below . the . moon

Title: Becoming Judas
Author: darkstar (clone347@aol.com)
Rating: pg-13 violence
Classification: see part one
Disclaimer: see part one
Summary: see part one

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becoming judas: 2/12
darkstar
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She felt a tremor of fear pass over her body and knew that she was shaking. A glance at Mulder brought relief that he had not noticed, that he too was staring at the stakes. Just two seemingly insignificant pieces of wood, surrounded by even more insignificant brush and grass.

When all was said and done, the most horrible deaths were the most commonplace. Here they were, fugitives from the government of the next millenium and beyond, and their fate would be almost perfectly similar to the fate of many during the middle ages who had stood apart from the masses. Even in a world ruled by aliens, the basics never changed. Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne. She had never planned on *dying* for the cause, things had just worked out that way, but at least she had Mulder with her...

<Mulder. But he's afraid of fire...> Scully choked on her next breath as she remembered. They couldn't burn Mulder- they couldn't. Let them do whatever they wanted to her, but not to him. Not this. Her heart began to pound wildly in her chest, first with frustration, quickening into out and out anger.

"Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, you stand accused of high treason, of aiding the rebellion, and the murder of one of my people. The penalty for that is death." A gruff voice snapped her attention to the man standing in front of them, flanked by two others, each armed. The man himself was unarmed. "In your treachery you have endangered the lives of everyone in this village. What do you have to say to these charges?"

She recognized him as Boss Gordon. The man who held their lives in his hands.

"I am a member of the resistance." Mulder spoke up before she could open her mouth. "I make no apologies."

An wave of angry shouts rippled across the crowd, along with cries of "Burn him! Burn them both!" Gordon held up one hand and all was again silent.

Mulder plowed right ahead, spinning a lie he silently begged Scully to go along with. "She is innocent." He looked at her in rank disgust. "As innocent as a government spy can be." The contempt melted into pride. "I captured her, and was taking her to my superiors for questioning." Scully's mouth dropped open to form a perfect O. He had his moments of insanity, but this....this was unacceptable. If she died, she died. Living alone would be just as bad. "He's lying." She said, the hot strength of anger pushing her forward. "I'm every bit as resistance as he is."

"Scully!" Mulder hissed her name, his voice razor sharp. "What are you doing ?"

She ignored him, turning toward Gordon.

"We are rebels. If you can call it that. You talk of treason, of treachery...well let me tell you something of treachery! *Treachery* is when human beings turn against human beings, when they are willing to destroy them for the simple crime of standing up to oppression! *Treason* is when we hunt each other down like cattle for a government who thinks of us all as nothing more than pests to be exterminated!" Scully whirled to face the crowd, jabbing her finger in their direction accusingly. Mulder watched in stark admiration as her blue eyes hurled electricity down on the mob. This was his Scully in full battle armor, and he never ceased to be amazed.

"You are the traitors here. You think yourselves so brave with your guns and your vendettas. In truth you are but cowards! Weakened dogs, killing off those who are different from what you will never be. You can kill us, but it will not change your state at all." Her voice was calmer now, as the eruption faded away. "We may die tonight. But you will die every day for the rest of your miserable lives."

She was finished. Nothing more to say, no more strength to say it with. She turned her back on the crowd, desperation beginning to creep back into her eyes as she waited for Gordon's decision. The whole world was silent.

He shifted in his stance, his eyes meeting hers in a mix of regret and steel. "Kill them." That said, he turned and walked back into a building, taking all her resolve with him. His words struck her like a physical blow, and she stood with her head bowed for a moment before looking up at the only thing she wanted to see.

Mulder could barely look at her. The face of death was in no way as crushing as the complete despair rampant on her features. But he could no more look away than cease breathing, held captive by her eyes.

One tear slid down the side of her face, carving a path through the dirt and the blood.

It carved a gash right down his soul as well. He hardly felt the crushing grip of the men pushing him to the stake, barely acknowledged the burning on his skin as they re-tied his wrists behind him. Another length of rope lashed his ankles to the wood. It didn't matter.

She filled his gaze and mind and soul so completely, that even death was momentarily forgotten. They were not dragging her. Scully was *walking*. Slowly, stately, more like a queen surrounded by her court rather than a martyr condemned to die. The monsters hovered around her, waiting for her to try an escape. She didn't. She walked up the stake and drew herself up to full height, staring straight ahead as they tied her.

Her arm was no more than a foot away from his. So close... but too far away. The men were going for the torches now. What were his last words going to be?

"Scully..." He called her name in a whisper, and she turned her head until she could see him. Scully could almost feel the torture in his eyes. She knew she could take the pain of dying but she couldn't sit and listen to him take the blame for it. "Mulder, don't."

