio, searching for a station without ever taking his eyes off the road.

They hadn't passed a half-dozen cars in the last two hours. Now they were driving into the badlands of the South Saskatchewan River and she couldn't make out a single human habitation within sight. The car was climbing a little, nothing to compare with what they'd done in the Rockies, but enough to give a breathtaking view of the surrounding country. The sky by this time, if such a thing were possible, was navy blue, and in the places where the clouds broke, tight, brilliant shafts of light struck the grass. She couldn't remember ever having seen anything so beautiful.

Krycek slowed the car and pulled onto the shoulder of the road, then got out wordlessly and moved around to her side. He opened the door and stepped back a little. Scully blinked up at him. He held out his hand, palm up and open; after a moment, she realized he meant for her to take it. She did, and got out.

Standing, she reached to his collar bone. Alex Krycek was a big man, and she couldn't for the life of her explain why he looked so much like a child. She absently braced his shoulder for him as he leaned into the car to turn up the radio.

"Dance with me, Scully."

She stared. The human hand extended again, calm, waiting. She took it and let him draw her in against his chest. The song on the radio was a waltz she didn't know. She moved to it gently, feeling his right hand in hers and the unusually reassuring artificial left against her hip. The radio song was laced with static from the electrical storm coming in across the ridges of the hills. There was no one else in sight and they were up so high and so exposed that lightning might strike them.

Krycek kissed her at the same moment that she saw lighting on the next hill (count one Mississippi, two Mississippi) and she kissed him back (three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five Mississippi) and broke away with the shock of the thunder. The storm was five miles off and blowing in. The momentarily shattered radio signal reconstructed itself and she danced with Krycek again and steadily until the rain came.

The electricity flickered on and off for most of the evening until Scully simply shut the lights off in annoyance. Krycek had fallen into bed almost as soon as he had satisfied himself that the room was secure. He'd done that with each place they'd stayed in. She could remember hearing him pace when he was keeping her blindfolded, touching things and reaching here and there, making soft leather rustles. She loved the strange, ritualized way in which he did things.

He slept the way he ate, voraciously, as though it might be weeks before he had the opportunity again. It wasn't the sleep of the just, but Mulder was evidence enough that the sleep of the just was not a peaceful one. She could envy him oblivion, at least.

As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, Scully began to make out her keeper's face, pressed against the bedding. He slept on his stomach, his left shoulder twisted up as though the missing arm were simply buried beneath the pillow. His face was strange and foreign, not the one he had worn in the FBI. Once upon a time his cheekbones and jaw hadn't pressed so starkly against the skin. He had aged, lost his soft expression with the baby fat.

The worry lines deepened across Krycek's forehead and he murmured something in his sleep. "No. Please."

She crawled out of bed and went to him. He was sound asleep, his knees drawn up close against his chest as he rolled onto his side, head down, as if he were trying to fit himself into a small space. Again, the whimpered, "No."

"Alex."

He was dreaming. She didn't think he was dreaming of Tunguska, he wasn't screaming bloody murder as yet. Only pleading. Please don't do this. Do what?

"Alex," she repeated, and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, laying down beside him.

He came awake gradually, gripped by fits of uncontrollable shaking. His muscles under her arm were so tense that she thought he might break at a touch. The small digital clock on the table between the beds counted off half an hour while she lay locked around him and he trembled silently.

Krycek turned suddenly and pulled Scully tightly against his chest. The shift was so abrupt it knocked the wind out of her for a moment. Against her hair, he was whispering, "Oh God, Scully, I'm *so* sorry, I'm so *sorry.*"

Silence.

Then Krycek said, "In the trunk of his car," and she saw it again. Duane Barry opening the trunk to let her see the dead patrolman lying by the side of the road. She remembered it being cold and dark and the blood running down her face and the bruises on her wrists where the ropes had cut in. She had never been before and was never again that frightened, not even in the last moments before Krycek had shot her captors in Prince Rupert. "We let that crazy son of a bitch take you. Oh Scully I'm so sorry, I didn't think didn't know I didn't understand oh God I'm sorry."

(*For ten sleeping minutes, Alex Krycek gets to know what it's like to be a woman locked in the trunk of a car. Irony, Mulder?*

(Justice, Scully.

(*You hate him, Mulder. Why?*

(He killed my father.

(*Maybe.*

(He hurt you. He let me like him. He was kind to me when I needed someone to be kind to me.

(*That's called compassion, Mulder.*

(I won't forgive him, Scully.

(*It's all right, Mulder. I haven't yet.*)

She cried into Krycek's chest and he cried into her hair.

His ragged breathing shook her a little. She had trouble distinguishing his occasional gasps from the thunderstorm that had almost blown over. Cold air had come in with the unsettled weather, and it made uncomfortable drafts in the old motel building. A miserable, chilling summer. Krycek's shivering had yet to lessen.

