Title: Becoming Judas II : Resurrection
Author: darkstar
Email: clone347@aol.com
Rating: PG-13 for war violence
Classification: see part one
Disclaimer: see part one
Summary: see part one

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Resurrection (7/8)
by darkstar
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"His name was Che." she said. "Hers was Aida."

And so for the next thirty minutes, she told him of the beauty. She told of a healer with warm eyes and ideals of a better world who saved her life once but saved her humanity a good many more times, reminded her that not everyone had sold out. Not everyone had given up. She whispered of a girl who absorbed emotions, who radiated innocence in a day when no one was innocent, and then her voice dropped to a hushed awe as she described the child that spoke from within the womb to its mother. Scully felt the tears eating away at her restraints, but she smiled anyway as she remembered details of a back room wedding and a pink sun dress, and all the other nuances of color and life that filled in her memories of them. She wanted to speak of them now, while they burned vibrant and fresh in her mind. She did not want them to fade away into just another stack of yellowed photographs in her albums of dead memories and nearly forgotten lives.

Then she wiped away the tears that had escaped, pressed her fingers against her palms to remind herself who she was fighting, and told him about the ugliness. She heard her voice turn to acid as she recounted the arrest and the beating and the forced abortion she had been unable to prevent. It felt like steel had replaced the blood in her veins when she told Mulder of a husband's last, desperate attempt to save his wife. She relied on clinical detachment to sustain her through descriptions of the execution. Even without details, she still recalled the horror, still tasted it like bile in her throat.

(Mulder, she noticed, did not look shocked. She resented it until she realized that he had seen much worse. She did not allow herself to think that he had been responsible for much worse.)

Then, suddenly, she was at the end of the story. Could two lives be summed up so briefly? She wondered how long it would take to retell the story of her own life, and of Mulder's. If anyone would even remember the battles and the quest and the heroes they used to be.

"He killed them." she said. "Nicolas did. He stood there and watched while she screamed and I swear he smiled through it, right from the beginning to the last drop of the stilettos. He enjoyed it."

Mulder let her finish, taking a moment to sort through the jumble of emotions and facts he had just heard. Obviously the two hybrids had effected her deeply, even though she had only known them for a while. He was, in a way that he regretted but could not help, jealous that she had so easily given them the trust and friendship that it had taken him years to cultivate. But the bottom line was, they were dead now and she was out for blood. Scully was not one to leave a friend's death unavenged. She'd proven that time and time before in the field. If he supported her claim that Nicolas had acted unjustly, it would only add to her resolve to act against the man. And that was dangerous. She had no idea what she was up against. No idea at all. There was something about Nicolas even more chilling than Pavlov had been. He wasn't about to let her expose herself to that sort of darkness.

And besides, a strange and stubborn emotion in the back of his mind that refused to believe the Leader would act so unjustly. After all, the hybrids had broken the law. Execution was the price. Perhaps Scully's ready closeness to the couple had impaired her judgment.....

Either way, she could not be allowed to follow their footesteps. It was for this reason he chose his words carefully to persuade her not to fight.

"Nicolas is a hard man." he said. "He may even be a cruel man, in some aspects. But I do not see him as a cold-blooded murderer. A soldier, yes. But not murder for sake of sheer pettiness." He did not realize that the voice whispering the words into his mind was very much like Nicolas himself. By now, the voice had been inside him for too long.

"You defend him." Her hand stiffened in his and she very nearly pulled away. He closed his hands tighter around hers to prevent it. He could not lose touch with her, not now. Not when the doors were just beginning to open. "You defend him and yet you did not see his eyes when he looked at them. It was murder. And the blood was colder than any I have seen."

"He is responsible for the protection of thousands, for hundreds of thousands, of lives. I don't defend his methods or the unnecessary brutality of the execution, but I can at least empathize with his reasoning. The rule of law is the only thing that prevents us from turning into a bunch of animals with guns. Sometimes that law is something we can support. Other times it's something a little harder to accept. I know they were your friends, and I'm sorry that it had to happen to them, but Nicolas is not the man to gun for. He's just doing his job. Maybe he does it too eagerly sometimes. No one's perfect and right now he's the one in charge."

This time she did pull away. "Congratulations, Mulder. You sound like quite the company man." It stung, in a way far worse than the cuts on her skin, to hear him defend Nicolas. What could he possibly see in the man? She had heard how quickly he had been taken into Nicolas' confidence, even that the two men were considered friends, but she had not believed it until now. Could Mulder not see the evil in the creature's very eyes? Just like Pavlov.

The thought sent her mind spiraling back to the dreams and the eyes and the blood red flowers. /Deepest sympathy for the loss of your friends./ Monster. She would tell Mulder what kind of monster he defended.

"It's not just the execution." She spoke calmly, attempting to keep the rage to a simmer so he could not fault her logic. "He had personal interest. Why do you think Aida was arrested? He wanted her for the same reasons those fat Colonist generals buy their pretty young slaves. She caught his fancy. When he found out she wouldn't give him what he wanted, he beat her. Then he killed her for it, and her husband for trying to stop it. If Che hadn't tried to escape with her, she would have gone right back to Nicolas' bedroom and I don't think you can tell me that that would be in the best interest of the state."

"You are certain he was the one to beat her. You can prove it."

"She told Che that Nicolas did...things....to her mind." She shivered on instinct, resisting the urge to grab Mulder's hand again. She imagined Nicolas had looked at Aida the same way the man looked at her. An intrusion deeper than flesh.

For a long space he did not say anything.

"He's not Pavlov, Scully. Pavlov is dead. I killed him for you, and he's not coming back."

/Yes, but would you kill the man you think saved your soul if I told you he wants to do the same things to my mind? And Pavlov is alive, for as long as Nicolas' eyes burn in my dreams./ For a fleeting moment she contemplated telling him this. The words were on her lips.

But she could not bring herself to speak them. Pavlov was her demon, not his. The nightmares, the memories.....she must fight them alone. She would not throw herself weak and cowering into Mulder's arms and beg him to save her from the monsters under her bed. She could drag them into the light herself, sooner or later. No matter what he said, he counted on her being strong. One of them had to be made of steel and it certainly wasn't him, no matter how hard he thought he'd become. They had broken him because of her once and she would never, never see it happen again.

So she smiled, and reached for his hand again, and because she craved the warmth more than the truth, she agreed with Mulder. "He's not coming back. I know."

He must have felt her tremble, revealing the secrets without words, but she knew he would not understand the tremor. He would think it was the cold, or perhaps the grief, or perhaps a distant memory of Pavlov and the camps. For any of these reasons or maybe all of them, he pulled her close to him again, wrapping his arms around her like he wanted to keep out the world.

It was strange, how even after falling stars and dead planets, she had never stopped believing she was safe every time he held her.

"Do you ever wonder why they say ignorance is bliss?" she whispered, tracing circles on the back of his palm as she spoke. The scars on his hands were rough to touch. She tried to pretend they were not there, but her fingertips betrayed the illusion every time.

"Why?"

"Because whenever there is a moment of happiness...I mean true, complete happiness...it is spoiled by the knowledge that something will inevitably spoil it. Flowers wither in the winter. Sunsets melt into black. But sometimes I think the knowledge is a choice. Some people live their whole lives without it. They just go from day to day in the ignorance that they can perfectly happy...that they can be in love...and not have it hurt."

/Does it hurt so much to love me?/ He wanted to ask, but he dared not push so far. He did not want to hurt her. Only hold her, like this, forever and ever. Without winter or blackness. He spoke to remind himself that it was temptation he could not indulge. Someone had to fight. He was that someone. "Reality hits everyone sooner or later. Even the ignorant."

"Sometimes," she stared intently into the waning darkness. "I envy them. Just because they smile. Do you know, Mulder, that every touch between us is like it's the last? We wait for disaster to strike because we think we have to have an excuse to be close. But sometimes don't you just want closeness for the sheer sake of it? The world doesn't have to fall apart in order for you to put your arms around me. I don't have to be crying or bleeding for you to hold my hand. We can laugh and smile and be ignorantly happy too, sometimes. Right? Haven't we earned that? We tell each other we'd die for each other, but we're so scared to live."

"We live."

"Think back and tell me if you remember the last time we've spent a day together doing anything besides running or fighting or killing?"

There was a time when he could have remembered, when he could have told her exactly what she wanted to hear. But that time was gone. All that filled his mind were images of blood on hands and dust on skin and never sleeping the whole night for fear of being caught. Of hands and fingers and arms tangled around each other but always in desperation. Always in fear. They held onto each other until the skin bore fingerprints because they were afraid it would the last time. Yet never because it simply felt right.

He had no answer to give her. No answer for himself, other than a fierce resolve that it would change. He had wasted enough time in fear, in darkness. She deserved some light and he would find a way to give it to her. Even if he could not find it in himself. He'd shine her own reflection back at her so she could see how pure and beautiful she really was.

/Scully, you're the sunrise./ His mind reached out for hers, imagining she could hear. /All lit up like heaven and soft as butterfly wings but don't you tell the secret. Don't you tell a soul./

These were not his spoken words. They ran too deep for that. He found other words, less close to the heart, to share with her. "And what would you do if you were ignorant? If the world was ours for a day, and there was no war or death or broken flowers to worry about? What would you do?" She could ask the moon from him now, and he'd give it to her. She could ask for his heart, and he'd smile while he cut it out because the wound would never hurt. She'd sweeten it to pleasure with just one kiss.

For several moments he was afraid he had said the wrong thing. Perhaps the wish was too intimate, too private to be shared with him. He began to fear he had pushed her into a place where all she saw was the burnt out world and could not look up to see the stars that remained in the sky.

But no, Scully would never lose hope. She was stronger than he ever would be. He knew it to be true when she spoke. Slowly. Carefully. As if she was unveiling something precious to him, peeling back the covering layer by layer. This is my dream, she was telling him. Please don't hurt it.

Never, he would say.

"I think I would dance."

"Dance?" Funny, he never thought of her that way. He knew her grace, her quickness, but ever since the invasion, he had viewed those attributes in terms of skill in defense maneuvers and quickness on the battle field. Now Mulder felt he had missed some integral part of her personality, the part that had wings and flew over even the tallest barbed wire. Her spirit.

"When you dance, you're free. No one's holding you back from anything. No one's stopping you. There's just the music, flowing through you from every part of you, and there's the warmth of the song, and you just fly. We danced once and it felt like that. It was so long ago but I'll never forget. And if I was ignorant, and if I did not care, that is what I would do."

He remembered the dance she spoke of, every detail from way the light of the disco ball glittered in her eyes to the softness of her body in his arms. It was intoxicating. He could become drunk off the memory.

