Levithan I (Part B) Wind whispered in the grass, and the water rippled. The beauty of the oasis surrounded him, but it was soft, this time. The water sustained him; the grass nourished him. Tears coursed down his cheeks. "Where are you?" Even his voice was muffled by softness. "Come back!" Silence. He was alone. The beautiful terrible voice that had wanted him, that had promised him victory, had gone. He had failed him. He fell to his knees in the grass, throwing back his head, and shouted. "I'll try harder. I'll fight. I'll try again." The sand in the desert stretched into a barren eternity all around. It was parched and heavy with disapproval. His imagination supplied the words in the silence, though there was no voice behind them. He was alone in a dead world. Alone. An abandoned feather fluttered in the wind. "I'll fight them," he shouted to the desert sky, and "I'll fight them," as he snapped out of sleep and was alone in the darkness of his bed. The sheets burned like the sun, and he tried to reach for them, to rip them off, to run for the door, and try again. Again and again, as often as it took, he would try, and he would.... Restraints held him. "No!" He screamed only once, short and sharp, then turned his face away from the camera and let himself cry into his pillow. ****** She heard him shout and was out of her bed in an instant, hand pressed against the wall that separated them. Her hand. She was still breathless from a dream of a dozen people hanging from a precipice, all clutching her hand, her wrist, her arm. The searing agony in her shoulder had told her to let go; the pleading terror in their faces had told her to hold on, but she _could not do_ it. She had let go, had felt the soft balm of comfort in her shoulder, and had heard their screams. "Dana!" A young girl's voice. "How can you leave us?" Long after he fell silent, she stood there. She wouldn't let herself sleep. She wouldn't let herself dream. ****** January the fifth. The watch fell from her tense fingers, and broke. She plastered a smile on her face, then was ready to look at him. "Mulder." His arms were round his knees, pulled up on the bed. Propped up by pillows, he was half-sitting. He was gaining strength, yet she was losing him. "What's happening outside?" He was tense, unable to settle. At least he was out of restraints now. If he tried to escape again, he was strong enough to make it until..... She sighed, grimly. Until they brought him back again. She shook her head. "I don't know, Mulder." His eyes reproached her steadily. they said. That morning, she had enjoyed her first shower, overcoming another petty resistance. As the warm water coursed over her body, she had first smiled, then cried. She would never tell Mulder of her tears. "Any new ones?" he asked, hungrily. "No." Their doors were unlocked now, and they could visit each other at will. They were still prisoners, held in by sealed doors in the corridor, but their small territory included four other empty rooms. "Cancerman came in with the doctors, when you were sleeping," she told him, softly. "He looked.... smug. Confident." "It's proceeding." His voice was heavy. "Have they stepped in yet to take control, or are they still watching it collapse - helping it?" She clenched her hands into fists, tightly. "I don't know." God, how she wanted to sink her head into her hands and weep for them. They were fragmented, brittle. she cried, silently. But she didn't know how to stop. "Scully. Dana." He reached for her arm and held it, and that was nearly the end for her. The need in his eyes reflected hers. His voice was soft. "What did they say to you to make you accept?" She snatched her hand away. "I haven't." She gestured at the blue bruise at her hairline. "They took me, too. I didn't consent to this." "Then why don't you fight?" His hand closed round her wrist, and it was almost his old strength. "You know who's keeping us, Scully, don't you? It's the people who are behind everything we saw out there. It's the people who want to destroy everything we've ever known. It's the people who want to rule with the aliens over an enslaved population." Once she had been a different Dana Scully, and would have laughed at that, dismissing it as science fiction. Part of her longed to be that woman again. Knowledge was responsibility, and responsibility was terrible. She rubbed her eyes, and no tears fell. "How can we fight, Mulder? You know, maybe they're right - maybe the Gunmen were right. Maybe the best thing we can do is stay safe until the disorder settles, and take it from there." He snatched his hand back as if it burnt him. The look in his eyes was of betrayal - like when she had told him, the previous day, that she had been the one who had requested restraints, sure that he would die if he tried to escape again. "How can you say that, Scully?" His voice was low. "How can you believe it?" But she was silent. "Do you think for a moment that they would let us out to _fight_ them?" He raised both hands to his face, spreading his fingers and pressing his fingers into his brow. "Electric shock therapy, Scully. Brainwashing. He as good as told me. I know you think I'm crazy, but I want to keep my mind intact." She wanted to reach for his hands and pull them away from his head, and just hold them. She bit on her lip, and said nothing. "Scully." A change of tack. He was gentle, caring, hard to resist. It was his silent concern that had her weeping in his arms after Donnie Pfaster. "What do you know, Scully? What scares you so much about.... outside?" A dozen pleading hands falling to their deaths.... Faceless ghosts following the flashlight.... "Scully?" She raised her head. "I'm not afraid." He blinked. "I am. How can anyone not be?" She was silent. His voice was barely audible. "You do care, don't you, Scully? You're not.... not one of.....?" He swallowed, and didn't - couldn't - finish. She rounded on him then, her eyes blazing, her fists clenched. "Don't you _dare_ accuse me of not caring, Mulder. Damn it - I have family out there. My _mother_ is out there. _I_ have every reason to care." "So have I, Scully." His voice was small and so cold. "My mother's out there, too." The pain in his eyes hit her like a slap. She knew the gaping wound that was his relationship with his mother, and yet she had said.... she murmured to herself. "Yes." She breathed out, long and slow, and rubbed her eyes with both hands. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that." He looked away, as if her apology, by showing that she knew his hurt, weakened him. "Mulder." And this time she reached for his hand, and wouldn't let go. It was time for building bridges. As the world fell around them, they would have each other. "We're different. We both feel this. We're.... we're _different_. We've always agreed to differ before." He was silent for a long time, and she listened to his still-laboured breathing, counting the seconds by the sound. "Yes," he said at last. He looked at her, and there was apology in his eyes - apology for what he was about to say. "I know that, but...." He looked down. "I find it hard to accept your reaction." She didn't blink. "I find it hard to accept yours, Mulder. I think you're hoping too much. I think you're setting yourself up for a disappointment - or to get killed. I find it hard to accept, but I know it's you." He frowned. "But yours is not....." Then he stopped. She stood up. ****** Hand pressed against his chest, he crouched down painfully, and reached for the object he had seen half under the bed. A watch. He held it in his palm and looked at it, consideringly. Scully's watch. The glass was cracked, but it still marked the time. Just after ten o'clock on the morning of January the seventh. For four nights, his dreams had been silent. He had awoken every hour to the childhood terror of being alone in the world, the only one left alive. Half-asleep, he had stumbled to Scully's door and stood there, hand cupping his ear, scarcely daring to breathe, until he'd heard the soft rustle of her sheets as she'd turned over in bed. He'd wanted to bury his head in his hands and smile, and weep. An hour later, on soft silent feet, he had done it again. And again. And again. Morning.... He rubbed his eyes and frowned. The night was a dim memory in the morning, leaving him unsure what had been a dream. If Scully ever heard his visits, she said nothing. And he said nothing about the fact that, once, he had been sure he had heard her crying, and murmuring "no". A shuffle of footsteps.... The watch fell from his fingers. Forgetting his injury, he groped for the door handle and ran into the corridor. Four men were clustered just inside the sealed door, and they weren't guards. He swallowed. He had been so eager, so desperate, to hear the news, and now it was here, he could only feel dread. Some truths were too horrible. Ignorance could be a comfort, as long as you were blessed with no imagination. "You came from outside?" he started, tentatively, then the thirst to know the truth even if it was poison took hold of him. "You came from outside?" He grabbed the nearest man by his arm. "What's happening out there?" Scully's door opened and she stood there, fist pressed to her mouth, silent. "The plan." The man's clothes smelled of acrid smoke and there was a rent in his sleeve. "It's going according to plan." He grimaced. "Not pleasant, but then it was never meant to be." Another one looked at Mulder assessingly, as if noting his awkward stance and the marks of the IV in his hand. "You didn't make it in time either?" He shook his head sympathetically. "We were supposed to report two days ago, but travel's impossible out there. It all collapsed faster than anyone dared hope." "Hope?" He heard Scully's repeat the word in a terribly rising whisper, then the click of her door as she shut the men out. A few days ago he would have felt anger. Now, perhaps, he understood. She would be crying behind that closed door. The first man looked at his feet. "There are dead unburied on the streets, now. People kill for water. The lack of sanitation is causing widespread infection. The police and local government tried to come forward, but were attacked for not being able to solve everything. The people killed their only other chance at order. It's...." He passed his hand across his face. "It's not pleasant, but it's a small price to pay." "For what?" He grabbed the man by the collar, his other fist raised. He longed to smash it into his face, to see the whole plan dissolve into a bloody pulp. "What can be worth that?" Six hands pulled him back, holding him, and he could not fight them. Oh how he tried, but he could not fight them. His chest hurt. "You know." Cool eyes appraised him, and there was true bewilderment in there. "You know, or you wouldn't be here." "Getting sentimental?" An elbow snaked around his neck, and a fist patted his kidneys - a warning only, not hard enough to hurt. "We're all part of it. We made that choice. We knew what it would be like." "I'm _not_ part of it." He flailed his arms and broke free and rounded on them, breathing fast, a fighter fending off four attackers. Something brushed at his hand. "I never will be - never." They shrugged, and turned their backs. He raised a fist, a challenge half out of his mouth, when a hand caught his and held it. Scully, her eyes wide. He hadn't heard her come out. "Don't," she mouthed. He tried to wrench his hand away. "Don't stop me, Scully," he hissed, low and intense. "No." She held tight, and squeezed, and smiled sadly. Then he remembered the touch on his hand when he had stood and fought, and knew she had been beside him then, too. And there, at the end of everything, he smiled. ****** Her dreams were silent, now. Alone, she wandered through an empty world, and part of her relished the fact that she was alone, that she was responsible only to herself. Silent. But part of her wept, and wanted them back, calling her, needing her. When she woke, face damp with tears, she would press her hand against the wall between her room and Mulder's, and wonder why, in all her dreams, there was never _him_ by her side. ****** He had spent years seeking answers from men he hated, needing them even as he hated them. He felt like a fly caught by a spider. He hungered for the newcomers' news, though he never wanted to see them again. It was the fourth time he had gone to them in two days. "Why are you prisoners here, too, if you're part of it?" He held onto the door frame, feeling that it was the only thing holding him back from pummelling the man. The man frowned. "Prisoners? It's for our own protection. The great ones have too much to think about to have to worry about us. They'll let us out when the time comes." Another voice spoke behind him. "It's to keep the rest out, not to keep us in. We had to fight through crowds when we came here. They hammered at the van. They nearly pulled us over. The guards at the entrance were having to shoot them." Mulder shut his eyes. It was a nightmare memory of frantic aliens, clawing at the small hole that led towards safety. It was rushing cyanide gas, and the papery crunch of bodies beneath him as he fled from fire towards fire, burning in the desert. He moistened his lips. "Where are we?" "Underground." The man in the room narrowed his eyes. "Like I said, you should know this." He ignored him. "You don't like it." He gestured with his hands, intense. "Everything you saw out there.... I can tell you don't like it. Why do you just accept it all?" He was almost trembling with intensity. These were the first. If the project succeeded, and if he escaped intact, there would be a million million more to convert, urging them to resist with his voice alone. These were the first. "Accept?" The man in the room raised a doubtful hand to his head. "What else....?" "We were chosen for this," the man behind him said, a note of pride in his voice. "Chosen because you were sheep?" Mulder spat out, derisively. He took a step forward, his hands itching to shake the man inside until he saw things for what they were. "Chosen because you would mindlessly following orders? Were you born stupid, or did they make you this way?" "Mulder." Scully's voice behind him, low and