Jacobs Ladder

Fandom: The X-Files/Outer Limits.

Category/Rated: R slash

Year/Length: ~7300 words

Pairing: Mulder/Krycek/Hardy

Spoilers: Essence/Existence, The Inheritors.

Disclaimer: If youve seen them before, they ain't mine.

Summary: Jacob dreamed that he saw a ladder with angels moving up and down it, and God at the very top.

Author's Notes: This is for the lady who gave me the idea. I hope that its worthy of the original concept. All lyrics are from "This Wreckage" by Gary Numan.

Beta: Ursula contributed significantly to the content with her knowledgeable suggestions, and I am grateful for her input.

And what if God's dead?
We must have done something wrong
The dark fade ends
We're independent from someone
This wreckage I call me
Would like to frame your voice
This wreckage I call me
Would like to meet you, meet you
Soon

Hardy:

My name used to be Jacob - might still be Jacob, for all that I know.

I had it all. Great job, bright prospects, good looks and a beautiful, brittle woman who was prepared to welcome me into her life of good taste as being of artistic merit myself.

I had it made.

Kara was a status symbol on my arm; a woman who not only knew what she deserved, but felt that she deserved me. I was happy. I had a person to be, a place to go, and the warmth of another to ignite the tenderness I bore within me. I was the center of my world, and thought that Id been blessed by the gods.

I was wrong. Nobody can ever have it all.

You might as well say that I was struck down by a jealous God. I was certainly stricken, and I can remember still, even now after it all, the way that shining fragment catapulted inexorably towards me -- an iron teardrop, weeping through the heavens to collide with me. No way to escape the moment of meeting, and then nothing more. I can hear the screams as Kara saw it strike, and then a black rose, petals of dark velvet blossoming before my eyes.

Call it expanded consciousness. Call it Nirvana. Call it the sad ramblings of a dead man, but I recall a place of light and fragrance. I remember floating and feeling complete, and then

There was the other. A splintered voice that nagged and niggled at the corners of my mind, while I tried to cling to my sense of self. Jacob my name is Jacob. Who the hell are you?

And I was drowning. I coughed and retched lest I choke, pulling myself up to find that I was naked. There were men there, and a sense of pressure. A voice that spoke to me from within, communicating like a distant sun, heating, bathing, irradiating. I stood, feeling ungainly, my body no longer mine as I strode to the door, my departure a Novocain shot as the two of them stood frozen in space.

As I fastened the door against pursuit, I sensed the other looking out at them from behind my eyes, and for a brief moment I felt warm, and loved, and not alone.

Jacob? You and I have work to do.

No time. We had no time to do what was required of us, what they had come to do. We had to find the people we needed and send them through before we were caught. We separated, Kelly and Curtis and I, each to do his or her task as fast as inhumanly possible. The silver voice inside my head praised and cajoled as I performed tasks that were suddenly within my power. I walked through it all in a heady daze, delighting in the motes of experience - achievements that drifted about me like so much sunlit dust.

I had been back only once to apartment 305, and the visit had blasted my senses. The other that dwelt within me now was impatient, anxious to be gone from there, and I could sense his fear of the sticky strands of our relationship as he urged me to leave, drove my body even as Kara begged me to stay.

Id taken back my ring, and that was all the earnest of my continuing love that I had time for, before I found myself impelled from the home Id known. Shed called after me, and her eyes had been red with weeping. Shed loved me, I know it now as I knew it then, but I had a purpose that transcended simple monogamy. I had to save a race from extinction.

I worked, and took comfort in the presence of the other. Pleased at my efforts, the other waited behind the door inside my mind, and praised, informed, approved.

I was a good pupil.

The end came with startling finality. I had hoped that Kara would have loved me enough to come with me. What does the marriage ceremony say? Forsaking all others?

I tried to tell her - and the other was silent for a moment, whether mercifully or not I have my doubts. Kara remained, and I - well dead men cant prove anything.