"What would you do?"

She waited for him to reply, to open up his soul as she had revealed hers.

"I would make it like it was."

Then neither of them could speak.

Three days passed, then a week. The cuts on her hands healed quickly, as did the pain in her eyes. Mulder knew her skin was used to the blood and her soul was used to death. It was as simple as survival, yet there were still mornings when he woke up bitter with the hatred of it. But then she had never been one to wear her grief on her shoulder like so much sackcloth and ashes. She preferred to combat death by living life, so he stood aside and let her heal herself in her own way. She worked long hours in the delivery rooms, as if each baby born was her private victory. She would come home late, her eyes crinkled with weariness, but always she smiled for him and laughed at his lame jokes and thanked him for waiting to eat dinner with her, even if it was cold. Always she did everything in her power to hide the glimmers of sadness in the corners of her eyes. He let her believe he did not see, even though he noticed every time.

Something had to give. Something had to change or else they would rush right back into life and the war and forget all that had once been whispered in darkness.

On the morning on the seventh day since she let him hold her and told him her dream, he decided he couldn't let that happen. He couldn't let it slip away.

"Do you still want to dance?"

She put down her paperwork and stared at him, her eyes sliding into a deeper shade of blue. "What?"

"You told me you'd dance if you had a day of ignorance. Did you mean it? Is it really what you want?"

"I suppose so, but it's not like we can just-"

"Be ready in an hour."

"Doesn't leave have to be approved at least a month in advance?"

"Don't worry about that. Just pull that dress of yours out of the closet and be ready in an hour."

Her voice caught him at the door, and he turned to see her smiling. He knew it was real because it was so very pale, as if it were something that had not seen the sun in years and was just now stepping forth into the light. "Mulder, why?"

"You said it, not me. Everyone deserves a day of happiness, right? Even us."

"Especially us."

He grinned and the colors of her smile grew deeper. Already it was something like happiness. It was something like love.

This was going to be a beautiful day.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * Ten hours later-- after the sticky heat of a three hour car ride, the contained chaos of the city streets, the cool revival of dusty skin in a hotel shower, and the waiting for dark to fall and the magic to be right-- they arrived at the gateway to what seemed an entirely different world.

The Nebula, the biggest of the local underground nightclubs, advertised a taste of the Old World and delivered on all accounts. The other guarantee of business was the club was the only of its kind with two hundred miles of Freedom City. That was the reason people paid a hundred dollars hard currency a head at the door and didn't complain.

One hundred dollars was nothing. He'd pay five hundred to give her tonight. She was going to dance and she was going to do it in the best place he could give her, and the Nebula was it. Mulder had heard the other men in his patrol talking about it, how there was something about it that sucked you in like a time warp and threw you back to a place without dried out land and empty seas. How you could forget, there.

Tonight, that was what he wanted. Ignorance. Bliss.

They stepped through the door, and despite himself, his breath caught in his lungs.

The darkness hit him first, thick and smelling of margaritas and rosewood incense, a potent combination that dulled the mind and awakened the deeper senses. For a moment, it was so dark he could barely see. Then a thousand stars exploded above their heads, the sparks falling down to their faces in a thunderstorm of silver light as the disco ball rotated toward them.

The light dripped from her hair, down across her skin like rain, and he imagined he saw it turn to steam by the heat of her bare shoulders. She was always beautiful, but tonight she was beyond that. The dress flowed around her like it had been fused into one with her skin by some act of magic. Yes, there must be magic here tonight.... He did not remember the color being so bright of a blue before, or her skin being kissed by so soft a blush as it was tonight.

He felt a need to have her close, her warmth clinging to him like the incense in the air, thick and sweet and blood-boiling. He had been cold far too long without her, but not for tonight. Tonight they would dance and nothing else in the world mattered.

Mulder kept one hand around her arm, just above her elbow, to ensure they were not separated in the crush. His other hand hovered at the curve of her back, the tips of fingers barely touching her. The material of her dress was thinner than the light itself, and she burned his fingertips through the cloth.

It made him feel alive. It made him want to press his lips against hers and absorb the heat until his soul was consumed and born again like a ghost of the phoenix. He would transform back into the man with the soul of a child. The warrior with the eyes of a prophet.

A human.

She made him all of these things.

The darkness washed over them again, ebbing and flowing like the tide upon some otherworldly shore, and he became increasingly aware of the strange universe around them. The room was packed with flesh, a sea of faces most of whom were under twenty-five, the majority paired into couples moving on the dance floor or hovering at the bar. One minute he would see them, the next minute the darkness returned and they disappeared. It was as if a constant battle was being waged between darkness and light. Inherent darkness pierced the air but every minute a new variation of color and brilliance tore through the blackness. Strobe lights passed over the crowd on the dance floor, racing fast as firework explosions inside the brain. Colored spotlights hollowed out islands of crimson or violet or tangerine radiance in the sea of black. The patches of light drifted across the crowd in time to no rhythm but their own. Lasers cut through the air in daggers of deepest green. Above all, the disco ball hung like a false moon, the silver patterns of light changing shape and definition to fit the melancholy sweetness of the song that filled every corner of the room.

*I dream of rain. I dream of gardens in the desert sand.*

The others were right. It was a place not of earth. Nebula, the name said. The burning soul of a dead star. He believed it.

*I wake in pain. I dream of love as time runs through my hand.*

But he was not the one who needed to be swept away. She had not yet spoken. Not yet given affirmation or condemnation to this dream.

*I dream of fire. These dreams are tied to a horse that will never tire.*

"If you don't like it," he whispered, his lips close to her ear so she could hear him under the pulse of the music. "We can leave."

What if he had been mistaken? What if this could not make her happy, make her forget?

*And in the flames, her shadows play in the shape of a man's desire.*

She turned around, just as another burst of the strobe lights sent trickles of light running down her arms and skimming the surface of her dress. Her eyes stared straight into him, darker than the shadows between the spotlights but burning with some strange passion he could not name.

She leaned forward until her cheek rested against his, her words breathing into his ear. Close. Intimate. Words for only him to hear.

*No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this.*

"Shhhh," she whispered. That voice did things to a man. "Don't talk, Mulder. Don't talk. Let's pretend that we know nothing. Nothing but music and flying and dreams. Dance with me. Just dance."

*And as she turns, this way she moves in the logic of all my dreams. This fear burns. I realize that nothing's as it seems.*

"And what if my feet are too heavy?" He murmured back. What if he had born the burdens too long and had lost the wings?

"Then I'll carry you."

*I dream of rain....I lift my gaze to empty skies above.*

But the skies were not empty. It poured, rained stars, and he felt it soak him to the soul as she pulled him onto the dance floor, a hunger in her fingers as they wrapped around his. Palm to palm. Skin to skin. Pulse to pulse.

/Let us pretend, you and I. But don't you talk. Don't you say a word. It will shatter the secret. Break the spell./

Oh, but he was afraid to break the spell.

*I close my eyes, this rare perfume is the sweet intoxication of her love.*

He eased his eyes shut and let the moment carry him away, away from reality and the still vivid memories of broken flowers and torn hands. Of her torn eyes. When the moment passed, another came, then another, and yet another still. They were in an ocean of moments, warm and calm and shoreless. Swimming together, hand in hand. Passion to passion. No one else existed. No other world existed outside this stolen sweetness.

*Sweet desert rose, the memory of Eden haunts us all...*

An electric violin took over when the voice died away, leaving a lingering sense of yearning in the air and in the back of his mind. He moved closer to her, fingers hovering inches above the slope of her shoulders as she swam the ocean with him. She flowed around him like liquid, one moment a fingertip out of reach and the next close enough to press a kiss upon his eyelids. Her eyes were wide open, but sightless, staring up into the explosions of light as if they spoke to her soul.

When you dance, you're free, she had said. She was finding her way back to freedom, and her every move was desperate with the search for it. She danced like she was afraid she'd lost the way. Like she was afraid to slow for a moment because if she did, the dream might leave her.

His hands moved around her waist, capturing her so that her head rested on his chest as her arms wrapped around his neck.

"Slow down," he whispered, feeling the butterfly race of her heart above his. "It's not going anywhere."

Her voice, breathless and half-trembling. "Promise me."

He bent forward to press shadow kisses on the back of both her hands, then on the side of her jaw. "I promise."

Her arms tightened around him and they spun to meet the next wave of silver together. Minutes passed, or maybe it was hours, but he didn't know, and didn't care. There was only the ocean, the invisible sea surrounding them and carrying them toward something beautiful. They raced from light to light, laughing as they captured a speck of crimson here, then an emerald shower of lasers there. Always in the light, always one step ahead of the darkness.

A half-forgotten passage of Eliot floated to the surface of his mind.

/We have lingered in the chambers of the sea, by sea-girls wreathed with sea-weed red and brown. Till human voices wake us and we drown./

But he would not let them drown. He would not listen to the voices. He would cover her ears with his hands. They would swim forever. The only question in his mind was whether she was human, an intruder on paradise as he was, or if she really was one of the sea-girls, a thing as beautiful and alien as the ocean itself.

Her eyes flashed up at him again, wild and breathless and free.

No, she was not human, he decided. She was light.

Three hours passed before they paused, breaking from the current of the dance floor to a nearby table. He was slightly out of breath, not so much from the exertion as from the dizzying closeness of her, and he noticed her breath was just as shallow.

He called a waiter and let Scully choose the drinks. Margaritas, she said. Make them sweet.

Perhaps now it would not be deadly to speak.

"How long as it been since you danced?" he said, his hands tracing circles into the table. Eternity, etched into the dark mahogany wood. He wanted this to last forever.

"Too long." Her chest still heaved in leftover exertion as she spoke. Her eyes remained fixed on the dance floor for a moment, tracing the path of a stray spotlight before moving back to him. "I had forgotten how it feels. I had forgotten to feel anything at all."

"You're not the only one."

"I was afraid. Of what it would take. Afraid to be with you again because you demand me to feel."

"Are you still afraid?" That made him ache, made him fear her next words.

"At times, yes. But I've found I"m more afraid not to."

His fingers found hers in the darkness. Relief.

"I'll never let you go. You know that."

He saw her smile light up the darkness, brighter than the color around them, purer than the silver. "I know."

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The rest of the evening flew by in heartbeats until the realization struck him that by now the midnight would be fading into the twilight of morning. They had danced away the darkness, and now there would be no more time to forget. Now they must go back. They must return to the knowledge, and the distance between them, and the self-imposed restraint necessary for survival. But they would not go yet. There were a few moments left in the dance, a few, and he would not give them up quickly.