warning. "Look, Scully." He whirled round and grabbed her wrist, holding it tightly. He wanted them to see with one pair of eyes, to feel the same. "Look at them. This is the future." He raised his voice, shouting to all of them, his eyes pricking. "Would you kill if they ordered you to? Would you?" His eyes focused on one. The man nodded slowly, but his eyes said, "of course." He bunched a fist, but remembered Scully, and slammed it into the wall instead. Fire licked his knuckles. "You..... you disgust me." He shook himself free, and walked to his room. ****** "Mulder?" She walked tentatively. He had been withdrawn for the last day, edgy, burning inside with an anger that was close to consuming him. He was coiled tight as a spring, crouched beside the door in the corridor. His eyes flickered at the sound of her feet, but he didn't look up. "Mulder?" His fingers were woven together. As she watched, they clenched, then unclenched, the knuckles white. "The guard comes through that door with our food," he said, dully, not looking at her. "I'll be waiting." She let out a breath. "Mulder." She placed a hand on his shoulder, half pulling him back, half supporting him. "What can....?" "I have to try." She swallowed hard. Last time he had said that, she had almost lost him. There was the same heavy air of fatalism about him. Doomed, she had thought then. "You know, Scully...." He gave a brittle laugh, his eyes burning dully. "I always thought they would kill me in the end. I never thought that they would want to turn me into a.... a mindless drone, doing the work of slave masters." "Maybe they won't." Again the laughter, as if he had gone beyond.... beyond _everything_, and could only laugh. "He told me, Scully - Cancerman. Everything.... It's all been some sort of test. They've been watching me, testing my spirit." He shook his head. "I guess it's one test I wish I hadn't passed." She dug her nails into her palms. "Why would they test your.... your spirit, if they wanted to make you a 'mindless drone'?" He laughed, and she wanted to shake him, to hold him. He laughed, and pressed one hand against his forehead. "Then they want to make me a leader, and that's worse, Scully - far worse. I _can not_ live with that." She shook her head sadly, and shivered. "And now I'm wondering if any of it was ever real." There was resignation in his voice, and a bleak despair. "I've been nine years on X-Files, Scully. It was my life. I thought I was close to the truth, but nothing prepared me for this. Was it _all_ a lie - a test?" She searched for comfort, but found none. It would demean him to lie, to treat him like a child. "I don't know. I shouldn't think so. You had them scared at times. You found some truths - we found them." He looked at her bleakly. "But it's nothing now, Scully, can't you see? I'm looking at a future controlled by the people I most hate. I have _got_ to hope, Scully. I've got to fight. Right now, it's all I have." He put his hand to his face, covering his eyes. He was hiding from her, but she knew from his voice. He was crying soundlessly - tears without sobs. "If I stop fighting, it's because I've stopped hoping, and if I stop hoping, I die." She didn't want to touch him. He needed comfort, but she was not the one to give it. She was not supposed to know about his tears. She cleared her throat, and blinked back tears of her own. "You could accept their position, and fight them from within...." It sounded hollow even as she said it. She had expected a storm of denial, but instead he just shook his head, slowly, so slowly. "I hate them, Scully. I could never join them. It would be like.... like allying with the Devil." She shivered. "So." He looked at her, then rubbed his eyes. It was a moment of confidence, she knew. He was showing her that he had been crying - telling her that he trusted her enough to know. "So I fight, Scully." He gestured at the door. "This is my way." She knew him better than to object. Instead, she touched him gently on the shoulder. "It could get you killed, Mulder." He nodded, but said nothing. ****** A keening noise woke her - distant, like a whine. "Mulder?" She pushed the covers back and stood up, bare-foot upon the floor. There were no dreams heavy in her memory, now. Sleep was as empty as her days, though by day she had Mulder. Except once, he had never appeared in her dreams. "Mulder?" She opened the door and stood there on the threshold, watching him. Earlier, she had watched him sleep, slumped against the wall, his chin slumped forward on his chest. She had watched him awhile, then softly returned to her room, feeling the strange privacy of the moment. Asleep, he was as if naked, stripped of all his defences, child-like. "Mulder?" He was kneeling now, every muscle alert, awake. The side of his face was pressed against the door and his eyes were closed. She swallowed. "Mulder?" "Scully." Slowly, he opened his eyes, and for a second she had an insane urge to stop him - an insane conviction that she would see something terrible. Eyes burning like coals. "Listen, Scully." She blinked, and his eyes were rich brown, but old, so old. "It's an alarm, Scully." There was a terrible hunger in his voice. "It's happening. It's started." Then, before she could breathe, he whirled round and pounded a fist once into the door, hard. "And I'm in here," he shouted. His fist opened into a flat palm, pressed against the door, and, as she watched, it trickled down like water, until he was sitting on the floor, hands slack at his sides, head slumped forward. "And I'm in here, Scully," he almost sobbed. Somewhere, like the scream of a dying world, the alarm continued. "Maybe...." And then she stopped. But he knew it, anyway. "There always was a degree of escapism in your refusal to believe, wasn't there, Scully?" His voice was dull - resigned, not angry. "It's safer to shut your eyes to what's happening. You want to live in a cocoon, refusing to let the truth shake your little view of the world." She clenched her fists, fighting the urge to hit him, to silence him. His words _hurt_. "It's safer to hide, isn't it, Scully?" His eyes held her, and there was something strange in them - almost longing. As if part of him wanted so intensely to be able to retreat from the truth and hide in some beautiful unreality, some fantasy world. Some soft white-paved prison.... Some wild impossible hope.... "Don't." She swallowed hard, her eyes stinging. His words hurt, but..... "Maybe we each have our cocoons, Mulder," she said, softly. How could her voice stay so level? "Perhaps we need them to survive. If I'm hiding, then you are too. This.... this hope of yours, that you can somehow save the world.... You said it yourself, Mulder - you need hope to live, however implausible that hope is.... Can't that be called a refusal to face reality, too?" She half-closed her eyes. The picture of Samantha that he carried everywhere.... He had never needed to face up to the sad remains of his life, clinging onto the hope - the insane hope - that just to see her smile would magically heal everything. Hope like that could be a crutch. He would cling to the crutch while his limbs atrophied, just like now he was clinging.... "No," she murmured, aloud, aware that she was being unfair. They had both been unfair, though not untrue, perhaps. He gave a strange harsh laugh. "Reality sucks, huh?" Then, before she could answer, he bunched a fist again and held it up. "I want to change reality." Silently, she shook her head. Instead, she touched his shoulder. "Don't hope too much," she said, once more. "What can you do alone?" "Not alone, Scully." A stillness fell over him. "Never alone." She let her hand fall, afraid. If he meant her, she wasn't sure she could do it. If he meant someone else.... His eyes meant someone else. ****** "Why don't they come, Scully?" High on the ceiling, the red eye blinked. "Why?" He wrapped his arms round his knees and rocked, tense almost beyond the point of endurance. For two days he had waited beside the door, ready to attack, ready to fight. He needed only to put a face to his hatred. It was so hard to fight soft white sheets, and warm water and clean clothes. He could fight only by denying himself, and that was absurd. Once, late at night, he had almost torn his clothes off, refusing to wear what they gave him, to do even this for them. Then he had imagined them laughing, seeing him reduced so low. "They're watching you," she said, at last. She seemed to hesitate always, now, before speaking to him. "They know you're waiting. You're only hurting yourself by this.... this resistance." he read in her eyes. "Or they're busy." The alarm had long since fallen silent, but sometimes, through the door, he heard running feet. "Taking control, or losing it." He smiled cruelly. "I hope they're losing it." "If _they_ can't assert control, who can?" Her voice was soft. She gestured at the four men, a blank leaderless huddle in a doorway. "If what they say is true...." "Tyranny or anarchy? To live as slaves, or die free? The choice is yours." He gave a bitter laugh. Oh, but he wanted - he needed - to bury his head into his hands and weep, calling for her. And her receding footsteps sounded in his head like the hammer-blows of that thought: We haven't a chance. We haven't a chance. We haven't a chance.... "No," he said aloud, and raised his head to stare at the camera. "I refuse to accept that." ****** And someone came, and death was with him. Someone came, and Mulder slept. ****** A hand at his throat, heavy and coarse. From a sleep in which he was weeping, searching, Mulder half awakened, swaying his head from side to side, a low moan in his throat: "no...." The hand pressed down, the thumb pushing into the hollow at the base of the throat. In the desert of his dream, he collapsed to his knees, unable to breath. Half mad with loneliness, he almost welcomed death. "Mulder." He was awake in an instant, eyes open, body still. Hand on his throat, cold blue eyes observing him. The man's clothes smelled of smoke. "Ah, Agent Mulder...." "You." He lashed the man's arm away, then let his own hand move to his throat, protective. Scully was wrong. His resistance _was_ reasoned. He would bide his time - wake up fully before attacking. "I was making sure you were still alive." The man's voice was bitter. Alcohol mingled with smoke on his breath. "I've wanted you dead; I've mourned you where you _were_ dead. Why have you got that power over me, Agent Mulder? Why?" "I...." He pulled himself to a sitting position against the wall. He was cautious, thrown by this sudden frailty in his inhuman emotionless enemy. Like this, he was harder to fight, harder to hate. "I don't know," he said, at last, his mind racing. "You always fascinated me." His hands were shaking. The smoke in his clothes was too acrid for cigarette smoke. "I've hated you; I've envied you. At times, I've almost loved you. Mostly, I've hated you." He didn't want to hear. He _understood._ He didn't want to understand. "You opposed what I thought was right - what I knew was right - what _is_ right." The man slumped beside him. They were like drinking companions - best friends side by side against the wall. The reek of alcohol was unmistakable. Mulder clenched his fist. For three days he had waited.... Oh, but he wanted to pummel the man's face into an unrecognisable pulp. "Scully!" he called, a pained croak. "Scully!" Her cool assessing eyes as he hit Roche. With her watching, he would not lose control. "Order." The man reached into his pocket and brought out a small flask. "Order. Control. Survival. You went against that. You were like a child, not knowing what you meddled with, not knowing the price." "The price? You should have told me the price. You should have told me the truth." He gave a short laugh, brittle. "_If_ it mattered to you like this...." "We should have killed you." The man took a large mouthful of drink. "Only sentiment stopped me. Your parents.... You could have been mine. I could have been you." He wanted her. He wanted then to hear it together, to feel it together, to see it as one. "I should have killed you. I will _not_ let you see what's out there." A soft hiss. "What's out there?" He was shaking with control. He would hear the truth before beating him into silence, but this time he would not walk away. The man's words had charmed away his gun twice before. The man took another mouthful. "Betrayal." And Scully was there, still as a ghost. Her eyes were wide, as if she could not believe the surreal nature of the scene before her. He marvelled at how _he_ had accepted it. He had opened his eyes, blinked, and then adapted. Her presence eased him. He let out a breath. "Who by? You? You con the people by offering them order, and then enslave them?" The metal flask shone. "We would have saved them, Mulder." It was a cry. "How?" Scully. She stepped forward, as if drawn to the man. He didn't turn round. "You think we chose this, Mulder? Do you? You think we hurt people because we _like_ it?" Yes. He nodded, but was beyond speaking. "They would have done worse." Another swig. "Much worse." "They?" Scully's arms were wrapped round her body. "Aliens, Agent Scully - not that you will believe me." He laughed. "They chose you well. Someone loyal, but too blind to see, while Mulder saw, but was not believed, and missed the point." "Which is?" She leant forward - her icy interrogation look, ignoring words that hurt. "Aliens." The man blinked several times, then rubbed his eyes harshly. "They came. They were so superior to us, technologically. They wanted to colonise. _They_ set the date, Mulder - not us. They had no more respect for us than a man has for the.... for the worms in the soil he digs for his foundations. " "Respect?" he spat out, contemptuous. He clenched his fists tighter, and trembled. "We did what we could, Agent Mulder. We salvaged control." He twisted the flask in his pale lined hands. "Their coming was inevitable. We initiated hybridisation projects to persuade them that mankind could be utilised - that they needn't start afresh but could use the existing population. We appropriated what technology we could so they would respect us, listen to us. If their coming was inevitable, we would