"Don't what?"

"Apologize." She smiled sadly. "You're not responsible. I'm here for the same reasons I always was. Because I want to be."

"I wouldn't mind dying this way if it could save you." It was true, but his thoughts were a thousand miles from his words. He couldn't say the three words in his mind. Even though he'd never get another chance.

Some secrets were best carried to the grave. Besides, what good would it do, now, here?

"You have saved me Mulder." She whispered back, then her eyes widened, and he followed her gaze. Two men stood in front of them, the flames from their torches orange-red against the backdrop of night.

"Let's see how rebels burn." One of them said, a sneer on his face.

"Not hardly as hot as she talks." The other added, laughing loudly. He passed the torch slowly across her face, inches above her skin. Scully turned her head, trying to keep from screaming. "Let her go." Mulder said, not caring if he was begging. "Please. If you have to kill her, do it some other way."

The man pulled back, laughing again. The kind of laughter of a boy who is about to pull the wings off a butterfly. "Now what would the fun be in that ?" He ran his fingers down the side of her face and along the ridge of her shoulder where the cloth had been ripped away, then pressed his lips to her neck. She pulled her head away. He grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked it back toward him, then placed his lips on hers for a long moment.

Every muscle in Mulder's body quivered with rage. Just five minutes alone with that scum was all he'd need. Five minutes and then maybe he'd let Scully finish him off...

She spit in the man's face. He merely wiped it away with his hand and turned to Mulder, a huge smile on his face. "Too bad she has to go to waste like this. I'd have liked to take her out for a spin. How would you have liked that, hero boy?"

Mulder let him know in a very lengthy string of four lettered words he saved for just such occasions.

"No more chatter." The first man said. "On with it."

The tips of the torches touched the grass, the flame kissing it just long enough to set them on fire.

*************

His fingers tightened around the rope as the brush flared up around his feet, the hungry flames already lapping at his shoes. For the moment the smoke was worse than the fire, filling his lungs and stinging his eyes until each breath was stinging hot and painful. Fire. His worst enemy. It was like his dream all over again. Or a scene from one of his darker nightmares. But this was real, and searing pain began to shoot up his legs as the heat reached his feet.

<Don't look at the fire...look at Scully...> He could see her out of the corner of his eye, the image shimmering in the heat as she fought to breathe.Mulder couldn't tell whether smoke or pain or both caused the tears that trickled down her face. He didn't want to know. He didn't want to look at her anymore, to carry this last image of her into eternity. Not like this.

So he closed his eyes and tried to remember any sort of prayer. *Hail Mary, full of grace...hallowed be thy name.. blessed art thou and forgive of our trangressions..."

This was useless. He had to see her again before he died... Mulder opened his eyes. A pain so intense the fire was nothing ripped through his gut. Her body slumped against the restraints, her head lolled to one side. Mulder wanted to believe she was unconscious. He refused to believe that she was dead. That this was really it.

But believing or not believing had no bearing on cold reality. His head dropped to his chest as the black hole of despair came rushing up to swallow him whole. He wanted nothing more than to embrace the flame, to let it carry him to a place where he could see her again.

His thoughts were frozen and his eyes shot open when a wave of freezing cold water doused him, turning the fire into nothing more than a smoking pile of wet embers. Mulder snapped his head toward Scully so fast he practically heard the vertebrae in his neck popping. She was soaked too, but she wasn't moving. Not at all. He tore his eyes away from her long enough to thank their savior. And instead found himself face to face with the man from the dream himself.

A very smug Krycek stood before him, holding an empty water bucket in his good hand and smiling like a cat that had just caught a mouse. Two mice to be exact. Krycek held his gaze a moment, then turned back to a very disappointed crowd.

"I hate to ruin your evening, " he said, setting the water bucket down. "but the barbecue's been called off. These two belong to me."

"Says who??" The man who had kissed Scully stepped out of the crowd, brandishing a crowbar. "We found 'em. We do what we want with 'em." A murmur of agreement swept through the crowd.

"Is that so." Without so much as a change of tone, Krychek pulled a 9 mm from his leather jacket and squeezed off two shots. The man screamed horribly as he crumpled to the ground, two masses of blood and bone chips where his kneecaps used to be. The mob shut up, no one daring to move even to help him.

For the first time in his life Mulder agreed with Krycek. The vigilante had gotten exactly what he deserved. He only wished he could have pulled the trigger himself. Although if it'd been him he would have aimed a little higher. Krycek was talking again, clearly in control of the crowd.