She was no longer desperate in her search for wings. The music itself no longer pushed itself frantically through the mind, but floated around them as a slow, soft blanket. Her forehead rested against his, so close he fancied he could absorb her thoughts through her skin. He felt her warmth. Her peace. That was all he wanted right now-- the simplicity of her breathing, thick with the half-drowsiness of spent passion, the softness of her fingers against his backbone, the beautiful illusion that ignorance and bliss could last forever, and no one needed fear the dawn. It took so much to push the world from the mind, and in these moments he knew they had succeeded.

/She does not care what I am. Not here. She doesn't have to know anything. See, it isn't hurting anyone. In fact, she's happy. I've finally made her happy..../

The thought closed off his doubts, and he allowed himself to totally relax for the first time since they entered the world of light and music. He did not think of morning or sustained illusions or anything other than her touch. He surrendered, as she had done hours before, to the dance. It was so easy to feel the music, so easy to be swept away.

*Waltz with me, my love. Tell me what you're dreaming of.*

"You want to know what I'm dreaming of?" He whispered.

She smiled, and he felt the glow melt the icecaps over his soul. "What?"

"Nothing. I've got it all right here."

"You dream of nightclubs?" The smile turned teasing. "Who knew?"

"I dream of this--"

And he kissed her then. It was neither fire nor ice nor burning light, but something sweet and gentle and perfect, like violets after rain or moonlight spread over lace. He would never forget the taste, a mix of margaritas and strawberry lip gloss and the softest skin. He could not get enough of it.

*Hold me now, we can share our love.*

No, they were parting too soon. Much too soon. Had he done something wrong? Had he rushed the moment? But she wasn't moving away after all. She followed him into the next spin of the music, her eyes capturing the light and refracting it into glittering desire.

"Show me the dream again." Her lips against his temples, across his eyelids. Begging. Demanding. Seducing.

Breathe, a little voice inside his head reminded him. What if he didn't want to breathe? Not unless it was with her....

He spun her out to arms length then caught her to him again, backwards, so that his hands splayed across her stomach. Another kiss, touching the curve of her neck at the base of her hair.

*Waltz with me, my love.*

"Do you dream too?" he asked her.

She turned to face him again. He could barely hear her underneath the music, but he heard enough. "Oh, believe me, I dream."

Now she kissed him and this time it was fire. This time the heat scalded him inside out, leaving him seared and breathless but alive. So alive.

"This is real, isn't it?" she said, after the kiss was over and her head rested on his shoulder.

"This is real. No secrets. Nothing held back." He knew, on one level, that it was a lie, but on every other level he could not bear for her to slip away once she was this close. I am not going to lose you, he had said. He'd meant every word.

"I am afraid, sometimes, that what I see and what I feel are shadows. Hallucinations, or myths or...."

"Did it feel like a shadow?"

"No."

"You have your answer."

"Then promise me something, Mulder."

"Anything."

"Promise me this will never change."

*Tell me something...will we be broken down? Tell me something...will we be broken down?*

"I promise."

And he sealed it with a kiss.

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

Freedom City
One hour later

Nicolas sensed the brewing storm before the call ever came over his com link.

He felt it the air, an electric buzz across his skin like the tension of lightning right before it struck. He heard it rumble in the distant corners of his mind like thunder over a desert horizon. Whispers of anger. Passion. Pain. Fear. All the dark things, all the thunderstorm emotions, and this was how he painted it. Black paint splattered across white canvas, a fury of yellow and silver, a sky without stars or moon only roars of thunder and dagger-slashes of lightning. Where was it coming from? Certainly not the whimpering girl-child he had brought in for the evening. Only one probe of her emotions had proven her incapable of such depth. Mulder's woman, the one with the red hair and passionate eyes, would have had such depth. But not this runny-nosed brat. This one had merely cried and asked if she could go home, and cowered in the corner after he slapped her and told her to shut up. Had it been any other night, he might have taken the trouble to twist her mind just to teach her how to keep quiet, but tonight he had more important visions to chase. The thunder called to him. The lightning danced inside his veins, running out his fingers through his paintbrush.

And if he felt this much from a distance, how would it feel to stand in the center of the storm, at the nexus of the rage? Where was it coming from?

After he picked up his com-link he knew.

"Sir, you might want to come down to the infirmary. There's been an incident."

"An incident?" The rumble of thunder in the back of his mind increased.

"Yes sir. Commander Mulder and Dr. Scully were ambushed on their way back from leave. A sniper caught them on the way out of town."

"Were there any injuries?"

"Affirmative, sir."

"To what extent?"

"Dr. Scully was shot twice. Once in the shoulder and once in the stomach. We have healers working on her but she is still in highly critical condition."

Nicolas felt his heart rate edge up a notch. So the stone woman wasn't so invincible after all. Could it have been her pain he was sensing all evening? No...no...he could only have sensed those things in someone whom he had previously established a link with...

Then it hit him. Mulder.

"And Commander Mulder?"

"Flesh wound in his upper arm. Light bleeding, but he will injure himself further unless he calms down. That is why I called you, sir. We're having trouble restraining him."

/I'll bet you are./ He half-smiled to himself at the thought.

"I'm on my way."

He switched the com link to neutral and moved quickly to wash the paint from his hands. It was all very clear to him now. Mulder's woman had been injured and now the man was ready to tear earth, heaven, and hell apart. How very useful. In fact, tonight might be the perfect opportunity for him to regain control of his puppet. Mulder had become increasingly harder to manage since the lovely Dr. Scully had arrived. Well, now that Scully was bleeding to death in the infirmary, he was sure that he could convince his wayward protege to return to the fold.

Nicolas keyed up his com-link again and spoke to the guard outside his room. "Captain, send for my personal healer and bring him to the infirmary immediately. No, I'm not hurt. This is a favor for a friend."

He glanced back over to the girl in the corner, almost as if she was an afterthought. "Oh yes, and you can come clean the trash out of my room now. She was....disappointing....I'll expect your men to send me something better next time."

The lightning-buzz increased inside his brain as he headed for the infirmary. Time for the Leader to save the day again. It would work out very nicely, really. His people would be reassured of his never-ending compassion. Mulder's unchecked emotions would only open him to further control. And with more and more discontent in the streets and talk of new leaders in the underground meetings, a little control was most needed.

He would save her life and then he would make Mulder pay for it. With interest.

He opened the door to the infirmary and for the first time in his life was pushed back by the sheer power of a man's emotions. The storm raged inside his mind, out of control, as giant thunderclaps of rage and jagged spears of electric agony pierced his subconscious. He was forced to grab the doorpost before he could even stay on his feet. The anger was frightening. The pain was raw, relentless like a driving rain.

The whole effect heightened the senses better than any drug. But every drug must be taken in small quantities, so Nicolas took the opportunity to raise a few shields against the onslaught of emotion before he continued into the room. He heard Mulder before he saw the man.

"I want to see her! It's been too long... something should have happened by now."

"Sit down, sir." A woman's voice, most likely a nurse. "Dr. Scully's injuries are critical. Only the medical staff and the healer are allowed to be in the room. If you will please sit down and let us treat your wounds..."

"She's still in pain. I can hear her. Start doing something for that pain now or I'm going to do it for myself!"

"We told you, sir, medication will hamper the healing process."

"What healing process?!? Has she opened her eyes? Has she stopped bleeding??? Maybe your healer isn't working hard enough. Maybe he's holding back!"

"Sir-"

"NO! You listen to me!! She is going to wake up! She is going to be fine! I don't care how many healers you have to us, or how much it sucks them to the bone, she is going to be okay! Or else I'll turn that hybrid freak into a puddle of green Jell-O. I don't care what he is to Nicolas."

A new voice, the deep military growl of General Skinner, cutting through Mulder's shouting with surprising calm. "You will do no such thing, Mulder, and you know it. Now sit down and let them look at your arm. You can't help her by threatening them."

For ten seconds there was dead silence.

Then Nicolas heard Mulder speak again, in a very small voice.You could have heard the tears from three miles away. "Just keep her warm, please...if you can. She hates to be cold."

The nurse's voice. "I'll tell them to put a blanket on, sir."

"Tell her I'm here. Right outside. Tell her I'm waiting. Tell her I love..."

The words fell away into silence again because no one, not Skinner or the nurse or the doctors, knew what to say to that.

Nicolas rounded the corner.

Even though he had shed blood, even though he had taken life and enjoyed it, even though he had fought many battles and seen many wounds, at the fragment of a second that Mulder's eyes locked with his own, he was stunned.

He'd found the heart of that thunderstorm.

Naked fear that screamed lightning. Naked pain deeper than thunder. Naked love that cried so softly in the seconds between both. There were tears in the man's eyes and fingerprint-shaped smears of crimson on his cheeks where he had tried to wipe away tears with bloody fingers. No doubt it was her blood, covering his hands and his clothes from attempts to hold the pieces of her together until help had arrived.

Then Mulder blinked, once, and looked away, and Nicolas found himself for once relieved. The pain had been too tangible there. It would have hurt just too much to probe the man's mind tonight. And not just the mental ache of emotional pain either. It would have been physical too, like trying to walk on fire.

Skinner saluted, a stiff and formal gesture. "Sir. You honor us with your presence." His eyes left the distinct impression that it was an honor he would rather not have received.

"The Leader is never too busy to see to the needs of his people." Nicolas chose to ignore the general's hostility, for now. He allowed his face to meld into a perfect mask of sympathy. "I heard that the doctor was injured and sent my personal healer to attend to her. Robert is very good. I have no doubts she will recover."

"Thank you for your concern, sir." Skinner nodded again, though his eyes remained suspicious. Walter Skinner was smart man, Nicolas knew, and one day he would have to die. Sooner than later.

He walked to the door of the healing unit- a room in the hospital designed especially for the treatment of critical patients using hybrid therapy-- and peered through the small window.

Scully lay on a hospital table, her hair spilled out around her in stark contrast to the sheets as her body twisted and writhed in restless agony. Velcro straps around her wrists and ankles kept her on the table. A dark blue blanket was pulled up to her chest, concealing the wounds, but the amount of bloody bandages on the tray beside her and the death-white pallor of her face told him it would be a miracle if she lived. Even under the best of medical care.

But she was one of the few privileged enough to receive something better than traditional medicine. Robert, the hybrid who attended her, was well known as one of the most powerful healers to come through the resistance. Nicolas had recruited him as his own personal miracle worker, and tonight he would earn his keep well. He would eventually heal the woman; of that Nicolas was certain. Though judging from the strain on the hybrid's face and the pain-wrinkles around his eyes, the battle would not be easy.