at least salvage what we could." He wished he had his gun. "You expect us to believe that?" "Yet you have believed lies - beautiful lies." "Prove you're not lying." Rapid as gunfire. "Careful, Mulder. I could still kill you." The man breathed out and raised the flask, almost lazily. "You expect us to believe that everything you did was for our own good?" It was surreal, like a nightmare. He wanted to laugh hysterically, or scream. "Some must suffer for the rest to live." It was dull, as if he was quoting. "Desperate diseases require desperate remedies." He smashed at the man's flask, spilling amber liquid on the tiles. It was a spreading stain, and dark. His fury could not be expressed in words. "It was an awesome responsibility, Agent Mulder." The man grasped the empty flask, clutching to it as if it was an anchor. His speech was becoming slurred. "We held the fate of the world in our hands. If people knew...." He gestured vaguely upwards. "You saw what it's like out there, Mulder. You've seen what panic can do to civilisation. Order is our hope." "So, what? You promised them that you would hand over a population nicely softened, ready for them to take over?" Mulder invested his voice with a heavy sarcasm, not letting himself believe. "In exchange for what? They promised that you could be their commandants, if you co-operated?" The man's mood shifted again. Melancholy, he nodded. And he saw the truth in the man's eyes. "But it's not working, is it?" He smiled, even laughed. "It's all going wrong for you....." "For all of us." Scully had fallen to her knees beside them, her hand on her chest. "How?" she breathed. "We're not ready for them yet, and they've come." He grabbed Mulder's wrist and squeezed, his eyes intense. "Did they ever intend to keep to the deal, do you think? Did they just agree to buy time while they prepared for this? Did they intend to betray us all along?" He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. The man's eyes made him breathe fast with hatred, his chest heaving. The wound still hurt. "What's happening out there?" Again, it was Scully who spoke, asking a question he had wondered, a few days ago, if she even cared about. He had accused her of hiding, but she had more strength than that - of course she had more strength than that. "Betrayal." The hand squeezed tighter. "Death. Disorder." The man shuddered. "Disorder...." Mulder trembled. He wanted to scream, to break, to shout.... "The disorder is the worst." And he broke. "You made it!" Face twisting with rage, hot tears on his cheeks, he launched himself at the man, pummelling blindly. "You...." Strong hands on his shoulders, pulling. "Mulder." Scully. He couldn't see. Fire burned in his chest and he was gasping for breath, his arms heavy. There was blood on his fist. "Mulder...." Vision sheeted red. He was sobbing, shouting - grief and fury. The man's fists fought back, striking with the unpredictability of a drunk. One smashed into his cheekbone, leaving him reeling, and another into his chest.... Like interference in a radio signal, the world froze for a second, then continued. For that second, there had been nothing but pain and the need to breathe. "Let me out!" _His_ hateful voice with an edge of fear. Scully's white hands closed round his wrist and held him back. A trickle of blood marred her fingers. Her eyes held his, then flicked back over her shoulder. The four men circled them, their eyes grim, their fists raised. "Scully," he gasped. The door opened, and outside was an unimaginable world of freedom. She held him - God, she _held_ him - as the man pulled himself to his feet, steadied himself against the wall, and stepped forward. Two booted guards covered him with their guns. "No!" He snaked a hand out for the man's ankle. He would pull him down. They would be on the same level. They would.... A booted foot slammed down on his fingers. He let his face show the hurt of it. "Worms, Agent Mulder." Through the closing door, the man's voice sounded. "We're worms to them - just worms." And then he laughed, high and hysterical. He laughed, and then there was silence. ****** Reality had shifted. In the world that came after, silence held them. Limp in her arms, Mulder was breathing fast, and she could hear the pain that each breath caused him. Her hands were on him but they were still, now - no longer holding him back, but not stroking, offering comfort. Then he turned to look at her, and held her gaze, unblinking. "You believe him." It was not a question. "I...." His hands scrabbled, pulling himself away from her until he was supporting himself alone. It earned her a second to prepare her answer, though what could she say? "I think it is possible that they believed that they had a.... a responsibility. I think it is possible that they believed that the things they did were the best way forward." "They were saving the world from aliens?" There was naked hurt in his eyes. "Eight years, Scully, and you could never once bring yourself to say that you believed in them - not once, when you knew how important it was to me. And then _he_ comes...." She tensed, her voice low. "I have come to believe more than I used to, Mulder." She was not proud of it. She didn't want the four silent listeners to hear. "But that man...." Fierce. He gestured at the door. "The things he's done to us. How can you believe _anything_....? He's manipulated me - he's said so. This is more of the same. It's going wrong, and he's already starting the apology." She held her ground. "He believes it - part of it, anyway." "Why? Because he's drunk? Because he shows his feelings, and all at once you feel sorry for him?" His words were meant to sting like a whip. He was coiled and dangerous, one step away from lashing out blindly. "Believe me, Scully, I have _seen_ this before. My father...." He passed a hand over his face. "After Samantha.... He drank. He cried. He seemed broken. Who would have thought of blaming him? I certainly didn't." She knew the hurt he bore there, but it wasn't the time for it. She lowered her voice, intense. "If it's falling apart out there.... If they caused it, and can't control it.... If they thought, rightly or wrongly, that it was for the best.... Responsibility can be terrible, Mulder." And then, suddenly, she had to reach for the wall, steadying herself. She felt faint inside, almost unable to bear the dreadful resonance of the word. There were so many things she didn't want to think about. "They caused it." She didn't recognise him in his eyes. "They. I hate them. Nothing else matters." She could find no way of saying it that didn't sound trite, inadequate. "They're losing control out there." He smiled grimly. "It's not going how they'd planned. There's hope that we can fight back. They're losing, Scully." It was not Mulder. The hope in his eyes was all from hatred, from enjoyment of their misfortune. It seemed alien to him, yet not so alien, as if she had seen it before but not recognised it. She wondered when he had changed - when he had moved from fighting out of love, desiring only to find his sister, to fighting out of hate, desiring only to destroy the ones who had taken her. And Melissa had said once that she had seen the same conflict in his eyes, once - the same war between the light and the dark of his quest. Melissa.... At that moment, knowing that the world as she knew it was in ruins, she only wanted to weep for the poor dark shadow that was Mulder's soul. ****** He was running his fingers slowly over his bruised knuckles, again and again. "Mulder?" She tightened her grip on the door. It was twelve hours since he had last spoken and the thought of seeing into his mind scared her. She feared it would be dark beyond imagining. "Mulder?" His head nodded, then jerked sharply, as if he had fallen asleep for a second. For the merest instance, his face blanked with.... fear? She took a step forward. "Mulder?" His lips moved - two almost silent syllables. "Footsteps?" She froze, listening, but heard nothing. "Where, Mulder? Who?" "Him." Dark and thrilling. He wrapped his arms around his knees. "He's coming." It was an icy finger on her spine. ****** No hands reached for her now. In her dreams, she wandered through a barren world, and her solitary tears burned like acid. "You hid." It was the voice in her head - the voice that was her own, yet not her own. "You could have saved them, but you didn't." She flashed on the ghostly memory of the little girl. "They could have been your children." "No...." She fell to her knees, her face twisting. "I can't have children." The voice ignored her. "And now, instead of you, they have _that_." And a nightmare kaleidoscope of images.... Blood in the streets; a million people coughing; flaming buildings as the only light in the night; and him.... Him. Red eyes in a face that _was_ evil. White teeth that flashed in a smile, and made birds fall from the air like stones, dead. Blood dripping from his raised fists. Eyes that withered grass and could strike a growing child with a cancer. Horror like a miasma from his aspect and his eyes. Him. "I'm scared of the bogeyman." She heard the little girl's voice, clear in her memory. "Save me from the bogeyman, Dana." Him. Red eyes.... And slowly, though part of her knew, somehow, that he was not here at all but a long way North, he turned towards her, his eyes searching.... And his eyes fell on her, and blinked, and they were blue and beautiful, like a polished gun is beautiful. "He knows I'm here." Terror coursed through her, though still she stood, and didn't lower her eyes though she was quaking inside. "He knows I'm here, and he's coming. Help me, God. Help all of us." And he walked. ****** His hands were at her neck. Blood pounding in her ears, she jolted awake. Arms entwining her; a face pressed against her throat. "Mulder?" She heard him in the darkness, and heard the catch in his breathing. He withdrew, and she thought she heard the soft exhale of an apology. "Mulder?" She ran her fingers over her neck. He had been kneeling on the floor beside her bed, bending over and holding her. His hands had been on her shoulders, his face pressed into the turn of her neck. Her skin tingled with the feel of his breathing. But she bit her lip and said nothing. He swallowed audibly. His breathing told her the truth - he had been crying, and, crying, had needed her. Once, a lifetime away, she had lain as one asleep in a hospital bed and heard him cry like this, afraid to let him know she had seen his weakness. She had never told him. "Mulder?" Soft. "Scully." His trembling hand reached for hers and pulled it upwards, as if pointing. "Look." She frowned. "What? Nothing...." "No." He took a shuddering breath, tight with the effort of control. "Nothing. The camera..." "They're not watching us any more." She had hated that camera, wanting only to feel free. "No. What if....?" He paused. "What if there's nobody left alive to watch us?" "Mulder." Sharp. She reached for the light switch, then stopped. She would give him warning - time to wipe his eyes and put on his mask. "I'm putting the light on, okay?" she said, softly, and part of her knew that she would never turn it off again, never tolerate full darkness again. The switch clicked, but nothing happened. ****** Blinded by darkness, they took the blankets to the corridor and sat there, pulled close to each other for warmth and comfort. Sometimes his head was on her chest; sometimes hers was on his. She saw no weakness in that. "If they're all dead...." She twisted a corner of the blanket. "If no- one comes....?" "Then we start eating them." She felt his movement as he gestured back at the four silent rooms. "Fillet of sheep." If she half closed her eyes she could see them, all four of them sitting quietly on their own beds, hands folded loosely in their laps, waiting for.... what? But she smiled, sadly. It was a spark of the Mulder she knew. "If they're dead..." His voice was heavy. "Then the aliens have won. I... I always wanted to prove that they existed, but this is taking it a bit far, isn't it, Scully?" She was silent. He shifted position. "It might be only them, Scully," he began, diffidently, but as he spoke he gained confidence. The wild hope was back in his voice. She found she had missed it. "It might be. If Cancerman told some truths.... Imagine it - the aliens break their agreement with our friends the Consortium. They want to colonise the world on their own terms, not hand-in-hand with.... with _them_. The Consortium has become their enemy, not the people. Everyone else might still be alive." But she said nothing. The echo of her dreams stayed with her, and the irrational clawing fear of what was _out there_. Not alive, and not people. "If we could just get out...." She shivered. And then, strange and sudden, a thought from nowhere - a thought she could not believe: But, as if they were washed by cool soothing water, her fears fell away. She saw herself standing in green fields, and it felt right and true. But Mulder.... She twisted the blanket tighter as the fears returned like a swelling wave. He was outside, apart. She saw no green fields for him. ****** Footsteps sounded in his dreams, soft and distant. "He's coming." He spoke aloud in the blackness of his prison, and thrilled with the hope of it. "He's coming for me." And he smiled. Half-closing his eyes, he let himself imagine. Fry's blue eyes smiled: "Did you think I'd leave you, Fox. Did you think I'd forgotten you?" An open hand with a crow's feather in it, which, as he watched, clouded and changed into a dull black key. "I was angry with you for being taken, but I have forgiven you. I will release you from all that is gone before, Fox. Take this key. Accept it." Not yet, though. Not yet. Kneeling on the hard ground, he waited, and listened. And the footsteps were closer. ****** Footsteps.... Before he was fully awake, he was on his feet, hope surging. He pressed his ear against the door and still he heard it. Footsteps. "Scully?" He crouched down and reached for her, but found only a discarded blanket. Breathing sounded in the darkness, fast and tense, as if she had backed away against the wall and now crouched there, terrified. Every breath caught, almost like a