I stepped into the light and was consumed, body and soul.

Ever wondered what it would be like to boldly go? As I stepped through that portal, despite the gunshot wound that was killing me a second time, I felt a thrill that came straight from the realms of sci-fi pulp fiction. I was living Star Trek.

Once through the gate with my charges, my work was done.

I didnt ask for this. Id done what the other required of me, but now, my task complete, I brooded. Id lost it all, and for what?

The others were happy. They had their life renewed, but I? It seemed to me as though my life was over. I wanted to go back, or to go forward. All I knew is that I wanted more. I wanted my life to have meaning. If not to regain what I had, than I wanted to make a difference for someone else. I had tried to regain what Id had - but was told it was impossible. It seemed that I had saved a race, but in doing so had lost my own identity.

Anger is something that destroys all that it touches. As my fury grew, the other that dwelt within me began first to counsel, then to warn, and finally to fear me.

Inextricably linked as we were, there was no way that the creature within could leave me. However, instead of embracing it, I rejected its presence. I turned away from the voice within and refused to hear the messages that spoke to me of love, of peace and joy.

Thats when the time followed where they all withdrew from me. The pain of my distress seemed to mute the colors that surrounded them, and even my companion, joined to me forever, withdrew from me. I was utterly bereft.

Id been certain that everything of worth was behind me, and to find myself utterly alone was suddenly too much. The world turned black, grim, desolate. The truth is that I was bored. Id examined my existence and found that it was meaningless.

It was then that I began to tally the things I had lost, and a raging despair overwhelmed me, a misery so complete that I sought to die for a third and final time. The other within me had made tentative attempts to soothe me, and I had rebuffed him without once attempting to shake myself out of my despondency. Finally, I found myself in a nowhere place, there to end my days, I had no doubt. Existence stretched out before me, a grey path without interest.

Time stopped.

Black on black, and pain that stabbed, and a weariness that seemed it would outlast the universe, and then

There might be a way.

Silver voice, belling clear and bright through my frozen anger.

A way? I snarled, uncaring - or maybe caring too much.

A way for you to find peace, even perhaps - in a way - to return to your home. The other seemed pleased, kindly. Calming images flickered within the void that was my heart, and despite myself I wanted to hear what he had to say.

Waiting was harder than I had ever found it. All the other would say was, You must trust.

I didnt. Couldnt, but it didnt matter a toss. In the end, I did what I was good at.

I waited.

We write suggestions
Suggesting fading to silence
And that must please you
My mirrors tarnished with no-help
This wreckage I call me
Would like to frame your voice
This wreckage I call me
Would like to meet you, meet you
Soon

Krycek:

The Hoover at night was a place I never thought Id see again, and it felt as though slugs were crawling the length of my spine when I slid inside. Part of the problem, of course, was Mulder, who was with me, alongside me without question, bringing her beside him.

He walked with his own lazy grace, though he must have been screaming inside from the fear and the darkness and the sheer futility of it all. I know that I was, but then, Ive spent the past 7 years doing that so Im used to it.

Damn him.

Damn him for being a constant, silent reminder of the things that I cant have - won't ever know again.

Damn him for wanting to protect her.

Okay, Im maudlin now, and I admit it, but you cant blame me for resenting that Id become a fulcrum for a battle that was never mine. Mulder made it mine, and because of him, I accepted it, but I didnt have to like it. Until I met him I never saw myself as a dweller in shadows.

So we ghosted through the empty building just as though the solid might of the FBI could protect us from the thing that sought to end her pregnancy, her life, and our chance of surviving.

When the danger threatened at last, as Id known all along that it would, he gave her to me, and asked me to protect her. I did. Surprising how just the sound of his voice, the look in his eye could make me reconsider, bend me to the path that he would have me tread.

I held her to me and she had no more substance than a bird. The temptation was there to crush her - smash her until she crumpled, red blood marring the fine, white skin and tarnishing the shining helmet of marigold hair, but, for him, I held her close to me and walked her past the nightmare that stalked her.