When Nicolas turned back to Mulder, the man's eyes had gone vacant. One of his hands held a tiny golden cross, and his lips moved endlessly in something that did not look like a prayer but might have been a secret for his woman's soul alone. A nurse worked on his arm, but he acted as if he did not even feel the antiseptic or the bandaging. It was as if his body alone remained alive while his soul traveled wherever his lover's was, searching her out. Bringing her back.

Touching, really. Rather pathetic too. Such blatant weakness and dependence on another...

He would give Mulder a while to wallow in his grief before he called him into his office for "debrief". It would give the emotions a chance to subdue, at least to the point where penetration of the subconscious would not be so painful. And it would also give him time to think how exactly to use Mulder's newly volatile emotional state to his own benefit.

That answer came sooner than expected.

"Alert me as soon as she regains consciousness." He instructed the nurse. "I regret that I must leave so soon, but I have several items to attend to before I retire for the evening. A leader's work is never done."

"Of course not." Skinner's words were hardly sarcastic, though his eyes sang with mockery. "Again, thank you for your help."

Nicolas was half-way past Mulder, on his way down the hall, when the man's voice caught him. Suddenly. Desperately.

"Sir, will you do me a favor?"

"Anything."

"I sent the patrol that picked us up back into the city to find the sniper who shot her. Let me know if they pick him up."

"Of...course. I'll let you know immediately." He hid his surprise with a grave nod. Mulder had sent the patrol out sniper-hunting? It was like looking for a rat in a sewer system. There was no guarantee you'd find the right one. Obviously he wanted blood bad enough not to care. An idea sprang into Nicolas' mind, the perfect idea. If Mulder wanted to kill, then he could accommodate. "I will have him delivered into your custody."

For three seconds, a terrible coldness took over Mulder's eyes, and Nicolas knew he had hit exactly the right spot. "Thank you, sir."

"Anything to ensure that justice is done."

He nodded once more to Skinner, who made no attempt to mask his disapproval, then left the infirmary. An old passage from his war textbooks crossed his mind as he headed for his room. He quoted it aloud.

"Therefore when you want to do battle, even if the opponent is deeply entrenched in a defensive position, he will be unable to avoid fighting if you attack where he will surely go to the rescue."

That place for Mulder was Scully. She had been attacked, wounded. He wore her blood on his clothes and on his hands and underneath it he wore layer after layer of guilt. So it was only natural he would want vengeance. At heart, Mulder was still an Enforcer. Nicolas believed that beyond doubt. The man would never turn from the chance to take blood for blood. The opportunity would have to be presented quickly, while his logic was still weakened....

With a little of the right emotional stimulation, he wouldn't even bother to ask whether the "criminal" they brought back to him was actually the one that shot her. He would simply remember how easy it was to pull the trigger and shoot the young boys in the head.

He would simply kill.

And then he would be controlled again, just that easily.

Nicolas smiled.

Don't fall away and leave me to myself.
Leave love bleeding in my hands,
in my hands again,
Leave love bleeding in my hands,
in my hands again,
Love lies bleeding.

- Hemorrhage
Fuel

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

And I will never leave you
'Til we can say, "This world was just a dream
We were sleepin' now we are awake"
'Til we can say
In a moment we lost our minds here
And dreamt the world was round
A million mile fall from grace
Thank God we missed the ground...
Burnt to the core but not broken
We'll cut through the madness
With a nuclear fire of love in our hearts....
Rest easy, baby, rest easy.
and recognize it all as light and rainbows
Smashed to smithereens.
Run to the water; find me there.

-- Run to the Water
Live

The first time she opened her eyes, he was there. His head rested on her stomach, positioned over the ghost of the wound, and he was crying. Not in sobs or in gasps but in silent, hot tears that soaked through the thin fabric of her hospital gown to burn her skin. A flash within her mind, a memory that seemed like a dream, of lead burning her skin. Of pain so hot she couldn't breathe, didn't want to breathe, only someone forced her to.

/Scully, look at me. Keep on breathing and look at me. Don't... God...don't look at it. Just at me. Help is on the way. C'mon, now, look at me. I want to see those baby blue eyes./

It was Mulder's voice. Try to hide the fear but failing...

/No, Scully, don't close your.....look at....please....try....I'm gonna kill him. He's already a dead man. Dead and rotting. I'll find him for you, and I'll take blood for blood and please, open your eyes.../

She remembered trying but something had held her back. A dark, heavy cloak of fire that made each second seem like an eternity of hell. Each time she tried to cling to consciousness, to l ife, to his voice, the fire burned hotter. Deeper. She just wanted to let go, but something inside her had whispered for her to hold on.

/You can't let go yet, Dana. You haven't saved him yet./

She remembered it had been Samantha's voice.

And she held on, until Mulder's hands were pried from hers-- she still felt his palm against hers, holding on until the last possible heartbeat-- and strange hands closed around her forehead and pushed the life back into her. She did not want that. The fire fought against it, causing pain. So much pain. So easy to die.

But she hadn't saved him yet so she opened her mind to the agony until, gradually, the burning subsided. It faded from blinding to moderate pain to a dull aching weariness draped around her entire body. She waited to feel his arms around her, his hands on her back, holding her and protecting her, but the nurses would not let him in. The need to sleep at last overwhelmed.

Now she was awake. She could tell him she was fine....that he didn't have to cry anymore...

Her vocal cords tangled thick and sluggish in the back of her throat, refusing any commands for speech; instead her fingers reached for him. Slowly. Steadily. Her hands seemed to be made of lead, and she gritted her teeth to force them forward. Just a few more inches, yes. Centimeters now...

The barest tip of her finger brushed the bones next to his eyes, sliding across the tightly closed eyelids to catch a falling tear. He jolted as if she had touched him with fire, and his eyes were so big when they met hers, wide and amazed, the eyes of a little boy more than a man. With the rise of an eyebrow, he asked her if it was real. With a smile, she reassured him it was most certainly real. That she wasn't leaving him any time soon.

Mulder buried his face in her stomach for another moment, pressing his lips over the place where the bullet had entered her. He wanted to pretend he kissed away the hurt, that he was the one to take the final sting from her body. In a perfect world, he could absorb it all into himself. He could take from her even the memories of the pain, but not only this one pain. He could take all the different hells from her. The torture scars on her back. The brand on her wrist. The claw marks on her mind. All of this, he would remove with one touch of his lips. One vow of love. In a perfect world, that was all it would take.

This was no perfect world. There would always be scars, deep ones, and kisses could not take them away.

But he kissed her again anyway. He wrapped his arms around her anyway, pulling her against his chest until she was warm and safe and protected. Somehow they did not need perfection. Only life itself, and life was scars as well as kisses. You could not have one without the other.

For her part, Scully did not think about perfection or love or the balance of joy and sorrow in life. She did not even think about the shooting, or her memories of the pain. She closed her eyes again and listened to his heart until the weariness became too much again and she faded into sleep.

The second time she opened her eyes, he was there. This time she could speak but where did she begin? She started with the easiest words.

"Good morning."

"Afternoon, really." He shut the door behind him and opened the window to let in the golden light.

"I slept all day?"

"Try two days."

She grimaced. "You should have woke me."

His mouth widened in a grin. "But you look so cute when you're drooling all over my pillows. Besides, you've got doctor's orders to stay in bed for three more days minimum. Intensive healing procedures do a number on your body, so they tell me. Not as bad as a gut wound, you can be sure, but you're still going to be a little weak for a while. They don't want you running around until your system has pepped up a bit."

"Give me a gun and a target and I'll show you peppy." She tried to move into a sitting position, but the sudden motion sent a blood rush to her head. She leaned back against the pillows and waited for the room to stop spinning. Good, he hadn't seen that one.

"Forget the doctors, Scully. I'm not letting you out of that bed until I am sure you're back to normal." He finished fiddling with the blinds and walked back towards her. The afternoon light framed him like a golden shadow, throwing his face into enough darkness to hide the scars on his temple and the worry lines around his mouth. All she could see was the glint of his eyes and the flash of his smile.

She pulled the blankets tighter around her chin and smiled.

"What are you grinning at now?"

"The view."

"Out the window? It's just a garden and some buildings-"

"That wasn't the view I was talking about."

"Oh." His hand rubbed the stubble across his jaw then moved up through his hair. Now that he was closer, she could see the worry-lines again. He stared at his hands, his feet, the carpet. Everything but her. After the silence stretched from seconds to minutes, she took the first move.

"Spit it out, Mulder."

His shoulders rose and fell in a slow sigh. "There's a deep cover mission heading for the field in three days. They'll be doing routine surveillance and sabotage runs up near the Canadian borderlands for about three months. They need a leader. I'm going to volunteer."

/He's leaving me again./ She took a long breath, chasing the remains of the dizziness from her mind. /No, wait, take a look at his eyes. He's not going because he wants to. He's running from something./

"Why?" Best to let him put it in his own words first.

"I promised to take care of you," His eyes remained steadfastly fixed on the small plant Skinner had brought her. He still refused to look at her. "Above everything else and everyone else, I promised to keep you safe. But it seems like my being with you now only leads you more and more away from that safety."

"You're going to run."

That got his eyes, alright, but she almost wished it hadn't. There was hurt in him, deep hurt. "I'm not running, Scully. Believe me when I say that there's nothing I want more than to stay. When I'm with you, I'm alive. That's the only time I am. But I don't care what I want or what I feel. I'm not dragging you down with me any further. I refuse. Skinner can take good care of you...he's done it before--"

"I don't want to be with Skinner.." She heard the bite in her tone and hoped it could cut through this thick stubbornness. "And if I had wanted something easy and safe and pretty, I would have walked away before my first year on the X-files was over. I've looked at the choices, Mulder, and I've picked you. Your truth, your quest, your life. It's hard sometimes. We get hurt sometimes. But if the alternative means living apart, then I don't want it. I won't accept it. I want all of this....not just the happy things." Oh dear, now she felt the tears begin to build. Curse the pain relievers and their idiotic emotional side effects. "But if this is not enough and if you still feel the need to go out and kill again, I'm not stopping you. I'll just go with you."

"Scully, no, absolutely-"

"Then stay. Don't run again."

He stared at her for a moment, a strange shadow over his eyes. Then he moved forward, trapping her hand between his. She could barely hear him speak even though he stood right beside her. "You win. I won't go anywhere."

"Say it as a promise. Say 'I promise to stay'."

"I promise to stay." He kissed the back of her hand.

"I'll hold you to it." She managed to work up a grin and was relieved to see him mirror the expression.

"I'll bet you will." He glanced at his watch. "Um, I have to go. It's time for ration distribution in the Quarter and there has been a rash of riots lately. Nicolas wants us to ensure the order is kept."