whimper. "Scully?" Soft. Even amidst the hope that was almost joy, he felt his eyes prick. He had never seen her terrified before. She had always been strong, and endured. "It's...." "Someone's there." Her voice was high. "I dreamed...." "You dreamed about him too?" He found her wrist and held it. She gave a small cry. He wanted to hold her and weep with relief, that they were together in this, but when he tried to speak of it, he could not. The dreams were personal. There was even a bitter stab of jealousy that she had shared them too. "I....," she began, then swallowed. The footsteps shuffled, and there was a full choking cough. A guttural voice swore. "It's not him." Black disappointment mingled with relief. "It's..." And then he was pounding on the door with painful fists. "Let us out! Unlock the door! Let us out...." Silence. Scully edged forward. Her hand moved over him, feeling for its resting place at the small of his back. And the door opened, and they were staring into a wavering light. "Yes." The voice was hoarse. The light wavered again and became a flashlight in the man's hand. His face was white, and blood trickled down his chin. He held a gun in his other hand. Scully's hand pressed into his back. Mulder took a step forward and her hand fell away. He felt suddenly that he was being drawn forward, that she was being drawn back. "Stay with me, Scully," he murmured, then half hoped she hadn't heard. She would bridle at it, and go her own way. "Yes," the man said again, and a strange noise issued from his gaping mouth - half laughter, half coughing. Droplets of blood shone in the light. "Yes. You can come out. Why should you escape? Now you'll die too." She was back by his side, and her hand closed round his. "I'm a doctor," she murmured, but there was no hope in her voice. "A doctor?" The guard laughed harshly, then a fit of trembling took him like a spasm and the flashlight fell from his hand. It rolled on the ground and then settled, still shining. It was as if he was standing knee-deep in light, while his face was in darkness. "A doctor?" his invisible mouth mocked. "It's too late for that. _They_ came." "They?" Mulder stepped forward. "What happened?" The guard didn't answer. His knees seemed to buckle and he collapsed towards, grabbing at Mulder as he fell. The two of them froze, locked in some deadly clinch, shaking with the effort of staying upright. The man's eyes held him. "Mulder," he gasped, eyes widening with recognition. "You. _You_ deserve to live least of all." He took a deep breath and spat in Mulder's face. "I'll live." Mulder lowered the man to the floor, groped for the flashlight, and straightened up. He rubbed at his face and it came away red. "I'll fight." He stepped over the man's body and walked through the door, letting the light shine down the corridor. It fell on one grey lump, then another, then another. Three bodies, not moving. His hand rose to his mouth, half in horror, half in.... protection? He stepped and stepped, and it seemed suddenly as if his footsteps were the only living thing in the world. He wanted - needed - to run, to rip open doors and search, crying out, "is anyone there? Is anyone still alive?" "Mulder?" Scully. Slowly, he turned round to face her wide eyes, her pale face. She was kneeling on the floor, bent over the guard. Her lips moved, but his reeling mind couldn't hear her, didn't need to hear her. Dead. All dead. ****** "No." The blank-faced sheep spoke as one. Mulder wanted to weep. "But...." He grabbed an arm - a random one. He had never bothered to ask their names. "The doors are open. We can go back home." He was dimly aware of Scully in the background. She was twisting the dead guard's key-card between her hands, looking at it as if it was the passport to death, not the passport to freedom and hope that it was. He raised his voice, speaking to her as well as to the nothing-men. "What is there to keep us here? We know they're dead down here. Out there...." "Out there?" Scully whispered, then she shook her head abruptly and put the key-card into her pocket. "It's safe in here." The man's voice was hollow. His eyes were red- rimmed and.... he realised, suddenly. "We were ordered to report here. They would keep us out of danger until it's time to...." "Damn it, it will _never_ be time, not now." He grabbed the man's overalls, forcing him to look at the guard's body. "Can't you see? _Can't you see_? There's no-one here to keep you safe any more. Out there...." He almost smiled. "Out there is.... not here." The man ran his hand across his face, and looked almost human. "Perhaps we'll get what that guy had. Perhaps we will die here, but it's.... it's easier, you know?" "Easier to give up?" He remembered the guard, and almost spat in disgust. "They had no chance, did they - no chance at all? They based their hope for the future on men like you?" "Leave it, Mulder." Scully sounded so weary. "Let's just get out of here." But something in her voice made him pause. "You agree with them?" He shook his head, wondering. "You want to stay here too?" She raised her chin, and the fear in her eyes was well mastered. "It's the Devil you know, Mulder. It's always easier. It's.... it's hard to face.... We don't know _what's_ out there, do we, Mulder?" He thumped the flashlight into the cupped palm on his other hand, rhythmically, again and again. "So we can hope," he said. A whimper of doubt was starting up deep inside, but he knew he must not listen to it. "We hope," he said, louder. He saw himself in green fields in a restored world, and it felt good and true. He believed in premonition and fate. She didn't waver. "And fear, too, Mulder. It's only human." The whimper became a scream. Beyond speaking, he nodded. Like a priceless diamond held in cupped hands, he clung to the image of the green fields, and clung to it still as he walked away. ****** Hand in hand, they headed for the light. Doors opened to a touch. After half a dozen of them, Mulder had almost broken down. "It was open all along, Scully, ever since the cameras went out." His voice had cracked. "I didn't try hard enough. He was right. If I'd _really_ wanted to fight...." "Not now, Mulder." Sharp. All along, it had been all she could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other. She felt she was walking into a dark cloud of evil that would attack her very essence. Even a dark underground prison full of death felt safer. He coughed, but said nothing. She imagined a line on the floor and walked on it, eyes wandering neither to the right not to the left, mind closed to what might lie ahead. "Scully." Sometime later. She didn't look at him. "Scully. Cancerman." For a moment, she let reality in, and saw him. He was slumped over a monitor, an empty bottle near one hand, a pen and paper near the other. Mulder's hand shook as he reached for the paper. It crackled as he raised it, brittle from dried blood stains. "Scully?" Almost fiercely, she forced herself to focus. "'It's coming. He's coming. We were so wrong'." Mulder read aloud, jabbing his finger at the paper, and he was smiling. "Listen, Scully. 'He will destroy us all. He's coming for us.' Good." She sighed, and closed her eyes again. Just a crack to watch her feet and follow her invisible line. "Hand in hand," she murmured. A long-forgotten line came into her head, and with it the memory of a serpent-smile. "Hand in hand with wandering steps and slow, through Eden took their solitary way.... Paradise Lost." He snatched his hand away. "You think this prison was Paradise? Like.... like _them_." Once they had opened a door to find a cluster of a dozen people, all blank-faced as the four they had lived with. They had refused to move, and, while she was Scully and would fight, she had understood. "No." She shook her head wearily. Before she had tuned them out, they had seen dozens of bodies, all of whom had died coughing blood. As a doctor, she had not even begun to theorise on what killed them. "But I'm scared of what we'll find out there," she said, truthfully. He nodded slowly, and for a moment she saw a truth that even he wasn't aware of, perhaps. She squeezed his hand. In that moment she feared what the truth would do to him almost more than she feared the truth itself. If "out there" was.... was _bad_.... If he saw it and accepted it, then he would break down utterly, while she.... She had to bite her lip not to cry aloud, and the pleading hands of her dream again haunted her. But she held on tighter. ****** He reached the light alone. Scully had fallen back, standing a few paces behind, her eyes on the ground. He could feel her hands clasping and unclasping, tense and scared. He coughed, out of breath from the stairs, then coughed again. Scully made a sharp noise in her throat - perhaps even his name. His lips moved silently. "I'm here. I'm...." His hands were shaking. Scully was right - he had hoped too much. He would stay on the verge forever, one hand on the shattered outside door, and preserve the moment for ever. he would smile. Stay here and savour the moment, drinking in every minute of it. He would live forever on the penultimate page of a story, enjoying the confident knowledge that the ending would be happy.... Never having to face the dreadful fear that the ending might be sad. He coughed again, covering his mouth with his hand. Red pain lanced through his chest with every cough. "Scully?" "Mulder." Her fist was pressed against her mouth, her eyes full of dreadful knowledge. "Oh, Mulder...." He coughed again, and the pain made him reach for the support of something - anything - solid. The door moved away from him and opened an inch. He shut his eyes. "Mulder?" Her hand reached for his, then she pulled him forward and held him, her face pressed against his shoulder. Under his hands, her back was shaking, as if she was crying. He was, too. "Scully...." He coughed again, and had to push her away simply to get the room to breathe. And her eyes.... He wiped his eyes. "Quit staring at me, Scully. I'm fine...." And slowly, slowly, he turned for the door. ****** end of part 3 ****** He'd fallen silently, and without warning. He hadn't called her name. Afterwards, as she wiped the blood from his unresponsive face and watched the laboured movements of his chest, she tried so hard to remember the sound of her name on his lips. Perhaps he _had_ called for her, and she hadn't heard.... And what did that make her? And if he hadn't called for her, then why not? Why, dying, would he choose to retreat from her and collapse in utter silence? "Mulder...." She touched his face. Nothing. An hour ago, they had emerged from the darkness into the merciless beauty of a blue winter afternoon, and a dreadful screaming silence. A discarded newspaper had fluttered in the wind - soft whispering noises against the ground. Five minutes of watching, and Mulder had broken free and stamped on it fiercely, breathing heavily, his eyes wild. She had understood. The silence.... "Mulder?" Her voice was the whisper of the newspaper. Utter silence could be dismissed as hallucination, but that single sound made it real, amplified it. It was as if her voice was echoing up to the sky - the only living voice on the planet. Hand in hand, they had stepped across the twisted bodies, heading for the shattered gate of the compound. His hand had trembled and had tightened on hers whenever he coughed. Her eyes had flickered to his face, finding it impassive, though she'd known he had to be close to breakdown. He had hoped so much.... "All dead," she had whispered. "All of them. How?" Hand pressed against her mouth, she had focused on a movement that could have been a hand, could have been the wind touching a curtain. She had found it painful to swallow. "Mulder?" she had begun. "Is that...?" When she'd turned back to him, he'd been unconscious on the ground. He'd fallen silently, and without warning. He hadn't called her name. ****** Two pillows or one...? She held them in her hands, testing the weight assessingly. They were large pillows, and soft. She had carefully selected a dark colour, unwilling to see the stark contrast of blood on white cloth. A dark blanket was draped over her shoulder and a small pack of supplies hung from her forearm. But two pillows or one...? She frowned. One would be easier to carry, allowing her to carry more food, but if he then asked for two and she had to come back.... If she had to leave him again and he died while she was away.... Almost fiercely, she jammed the two pillows under her arm, and turned towards the door of the half-shattered store. Already, picking her way over bodies had become almost habit, done without thought, even without horror. She was wrapped up in cotton wool, and numb. She had always been fiercely practical, and part of her knew it was a coping mechanism, shielding her from the full horror of the loss of everything she had ever known. It was too vast to feel. Any horror she felt would be inadequate, and so she felt none. But Mulder.... Out in the too-silent street, she swallowed hard. All along, she had known, perhaps, how it would be with him. He had let himself hope, fiercely, implausibly. He had emerged from their underground prison expecting a war he could fight - a war he could help turn into a victory. Instead, he had found a graveyard - a silent battlefield bathed in bloody sunset. He had seen his hope become nothing. And now he was dying, and he didn't care. ****** "Mulder." He didn't open his eyes - didn't try. Why? "Mulder?" Her hand on his shoulder, shaking gently. "I'm back." He opened his mouth to speak, but a cough seized him. Raising a hand to his mouth needed a strength more than he could muster, so he turned his head away from her voice. Warm liquid trickled down his chin. "I've got a blanket for you, and pillows." She paused. "Do you want one or two?" But he said nothing. "Mulder." Her voice came closer, intense. "There's a house just over there, and its door's open. If I could get you on the blanket, I could...." "No." He opened his eyes, surprised at the strength he could put into that word. "I told you. I'm not going inside. They're other people's houses. It would...." How could he make her understand? "It would make me like _them_." "They're