Delivering her into the parking garage, into the hands of others that would save her, I turned back to face my own nightmare. Hers was beyond me now for good or ill.

I found him then, and at last we were face to face with no lies between us, save for the last one.

Thank you. His words were quiet. He knew that the fear was still a living, breathing thing within the building this night.

I did it for you. You know that. The last lie loomed between us, and I stepped forward to leave it behind me.

I dont understand you. And there it was, that lie in all its simplicity. Damn him.

Yes, you do. My hand rose unbidden to cup his skull and pull him to me, and I leaned forward, afraid, knowing what I knew but wanting this anyway. My mouth grazed his. I could feel his breath against my lips, warm and sweet, as though he were a human, and my lover still. It was enough. It was too much. I groaned and crushed him to me, my mouth desperate as I sought to wipe out every memory wed ever shared.

He was born to be kissed. His mouth is a carefully molded testament to the joys of kissing. I sank into that mouth, forgot myself, and all the fears I had in the piercing sweetness of knowing him once again in my arms. I think that perhaps I sobbed as I felt his warmth pervade me. Id been cold for so long.

Tongue tip touched tongue, heat and silk and wet as I described him to myself in a way I would never forget. When sounds heralded the others, and I knew that it was over, something within me broke forever, and what I needed to do next became the easiest thing in the world.

Hardy:

When the time came, they took me without warning to a room with a machine in it similar to the one that the three of us had built all those months before. Kelly was there. She wanted to say goodbye, and I felt a faint unfreezing of the numbness that had possessed me for the last forever in her friendly good wishes. Perhaps I had made a difference to someone.

I managed a smile, though I didnt know where I was going, and stepped through the portal. At least this would be different.

Transfer through one of the gateways is an exercise in improbability. Douglas Adams had it right. There are lights and sounds and starlight. One feels the pull of things that are unknowable. When I arrived at the place to which I had been sent; it was dark. I looked around me, seeking something familiar, but this was nowhere I had been before. I was a thing of shadows, and knew that I was not entirely present - within, but not of that place.

The presence within me cautioned silence, and, unthinking, I complied. A man walked past me, strangely glittering with intent, and then I saw a door open. Two people emerged from a room to move silently over the corridor and enter the elevator. She was tiny and I could tell that she was afraid. He was tall, and grim, and somehow I believed that I knew him, although his features swam before my eyes.

The elevator doors closed, shutting off my view of them. As the carriage began to descend, that other returned, and seeing his eyes, I wonder that I had ever believed him to be human. He was more alien by far than anything I had known. He was nemesis, disturbing, implacable. He watched the numbers on the elevator signal its descent, and then stalked to the stairwell, a raptor intent on its prey.

I retreated, the voice within me bidding me wait. Now was not the time. Later - much later I heard the sound of people returning, and wondered when and where I was, what I was doing there. The voice told me that it was nearly time, and inside my head the useless questions battered. All he would tell me was soon.

Men gathered, and there were arguments that I could barely follow. At last, guns flashed in the half-light, and three men stood, each menacing the next. From my place somewhere between this world and the next I couldnt hear them, but I could sense the hatred, and the sorrow, and the love, and then.

One gun spat, once, twice, three times.

One man fell, and I could see bitter regret in the eyes of the second. From the third, there was only satisfaction.

And what if God's dead?
We must have done something wrong
The dark façade ends
We're independent from someone
This wreckage I call me
Would like to frame your voice
This wreckage I call me
Would like to meet you, meet you
Soon

Hardy:

My name used to be Jacob - might still be Jacob, for all that I know.

I had it all. Great job, bright prospects, good looks and a beautiful, brittle woman who was prepared to welcome me into her life of good taste as being of artistic merit myself.

I had it made.

I was wrong. Nobody can ever have it all.