"It's awful hard to be orderly when you're starving."

"I think more and more people are finding that out. Not just in the Quarter....it's everywhere these days. Something's going to have to change."

"We could kill Nicolas for a start..."

"Shh." He held a finger to her lips. "No matter how much you dislike the man, it would be best not to voice those opinions these days. I was serious when I talked about the unrest. Everyone is paranoid and careless words can easily be misconstrued as a threat."

"Don't trust him, Mulder."

"I don't."

"Don't let him control you. He will try."

"He doesn't control me."

"Are you sure of it?"

"Yes." His hand disentangled from hers as he headed for the door. "Now stop worrying. The resistance can survive for a while without the express concern of Dana Scully."

"Ha." She smirked at him, giving up on any hope of serious conversation. She could win nothing against his denials. "You just don't know..."

He laughed one more time, and then he was gone.

She did not want to worry about the riots or the fact that Skinner was no doubt in the middle of it, or the idea that he and Mulder might end up on different sides. She did not want to think that Nicolas would use her weakness as an advantage to gain more control over Mulder. (Some existed already, she knew. It was only a question of how much and how deep.)

But she worried anyway. And she hated most of all the cloying sense of the inevitability of loss, and of her complete helplessness to stop it.

The third day, she opened her eyes and he was not there. Skinner came, bearing water for the plant and coffee for her, but he would not answer her questions. He spoke of the food riots, the unrest, the growing ripeness of the time for action, but he said nothing of Mulder. Not until the very end, when she had grown tired of begging and pleading and demanding and finally told him that if he did not answer her, she would get up and find out herself.

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. "He left early this morning to oversee a prisoner transfer. One of our patrols caught a Colonist soldier last night and they are bringing him here for questioning."

"Just a soldier? But why would they send an escort for questioning--"

"It's the sniper who shot you."

A sharp hitch in her lungs cut off her next breath. "Nicolas gave him full custody of the prisoner." He guided a thin stream of water over the dark green leaves. "In the full interest of justice, of course." There was no attempt to hide the sneer.

"You think there was another reason."

He set down the water pot and locked eyes with her, his eyes dark but frank. "I think Mulder will kill him. I think that is what Nicolas wants."

"Mulder has killed many times for the Cause. Why is this one important?" She did not want to admit she took satisfaction from the thought of the soldier's death. The man, whoever he was, had caused the fire to burn inside her, had caused the pain. For that she would almost be willing to kill him herself. She knew she should forgive. Seven times seven, just like all good Catholic girls, only it was so much easier to take an eye for an eye. It wasn't a feeling she asked for or cultivated. It was just there.

"Remember what he is, Scully." A bit of warning shadowed his words, and she felt an odd resentment for it. Of course she knew what Mulder was. She of all people...

"I know what Mulder is."

"Do you, now? Have you forgotten what he's been doing for the past two years? He hasn't just killed men for our Cause. He's murdered for the other side too. He's killed innocent men and women, and probably children too. It was his way of life."

"What are you saying?" The resentment began to change to anger. "That he's a murderer? That he enjoys it? He's not like that. He's changed back into the same man he was--"

"No, Scully, not the same. Violence doesn't just leave a man when he changes sides. You get a taste of blood and power and it becomes easy to solve all your problems that way. With your gun. It's easy to excuse it as your duty, or your job, or...." His voice trailed slowly away. She realized he was not talking about Mulder anymore.

"A cause?"

His eyes flicked back to her, his gaze pained. "Yes. A cause. Even if it's a just one."

"You were like Mulder is." She had not seen it before, but she saw it now.

"In the beginning, I was addicted too. I hated the Colonists so much. I hated what they had done to my country, to my friends, to me, and I hated the ignorant people who stood by and laughed at us-- the same people now begging our help. It was so easy not to think, just kill. For a while, that's what I did, but even after I realized what I was becoming, it was so hard to resist that urge. By the time I came to my senses, Nicolas was already in office, and I had lost my chance to stop him. I do believe we could have stopped him, then, if someone had spoken up. Mulder w asn't there to do it. You weren't there to do it. The people looked to me, but I let them down because I was too caught up in my own anger to see the need. I didn't want to the one responsible for building a better future. I failed and we've all paid for it."

"It couldn't have been all your fault." Scully leaned forward to touch his hand. "Nothing like this can be traced back to one person. Everyone made mistakes. We still make them. You've more than paid yours back."

"I've done nothing." He looked away abruptly, the lines of his jaw taut with frustration. "Nicolas still leads. He's destroying this city. He's destroying his own people. The longer I stay here, the longer I am sure of it. When I've done something to stop him, and succeeded, then perhaps we can speak of paid debts."

"You can't save them all, Walter." She placed her hand on his forearm, feeling the strength in his muscles but also the weariness. "Believe me, I've tried." That had been a hard lesson to learn, when she discovered that the she couldn't protect the children or the innocent, that she could only survive and fight and kill and hope in the end it balanced out. Someday, they would all have a lot of penance to do. "It's hard enough to save one man....let alone...."

This time it was her voice that failed.

He covered her hands with his, brushing his fingers clumsily across her knuckles as he used to do in Chile, when she woke from nightmares. "You have already saved him, Scully. He just has to realize it. He will realize it."

"Soon, I hope."

"Soon."

She smiled at him then, showing him her belief, her assurance. Then he left and the door closed and the silence resounded with her doubt, not only for Mulder, but for herself.

Skinner depended on her to talk Mulder out of his violence. She knew it was the right thing to do, the only thing to do if she wanted to keep him from slipping back into the pit. What she did not know was if she herself could get past the memories of the burning, the occasional spasms of residual pain, the simmering hatred boiling just beneath her mind.

Was this what Mulder had lived with every day? Because of her?

Sleep came only after many restless hours. And even then, she was not granted peace. She dreamed.

It was not as before, a wasteland of frozen oceans and burning skies and eyes in the mist. Nor did she find herself alone. She stood in the center of a vast crowd, pressed on all sides by heat and sweaty flesh and the smell of hatred cooking under the noonday sun. It sizzled on the pavements and on the sidewalks and in the eyes of the men and women around her.

The air trembled with a sudden thunder, the ground shaking beneath her feet. No, not thunder. A scream. A thousand screams from a thousand throats, forced into one sound and one voice.

"Kill them!"

Again....

"Kill them!"

Again...

"Kill them!"

Then another voice, rising over the crowd in righteous exaltation. "The will of humanity has been spoken!" She knew w ho spoke. She knew well his evil. Nicolas. Protector of humanity. Murderer of children. He raised his arms and continued to deliver his judgment. "The hybrid infidel must pay for her crimes and heresies. Who will accept the shedding of her blood?"

The sky shook once more under the cry.

"Her blood be on us and on our children..."

The thin scream of a terrified girl slid momentarily above the roar. As soon as Scully recognized the voice, her stomach begin to churn. Not again...no....it wasn't possible....

"Aida!" She called out, not expecting an answer, as she began to shove her way through the crowd. She would save her this time. She would stop it.

"Where are you running to, Dana?"

A man grabbed her arm, his hand reptile cold and his eyes snake ugly. It was Nicolas. His fingers bruised her wrists, his eyes mocking her.

She jerked her arms away. There was no time to answer.

"You can't win, darling." A second man, also Nicolas, blocked her path. "I am the mob."

Members of the crowd began to turn towards her.

"I am the people."

Their faces shifted, changing shape until all had white-blonde hair and pale as ice skin. Until a sea of electric blue eyes stared through her, and the faces behind them smiled as a legion of demons.

"I. Am. All."

Their voices writhed through her brain, a knot of baby vipers. /Run, run, run, Dana-girl. Save the little weak one, Dana-girl. Stop us if you can. Now run alone, run, run..../

She covered her ears with her hands, squeezing her eyes shut. /Mulder will stop you./ She told them. /He promised never to leave me again and he will not let you do this thing./

/Ohhhh,/ The voices rose again, swelling with delight. /But you don't have to search for him, He's already here..../

Like waves receding from a shore, the crowd parted on either side of her, and she was given a clear view straight to the execution platform. Her horror shimmered before her with the heat.

Aida knelt on the wooden platform, her face streaked with tears and sweat and blood. Metal handcuffs bound her hands behind her. The tattered remains of a torn pink sun dress (the wedding dress, Scully remembered) hung from her shoulders. Her back was exposed, the bones jutting out through the skin and her head was bowed.

And before her stood Mulder, his face cold with disgust and hatred. In his hand, the gleaming metal cylinder of a stiletto.

"Mulder!"

His eyes, she could see his eyes, as if they were inches from hers. They screamed. /Stop me. Help me. This is not who I am./

"Stop, Mulder! No!"

The Nicolas crowd closed in around her again, even as she ran. The voices returned.

/What's wrong, Dana-girl? Is it too far to run? Is the sun too hot? Go on now. Run to him. Save him if you can./

/He is not yours. You will not use him to kill for you. He belongs to no one. You fear him because he can destroy you./

/And you think he will be the savior of the people? You think he can save you? Look at him, Dana-girl. He sees nothing but his hate. He tastes nothing but blood. Your blood. He'll do anything to avenge you, you know. It makes him so easy to control. So easy to break./

"Let him go!" She screamed, aloud. "He's done enough! He's suffered enough!"

/He belongs to his own guilt. We merely form the outer cage./

"Then take me! If you have to take someone, if you have to use someone, use me!

She held out her hands to the crowd of identical monsters, turning so all could see her. "Leave him! Let him heal! Take me!"

The fear in her stomach blended with the heat and soured her breath like old whiskey. She knew they would kill her. She knew they would rip her apart. Just like Pavlov. Worse, perhaps, than Pavlov.

But all she saw was Mulder on the scaffold, ready to take a life, not knowing what he was doing or how he was being controlled. So close to falling back into the darkness....."

"I am yours if you spare him. If you spare the girl."

/Very well, Dana-girl. Very well./

They smiled, as one, and as one they surged forward to claim their prize. They spit in her face. They cursed her. They struck at her with their fists, with their boots, with the palms of their hands, dragging her to the ground. Their hands ran over her body, tearing her dress, bruising her skin. And all the time, their laughter. And all the time, their voices, inside her head.

A tearing pain in the flesh of her wrist, driving down between the bones. A flow of blood into the dust of the courtyard. A nail. Another pain, more blood, another mark. Pain around her head, as thorns, blood running down into her eyes. Such a fire across her back....through her feet....

Yet she did not hate. She loved, more than she had ever before. She felt ready to split with the love for the man she had saved. She had finally won him back....just as she had promised....