dead, Mulder. All of them, somehow." Her voice was soft. "We don't know yet how far it extends, but it's reasonable to assume it's not just here. If we're to survive, we _need_ to take things from other people's houses, and stores. We have to adapt." His vision doubled with tears. "It's... it's like grave-robbing, Scully. They wanted to destroy civilisation. I... I don't want to die condoning that." She exhaled sharply. "Damn it, Mulder, you're killing _yourself_." He coughed again, and this time his eyes were open to see the blood on his clothes. "They killed me, Scully. You've seen all the bodies. I'm dying of.... of whatever it is they unleashed on the population - they, or the aliens. First the anarchy to weaken us, and then.... what? A gas in the atmosphere? A virulent plague?" He tried to smile. "It's funny, Scully. I thought it was going to be bees...." "You are _not_!" She slammed her fist into her hand. "You're killing yourself. You're not trying to fight. You're rejecting everything I.... " Her hand closed round his shoulder. "I'm a doctor, Mulder, and you won't listen to me. You.... " He shut his eyes and remembered the Scully of the past two weeks. Daylight had transformed her. "You were the one who told me not to fight, Scully," he said softly. "You were the one who wanted to stay down there." "I...." She swallowed, and there was a strange note in her voice. "I was.... I was afraid of what we'd find. I was afraid of what you expected we'd find - that the contrast between your expectation and the reality would be too great for you. I was afraid of.... of _this_." He coughed, and curled his knees up towards his chest. It gave him no relief. He felt she had been patronising him and treating him like a child, but could feel no anger. It was too late for that. "You might not..." She inhaled sharply, and there was a desperate fierceness in her voice when she spoke again. "You're not dying, Mulder. It's the stress, coupled with a chest injury that's not properly healed yet. It can't be the same as they all died of - can't be. If it was, we'd have both seen exposed to it, and _I'm_ not sick." The desperation in her voice.... She was doing what she had accused him of doing, clinging to a wild hope in a hopeless situation. It was.... it was _human_ and he loved her for it, and grieved for her because of it. When he died.... And then he couldn't stop the tears. "I'm sorry, Scully...." "Don't." She pressed a finger to his lips, and it was clumsy and trembling. It hurt him. "Don't start saying your farewells. Don't." She was where he had been all his life, still hoping for impossible miracles. He had moved on and embraced the darkness, understanding it for the first time. He had found his truth, and his truth was nothing. He coughed again. "You're right, Scully," he murmured, when he could. He was crying openly now, knowing he was too close to death to need to conceal. "The contrast between expectation and reality.... Wasn't that my life, Scully? I thought I was looking for something that would change the future, but all I was looking for was something I hoped would change the past. Nothing - nothing - could have given me what I wanted. Nothing I did could make any difference. Every small gain made it worse, in a way...." She touched his hair, but said nothing. She made no sign of understanding. He _wanted_ her to understand, here at the very end. "Every small fact that I gleaned about what I called the 'truth', Scully...." He grabbed her wrist. Her pulse was rapid beneath his fingers. "I knew I was a step closer, but I just felt further away. My childhood, my life, was still as it always had been. Nothing that I found out made me happy. If anything, it made me less happy, since each time I had allowed myself to hope that it _would_ change things." "Mulder...." "You were right, Scully, that night before they took us." He wiped his face with his hand, and it came away streaked with blood. "The truth doesn't make me happy. I... I hoped too much. The truth is that there is no hope - that nothing can be changed." "Damn it, Mulder - things can be changed." Her voice cracked, though her eyes were dry. "You're talking as if you believe in fate. _I_ don't. I believe that we have choices. I believe that we can control our.... our destinies. And I believe that you could fight this... this respiratory problem that you have." He shut his eyes and searched for the image of Fry, but couldn't find him. "I hoped we could fight," he said, scarcely above a whisper. "A man gave me that hope. He led me to believe..." Tears choked his voice. "I was wrong," he said, when he could speak again. "We can't fight this." Above him, the sky reddened. Clouds passed over his vision and he let himself drift. Drift.... ****** He had despaired. Arms wrapped tightly round her raised knees, she watched him sleep, knowing that she had already lost him. He had despaired, and he was no longer Mulder. Mulder had always burnt with a fierce flame of hope. It had sustained him, driving him through false leads, danger and pain, nourishing him when he had nothing else. Face set, eyes intense, he would have walked through fire, willingly suffering the burns and the fear, on the slimmest of hopes that there was some clue beyond the flames that would lead him to his truth. He had been a man created on hope, and without hope he was.... he was terrible. She let herself cry, then. Even if he lived, he had already died. ****** Close to death, Fox Mulder wandered in dreams.... On cold desert stone, he lay beneath the stars, hands folded softly on his breast as if laid out ready for burial. A cold star in the west increased and swelled like a sun, until he was bathed in silver light. He was dimly aware that he _had_ hurt, and that the touch of the light meant that he hurt no longer. The pain was like a dream within a dream. he thought, wonderingly. And then, out of the light stepped a figure. A silhouette against the light.... It was the willowy alien from the night Samantha.... It was the alien in Puerto Rico that had witnessed his panic and his failure. It was the figure of his nightmares.... He opened his mouth to scream, tried to drag himself away, but he couldn't move as much as a finger. he moaned, trapped in silence. <_This_ is death....> Death as an eternity of his worst fear, with no soothing healing light. "No, Fox." A low chuckle. "Not death. Life for you." And the figure stepped forward on soft leather boots and became the smiling face of Richard Fry. "You came." Tears tricked down Mulder's cheeks. Hope swelled in his like a sunrise. "I thought..." "No." The man's face looked grave, but there was a smile behind the surface, invisible yet somehow there. "I forgave you for letting yourself be taken. I couldn't come for you before. I've been away in the North, fighting...." He gestured at the desolation of the desert. "Fighting all this, Fox. Trying to stop it. Trying to rebuild." It was like water to a drowning man. He found he could raise his head. "There's still hope?" "Yes. A little, Fox, and only with me." "But..." And something of the outside world intruded - maybe Scully, moaning a little in her sleep, or the touch of the winter night on his face. "But I'm sick. I'm dying." "Are you?" On silent feet, Fry stepped forward and crouched beside him. He reached out, and one hand cupped Mulder's chin, while the other he laid flat upon his forehead. His eyes shut. "Are you, Fox?" he said again, and laughed, full and rich. The laughter released him, and he could stand, swaying a little but being reborn by the second. "Hope." He moistened his lips. "I will...." "Yes." Fry nodded. "We will be formidable, Fox. Whatever you see, you must never despair. There is always hope." "Yes." Mulder sighed. He shut his eyes and bathed in pure joy. After confinement, the first breath of fresh air is always the sweetest. When he opened his eyes, Fry was gone, and the air was whispering. ****** "Mulder!" She jolted out of sleep, fear crawling in her stomach, cold and painful. She had dreamt.... what? Already, the image was fading, but the terror was still there, like a physical pain. Hammering in her head, again and again. She passed a hand over her face. "Mulder?" "Scully." He was propped on his elbow in the moonlight. He breathing was slow and steady, his eyes reflective. His other hand had reached for the blanket and was clutching it convulsively. The moon was where it had been. If she had slept, it had only been for a few minutes. "Mulder?" She hardly dared touch him. Her hand was almost on his face, when suddenly he smiled, his teeth flashing white and unexpected in the moonlight. She snatched her hand back, her heart beating fast. "Scully." He frowned. He looked as if he was warring inside, torn. "I'm..." His hand moved to his forehead, his fingers shaking. "Did he come?" "No-one came." She was sure of that. She had slept for a little, dreamt a nightmare, then awoken. He passed his hand over his face. "I'm.... I'm not sick. I'm not sick. Why?" "I..." Wanting so desperately to smile, she cried instead. She touched him unreservedly. "I don't know. Maybe it doesn't matter." "It does." His face darkened and she felt an obscure pang of fear - fear for him, and fear of him. "It matters." ****** The blanket was draped across her shoulder, and she held it, hands clasped together at her chest. As moonlight turned to dawn, she watched him. "Mulder?" she tried, but no sound came out. Even if she has shouted, she doubted that he would have heard her. He was absorbed, as he always was with everything he did. His clothes still specked with blood, he had stood up, not waiting until dawn, and prowled away from her, intense and silent as a panther. Wonderingly, she had followed him back to a building they had passed shortly before his collapse - to a small police station. Now, surrounded by the dead, he was stockpiling weapons. "Mulder?" She settled the blanket tighter round her shoulders. "Stop, Mulder." Then, louder, "stop!" "There was rioting." His tone was dull, showing no sign of listening to her. "They had to take their guns with them. They died out.... out there. At the end, some must have seen how it was going and hidden their weapons, keeping them safe from looters." Coldly and dispassionately, he slammed a bat into a metal locker door, then raised it as if to do it again. "There's good weaponry here, Scully. We can be armed." "Why?" She passed a hand over her face, and the blanket fell away on one side. "So we can fight them," he almost spat. "Who?" She gestured behind her, at the empty streets. "There's no-one left." "We don't know that, Scully." He held the bat in one hand, bringing it down rhythmically in his other palm. Something inside her shivered at the sight of it. He was like a mugger preparing to attack an innocent. She had seldom seen the latent violence inside him, and never been its target. She.... She massaged the bridge of her nose, driving at a headache she hadn't been aware of before. She swallowed. The thought that Mulder had been about to attack her.... "....okay, Scully?" His voice was low, his hand on her sleeve. The bat trailed at his side, neglected. "I'm fine." She nodded, weakly, and shrugged. "It's... It's hard...." "Yes." The grim look was back, and, even this time, she found it hard to look at. There was another question she needed to ask. "It's hard, Scully, but we have to fight. Just because.... because _he_ was dead back there doesn't mean they all are. Somewhere, they could be gathering. This could be only the beginning." "The beginning?" She laughed. Grief and laughter were so close, sometimes. "Whatever they did killed all these people. It's no disease I recognise, and it must have been so fast acting, so.... universally fatal. They must have engineered it, Mulder. They wiped out.... Is it the whole world's population, Mulder?" "The date is set, Scully." The bat was back in his grip like a weapon. "The date is set, and now it has come. Colonisation - that's what they told me. If Cancerman was right and the aliens broke the treaty and did it their own way, then they should still be here, somewhere. They..." "Aliens?" Her voice was wan. This was surreal, terrible. "Aliens. Hybrids, perhaps." He shut his eyes briefly, as if to steady himself. "They must be somewhere. They will have a.... a base for their colonists. Why wipe out the population unless they intend to move in, to take over?" She covered her mouth with her hand, shaking. Just hours ago, he had been despairing. Her laughter might push him back into the darkness. "You want to save the world from alien invasion, Mulder," she asked, softly. When she said it, it was tragic, insanely heroic, but there was no humour in it - none at all. "You want to save the world with a baseball bat and a few automatic pistols?" He didn't smile, didn't falter. "No. Not just with these." She shivered. The cold grey of morning came through the windows, but outside was all silence. God, but she had to break the silence. She would ask, and face the consequences. "Mulder?" He didn't flicker. "Mulder? Why?" She took a deep breath. "Last night you were.... you were so different. You were despairing. You saw no hope in anything. You... Damn it, Mulder, you wouldn't even come inside, and now you're stealing dead men's guns, and stepping over their bodies without even seeming to care." A shadow passed over his face. "Last night, I.... I thought I was dying. I was in shock. You're right - it was so different from what I had hoped. I... I wasn't myself." He gave a half smile, shy and troubled, as if he was trying out his old sense of humour, testing how appropriate it was to the situation. "You have no idea how dying can cramp your style, Scully." She didn't smile. Her eyes ached with unshed tears. "You're not yourself now." His eyes levelled, dark and intense. "I am, Scully. You know that. You know me." Yes. Slowly, sadly, she nodded. She couldn't speak. He had always been focused, driven, casting aside all convention if it impeded with his quest. But if this was the Mulder she had always known, it was a Mulder stripped bare of his usual compassion, his fears.... even of his emotion. The one true emotion she had seen was hate. "They're dead," he said, his