Call it expanded consciousness. Call it Nirvana. Call it the sad ramblings of a dead man, but I recall a place of light and fragrance. I remember floating and feeling complete, and then…

There was the other. A splintered voice that nagged and niggled at the corners of my mind, while I tried to cling to my sense of self. Jacob… my name is Jacob. Who the hell are you?

As I fastened the door against pursuit, I sensed the other looking out at them from behind my eyes, and for a brief moment I felt warm, and loved, and not alone.

Jacob? You and I have work to do.

I'd taken back my ring, and that was all the earnest of my continuing love that I had time for, before I found myself impelled from the home I'd known. She'd called after me, and her eyes had been red with weeping. She'd loved me, I know it now as I knew it then, but I had a purpose that transcended simple monogamy. I had to save a race from extinction.

I worked, and took comfort in the presence of the other. Pleased at my efforts, the other waited behind the door inside my mind, and praised, informed, approved.

I was a good pupil.

The end came with startling finality. I had hoped that Kara would have loved me enough to come with me. What does the marriage ceremony say? "Forsaking all others…?"

I tried to tell her - and the other was silent for a moment, whether mercifully or not I have my doubts. Kara remained, and I - well dead men can't prove anything.

I stepped into the light and was consumed, body and soul.

Once through the gate with my charges, my work was done.

I didn't ask for this. I'd done what the other required of me, but now, my task complete, I brooded. I'd lost it all, and for what?

The others were happy. They had their life renewed, but I? It seemed to me as though my life was over. I wanted to go back, or to go forward. All I knew is that I wanted more. I wanted my life to have meaning. If not to regain what I had, than I wanted to make a difference for someone else. I had tried to regain what I'd had - but was told it was impossible. It seemed that I had saved a race, but in doing so had lost my own identity.

Anger is something that destroys all that it touches. As my fury grew, the other that dwelt within me began first to counsel, then to warn, and finally to fear me.

That's when the time followed where they all withdrew from me. The pain of my distress seemed to mute the colors that surrounded them, and even my companion, joined to me forever, withdrew from me. I was utterly bereft.

I'd been certain that everything of worth was behind me, and to find myself utterly alone was suddenly too much. The world turned black, grim, desolate. The truth is that I was bored. I'd examined my existence and found that it was meaningless.

Time stopped.

Black on black, and pain that stabbed, and a weariness that seemed it would outlast the universe, and then…

"There might be a way."

Silver voice, belling clear and bright through my frozen anger.

"A way?" I snarled, uncaring - or maybe caring too much.

"A way for you to find peace, even perhaps - in a way - to return to your home." The other seemed pleased, kindly. Calming images flickered within the void that was my heart, and despite myself I wanted to hear what he had to say.

Waiting was harder than I had ever found it. All the other would say was, "You must trust."

I didn't. Couldn't, but it didn't matter a toss. In the end, I did what I was good at.

I waited.

We write suggestions
Suggesting fading to silence
And that must please you
My mirror's tarnished with 'no-help'
This wreckage I call me
Would like to frame your voice
This wreckage I call me
Would like to meet you, meet you
Soon

Krycek:

The Hoover at night was a place I never thought I'd see again, and it felt as though slugs were crawling the length of my spine when I slid inside. Part of the problem, of course, was Mulder, who was with me, alongside me without question, bringing her beside him.

He walked with his own lazy grace, though he must have been screaming inside from the fear and the darkness and the sheer futility of it all. I know that I was, but then, I've spent the past 7 years doing that so I'm used to it.

Damn him.

Damn him for being a constant, silent reminder of the things that I can't have - won't ever know again.

Damn him for wanting to protect her.

Okay, I'm maudlin now, and I admit it, but you can't blame me for resenting that I'd become a fulcrum for a battle that was never mine. Mulder made it mine, and because of him, I accepted it, but I didn't have to like it. Until I met him I never saw myself as a dweller in shadows.