/Samantha, forgive him, He never knew what he did..../

/There is a price to saving the one you love./

Then they were raising her, lifting her up, and there was no earth nor sky, but she was in between, and she could not see Mulder, and the pain, oh, the pain, and she screamed....

Her body twisted into a convulsion as she woke, shivering from her own cold sweat, clenching the blankets between her hands as if they were the only thing holding her in the conscious world. The room around her was dark, the shadow tinted silver by the light of a full moon. Outside the window, the sky hung heavy with stars. A clear night. A beautiful night.

And she did not see any of it. She saw the courtyard at noon, the crowd in which every man was the man she hated (and perhaps feared, if she admitted it truly). She felt the despair behind his cold features, the heat of the pavement under her bare feet, the metal driving through her skin and bone.

/There is a price to saving the one you love./

"You dreamed it." She whispered it slowly, firmly, making herself hear it. "He can only hurt you inside your head. Only if you let him. But you are stronger than he is. You have fought greater evils than he. So do not worry about the inside of your head."

The window were open, and a lazy breeze stirred the curtains. It dissolved the goosebumps tightening her skin. She took deep breath after deep breath, smelling the thickness of the roses in the garden below, the freshness of the dew. Yes, she was certain now that it was only a dream. Just to be expected as part of the trauma of her wound. Her body had been healed, but her mind still had to deal with the aftershocks. All things considered, it would have been stranger if she had not had a nightmare or two.

Her wrists ached nevertheless.

And she remembered that she had also dreamed the day they took Aida...

"Logic, Starbuck." She wrapped her robe around her and slid off the bed, walking toward the window to better enjoy the night air. "You're getting as superstitious as the old gypsy women in the Quarter. The ones who try to sell you magic amulets and call you a saint because you give them bread and who tell you that your man is the one they've all been waiting for. The one who's going to set them free. What would I tell them tonight? That their savior's not available right now because he's gone to kill a man? That their saint wants that man to die just as badly? But then how do they even know it's the right one....snipers are almost impossible to flush out."

Maybe the point was not if he was guilty or not. Maybe it was just a matter of finding someone to die. She wanted to believe Mulder would ask for verification, but she remembered how hard his eyes grew, in the old times, before he killed. He might not care. Even if he did, he'd have to take their word for it...

That drew the gooseflesh to her skin once more.

The whole thing felt like a trap. And she would be the bait...

"No way I'm letting you win this one, Nicolas." She whispered the words to the breeze. "You won Aida, and you won Che, but Mulder is another story. Oh, you think you can control him. You think he's so weak. But you've never seen the way he loves me. You were not there when he kissed me, so you could never have seen his eyes."

At this memory, she let her voice slid into silence. It had been beautiful, that night. They had been safe, secure between the darkness and the threads of light. As she danced, for the first time since the cities burned down, she had felt alive. She had felt for the first time that maybe they had a chance at a better future after all, if everyone could have one night like this....

But then they shot her. The bullet might as well have hit Mulder, so quickly had he changed. He might have been with her tonight, holding her hand in the garden and running rose petals over her fingertips. He might have smiled with her, laughed with her. Instead he was out in the desert bringing back a man who was condemned before any trial.

It was not fair. There was always a bullet, wasn't there? Maybe not one made of lead, but there was always something to push them apart. To hold them back.

She was not permitted to dwell on this thought anymore, for a sharp and urgent knock at her door demanded her attention. Skinner's voice carried easily through the wood.

"Scully, open up. It's me."

She crossed the room in four steps, unlocking the deadbolt as she pulled the door open. He stood in the hallway, his chest heaving slightly as if he was out of breath. He looked so old in the dingy light of the hall, the lines of his face seemed so heavy. She wondered, vaguely, how old she herself looked now. How many wrinkles she had earned. He was wearing his uniform, she noticed, and one sleeve was spotted with tiny red spots. Blood.

Her pulse jumped up a notch.

"What's going on?" Her voice a thin wire coiled around the tension in the air. "They're here, aren't they? Mulder and the... others...." She tried not to think of the fact that he had with him the man who supposedly tried to kill her. She needed to be human, tonight, for Mulder. She could not afford the luxury of hate.

"They returned around thirty minutes ago."

"And you didn't tell me?"

"No." His eyes begged her not to be angry. "I didn't want you to have to see it. You've seen so much, and I wanted to protect--" His teeth clenched as he cut off the words. "They brought back a kid, Scully. A teenager. He can't be more than seventeen, I swear to God, and he certainly is no sniper. I watched his hands when they unloaded him. The hands of a sniper never shake. This kid shook like an old man. But Mulder won't see it. They showed him a doctored mission log and said it was the kid's. They lied to him and he doesn't know... "

A bubble of nausea swelled up inside her gut. She had been right. It was a trap. "What will they do to the prisoner?" The words were slow, deliberate. She wasn't sure she wanted to know. Reality seemed to bend and curl around her, leaving her caught in a dizzy middle ground. There was too much death....too much blood....not enough time to get it all straight....

"He's being interrogated."

So that's where the blood on his sleeve had come from. Had Skinner taken part? No, he couldn't have. He wouldn't. "By whom?"

He remained silent just long enough to confirm her fears.

/Mulder. They've got Mulder killing that boy./

She leaned back against the doorframe, her hand pressed against her forehead to relieve a sudden headache. "He wouldn't." The denial hissed through her teeth.

Skinner's hand moved to rest on her shoulder, trying to comfort her in a touch because neither of them knew words that could help. He did try to find them. She appreciated him for his effort.

"He doesn't see a boy, Scully. All he sees is the Colonist who almost killed the woman he loves. And I smelled liquor on him. They must have gotten him drunk first. He wouldn't listen to me....I tried....I came here because you are the only person who could make him understand....that's the only reason I'd bring you into something like this. Forgive me..."

Forgive. Such a heavy word. "Just give me a moment to get dressed and I'll be there...." She patted his hand and moved back inside her apartment. The breeze seemed so much colder now.

Now she knew why Skinner looked so tired. Now she felt the same weariness in her bones. So tired, yes, and remembering she was weak and had been shot only three days ago, and what could she do to stop anything? What could she say?

It would come to her. For now she just had to get there in time.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The world was blood.

Tiny droplets in the air, inhaled with his every breath, collecting like dew inside his throat to mingle with the leftover tequila to form a taste like scorched copper. He could taste the hate above all else.

The world was blood.

Slick and wet across his knuckles, splattered across his uniform, across his face. It oozed in tear-like streams down the face of the boy-- no, the killer, he would not think of him as a boy-- bound to the chair in front of him. Some of it blended with real tears to drip from the killer's chin, down onto his neck.... It wasn't enough. Scully had bled more than that when the freak had shot her. Well, the night was young. His fists clenched into a tighter ball and the muscles in his arms tensed in preparation for the next blow.

"You shot her!" A voice, raw and bent until it was not as man's voice, tore through the air. "I want to hear you admit to it!"

More blood, flying from the freak's nose as his fist drove straight into it. He thought he heard the bone crack. He hoped. He hoped it hurt, real bad.

"Did you enjoy it, huh?"

A blow to the gut, sharp and fast and hard.

"Did you like seeing her bleed?"

Another one to the stomach, finishing the job. The boy doubled over, gasping for breath through swollen lips, but Mulder grabbed him by the hair and yanked his face up until they were eye to eye. His voice dropped to little more than a growl.

"Did it make you feel like a man?"

The boy's lips were moving, trying to form words through the blood.

"What is it, son? I can't hear you?"

"Didn't....shoot....her....please....didn't..."

Rage, boiling up inside his stomach, scalding every nerve inside his body until it erupted again through his fist. Let the Colonist scum lie all night. He knew the truth. The patrol had shown him the boy's mission log, shown him proof that he had a credited sniper kill the same night Scully had been shot. Had the freak watched through his scope as she doubled over in pain from the bullet? Had he gotten off on her scream, on the sudden flow of blood? Had he laughed?

He wouldn't be laughing much longer. Before the night was over, he would confess all or he would die in the chair. Slowly and painfully, just like he wanted Scully to die.

The world was blood.

Most of all, it was inside his mind. It soaked his brain, coating his every thought with hate and anger and kill-lust. It soaked his eyes, turning everything he saw a sickly shade of red. Never had he hated so much. Never had it burned so deep. At first he had tried to keep control. He had tried to reign in the emotion, the disgust. But then they'd offered him the liquor, and he had thought it would drown the voices in his head, but it had only broken down the restraints....Something in him had torn free, seized his mind and his body and twisted it until all he wanted was to kill. To destroy. The urge grew with every punch, every scream of the prisoner. /More,/ the voice inside his head sang out. More. He tried to take the one you love. He tried to take her from you, and you couldn't protect her then, but you can now. So make him pay. C'mon, make him scream again./

He obeyed. With relish.

It was Nicolas' voice inside his mind, but he did not realize it. It was Nicolas' hate, Nicolas' anger, Nicolas' lust that drove him so, stirring his own emotions into a frenzy, but he did not feel the invasion of his mind. Nor did he see the smile on the Leader's face every time his fist smashed \ into the boy.

He felt only the fire and never stopped to think that it was not totally his own. It was like he dreamed and watched himself from outside his mind. In the dream he marveled at his ruthlessness, at his brutality, but he could do nothing to stop it. Only sit and wait for the dream to end. And in the back of his mind, in a far away corner so remote he could barely hear it, another voice called for him to wake up. A soft voice, almost totally buried under the chaos of hate and pain and guilt. Pleading with him. Begging.

/Don't do this, Fox. Open your eyes. Don't do this..../

It was Samantha's voice.

Every time he heard it, every time he began to listen in the smallest way, the Nicolas voice hissed a reason to keep on hating.

/People like that scum are the reason your sister is dead./

/He's one of the ones who shoot children in the streets. You remember that, don't you, the blood in the morning mist and the screaming mothers and the little tiny bodies..../

/You let him live, he's just gonna shoot another woman./

The world was blood.

It was in the eyes of those around him, a crowd of fellow soldiers pressed in a large circle and cheering every time a new splatter of blood hit the floor. They were a blur before his eyes, a jumble of faces he did not recognize and voices he did not know, but it was easy enough to recognize the common bond of hatred.

"That's right! Hit him again!"

"Give the freak a taste of his own medicine!"

"How do you like that, boy? Look at him, crying for his momma. I shot your momma, kid. I shot her and listened to her scream!"

"Show him what happens when he shoots one of our women!"

And then there was Nicolas' voice, an audible one this time, low and intense. "That's right, Mulder. Listen to them. Listen to yourself. Make sure justice is done."

And then there was the sobbing of the prisoner, barely heard beneath the shouts and jeers and obscenities. But Mulder was close enough to hear it.