"See this?" He held up his left sleeve, showing the crowd the yellow and black insignia of the Enforcers, the Colonist's secret police. "This means that they are my prisoners, and I decide what happens to them. If anyone else has a problem with that, step forward and join your friend."

No one so much as breathed.

"Good. Now I need four of you to untie them and two more to get the trash out of the street." He gestured to the man writhing at his feet. "Your services will be duly noted, as always."

Mulder forgot about the urge to lunge at Krycek the moment his hands were free in his concern for Scully. The moment her ropes were severed, she slid down the stake into a small heap on the ground. To his surprise, no one tried to keep him from her side. He was there before a breath had passed. She had never looked so tiny. Her eyes were closed and if her chest was moving he couldn't tell.

The rest of the universe blurred around him as he covered her mouth with his, emptying his lungs into hers. No matter how much he tried to keep her safe, things always ended up this way- with her breathless and him trying to hold her on the planet for just a little while longer. Maybe it would be better if he just let her go... No. It wasn't even an option. If she died, he would die. And if he died, the bad guys would win.

But didn't they always anyway?

Time unfroze at the sound of a small cough, then another. Her eylids fluttered like butterflies trying their wings for the first time then opened. The blue of her eyes danced with bewilderment and hope as she tried to speak, her voice thick and raspy from the smoke.

"I'm not dead..."

"Shh." He noticed that soot from the dead fire was smudging her hair. She shouldn't have to lie in the dirt like some kind of animal. Sliding his arms underneath her, he pulled her half-into his lap.

"Can she walk?" Krycek's voice demanded attention which he grudgingly paid.

"I doubt it." Mulder said, not bothering to purge the hate from his voice.

"Be nice to me Mulder." Krycek smiled. "I saved your life. And hers."

"Why? Did you want to kill us yourself?"

"You misjudge my motives." he said. "As alluring as the prospect may sound, I don't want to *kill* either of you. There's a hefty price on your head and it will belong to me in a matter of hours."

He felt Scully's muscles tense and remembered their earlier conversation. How many promises would he break? "I don't suppose you'd let her go." Mulder said. "After all, I'm the big prize. She's not a threat without me." It was a lie and they both knew it.

"Oh but you don't give her enough credit. I am full aware of what she's capable of." he looked at his watch. "Well it's getting late, or I should say early, and we have a long way to go." He leveled his gun until an invisible arrow from the barrel bored into Mulder's forehead. "So if you will follow me, we can all walk out of this nice and peaceful like."

"And if I refuse? Will you shoot my knees out too?" The sarcasm was clear, and Mulder was satisfied when Krycek stiffened.

"No." He snarled back. "I'll shoot out hers."

His tone made it clear that it was no idle threat, and Mulder kept his arguments to himself as he willingly followed the man he hated most into the midnight.

*************

The moon was falling like a burned out rocket toward a horizon tinged with gray dawn and they were still walking. And walking. And walking... Each movement jarred his tired body one inch past the unbearable. The rough terrain was unforgivable on his bare feet as he moved from patches of silver to shadow to silver again. Unfortunately most of the sharp plants seemed to prefer shadow. Not for the first time he wished for his shoes. Or that he could rest. Or even ease the weight of the body in his arms.

He felt a bit guilt at even associating Scully's featherweight with "heavy", but his arms could only take so much in one night without turning into noodles. She had held her own for the first few hours, telling him she was fine right until the second she dropped unconsious in the sand. To tell the truth, Mulder was surprised she stayed on her feet as long as she did. Krycek had offered to carry her once but Mulder's quick and rather nasty refusal made it clear to him not to offer again. The thought was almost sacriligious, not to mention the fact that it was beyond an insult to admit to Krycek that he was getting tired enough to consider the offer. So he carried on, step after brutal step.

Krycek, for his part, stayed a wary glance away from Mulder's side, the gun never wavering in his hand. The flint hard shine in his eyes telegraphed to Mulder's the ready consequences any escaped attempts. The very notion made Mulder want to laugh. To be absolutely fair, he *had* thought about it, but the ideas had began and ended with the woman in his arms. Escape was impossible as long as she was out of things. But as soon as she returned to the world of the living....

Maybe it was sunrise or maybe his swollen eyes were just playing tricks on the rest of his brain. Either way he was fairly sure the black blur three paces ahead of him that made up Krycek was stopping. He gave his body the order to stop; it just sort of died on him instead, leaving him standing like a robot with a rag doll in his arms. Was this it? Their execution? He wanted to at least be able to see the end of his life, of his quest, when it came.