voice low. "They don't need their guns now. We can't bury them - how can we bury the millions of people in DC alone? To even attempt it would be madness. You said it yourself, Scully - if we are to survive, we will have to adapt. We will have to become callous towards the dead. It's too late for them, but it might not be too late for...." "Callous?" She wanted to slap him, hard. "Is that what you think I meant last night? Is that what you think I meant when I wanted to stay underground? If we have to be callous to survive, then I'm not sure I want to survive." He winced as if she _had_ slapped him. "You said...." He swallowed hard, licked his lips, and tried again. "You took the blankets. You told me I was wrong when I didn't want to." She bit back an angry response, but still held her ground. "Yes, Mulder. Yes I did. There's a difference between taking things because you have to, knowing that it's wrong, and taking things without caring. Reluctantly acting out of necessity is not being callous. It's.... " She gestured towards her chest, towards herself. "It's like the difference between a pathologist performing an autopsy, and a killer who mutilates his victims after death, for pleasure." His throat was moving convulsively. "I'm not... I'm not a killer." She grabbed his wrist. Words were pouring from her and she was unable to stop. She had repressed so much. "Do you know why I didn't want to come out of there, Mulder, really? It's because I was scared - I was scared of... of finding _this_." She phrased it like an accusation, angry. She had to. "Do you know why I went in there and got you your blankets - why I spent five minutes wondering how many to get you, when people were dead at my feet? No? Well, it's because...." And she nearly broke down and wept. Nearly. "It's because, if I let myself mourn even one of them, I... I don't know how I would ever stop crying." He touched her shoulder. "I know." It was the merest whisper. She couldn't bring herself to look at his face. Her eyes flashed fire. "So don't ever say I'm callous, Mulder - ever." "No." And she looked at him at last, and there were tears on his cheeks - tears that she couldn't let herself shed. His face was scoured with grief and horror. "Mulder." And she almost smiled, understanding. His words had been as much to convince himself as to convince her. He had swung on a pendulum, from despair and hopelessness, to a cold and hate-fuelled hope. Neither were truly him, and now he was whole. Despair and hope had merged, and he was her Mulder again. "Mulder." She touched his face, one hand cupping his cheek, and words came out that she had never intended. "I'm... I'm glad you didn't die, Mulder." He shut his eyes. "Being alone in this world.... It would be so cold, Scully." She took a deep breath. "We're not alone." She pulled him close and held him, her head resting on his shoulder. "No." When she looked up, he was staring intensely into the distance, though his hands were on her hair. ****** At his sides, his hands clenched and unclenched convulsively. Inside, he repeated the words that had become his mantra, his only source of strength: He bit his lips. His head swayed from side to side, despairingly. "It's so hard...." His lips moved silently. "So hard...." Their underground prison had been only a few miles from the FBI Headquarters. Silently, both thinking as one, they had walked there, weaving their way through the congested tangle of metal that was the cars on the roads. Driving would have been impossible. he had thought, fiercely, stepping over a body in the street. And, then, seeing dead staring eyes from the window of a crushed car: And now, beside him, Scully's chin was high, her lips pursed. Perhaps being a pathologist had taught her to distance himself from death, while he.... He swallowed hard. As a profiler, he had learnt the art of Victimology, teaching himself to identify with the victim, to see as they saw, to feel as they felt. He was glad that he hadn't eaten. His stomach felt full of poison, and his chest hurt. Part of him felt that it had all been a dream, but part of him - most of him, perhaps - knew that he had been chosen. He had been healed, and reborn, but still had to prove himself worthy. If he could survive the horrors to come with his mind and body intact.... If he could fight his way through to Fry's side.... It was a test.... And he was failing. "God," he whispered, out loud. "It's so hard." "Yes." Scully, her voice low. They stood in the park where it had all begun, the grass still beautiful beneath their feet. There were few bodies here, but no life. Like wounded animals, most people had crawled home to die in their beds. Or at their desks.... The corridors of the FBI had been silent. Dust had settled on the desks, and Christmas decorations hung limply in the offices. Even in a crisis, they had chosen not to die at their posts, but to.... "They should have fought." Blinking through tears, he had slammed his fist into a desk. The dust had made him cough, and Scully had glanced at him sharply. "Did _anyone_ fight, Scully? Or did they just stay at home at the first sign of trouble?" She had moistened her lips. "We didn't come in to work either, Mulder," she said, softly. "You wanted to fight it your own way." He had refused to feel guilt - not for that - not that he hadn't tried. "We tried, Scully. All the others..." He'd gestured angrily at the decorations. "It was so easy for Them, wasn't it. They didn't need to buy the loyalty of the whole FBI, or the police. Just a few at the top, perhaps, and everyone else.... They were bargaining on everyone being selfish, and thinking only of self-preservation. They knew no-one would care enough to take things in hand - to restore order the proper way. We destroyed ourselves...." But some had stayed; some had fought.... And failed, and died. "I want to bury him," he had said, at last, minutes after they had entered the office. There had been weapons and supplies on the floor, and plans of campaign on the desk. But he had died without an army. Scully's hand had been on Skinner's still neck. She had looked up and nodded slowly. "Yes." She had been almost trembling with the effort of control. "Just him." He had held tight to the doorway. "Let him stand for all the others." "Yes." Again just that single word. And so they stood in the park where it had all begun, the grass beautiful beneath their feet, freshly turned earth moist and shining. His chest ached badly with the effort of digging, and with more than that. He reached for her hand. "Scully..." He bit his lip and managed to steady himself. "Scully. It's not callous, but...." "No, Mulder." She shook her head, her eyes straight ahead. "It's not. We _can't_ bury them all. We can't.... We mustn't let ourselves feel this as we.... as perhaps we should." "Scully...." Her eyes were dry. He was screaming inside, crying that they were both wrong - utterly wrong. She was repressing things, refusing to cry. He was.... what? Clinging to an impossible hope, deliberately making himself cold inside. They were _both_ making themselves cold inside, he realised, suddenly, looking at her marble face. he wanted to cry. But the other agents at the empty desks... They had given in. They had died. It like a cracking whip, driving him on, and he knew he had to endure, he had to fight. It was his duty. ****** "Dana!" Her head snapped up. Hand in hand, they had stood beside Skinner's grave, lost in their own thoughts. The sun was high, the day beautiful. And now someone was calling her. "Dana!" Beside her, Mulder drew a sharp breath, and he reached for his gun. She shook her head, wonderingly. The voice was striking resonances deep inside her - places she didn't want to go. "Dana! You came back for me. You didn't leave me. I thought everyone was dead. I thought you'd left me...." She saw the stuffed lion first, bedraggled and dirty, peeping around a tree. Small fingers clasped him, and a matted strand of blonde hair whipped in the wind. She stepped forward, then remembered that she had never learnt the girl's name. "It's.... you." She crouched down, stretching her hand out. "It's okay. You can come out." Silence. The girl stepped out and stood, arms wrapped tightly around her body, the lion clutched to her chest. She was dirty, traumatised and clearly scared, but her face was alight with.... joy? "You okay?" Scully forced herself to smile. Inside, she was the closest she had come to breaking down, but the girl's needs came first. "You know, you never told me your name." "Bethany." The girl's eyes flicked briefly towards Mulder, and there was a shadow in them - of fear? Her lower lip was trembling. "I'm... I'm okay now. You'll take care of me." "Bethany, this is...." She hesitated, her eyes never leaving the girl's, then decided. Fox, or Mulder - neither sounded normal. The girl wouldn't know any different. "This is my friend Mulder. He won't hurt you." The girl gave a small shrug, as if dismissing Mulder utterly from her consciousness. But she stepped forward. "Dad died yesterday," she whispered. Her face was the very picture of a little girl trying so hard not to cry. Inside, Scully felt that she mirrored that face. "All the others, too." Scully touched the girl's hair. "Don't...." "They died." The girl's voice was almost fierce. "Everything got.... scary. People were shouting and throwing things. Then they all got sick. They started coughing." She blinked, and tears flowed down her cheeks. Scully had never seen a child cry silently before. "You're the only person left." "Scully...." She pulled the girl close and stroked her hair, turning almost angrily towards Mulder. "What?" "How do you know this girl?" His eyes were.... hungry? Wary, too. She knew the girl would represent hope to him, while to her... She whispered, reluctant to disturb those silent sobs. "I met her outside the Gunmen's place, just before...." She swallowed. "Just before the end." She said nothing of the dreams. "Bethany?" Mulder crouched down. When he wanted to, he could be charming to children. "How did you find us?" Scully bit back her angry reply, putting it instead in her frown, her eyes. She didn't like the eagerness in his voice. He was on to something - or thought he was. The girl made no reply. But the question rankled. Her dreams.... She had never been wholly successful in her attempts to silence them, to forget them. She needed to know. She needed a prosaic answer - needed an answer that could let her survive this as Scully. "How did you find me?" she whispered, her mouth close to the girl's ear. "I dreamed, of course." The girl's reply was but a breath of a whisper, spoken into Scully's hair. "You went away, but then you came back. You told me to wait for you here. You said you'd look after me, and you will." For a long time, she did nothing but breathe her fingers entwining the girl's hair. In her mind, the girl's voice doubled, trebled, and became a dozen voices, male and female, old and young, all crying out to her. And the girl was the first.... "Scully?" She jumped physically at Mulder's touch. She had been.... where? "What did she say?" She opened her mouth, then shut it again. "Chance," she said, at last, firmly. "It's so quiet here, she heard us. Voices travel." His eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. For a moment, he seemed to her as a killer eyeing his prey, planning to rip the girl from her, but then it passed, and he was Mulder again to her. "Bethany?" The girl gave a low moan and clung tighter. "Bethany?" Her only answer was breathing, deepening into sleep. ****** Even in the sunlight of afternoon, she slept. Bethany's head was on her lap, her own hand in the girl's hair. The silence was lulling, when it was not terrible. In the silence, she slept.... And on whisper-quiet boots, he came to claim her - to snatch her children from her one by one, and.... "No!" She jerked her head up, crying out loud. "No!". Then, before she had time to reassure herself that it was only a dream: "Mulder?" He was crouching beside the bench, one hand stretched out for the girl's neck. A gun was in his other hand, and his finger was on the trigger. The look in his eyes was hope - hope that could turn into hatred in an instant. "Mulder?" Her hand moved smoothly to her own gun, though she made her voice low. "What the Hell are you doing, Mulder? She's just a little girl." "I...." He blinked, and for a single insane moment she thought that his eyes would reopen red and inhuman. But he was still Mulder, his eyes shining with tears, and desperate. "I have to know, Scully." It was close to a sob. He made it hard to feel the anger that she ought to feel. "What if she's a hybrid? What if she's a.... a trap?" Her voice was a deadly whisper. "And you were planning... what, Mulder? Shoot her in the back of the neck just to see what happened? Take her blood while she slept? Damn it, Mulder - she's just lost everything. She can't be a day over seven." His hand remained still, shaking a little. "I wouldn't hurt a little girl, Scully. You can't think that of me." But, for a moment, she had. She understood the shadow in his eyes, now, though part of her sometimes resented how carefully she had to tread with him, sometimes. He had never outgrown the past, but wore it like an albatross around his neck. It was.... difficult. "She's not a clone, Mulder." She sighed, and pointed to the girl's hand, still curled tightly round her lion. A half-healed cut had dried red. "She's human, and she's scared, and she needs me." "You?" His hand fell to his side, tightly clenched. "She's not Emily, Scully." It was scarcely above a whisper. He knew he was going to hurt her. "Don't...." "Do you think I haven't thought of that?" Hard and fierce. The wind whipped hair across her eyes, and she snatched hold of the lock and held on tightly. She needed something to grip. "I came to terms with that. I don't think motherhood is all a woman needs. I.... I was getting by okay. If I look after her, it's for her sake, not mine. This is not some attempt to fill my own thwarted maternal urges." She invested the words with bitter sarcasm. "She - needs - me." He winced, and shut his eyes for a moment, as if steadying. "If she's survived, there will