So we ghosted through the empty building just as though the solid might of the FBI could protect us from the thing that sought to end her pregnancy, her life, and our chance of surviving.

When the danger threatened at last, as I'd known all along that it would, he gave her to me, and asked me to protect her. I did. Surprising how just the sound of his voice, the look in his eye could make me reconsider, bend me to the path that he would have me tread.

Delivering her into the parking garage, into the hands of others that would save her, I turned back to face my own nightmare. Hers was beyond me now for good or ill.

I found him then, and at last we were face to face with no lies between us, save for the last one.

"Thank you." His words were quiet. He knew that the fear was still a living, breathing thing within the building this night.

"I did it for you. You know that." The last lie loomed between us, and I stepped forward to leave it behind me.

"I don't understand you." And there it was, that lie in all its simplicity. Damn him.

"Yes, you do." My hand rose unbidden to cup his skull and pull him to me, and I leaned forward, afraid, knowing what I knew but wanting this anyway. My mouth grazed his. I could feel his breath against my lips, warm and sweet, as though he were a human, and my lover still. It was enough. It was too much. I groaned and crushed him to me, my mouth desperate as I sought to wipe out every memory we'd ever shared.

Hardy:

I managed a smile, though I didn't know where I was going, and stepped through the portal. At least this would be different.

Men gathered, and there were arguments that I could barely follow. At last, guns flashed in the half-light, and three men stood, each menacing the next. From my place somewhere between this world and the next I couldn't hear them, but I could sense the hatred, and the sorrow, and the love, and then.

One gun spat, once, twice, three times.

One man fell, and I could see bitter regret in the eyes of the second. From the third, there was only satisfaction.

Turn out these eyes
Wipe off my face
Erase me
Replay, "The end"
It's all just show
Erase you

I need to I need to I need to

This wreckage I call me
Would like to frame your voice
This wreckage I call me
Would like to leave you, leave you
Soon

Krycek:

I couldn't do it any more. She was safe now, and the last thing I wanted was to remain around to compromise the work I'd put into getting her there. I thought about the things that I'd wanted and given away in the fight for this moment.

I thought about the kiss that Mulder and I had shared, and for a few brief seconds imagined that we could be together again, could put the past behind and… no. Regretfully, not possible. Suspension of disbelief? Forget it. For that to happen, you'd need a suspension of reality that bordered on the heroic.

So I leveled my gun, and readied my most irritating grin, trained it on the man that was the weakest link. He would have to do it for me. I'd been around too long, my sense of self preservation wouldn't let me do what was needed for myself.

So, Skinner would perform the task that I couldn't bring myself to do. I knew exactly which buttons to press there to make it happen. I went to work. The look in Mulder's eyes was one of deep shock, as though he too had wondered if we'd be together again. I could tell that it was something that he wanted, and that, for me was reward enough. Smiling with grim determination, I turned to focus on the one that would break for me, putting aside tender thoughts that had no place in my life.

Only in my death.

Glibly, savagely, I prodded Skinner, my knowledge of just where to probe, to harry and to goad. When at last I saw the hunted look that betrayed his imminent fracture, I darted one last, longing look at Mulder, then I turned back to Skinner in time to see the fire bloom in his hand as the roar of gunfire stole my senses.

Hardy"

"Now."

The being inside my head drove me forward, forcing me down onto the floor, onto the body of the man that lay where he had fallen. In vain I protested, and felt myself sink, something that was remote from me twisted, and then I found myself scrambling backwards away from there, every step bringing me further into reality. By the time I reached that elevator, the shadows that had concealed me were gone, leaving only the gloom and sterility of the corridor itself.

I found myself trapped in reality, subject to time once again, back in the world, and frightened, panicked, terrified.

The heart thumped in my chest, the fear lay crosswise in my throat, and within my head the presence had altered. I stumbled into the elevator and thumbed the button to drop it down the shaft, then leant back against the all too flimsy wall, my palms pressed back flat against the fabric of it, and my body shrinking back as though to mesh with it, as I tried to regain a little control over my breathing.