/God, he's crying like a child. He might as well be a child. How old can he be? Sixteen? Seventeen?/ Samantha's voice again. /How can you do this to a boy?/

/So he's young./ Nicolas' voice, dark and ugly. /You don't have to be an old man to kill. And that's what he tried to do to Scully. Do you remember how it felt when her blood flowed from her body underneath your hands, and you couldn't stop it? Remember how she shook with pain each time the jeep hit a rough patch, but you couldn't stop or slow down because every second she was growing paler?/

Justice had to be done, no matter the age.

Something in his soul twitched at that, asking him if this really was justice. If it was anything more than a lust for revenge.

He did not stop to answer because he could not answer.

After he broke the kid's nose in a second place, his hands began to ache and he reached for his pistol, turning it to use the blunt end of the handle as a bludgeon. He paused for a moment to catch his breath. The Nicolas voice inside his head swarmed around his thoughts, an angry cloud of hornets.

/Don't stop now. You're so close. You can really hurt him now. I'll bet you can break all of his ribs. And then we'll start to work on his hands....do you know how many bones you can break in a man's hands? Let's see him try to hold a gun after that..../

/Fox!/ Samantha again, sharper than before. Angry. /Don't listen to him! Listen to me, now! This is not what you are!/

The hatred in his mind rose up and pushed her voice aside. He raised the gun, already focused on the spot where he would break the rib. The muscles in his shoulders bunched together. The voice in his head laughed, and as it did, so did the burning within him. It pushed him forward, pushed him into action. He was not so sure he could stop now if he wanted to.

The prisoner screamed for mercy....

He poised to deliver the blow.

The Samantha voice sharpened, demanding his attention.

/Look at me when I'm talking to you, brother!/

He froze.

His eyes moved slowly from the soldier to scan the crowd, his heart slowing within him. It echoed in his ears. Thud-thud-thud. Monster-monster-monster. Killer-killer-killer. Thud-thud-thud.

And he saw her.

She stood directly across from him, side by side with Nicolas although Mulder knew the man did not see her. No one saw her, except for him. She was his angel, after all. Of light or of judgment. She wore the same white dress he had seen on her that day in Washington, when the children had been shot. Her hair hung down to her shoulders in the same way, loose and carefree. Again, her eyes burned his, with a silent flame. Her face showed no anger, none of the scorn or condemnation he expected, but instead only sadness. And such a sadness, like the tears of God, because they held every kind of grief and every kind of pain there was in the world. It was all focused on him. Asking him why. Begging him to stop. Crying for his soul.

The hatred swirled and churned around his mind, vying to regain its control. His hand began to move forward but it jerked to a dead stop as her voice sounded again. Only this time it was real. It carried above the crowd and above the static of his mind.

"Mulder, stop!"

His lungs became dry in the middle of his breath. How could it be? The dead could not speak....how then....

Then he realized it was not Samantha's voice at all, but Scully's. He turned to see her striding through the crowd, her eyes burning and her lips set in a thin line of determination and anger. Behind her, Skinner hovered protectively, his massive bulk and stony glare warning away all who would stop her.

/Get her out of here!/ The voice hissed, and Mulder detected an odd note of fear. /She doesn't belong....don't make her see what you are..../

She stopped inside the circle of soldiers, less than three feet away from him. Her eyes moved from his face to the face of the boy. He saw the anger flicker in the back of her eyes, the shock, the disappointment. It took him aback for a moment. How could it be that she was disappointed in him? Didn't she realize he was doing this for her?

Then the hate swelled, a wave of fire, and he didn't care whether she realized it or not. He'd make her understand later. After vengeance was taken and justice was satisfied.

"Skinner," He spoke to Skinner without taking his eyes off Scully's face. He was vaguely surprised at the snarl in his words and the way his lips curled back when he spoke. "Take her back to her room. She doesn't belong here."

Skinner said nothing.

She moved closer and reached out for his arm. He shrank back instinctively, as if her hand was a red hot iron. The voices inside his head were wailing, shrieking for her to get away. To leave him. When her eyes met his again, there was no anger. No shock. Only pain.

"What are you doing, Mulder?" She spoke softly, as if she was asking him why he was combing his hair a certain way or wearing a certain shirt instead of asking him why he was beating a man to death.

He wanted to tell her that he didn't know, but different words came from his mouth. The words the voice in his mind placed in
his throat. "Making sure he doesn't shoot anyone else."

"That's ridiculous. He's not the sniper. They lied to you. They want you to kill him. And even if he is guilty, he deserves a fair trial and a fair execution.'

"This is all the trial a Colonist deserves."

"Listen to yourself!" Her tone was sharper now, grating across his mind and scraping back the numbness coating his senses, forcing him to hear her every word. "Just listen to how you're talking! You have no idea what you're saying or what you're doing. You're angry and you're drunk and Nicolas is controlling you. I can feel it. He's inside your head and he's making you do what he wants you to do. Are you going to let that happen?'

"She's lying!" Nicolas spoke quickly, the veins in his forehead bulging underneath skin turned a stranger shade of white. "She is trying to manipulate you into weakness!"

Mulder watched as Scully's eyes left him and traveled over to Nicolas. Her face froze instantly in a way he had not seen in quite a long while. When she spoke, her voice was steel. "You are the one who is trying to manipulate. It might work on frightened girls and adoring subjects, but it will not work on me and I will not allow you to use it on Mulder. Get out of his head. Now."

She turned back to him. "You can fight it, Mulder. Whatever he's making you feel, whatever you think you are feeling, you can fight it. You can--"

He tried, but the hatred inside his mind intensified as a living creature trying to keep its foothold on a slippery mountain. It burned him, seared him, raged within him, until all logic was pushed away and he broke Scully off with a snarl.

"No one is doing anything to me! This is what I want!"

"No! It's not! I know you!"

The rage sharpened, sharpened, pushed.....it forced words he did not mean out of his mouth and threw them in her face.

"You know what I was!"

He backhanded the prisoner across the mouth as if to prove his words to her. The boy's head slung back, sending a spray of blood and sweat into the air. Some of that blood splattered across her face. He watched it stain her skin, her perfect flawless skin that should never know blood, and it shocked him. Through the anger, through the hate, through the blinding emotions, it cut deep into his mind. He stood looking at her and said nothing. Staring at her face, at the smears of blood across her cheek.

She sensed his confusion and moved forward, wiping the blood away with her sleeve as she walked. He wanted to shrink away again, to hide from her eyes and from her touch that certainly would break him, but he could not move. She did not stop until she was face to face with him. He knew she could smell the blood on his clothes and the tequila on his breath. He begin to sense the first glimmerings of shame.

He waited for her to strike him, to judge him.

Instead she reached out and traced the line of his cheek with her fingertips, ignoring the smears of blood left on her hands.

"I know what you are, Mulder. Let me tell you what I know."

All eyes waited on them in a strange fascination. He knew she felt the stares just as he did, but that did not stop her. She continued, her voice firm and clear.

"You are a soldier, one of the best. You are strong. You're difficult sometimes and stubborn sometimes, and maybe your high ideals are a little cracked, but underneath it all, you're still a believer. You were the only one of us who believed, before. You gave us hope. You gave us someone we could believe in. I still believe in you. I believe you are something better than this. You are something better than him." Her finger jabbed toward Nicolas. "Don't throw yourself away for a cheap shot at revenge. Don't throw us away. He can only control you if you let him. It's time to break that control. Break it now. And let's go home. It's late. I'm tired. Aren't you, Mulder?" Her hand rested around his, nudging his fingers away from the gun. "Aren't you tired of this too?"

The hatred-voice inside his mind faded, faded as he pushed it back, screaming its rage at him and clawing at his mind, but it was not strong enough to stop him. She pushed it back too, with her eyes. With her soul. He awoke slowly from the nightmare. One by one his senses returned to him. For the first time he discovered there was blood on his hands. And on his face. And on his clothes.....and everywhere. A knot of nausea began to knit together in the pit of his stomach. For the first time he saw the face of the boy-soldier he had been beating. He saw the fear. He saw the pain. He saw the humanity.

The gun dropped from his fingers to the floor and his eyes fell with it. He could not look her in the face, knowing what he had just done before her eyes. He could not stand to see her light touch his darkness. "Yes." He whispered. "Very tired."

"C'mon-" She pulled him towards the door, but Nicolas' voice cut them off, cold and deadly.

"You were not dismissed, *soldier*. Pick up the gun and finish interrogating the prisoner."

Mulder lifted his eyes to meet those of the man who had been inside his mind. Tomorrow, perhaps, he would hate. Not tonight. Tonight he'd had his fill of hate. He felt only disgust, and a bit of pity, for if the dark fire had truly been Nicolas' emotion, the man was torn inside. He spoke in even tone, but firmly. "No."

Nicolas' voice increased in pitch and volume. "You will do as you are ordered. And I am giving you a direct order to finish the job. I don't care what your whore says, you are a member of the Humanity Corps and you are under my command, and you will obey."

Mulder's hands clenched on reflex to fists. /How dare that little *pig* talk about her that way...in front of these men...../

No, focus. He had to focus.

He took a deep breath and forced his hands to relax.

"I won't kill him for you. If you want him to die, you're going to have to do it yourself."

"Very well then." Nicolas waved to the two of the men standing behind him. "He is guilty of insubordination. You all are witnesses. Arrest him."

Scully's hand tightened around his, her eyes wide and flaring with fear for him. "Run." She whispered, just low enough for him to here. "I'll keep them back...."

"It's all right, Scully." He pulled her hand from his arm and held out his wrists for the soldiers to cuff. "Just stay with Skinner and promise me you'll be careful--" He would rather be in jail and have her think of him as human than go free and have her think of him as a monster. She had said she believed in him. That made it worth it all.

But Nicolas wasn't through yet. Mulder watched the man's mouth crease into a smile as he waved out two more guards. A feeling of dread begin to mix with the nausea in his stomach until he tasted it as bile in the back of his throat. "The woman instigated it. Arrest her as well."

"No!" He strained against the two men holding him, pulling to break free of the handcuffs. He lunged forward, using his entire body to push himself between her and the soldiers. "She is still sick....she hasn't recovered yet.....you can't arrest her...." He drew his leg back and let it fly in a fast kick to the stomach of the first man who tried to drag him away. Another soldier kicked back, a close-range blow to his ribs. He gasped for breath. Strong hands clamped around his arms, lifting him off the ground and hauling him back. He made them fight for every inch. They could take him, yes, but not her. She was still weak.....even now she swayed a bit as she stood. He was guilty, yes, but she had done nothing but stop him from killing an innocent boy.