be others." It was the crux of the matter. As soon as she had seen the girl, emotions had battered at her like a storm-swollen river at a dam. She had kept them under control - just. She had assumed that everyone above ground had died, not daring to let herself think otherwise. But if the girl had survived.... She bit her lip, her throat convulsing. She hadn't dared even think the word - not once - not since before coming up into the light.... "We'll meet someone else who can look after her, Scully." He looked tentative, reaching out a hesitant hand to her face. "I see in her the same hope as you do.... But we have to fight, Scully. We can't take a child into battle. We can't get attached to her." "You mean _I_ can't." Her voice was cold. "I might not want to fight - even if there _is_ an enemy to fight. Fighting and power play created this...." She gestured helplessly, seeking the right word. "This," she said, at last, firmly. The single word covered all horrors. "Perhaps we should salvage the little we can, settle down and just live." She stuck out her chin defiantly. She knew she didn't mean it, though part of it almost rang true with her. He looked at her silently, shaking his head, and suddenly she saw straight into his mind. Before his eyes flickered away from hers, she almost hated him. "Mulder...." She sighed, and rubbed a hand across her face, weary and drained. They had lost too much to lose each other. "It's just one girl. We can't leave her alone." He was silent for a very long time. "No," he said at last, and breathed out. He looked defeated, and she wondered what battle he had been fighting with himself. Probably his usual one, between obsession, and.... and everything else in his life. Sometimes, his obsession had been at odds with _everything_. She softened. "Mulder..." His hands clenched convulsively. "It's just her, isn't it? You won't be picking up a whole family of waifs and strays?" If it was meant as a joke, there was no humour in his voice. "No." She looked at the sleeping girl." I can mother a single child. I have no desire to lead a...." And she flashed onto a dozen screaming faces, dangling from a cliff, and almost cried aloud. He frowned. "Why not?" He raised his head. He looked like a soldier swearing an oath, declaring his intention to die for his country. "Why not, Scully?" She couldn't answer. ****** Smiling demons came from the past at moments when they were least expected. In a park, on a winter afternoon at the end of the world, he had seen the calmly smiling face of John Lee Roche, and had remembered. His finger on the trigger.... Kill him, and risk losing Samantha. Spare him, and risk losing another girl - a stranger to him. His finger on the trigger; his mind torn. He had lived for his quest, and it had inflicted many casualties. His own life, a life of mere shadows; physical pain, his career.... Unwittingly, he had let it hurt others, too: Scully, Deep Throat, Melissa.... But never willingly. In waking nightmares, sometimes, he had wondered what he would do if he had been faced with a direct choice - murder an innocent in order to save Samantha - if, to gain his quest, he would lose all humanity, all compassion. And, as a girl had counted aloud in a ravaged bus, he had learnt, and it had nearly destroyed him. Either solution would have scarred him. Today, he had seen Roche in Scully's eyes. He needed to fight - needed to win through to Fry. Fry was his new Samantha, though part of him knew that he was a symbol only, and perhaps only a memory, now. Fry personified resistance, the way an eight-year old girl had personified happiness and innocence. Just to hold a gun and fight.... To struggle on and not give up and die.... He had been reborn, and given a second chance. But.... Remembering, he let his head fall into his hands, sitting on a bench alone, as Scully and the girl were absorbed in each other. She had made him choose. The girl was hope. She was a sign that the world could still be saved - that there _were_ survivors. She was like water to a parched man, showing him that there was something to fight for, and a token in earnest of success. But she was also the road in the other direction. She was the girl between him and Roche's knowledge. She was a burden, a responsibility. How could they fight with a child in their care? And how could they leave her? If he went to join the battle with Fry, leaving a child alone and crying by the roadside, then he had lost already. He had to keep his humanity: he had to keep his hope. But the two were.... "Scully...." He whispered her name aloud, needing her, though how could he have told her? Either way, he was scarred, diminished. On the back of her head, her hair shone in the sun. ****** "I want to go south," she said, at last. Her eyes were rimmed with red, but if she had cried, she hadn't let him see it. She swallowed hard. "The roads are blocked in the city, but.... My family was in Florida, in Jacksonville, at the base there." He nodded, and said nothing. She tucked her hair behind her ear with a hand that shook. Curled against her, the girl's face was blank and accepting, like a kitten held in the safety of its mother's mouth. "I have to see, Mulder. You understand, don't you?" "Yes." Even speaking was hard. He was losing everything. She took a deep breath. "Your mother? Do you want to...?" And he almost wept, that he had thought of her so little. When he had buried Skinner, he had thought to bury the past, to forget everything but the hope of the fight that was to come. He cleared his throat. "Yes. She's north." "We could split up." A small voice. Her hand was round the girl's shoulder, stroking. He was away from her, on the next bench. "No." He spoke fiercely. He had failed Fry once that day, and would fail him twice rather than lose her. Nothing was worth _that_. "We'll go south first." The south felt grey and bland, while the north.... the north.... He felt drawn there, feeling the lure almost like a physical hand, drawing him. He didn't even know how he knew. He stood up, utterly bereft. He was turning his back on the thing that had nourished him and given him life. He was hiding in the past, not fighting for the future. He was.... At the sound of Fry's voice in his head, he let out a breath in an audible sigh. Just to hear him speak.... Even displeased, he was like food to him - delicious poison. "But I have Scully." He was beyond caring if he spoke aloud. "I have Scully, and I am still human." "I can't.... I can't leave her." And his knees buckled. Hands clenched to his head, he fell to the ground and wept. ****** They covered barely twenty miles before darkness. Arms folded loosely around her knees, Scully stared into the fire. Bethany lay sleeping close by, but she did not touch her. She had given so much of herself to the girl, protecting her. Now was the time for reaction - a time for herself. She had always thought of herself as fiercely independent, accountable to none, and accountable _for_ none. Even when she had striven for nothing as much as her father's approval; even when she held Mulder's happiness in just one breath... Still, she needed time alone. She needed to be Scully. The girl moaned a little in her sleep, then settled. She didn't wake. The flames flickered. Scully blinked hard, fighting the tears that she refused to shed. She started at the clear voice in her head - a voice that triggered some elusive memory that she couldn't pin down. It was like her own voice, but alien to her, and apart. "Scully?" Mulder's eyes flickered open, though he was still half in sleep. "You okay?" She swallowed. "I'm fine." Then, silently: Since collapsing in the park, he had been subdued, distant. He had clung to her like a shadow - like a second child to protect - but, when he had spoken, he had been almost surly. She had glanced sideways at him as they had been selecting their motorbikes, and seen his jaw set and trembling with tension. As if only willpower was keeping him from screaming.... "Mulder?" She touched his shoulder, now. "You don't want to go south, do you?" "South? No. It hurts." His voice was slurred. By rights, he was still convalescing, and was exhausted. "North." "To see your mother?" She shut her eyes briefly. There was the almost certainty of _that_ grief to come, and a pang of guilt, too. He was half-asleep, not guarding what he was saying. To ask him now was like an assault, of a sort. "To fight. They're fighting in the north." The flames flickered, and his eyes seemed to glow. "I wanna fight the aliens, Scully. I... I always have." "Yes." She bit her lip. "But..." He was coming out of sleep. "But we're in it together, Scully." His eyes flickered on hers, then away. He gave an awkward laugh. "I've given up ditching you for my New Millennium's Resolution - didn't I tell you?" He didn't fool her for a moment. "Mulder." She was strangely touched, and once more on the verge of tears. She knew she was playing a dangerous game with him - that if he sacrificed too much, it could kill him. "Thank you. I.... I just need to know. In a few days, we can be...." She shrugged, helplessly. Mulder's "north" was an illusion - a state of mind. "We can be wherever you want us to be," she finished, weakly. And then, when they arrived in the north and it was as lifeless and devastated as the south, she would help him pick up the pieces, if she could. ****** The dream whirled, flickered. Half an image of flames; a hand raised in entreaty; a flash of gunfire: whispering leather boots... And then it settled, with an almost audible sense of decision. A cold-faced killer stood tall, red blood lapping around his ankles. His face expressionless, he bent down and heaved a still-gasping form from the lake of blood. "Not dead yet?" he said, his voice cold as a knife. "There." A quick stab to the back of the neck with a shining blade. "Can you die now?" The body fell limp, and Mulder shivered with the memory of an agonising aching cold. "More?" The alien scanned his surroundings, and it was as if the camera panned back, showing Mulder the countless millions of bodies that littered that bloody field. "Any more still alive?" There were dozens of them, and they strode through the blood like giants, crushing the dead beneath their feet. Their heads were high. The date was set, and they had come to colonise. "Yes." The voice was like a roar of hope. From behind a rock, a gun cracked. "Yes. We're still alive, and we will stand." The alien fell, and the bloody pool absorbed him. "Got him. Next?" He couldn't place the voice. It was.... It was _everyone_. It was Byers and Frohike. It was a stranger in the street who had never before handled a gun. It was an orphaned child. It was.... Fry. The bullet shouted again, and another alien fell. the bullet told him. He swallowed a sob. "I care. I care about Scully, too." Tears scorched his cheeks, and he _could not_ answer. Afterwards, lying awake in front of the darkening embers of the fire, he still could not. ***** And she woke up screaming.... Afterwards, heaving great breaths to re-establish control, Bethany's large eyes intense upon her, she made herself forget the horror of that dream. She would not remember. ****** Half way through Virginia, Scully stopped the bike. Bethany's arms tightened round her waist, and she could hear the girl's heart beating against her back. Sometimes, when the girl touched her, she felt more. "Scully?" Mulder came back to her side. He was concerned for her, but the lines in his face looked eased, somehow. All morning he had looked as if he had been fighting a strong wind, pulling against the current. "It's...." She touched her forehead with her fingers. How could she explain even to herself? "There's a man back there. He's not.... I think he's not dead." "Not dead?" His eyes sparked, then faded again. "How do you know?" She dug her fingers into her palm, and lied. "I saw him move." But the movement had been like a tickle in her mind, unwanted and painful. It had grown with every second until she had _had_ to stop, or go mad with the screaming horror of it. She knew that, unless she went back and checked, she would never sleep in peace again. ****** Her hand was so close to the man's neck, but she could not bring herself to touch him. Even to look at him caused pain. "Scully?" She put on her mask, breathed in deeply to steady herself, then turned round to face him. "He seems okay. Exhausted, probably, and cold. He looks as if he's been here for hours." Not yet reached by the sun, there was still frost on the ground around him. As he lay there, he had an aura of melted frost around him - exactly around him. Part of her refused to acknowledge that this meant he hadn't moved at all. "Scully, he...." He frowned. He was thinking, she knew. she thought suddenly, and was surprised at how bitter she felt. It was _Mulder_. She sighed deeply. "He needs to be taken care of, until he's stronger." "Another one for you?" "What the Hell does that mean?" she fired at him. She was dimly aware of her hand, shaking. Bethany was a silent shadow by her side. "We talked about this. I'm a doctor, Mulder. This is my duty." Yes. He nodded heavily, but didn't speak. And there, insistent and unwanted, was the ache in her mind that wouldn't go away. The man's unconscious face.... Fiercely, she touched the man's neck, and swallowed hard. She was a doctor doing her duty. She could touch him. She was not scared of him. She was.... "Dana?" It was a cracked murmur, barely perceptible. But she snatched her hands away as if burnt. "Dana?" Like an army battered at a locked door, memories assailed her, and the locks were splintering. She saw pleading hands reaching for her. She saw faces crying to her as they fell from a cliff. She saw.... She saw Bethany, and the man, and many others, their faces too human to be mere imagination. She didn't once see Mulder. "Dana? You came." Almost harshly, she held the man, one hand on each shoulder. "How do you know my name?" The man frowned, bewildered. It was the look Bethany had given to the same question. "I dreamed, of course," he whispered, just for her. "You went away, but then you came back. You told me to wait for you here. I got here early so we wouldn't miss you." She didn't move, but