Horror rolled over me in slick and oily waves. I felt my gorge rise, and leant forward, hands outstretched to support me as I vomited, sour fluid my stomach's only content. Wiping the bitter residue from my lips with the back of my hand, I felt a moment's vast astonishment. The other within was frozen, staring at my hand as though transfixed, and I was at a loss as the thoughts seared my brain.

"What…? What's happened?"

Reeling, I staggered into the parking garage as the door to the elevator opened with a screech of tortured metal, and set out on unsteady legs towards a car - a black limousine that I knew I had never seen before, but which was somehow familiar - a safe haven that beckoned me in my terror.

I clambered into the vehicle, reached numbly for the key that I somehow knew lay beneath the mat on the driver's side, and pulled away. The voice in my head was booming, hollow, questioning, endlessly questioning. I had nowhere to run that would stop the questions, so perforce I tried to answer.

Much later, the car drew up in a dark, quiet street across the road from an apartment block that seemed to have some associations for the newcomer inside my head. The questions hammered at me still, but we had at least succeeded in establishing who we were -- and who we weren't.

He believed that he was dead. He'd actually wanted to die, with a bone deep exhaustion that told of battles long ago fought and lost. When I turned on the courtesy light and showed him my face in the rear view mirror, he'd gasped. My body found itself suddenly prepared for flight in a manner that I'd never known, so intense was his reaction.

Telling him of my history brought less incredulity than I had expected. He was, after all, inside my head, which made it impossible for either of us to lie, although I could feel his thoughts skittering madly as he attempted to decide what he should tell me. By the time we'd shared the history of the night, I was beginning to wonder whether this was what I'd longed for, or some strange nightmare. I was home on Earth, sure enough, and at least I wasn't bored, but the man in my head wanted to die, while by now I wanted only to live again. He was bitter, and so, of course was I. We talked, argued, sulked, but in the end we were together in this, and there seemed no escape. We compromised, and then we waited.

I thought that I was good at waiting. He was better. His patience was utter and complete.

Dawn was breaking when we saw him, a tall, slim figure with his head bowed, stealing towards the apartment building. I would have opened the door at that moment, but he cautioned me, and I paused, watching as the man opened the door and went in. When finally we emerged from the protective cocoon of the car, I gasped at the chilly air. There was a dew painting the world with droplets, and my very breath seemed heavy and unsustaining. My companion gave a snort of laughter that totally lacked mirth, as together we propelled my body after the man that we'd seen.

Who he was, I had no idea. My new 'roommate' had told me a little of his hopes and dreams, but we'd had no time yet to discuss relationships, and from the seething hurt that flickered through his presence in my head, I could tell that this was an ongoing relationship.

Sighing, I gave him control, and found myself flowing through the shadows the way that water slips over rocks. Up the stairs, the smell of boiled cabbage and faint, old, putrescence strong in the stairwell, to emerge into a corridor that smelled of dust and mothballs, I found myself looking at a door and the number 42. There was a brief pause while my hands busied themselves at his behest, and then the door opened.

We went in, of course we did. I didn't know why, or what we would do, but he was in command and at least I wasn't bored. Entering the living room, I saw the flicker of a TV screen, and the low lights of a fish tank. The rest of the room was cluttered, piled high with books and papers, like the bedroom of an adolescent.

He was sitting on the couch, a thing of black leather that was partially covered by a tatty afghan, the picture of dejection. We stood and watched him for a long moment, my inner companion apparently showing the same curiosity that a domestic tabby might evidence when faced by a twitching string. I found myself holding my breath, wondering whether we were here to comfort or to kill.

The man on the couch spoke first. He hadn't yet seen us, indeed, I doubt if he'd have noticed us if we'd gone to stand before him. It was then that I noticed that he had a gun, and felt a visceral twitch that was not mine, but came from the other.