"Contain him." Nicolas ordered, his voice dripping disgust. "If she is well enough to stir up treason then she is well enough to pay for it."

For Scully, the world spun at a thousand miles an hour, and she tried desperately to hold on. She stiffened her legs so that she might remain on her feet, tall and straight, that she might look them in the eye as they came toward her. She had not been out of bed for more than five minutes since the shooting, and from the moment she entered the room she had been fighting off the dizziness. Now it washed over her in waves, contorting the world before her eyes, bending it into strange shapes and colors.

She had to stand up....had to be strong for Mulder....had to... stand...

Her knees trembled and shook.

When they grabbed her, rough hands locking her wrists tightly into handcuffs, she couldn't hide the flinch. Skinner saw it and stiffened, his hand edging toward his sidearm with murder in his eyes.

"No." She pinned his gaze with hers, forcing him to see the caution in her eyes. "We need someone outside."

He nodded, but she saw the barely restrained fury in the tightness of his jaw. He would have killed if she asked him to. But she would not, no matter how much the handcuffs hurt or how much she felt ready to collapse. Nicolas already hated Skinner. All he needed was a reason to act, and she wasn't about to provide that.

They pulled her toward the door and she moved to obey, but suddenly her legs refused to work. The bones and muscles turned to rubber and she fell....fell.....the floor rushing up to meet her but never quite reaching her as the guards caught her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mulder struggle to get free, cursing the hands that held him back, screaming her name. Scully, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Screaming over and over again, Let me go to her. Let me help her. Let me touch her.

And he even begged.

Please....

She tried to open her mouth to tell him she was fine, but whirlpool around her sucked the words from her mind.

She saw Skinner, standing stone still, his face expressionless but his eyes burning. She saw the resolve, the promise that passed between them without words. I will get you out. I will find a way, no matter what I have to do. No matter what.

She saw Nicolas, his whole body quivering with rage and hatred as he looked at her, but also with desire, a secret lust burning in his eyes. More terrifying than the hate. Darker than the anger. He said nothing to her in words, but the stare told her enough. I will own you. I will possess you. I will make you pay for taking him back from me.

And then the darkness came and she saw nothing.

/I have saved him..../

A last thought.

Yes, but what would it cost him?

But it was too much to think, right now, and she surrendered to the imploding universe around her before finding the answer.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Drying blood and sweat plastered his clothes to his skin, but Mulder felt naked. It was as if all his outer defenses, all his protections and carefully constructed fortifications, were stripped away between the blinding glare of white lights on glossy white walls, leaving him bare before the never-blinking red eye of the camera.

That was the danger of this room, he knew, the same danger of every other room like it in the world. It existed not to terrify you so much as to break you down. To lock you in a world without relief from the burning exposure of lights and video cameras, and the brutal, relentless interrogator of your own thoughts.

Nicolas would have known that this was the only torture that could break him. He could give them the finger through beatings and blood-lettings of any sort, but lock him in a room away from Scully and imply that she is being hurt......that quickly became a different sort of battle. It was your own imagination that killed. She had been so small in the middle of that room, surrounded by hate yet somehow untainted by it. So fragile. The handcuffs had seemed so ugly on her wrists, the faces of the guards so hard....

Had they taken her to Nicolas?

Was she....

/No. Don't think it. God, don't think it./

He swallowed back the fear that turned the muscles of his throat dry and tight. His hands shook within the handcuffs in a mix of instinctive rage and a greater sense of helplessness. /Please let them leave her alone./ They could have him, if they wanted. They could strap him to the table under the bright, bright lights and they could send pain through his body until they were sick of it. They could cut through his flesh just to see him bleed (wouldn't Nicolas like that) but she had to be kept safe. But that would require mercy, and mercy was too human for this place. She had known that right away. She had tried to warn him, but he had been blind, so preoccupied with what he thought was the way back to light and redemption. And the very man whose guidance he had relied on turned out to be a darker monster than even himself. If she had not come back, who knows how worse it would have been? What would he have become?

The door opened and he knew the answer, for Nicolas was standing in the doorway, an indolent smile on his face although the expression was betrayed by the hard glint behind his eyes.

What Mulder saw was not entirely human, but purely evil. He did not know how he could have missed it before. He hardened his face into a mask of blank granite, determined not to be blinded again.

"Well, well, you seem to be quite the man of the hour." Nicolas stepped into the room, flanked by two of his personal bodyguards-- each holding a long metal billy club. Their faces begged Mulder to give them an excuse to play with his ribs.

It seemed that the overwhelming urge to attack the Leader and rip the smile off his face would have to be postponed. For now.

Nicolas leaned back against the hall, his body loose in deceptive casualness. Mulder saw, however, the way the muscles in his hands were bunched, waiting to form fists at any moment. The smile never faltered as the Leader continued to speak. "Word of your little game has spread all over the city. The common rabble are so fascinated, as peasants will be, and you can be assured that Skinner and his idiot followers are making the best of it. Some are even calling you a hero. The new Leader." The smile hardened, glinting in the light as a shard of glass. "That does not bode well for you, my friend."

"So is this the part when I get the sense beat back into me?" Mulder held his voice in the flat cadence he used when dealing with the Smoking Man. "I'll have to say that I thought the great and terrible Leader of the Resistance could have come up with something a little more creative. Electroshock therapy, perhaps? Or at the very least, the rack."

Nicolas laughed, a sound like the scratch of snake scales across the desert floor. Mulder was just waiting for the fangs to come out, for the true poison to be revealed. Something was hiding behind that smile, something dark and black and evil....

"Mulder, you know better than that. I am not going to insult you by attempting to break you physically. It would be a waste of our time. I have a better use for you. One that is far more productive to the Cause and, might I add, mutually beneficial to your health."

"Imagine my relief."

Perhaps it was the light, but the more he looked at Nicolas, the less human the man seemed. The voice became slurred, a hissing obscenity of sound that echoed Pavlov's voice. The eyes burned a blue unnaturally bright, while his pupils dilated into an almost reptilian slant. Mulder shook his head to chase away the hallucination. He had been under the lights too long. "I suppose that now you're going to tell me what you want me to do."

"We only ask that you use your strengthened influence over the people to expose a threat to our stability and effectiveness."

"Cut the noble crap and tell me who's trying to take your toys."

"Very well. I shall lay it out for you. Your friend Walter Skinner has always been an nuisance, caught up in womanish concern for humane warfare and minimizing the loss of life. We have suffered his whining because of his tactical skills, but now it is clear that he is a threat to the Leadership. His following has increased since your return, even to the point where he has began to turn the ear of some of the other generals. You see that this cannot be allowed."

"I see that the people are beginning to see you as the freak you are and that they want a change. I see that you're running scared, like a whipped mutt with your tail between your legs, but I don't see what I am supposed to do. If you're expecting me to kill him, the answer is no. You'll have to kill me instead and then you'll be making a martyr for Skinner's cause. I don't think you want that."

Nicolas' eyes flashed sparks of blue-black fire for a moment as he stared at Mulder. "Do not overestimate the importance of your life, my friend. I doubt they would call you martyr if your somewhat un-hero like past was exposed. But all this is beside the point. No one is asking you to kill. All we want is for you to reveal him as the threat he is. Go before the Committee and denounce him before the other generals as a Colonist sympathizer and a traitor. We have three witnesses ready to back your suspicions with their own reports and hard evidence has been arranged. Not that it will be needed. I am confident the others will listen to you. Your word is highly valued, even in your....fallen....state."

There was the slightest emphasis on the word "fallen", but Mulder refused to entertain the notion of guilt. He would not let the monster back into his head. The revulsion that had been growing within his stomach swelled into a climax. That....freak... .was asking him to betray the man who had saved his life, the man who had saved Scully's life.....just to save his own skin? Did the Leader think he had learned nothing all this time? That he would fall so easily back into the Judas mold? It was beyond insult. It disgusted him, so much that he would not dignify it with anger. He merely allowed his repulsion to frost over his eyes, to drip through his voice as he spoke. He leaned forward until he held Nicolas' eyes.

"You think you're so powerful, don't you. You think you've got them all terrified. I have seen ten times the evil you are, and I am not awed by your darkness. I am not cowed by your threats. Listen to me, Nicolas, and listen well. There is nothing you can do to make me betray Walter Skinner. He is worth a hundred of you. Feel free to do with me what you will, but I will not be your traitor. If I die because of it, at least I will die a human. Which is something you will never be."

Seconds dragged by, bitter with a palpable tension and rage. He watched Nicolas' face, saw the hatred and resentment pool in thick black swirls across the man's eyes before the emotions disappeared behind a smile which was now as cold as ice. The smile twisted as a viper twists to reach his prey, gloating, mocking. For all his resolve, Mulder felt his spine twitch against his nerves.

"A fine sentiment." Now the voice was indeed a hiss, low and inhuman but at the same time holding delight. "Yes, you will make a fine spectacle on the scaffolding, your flesh hanging in ribbons from your bones and your naked wounds baking in the sun. They call for you to save them now, but they will just as eagerly watch you die. That is how they are....they smell blood and they are drawn to it. They will accept yours as readily as they will any other Colonist dog. I really do admire your nerve. Really--"

Nicolas leaned closer. "But indulge me with one small question, if you will. Merely to gratify my own curiosity."His eyes gleamed and their electricity danced in his words, a barely audible hum. Mulder could feel the man's breath on his face. Smell the hatred.

"How do you think it will feel to her?" The demon smile curled up at the ends, reminding Mulder so much of Pavlov that he had to fight the urge to cross himself, to shrink away. A sheet of ice began to move slowly up his spine, toward his heart....

And then, beneath the ice, a rage. A pure, white hot, hatred. The more he sat and listened the more it built. An explosion was imminent, but Nicolas did not know how close it was.

The man was too busy talking in a sort of ecstasy, as if the act of describing pain gave him a deep pleasure. "She has such soft skin, so delicate and pure.....how do you think it will feel when it is exposed to the sky and the hungry eyes of a mob? Do you think it will be cold to her? Do you think she will blush in shame? Or will it burn her, when the whip falls? Again, and again, and again, until she is screaming with that soft voice. Until she's cursing your pretty little truth and her pretty little faith, but most of all cursing you for letting her die like that. Do you think she'll be strong until the very end, or will she beg for mercy? Ah, you'd like that, wouldn't you. Your whore's last words will be to me, begging me to spare her life. Promising to give me anything I want. Who knows, I might grant the wish. I'll make her work for it though....she might wish she was dead before it was ov-"

His last word turned into a choked gurgle of sound as Mulder's fists clenched around his throat in a mix of iron grip and steel handcuffs.

to be continued... page 8