He blinked twice, slowly and deliberately, until the world came into clearer focus. The reason for their halt was far less final. Krycek had a car- a rusty black Jaguar that had seen far better days. Mulder was both surprised and impressed, then surprised he had been either. Only influential members of the new hierarchy were allowed the privilege of cars. Krycek's insignia had been Enforcer. You didn't get any more influential than that. They were made up of a potpourri of aliens, humans, and hybrids each with one common ground. Each was the best at what they did, and there was talk that the *real* power of the government rested in their hands.

"Nice wheels." He croaked. mainly to see if the parched remains of his vocal cords still worked. They did, but barely.

"Well unlike you," Krycek turned his back to him long enough to fiddle with something on the trunk. "I know how to pick sides."

"Yeah, I've been meaning to ask you. How does it feel to be a lackey? Oh...how silly of me...you've been one all your life."

The trunk popped open with a whine and Krycek spun just fast enough to let Mulder know that he had hit another nerve. The smile wanted to come but he remained deadpan for full effect.

"Lackey is one thing to call it." Krycek said, the muscles in his jaw twitching as he tried to match Mulder's calm.

"Although I'm not going to end up in some alien death camp having my brains fried out of my head, like you are. But you're used to that." he edged forward as he spoke. "No, the real hard part will start when they hook her up to the machines. You know what I'm talking about, don't you Mulder. When she screams your name and you'll wish you were deaf because deep down inside you know..." He stopped inches away from Mulder, his breath hot and sour like hard liqour.

"That there's not a thing in the world you can do about it."

The hate made Mulder forget how tired he was but he remembered that his arms were full of Scully just in time to keep from attacking the man. As it was, he let the heat of his anger forge the lines of his face into steel and denied his enemy the privilege of a reaction.

"Put her in the trunk." Krycek ordered, stepping aside and waving at Mulder with his gun. "Put her in then get in after her."

The steel cracked over his eyes and allowed the tiniest sliver of shock to register. Krychek had not only known about Scully's abduction, he had *orchestrated* it. So he would have known about the last trip she had made in a trunk and what it would do to her to wake up in another one. Sadistic son of a...

"What are you waiting for ?" Krychek's voice broke into his thoughts. "We have a long way to go before the heat of noon sets in. Get in the trunk."

"No." Mulder looked him eye to eye, their pupils dancing as he refused him for the first time. "Not the trunk. She can't go in the trunk."

Krycek laughed, a thin cynical croak devoid of all mirth. "Still haven't curbed that defiant streak, have we Mulder ?" The smirk flipped into a snarl and he pushed the barrel of his gun deep inbetween Scully's ribs. Her lips parted slightly in a silent moan but she came no closer to the surface of consciousness.

"Maybe you still had smoke in your ears when I said I would shoot her. My orders were to take you alive. She is expendable. And I know a lot of slavers between here and there that would love to get their hands on a pretty piece of work like her-"

Mulder's snarled curse broke him off. Instantly, he felt chagrined for letting the little weasel get under his skin. Perhaps if he tried another approach. "Let me go in the trunk then. Put her in the back seat. Look at her...she's unconscious. What plan could she possibly have?"

"I don't know." Krycek said. "But I have heard the stories around you two. You seem to specialize in convenient miracles. No less than half a dozen of Their best bounty hunters have lost you and I have no taste to follow their path. Now get in the trunk and we can all be on our way."

Two heartbeats thundered like crashing boulders in Mulder's ears before he made his decision. Biting his lip and silently begging Scully to forgive him, he walked over to the trunk. Three short steps was all it took. The air inside hit his face like a blast of heat from an oven. As gently as he possible, he laid Scully inside, her hair spilling around her like a sea of chocolate froth. His eyes met Krycek's one last time and he let the hatred pour through with one additional promise.

The vow did not need words to be understood, and he let the full weight of impact sink in before he climbed into the trunk after Scully. A second later he heard the trunk slam shut behind him, locking out the light. Musty air assaulted his nostrils with maddening intensity. But he hadn't looked back, hadn't watched Krycek's face as he shut them in like another game prize. He hadn't wanted to see the triumph.

*************

Hot. The air was hot. Stale air, like it hadn't seen sunlight in eons. Her lungs shuddered when she breathed in the stuff. For the moment she allowed her eyes to remain closed, until her mind could bring her up to speed on what exactly had happened.

Oh God. Now she remembered. The crowd, the men, the ropes, the fire, the blackness that she had thought was the abyss of death itself swallowing her whole. But it hadn't. She was here, and obviously alive, so what had happened? Maybe if she opened her eyes, she could find out...