"It's all done. All over." The words were spoken softly, the man's voice soft and flat, as though there was no joy left anywhere. I watched in horror as he raised the gun to place it beneath his own chin.

"Fox." The word, no more, spoken softly, a caress in the darkness. The man on the couch lowered the gun and looked up, something dark and tired behind his eyes, something that faded, eclipsed by the incandescent joy that suffused his face as he saw me.

"You? I don't understand." The gun was now forgotten, laid on the couch at his side as he drank my presence down and sat, his face painfully hopeful, naked in its honest emotion.

"Neither do I, but I'm here." I began to understand that these two were lovers. I could feel the tenderness wash from my companion to me, and wondered where I would go, unable to fathom my role in this drama.

"You're dead. I saw you die." The fear was back on the other man's face. My companion moved closer to stand before him and extend a hand. As the other took it and rose to his feet, I felt my arms go around him to pull him close.

"I don't know how it's happened. I wanted to die. It was time." I could hear the desperate attempt at calm in his voice, and behind it see the swirling colors of distress and confusion as he picked his way through a minefield of potential lies to paint his soul for this man's inspection.

"How could you leave? How could you leave me behind?" The question was that of a small boy cast adrift in a busy street, and my companion radiated tenderness and impatience in a strange mixture.

"I thought that it would be better for you. I've never managed to do anything but hurt you." At my words the other gripped my shoulders, the slight pain making me gasp involuntarily. His face was fierce, the sulky mouth twisted and the eyes held a glitter of sudden anger.

"Don't I get a say? You were just going to leave me? Thanks a lot, Krycek." We stood for a stretched instant, and then his face softened slightly. "I want to kill someone - something. I want to destroy them for what they've done to you - to us. They took everything from us." Within me, I felt the melting, the surge of love for this other whose fingers were clenched so painfully on my skin.

"Mulder, don't you see? An eye for an eye just means that eventually we'll all be blind. You have to leave it all now. It's time to put it behind you. You will come with me, won't you?" I'd felt his fear, and now I felt his absolute certainty. Mulder belonged to him; he would come.

"Scully…?" My companion was ready for that.

"She's got others to shield her now; your work is done. All you can do is bring her into danger if you remain beside her." Swift anger flared in the other's eyes, and was replaced by a rueful smile that made him look absurdly young.

"You telling me I'm trouble, Krycek?"

"If the shoe fits, Mulder." The sigh he gave was histrionic, and the tension abated a little in its gusty wake.

"I see your point. I'm a lightning rod for trouble, and the last person she needs around her at the moment." I felt myself nodding, knew that my companion felt as if he'd won a great battle. I began to relax.

Mulder's face was close enough to mine that I could feel his breath, see the glisten of moisture on his cheek, and when our lips met, I was ready for it. Somehow it seemed inevitable.

Mouths, and hands, and bodies entangled, straining and yearning. I knew that these two were meant to be, although what place I had for myself within that dynamic I didn't know. My hands passed over his fair, smooth skin and my lips drank from him, and I was a bystander, a voyeur, watching two lovers from a place somewhere within myself as they sank down onto the couch and lost themselves in each other.

When the one who had accompanied me finally spoke, I almost started to my feet, causing Mulder to protest faintly and drag me back to hold and to kiss once more. I permitted him to roll me beneath him, covering my body with his own, and concentrated on the alien within. My skull was becoming crowded.

"Jacob, your work is done. You may choose now. Remain with your body as now, and share it, or become the way that I am, a free intellect, able to enter and leave a body at will; able to help the ones who are in need."

That gave me pause. I'd loved this body. It had served me well, but Mulder's hands were roaming it now, exclaiming over it, holding my left hand to his lips and shedding tears as he tried to ask, and Krycek tried to answer, without much coherence that I could discern. I decided. Krycek could take my body. I would go on. It would not -could not be boring.

As I whispered my goodbye to the new owner of my human self, I felt renewed, excited.

This was what I was born for.

THE END

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