Scully freed herself from his grip and leaned across the small carpeted alley between the two beds. Quickly, she retrieved the pillows and comforter and used the extra bedding to nest them both in against the cool air. Snuggled so close against him that their legs were tangling, she could almost pretend she hadn't been afraid.

Silence. Thunder so quiet it was barely more than an echo of bass vibrations.

"You have your enigmatic face on, Scully. What are you thinking?" Silence. "I - "

She covered his mouth with both hands. Smiling slightly, she shifted until she was on her stomach and half on top of him. Krycek drew his lips back and kissed her palms, tracing her life- and love-lines with his tongue, watching her with wide, curious eyes. Her smile didn't expand, but the small wrinkles at the corners of her own eyes made themselves known, deepening the enigmatic expression. She moved her hands away, kissed him deeply, and threw a knee across his hips so that when she drew back they were pressed together and she was straddling him.

More silence. Then he reached up and pulled her mouth down to his, rasping his tongue over her teeth. Scully wondered what it meant when Russian eyes were smiling.

The blankets fell back as she sat up, giving Krycek access to her body. He reached out in the dark and caught the hem of her t-shirt, lifting it a little to rake his fingertips over her belly. Scully pulled the shirt off and dropped it over the side of the bed. She felt his hand against her back as she wrestled his jeans off.

"Yes." Whose voice? She couldn't tell.

His cock hardened under her, brushing the hair between her legs, teasing. The hand slid down her back to catch her hip. She appreciated the steadying contact. Her knees were trembling as she raised herself up and paused with the tip of him just outside her body.

"Please, Scully." Even now he called her Scully. He had learned that from Mulder, once upon a time, and he did it still.

Krycek's fingers pressed against her hipbone, tense from resisting the urge to pull her down. She bent and rested on her forearms to kiss him briefly and chastely on the lips, then straightened and sank onto him.

Oh, it was impossible that he could stretch her so abruptly and still feel so good inside her. She balanced on her knees and quivered while the first shocks ran through her. Her palms stayed pressed against his chest, elbows locked, holding herself in place. Only when he released her hip and took one of her hands in his to raise it to his mouth, she started to move against him.

The easiest thing was just to rock, finding the places inside where she wanted him. Her fingers disappeared between his lips; he sucked on their tips gently. Krycek - no, Dana, call him Alex. She barely recognized the incandescent, strange fey being under her who touched her momentarily - there, here - and withdrew, and caressed her again. Alex's arm coming around her to pull her down to lie full length against him. Alex's hips that bucked against hers, creating bright friction that flashed behind her eyes.

They made love like that in the dark, close together and occasionally touching. Exploring one another as strangers. *Oh yes, please.* He moistened three fingers in his mouth and drew them over her nipples, eliciting whimpers and kisses.

Her orgasm, when it hit her, was long and slow and rose up her body in waves. She was laughing and Alex was sparkling under her, fascinated by her expression. He came after her, thrusting up into her body while she was too exhausted to move, locking his mouth on hers and refusing to release her until the tension had bled out of them and they lay across each other, half dozing.

She felt Krycek stiffen a half second before she did it herself. At the back of her mind, Mulder's voice raged at her for allowing this intimacy with their enemy. She wondered whose voice reproached Krycek. The Smoking Man's, maybe. They had closed themselves off from one another. Both of them feeling frightened and embarrassed and exposed.

Scully locked her arms around his neck, dragged his eyes up to meet hers. "Don't you leave me," she hissed at him. "Don't you dare." Because she wasn't prepared to let go of him just yet.

*let me go Scully*

*no*

*please*

*no*

*why*

*I won't*

She waited for him to relax. Then eased herself off him and snuggled in close, pulling the mass of bedding up around them. Nesting. Settling in to hibernate. Waiting for the world to end. It didn't. Krycek's fingers stroked along her spine until she slept in spite of herself.

Great Falls, Montana, was surrounded by a mass of commercial generica and a tangle of roads. The late-day brilliance glared off the concrete wastes of truck stops and fast food outlets. Welcome to America.

The radio report early that morning had forecast Arctic air over most of the northwestern United States. It was still cold. Scully rested her temple against the car's passenger window and burrowed deeper into Krycek's sweater. It smelled like him, even after all the days she had worn it. Beside her, Krycek stayed wrapped in the leather jacket that seemed somehow to comfort him. She could still remember waking under it in the back of the car and feeling the security of its weight.

The centre of Great Falls was greener and shaded with trees. Someone had made a stab at classical civic architecture in the midst of this outmarch, so that white marble and columns marked the public buildings. The effect was incongruously charming. Krycek drove through the downtown without comment and pulled into a sheltered area behind a low office complex. Sunlight slanted into the alley. He got out of the car.