Still black. Was she dead after all? Or perhaps her brain was still a little smoky. <Open your eyes.> It wasn't until she blinked that she realized her eyes were open. The smothering darkness around her just made it impossible to tell a difference. She sensed a wall no less than four inches away from her face, so close her breath bounced off it and back into her face. At least what little breath made it past the sudden constriction binding her throat with cords of iron.

Step two. Find out where she was. Her fingers stretched out tentatively, above her head. Another wall- or was it a ceiling ? The first edges of panic began to creep around her like demons from the dark. The fear compounded when she recognized the heavy weight of another body pressed up against hers in a very small, very confined, *moving* space. They were in a car. Or the trunk to be exact.

Just like before. Just like when the nightmares had started when her own government sold her out for the first time and not for the last time....

She didn't mean to scream. It just sort of erupted up from her gut in one lightening fast wave, filling the tiny compartment in an earsplitting shriek. The world blurred around her, her fists flailing helplessly against the demons in her head. <Notagainnotagainnotagainnotthistimenooooooo>

"Scully."

The sound of her name formed an uneasy tether back with reality. Or maybe it was just the voice that said it. Mulder was here. He was alive. She wasn't alone after all.

"Mulder?" His name tumbled out of her lips in a breath, , half-ashamed of her scream but at this point too consumed with the double potion of terror and relief to care.

"I'm right here." Somehow his hand managed to find hers in the ebony. He pulled her even closer to him, and despite the thick heat of the trunk, she felt herself shivering uncontrollably. A desperate need overtook her to make sure it was him, and her hands fumbled in the dark until she found his face. He must have known what she was doing- he didn't so much as breathe until her fingers had explored every feature to her satisfication.

"It's me Scully. It really is." His hand over hers tightened to back up his words.

"What happened to us?" She breathed, allowing her head to come to rest against his shoulder. "Why aren't we dead?"

"Krycek didn't kill us.."

"Why?" Scully wasn't entirely positive she wanted to know but she had a guess.

"The bounty brings more alive."

Every muscle of her body stiffened ramrod straight as she fought to regain the trappings of dignity and control she needed so much. "Alive." Her whisper was a dim echo in the darkness, waiting for affirmation of the cold truth. Alive meant something far worse than death. Life in the very camps Mulder had promised her she would never visit.

If that was to be Fate's final say to them, she refused to shy away from it. She was strong and more than that she was a Scully. What would her father have done? Or her mother, or Bill or Melissa or Charlie? The grim reality was that she didn't know. They were all lucky, all were granted the privilege of death as opposed to an endless cycle of dying commonly known as life.

No, she would never scream again. But she would be strong for herself, and for Mulder too. He blamed himself for far too much as it was.

"Where are we going?" She listened to the ghost of her voice fade away after she finished talking and was pleased to her that it had not shook the way her hands were.

There was an uncomfortable gap of silence before he answered. "Enforcer headquarters I figure. Krycek will be eager to get his greedy little plastic fingers on the reward for us. From there...I don't know....we can be shipped off to any of the facilities in the nation. Since we're such high profile catches we'll probably wind up in one of the Arizona camps." He didn't tell her of the other possiblities. That they could be split up, that he would never see her again. Or even worse, that she would be sold into slavery as a diversion for the rich and powerful.

Mulder had come to the firm resolution that he would be willing to kill her before he let her go that way.

There was no need to tell her of all this. Scully was smart, and chances were she already knew twice as much as she was letting on. But there was always the slim chance she had been able to shove it somewhere besides the forefront of her mind, unlike him, and he wasn't planning on dragging it up if she didn't want to face it. He knew he sure didn't but better him than her.

"At least we're alive."

She was moving into a layer of Scully that came out whenever she was faced with something that was both horrible and inevitable. It was predictable. She had gone from fighting reality to confronting it and now she was trying to find some shred of optimism for both of them to cling to.

"We're alive." Scully was right, he knew. And though for now it seemed a blessing, in the days and weeks and endless months ahead of them, it could turn into a curse.

Krycek's words echoed inside the caverns of his mind like the whispers of a thousand nightmares.

Whoever coined the phrase was right- the truth hurt. Like fire and needles and barbed wire but most of all like helplessness. He could not protect her from the monsters any more. That had ended when a night and an eternity ago when he had slipped in his vigilance once and lost their freedom, maybe forever.

Krycek had said their escapes were legendary. And perhaps there was a grain of truth to it. They *had* eluded five or six Bounty Hunters in their time. Mulder had personally turned three of them into piles of green goo. Scully preferred dealing with humans, but she was deadly in her field of choice. But this time was different. Because he had been thinking of escape options, racking his brain every moment since the trunk lid slammed shut.

And the most painful truth of all was that he could not think of a single way to earn their freedom.

Not one.

to be continued. . . part 3