"C'mon," he said. She got out. He looked the vehicle over briefly, as if suspicious of its existence, frowned, and pulled a small bag from under the driver's seat.

He guided her between the buildings with a hand that rested lightly in the small of her back. She didn't remark on the modestly chivalrous gesture. Privately, she wondered whether Krycek imitated Mulder deliberately or whether these things were simply a male reflex in her presence. If she really seemed so fragile as to demand protection. In front of her, the alley opened into a cross-street.

"Wait." His hand caught her shoulder a moment before she would have stepped into the light. "The building off to your left is the Great Falls police department. He's waiting for you there. Tell him I'm sorry we were late."

She didn't ask who. Him. She gently turned, keeping Krycek's hand against her body, and wrapped her arms around him. He rocked back a little and pulled her closer to rest his cheek against her hair.

"Why, Alex? Why did you do this?"

She wasn't sure whether she felt him tense. In any case, it was only for a moment. "No reason. I don't know." Touched his lips to hers, stroked them with the tip of his tongue. "That's my girl." Then let her go. "Take care of yourself, little sister."

It was a strange endearment, one that she suspected didn't belong to the English language. Krycek dropped the bag into her hands. It was heavy enough that she had to struggle a little for it, and while she was off- balance, he stepped out of reach.

"They're yours. I grabbed them in Prince Rupert." She pulled back the cheap nylon zipper and rummaged inside. Distantly, "If it helps your peace of mind, the gun I've been using is my own. I wouldn't leave you holding a murder weapon."

Her cell phone. Her wallet. Her gun still strapped into its holster, ammunition clip in place. Her FBI badge and office pass.

She looked up. Krycek was halfway down the alley, nearly out of her view and moving away.

*Click.*

He must have heard her cock the gun, because he paused in mid-stride, though he didn't turn around.

"Alex."

Silence.

"Run," she said. "You aren't forgiven yet."

He disappeared. She stood for several minutes with her gun arm extended, wondering why she could still smell him, before she realized she was wearing his sweater.

In the two days he'd been there, nobody in the Great Falls PD had questioned the presence of this single FBI agent sitting on their lobby couch with hands that shook like a drug addict's. After the first six hours, the cleaning woman had found him an empty coffee can for the shells of his sunflower seeds. After eighteen hours, Ray Stevens passed through on his way home and stared at the man sprawled on the couch with something between incredulity and pity.

He knew Stevens was a good man. FBI trained, calm, greying in his middle age, the right kind of police chief for a small town in strange, empty country. Still, Mulder couldn't meet the eyes giving him that unreadable look.

"Get some sleep, Agent Mulder." He didn't answer. "Use my office. Desk officer's got your partner's description. He'll call you if she comes in." Mulder stared at him blankly. "Go."

And eventually he did sleep, dreaming of Scully and Samantha blended together, of scores of serial murder victims that could so easily have been either woman. He woke and swore and went in search of coffee.

In the lobby, the desk officer flagged him down. "Morning, Agent Mulder. Cleaning woman found this between the couch cushions. Yours? Has your name on it."

"Yes. Thank you." He took the crumpled yellow paper that had lived in his pocket for twelve days. Printed with the Western Union logo and the ten words of a basic telegram. In the age of e-mail, he had never received such a thing before.

FOUND SCULLY STOP MEET HER GREAT FALLS PD JUNE 13 STOP K

It was the morning of the 14th. She wasn't there. He spent the day in the lobby and snarled at anyone who approached him. Stevens chose to leave him there rather than attempt a conversation. He didn't sleep that night.

By mid-afternoon on the 15th, he realized that Scully wasn't coming. Understood that she was dead. He called Skinner, who took the news with a tense, "All right," and told him to come home. Mulder gathered his things from their scattered locations throughout the building and found his coat. The front windows in the station were tinted dark, making the day look nearly as cold as it actually was.

He couldn't bear the idea.

Three weeks, she'd been gone. Before, it had been three months and he hadn't given up. But there was nothing here, not a phone call or a visit from the Smoker, not a tip to explain her absence. He needed so badly to believe that Scully was coming back. He wanted to believe that it was her and not some stranger pushing the heavy front door open and dodging as it shut with a tight hydraulic groan. It could nearly have been her, blue eyes luminous against her too-pale skin and the bright hair whose colour he could never make out.

It could have been his Scully. There was a woman in the foyer, tiny and frail like her, wrapped in a too-large zip-front sweater with a gun holster just showing below it. If it was his Scully, she would cock her head and raise her eyebrows and loudly not comment on the state he was in. And then he would have to wrap himself around her and cling to her and prove to himself that she was still alive.

*God, what am I going to do without her?*

He picked up his bag and moved into the foyer to go, startling the woman who had been blinking in the sudden darkness of the station.

"Mulder?"