her eyes were searching wildly. But she had to ask. "We?" It was little more than a croak. "Two of us from the same town - would you believe that? He's back in the house." The man sat up, wincing at his stiff muscles. "Last night we got talking, and it turns out we'd both been dreaming about the same lady - about you." "I..." Oh, but she wanted to bury her head in her hands, like a man in a story someone had told her once. "Strange...." The man smiled. "Before all this happened, I would never have believed things like this. But now...." He shrugged. "We just accepted that the dreams were real. It doesn't seem strange to me that we are talking now. Something like this.... Somehow it makes all things seem possible. Old beliefs don't seem to apply." "Mine do," she said, firmly. It was essential to what she was. "Something like this only makes it more imperative that we think practically, and rationally." But her voice shook. As the man had spoken, he had been unmistakable. She had seen him, and maybe more than once in dreams she had refused to remember. "Maybe that's why he chose you," the man said, softly. Behind her, Mulder drew in a sharp breath. "Maybe he knew that, to lead us, we need someone practical, not a dreamer." "He?" Sharp. Her blood was pounding in her head. "God." The man opened his palms, as if it was all so easy. "God has chosen you to lead us. By sparing us, He chose us all, but you are His chosen leader. Why else would we both have dreamt of you, and be drawn to you?" She was beyond speaking. Even without shutting her eyes, she saw a boy with blood on his palms. For a moment, then, she had believed. The man was like a teacher speaking to a child. "He chose you to keep us safe from the Dark Man." And something clicked inside her - dreams and fears and fragments falling into place. It was right. It was terrible. It was right. It was.... "No." An inarticulate cry of rejection. She clapped her hands to her ears. "I _will_ not listen. You're crazy. You're..." She could say no more. ****** They sat in a circle, surrounding her like vultures, silently watching. "Scully?" He leant in close, his voice low. "Is it true? Do you dream?" They were.... God! They weren't even trying to listen. Their faces were serene - the two men and the girl. They knew she was theirs already. She hated them, then. "No." She clenched her fists. "A little. Nothing.... nothing like what he says." He looked at her like a penitent, confessing to his priest. "I do. I dream of.... things. I dream of things that I think are really happening, in some way. I.... Two night ago, I dreamt of being healed, and I was." "I dream...." She closed her eyes. Oh, but she was weary. "I dream of being responsible for people. I hated it when I dreamt it." He gestured at the silent watchers. "You dreamed of them?" She shook her head, but could no longer lie to him in words. "Do you...." He swallowed. "Do you dream of.... of _him_." He invested the word with an almost magical awe, and a tangible fear. Him... Feet whispering from the north, coming for her.... She needed several breaths to exert control. "If I dream of some personification of evil, then it's only to be expected, Mulder. We have...." She paused, then decided. The situation existed, even if she didn't say it. Putting in words didn't make it real. "We've lived through the end of the world, Mulder." "Evil?" His throat worked convulsively. "It's not evil to fight them. It's not evil to care." She shook her head impatiently. She was surrounded by madmen, believing dreams. "I don't believe in this Dark Man, Mulder. How can I protect them from something that doesn't exist?" He touched her hand. "I think you believe more than you admit to yourself that you do." "I...." Anger flared, but he had struck a chord. "I don't want to come through all this to be a mother to a group of adults. I don't want that responsibility. I didn't ask for this." "Perhaps you _were_ chosen," he said softly. "You were chosen _because_ you didn't want it - because you wouldn't believe. He knew you would think fully about it first, not jump in blinded by your own pride." "You don't believe in God, Mulder." Her voice was bitter. She remembered how he had scoffed, that other time. It had been important to her, then. "Not God, but there are other.... powers." "Chosen by the Devil?" She gave a harsh laugh, then shivered involuntarily. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?" "No." He took her hand and held it, his eyes intense. "What if a man... knows things? What if he can send psychic messages, and uses this skill to gather together the survivors to fight the colonists? What if...?" So close to tears, she laughed. He was crazy. He was her Mulder. "I believe this, Scully." His voice was low, thrilling. It was a statement of faith. She swallowed. The fear which had made her scream in the night was like a cold finger on her spine. "And the Dark Man?" "He's the alien, Scully. He's all of them - Cancerman, the morphs, the colonists. He's the... He's all this." He gestured at the silent world. "He's the symbol. He's the enemy." It wasn't real - none of it. She was in a dream, more terrible than any. She did all she _could_ do, and smiled. "Maybe they're right, Scully. Maybe you've been chosen, too. You've been chosen to take care of those too weak to fight, while the rest of us go into battle." "You think _you're_ chosen?" How could her voice stay level? He put both hands on his chest. "I was healed." She was more afraid for his sanity then than she had ever been. He was an intense-eyed cultist, swallowing poison at the word of their loved and feared leader. He was a believer with a simple faith, unswayed by reason. He was.... Mulder. She rubbed her eyes with her hands. He was being true to himself. He was believing. Like a man laying his head on the block, baring his neck for the headsman's axe, he was offering up his beliefs, simply - exposing himself to her contempt. His voice in a motel room in Oregon.... Her vision doubled with tears. "I need to go north, Scully," he said, quietly. "I need to see my family." He bit his lip, wary. "Perhaps it's fate, Scully. Perhaps this...." He gestured at the girl. "This is my new family, so I can forget my own?" Her eyes were ice. "Unlike you, Mulder, I would never sacrifice the people I love to an.... an idea - an illusion." His eyes shone. "I'm here, Scully, aren't I? I came with you." She hated herself, then. He had angered her, but she had been unforgivable. "Mulder." She put her apology in her eyes, her hands. "I don't believe in fate. I will care for the girl, I will treat those who are hurt, but I will _not_ forget who I am." "No." He touched her face, and smiled through the hurt in his eyes. "This is who you are." And all the time, they sat in a circle, surrounding her like vultures, silently watching.... ****** By evening, Mulder was nothing. He could have been a ghost. "Dana..." The fourth of them had come in blistered feet, in shoes too small for her. Her matted hair had framed her dust-streaked face as she had stood in their path, hands held out in supplication. He had glanced sideways at Scully's face. It had been closed. She had refused to look at the newcomer, refused to acknowledge her. Fascinated, his eyes had lingered, and at last seen her flicker a quick look at the woman. Then her lips had parted in some silent moan, though she had said nothing. he had thought, and almost wept for her, that she could be so afraid to let herself believe. "Dana...." The fifth had been an old man, his face dark and leathery. Almost blind, he had reached for her, wanting to place his hands on her cheeks and feel her, like a pilgrim would touch a sacred relic. As he had watched, she had flinched, almost pulled away, and then enduring. The man's fingertips had brushed her cheek, then paused, feeling the silent tears that had escaped her eyes. She had remained silent, but she hadn't pulled away. "Dana...." Two children, hand in hand - an older boy and a younger girl. They had held onto each other tightly with the fierce love born of catastrophe. He had doubted if they were truly related - if death would be that kind. Scully's lips had quivered, but she had reached out a shaking hand and touched the girl's hair. The girl had smiled. "Eight of us now, Dana." The first girl, Bethany, had snaked her hand into Scully's, jealous, perhaps, and fearful of being supplanted. Scully had frowned, blinking, as if pulling herself back into reality. "Nine," she had said. She'd smiled distractedly, and pointed to the group, one after another. "Nine, Bethany." "Eight." And, behind Scully's back, the adults had looked at him, their eyes cold. they had accused, silently. "Sc..." He had opened his mouth to call to her, then stopped. He'd raised his chin, and thought of his hope, his destiny. But their eyes haunted him.... He was nothing to them. At dinner, eaten round a fire in a house of the dead, they talked, but it was not the talk of traumatised survivors. Already, they were a unit, talking like old friends, anticipating each other's thoughts. They were one, while he.... He clenched his fists tight enough for then to shake. The north called to him, and every step away was killing him. "Scully." A low whisper. She didn't look up. Head bent low, she was turning her drink round and round in her hands, a world away. "Scully...." And, inside, he laughed and cried, the two together. Maybe he'd died and was already a ghost. Maybe he'd lost her. ****** On silent feet, she had searched, and now she had found him. And, now she had found him, she couldn't begin to think of what to say to him. "Scully." His voice was dead. He didn't turn around. He was leaning from an open window in an attic bedroom - leaning out too far. The back of his neck was white in the moonlight. She swallowed. "Mulder." "You've accepted." It was not a question. His voice was so flat, so hopeless. "You're staying with them." "No." She was all fire. "I haven't accepted anything." "I should be glad." His voice was anything but. "It means I can go north." "Damn it, Mulder." She was beside him in an instant, her hand closing round his wrist. "I haven't accepted anything." She took a deep breath. "But I have to face it - I've seen all of them before, in my dreams. All of them." As she said it, she felt a feeling almost of peace. She had been afraid to believe, but refusing to believe was.... God, it had been so draining, repressing things, living with that conflict. She had accepted what part of her had always known, but had been fighting, desperately. And nothing had changed. She had dreaded it so, but she was still Scully. As she said it, she smiled. "Do you believe what they say, Scully?" There was a desperate need in his voice, though she couldn't read him. Did he need her to say yes, or no? She raised her chin. "No. I... I have to face that we are bound in some way. It was..." She smiled, wanly. "It was hard, Mulder, accepting that. I'm not ready for the rest." "But if it's true?" She reached for the support of the window frame, leaning beside him to feel the cold air. "I need to see my family, Mulder," she said, quietly. "I can't take on all this. I need to think of...." She shook her head, at a loss. It sounded selfish, but it was only human. "I need to think of my own needs, too, Mulder. If I led them just because they wanted me to, I'd end up hating them." "No man is an island, Scully." She jerked her head up sharply. "If you left them, wouldn't you end up hating yourself?" And there was a darkness to his voice, and she knew he was talking about himself, too. "Yes." She rubbed her eyes, as if _that_ would make her see more clearly. "I don't believe them, but _they_ believe it, and that gives me a responsibility towards them. I..." Suddenly furious, she called a fist and slammed it into the window frame. "I _hate_ it, Mulder." His throat was working fast, as if fighting something. "Perhaps it's not for us to have feelings about it, Scully. Perhaps its fate." "I don't believe in fate." But then, unable to stop: "What's my fate?" "Maybe...." He shook his head, despairingly. "Like I said, maybe it's.... this." He gestured downstairs, towards her sleeping people. "Perhaps it's them." "To protect them like a mother while my man goes off to fight?" She tightened her grip on the wooden frame, voice rising. It was a sharp whisper, icy in its intensity. "Is that all you think there is for me? I'm just a woman so I can...." "No." He whirled to face her, and there was naked pain in his eyes. "I don't mean that. When _they_ come, the leader of the survivors will need to be strong, full of fire - a warrior. It needs compassion and courage." He held her by the shoulders, his eyes shining. "I can think of no-one better suited for it than you." She looked at him through slits of eyes. "I won't have my life dictated, Mulder - not by you, not by anyone." Then, unable to stay any longer without crying, she walked away. ****** He was stretched out on wooden boards, arms spread wide, and cold - so cold. Slowly, painfully, he opened his eyes, and a crow was looking at him, unblinking on the window sill. He blinked. It was not a dream. The crow in the desert of the World After.... It was an old dream from before the beginning, foreshadowing this moment. Scully was drifting away, and the world had died. Scully was leaving him.... He swallowed hard. _He_ had never dreamed of her, expect once, and then she had killed him.... He was alone on the bare boards of an attic room, and there was the crow, and its dark eye seemed to be smiling. And there were footsteps.... His throat was paralysed. He couldn't speak, couldn't make a sound. The bird's eyes seemed to narrow in contempt. On whispering wings, it flew away. he though, as if flew away from the moon. He longed and feared to follow it. "Mulder?" A hand on his brow. "Mulder? You're cold." He fought, lost as to which was a dream, and which was real. "Scully?" Her feet were bare. She passed him, and there was the sound of a closing window. "You take this aversion to beds a bit far, sometimes, Mulder." Her laugh was shaky. "Scully?" He pushed himself up on one elbow, then to his knees. "What's wrong?" "Nothing." The moon made shiny tracks on her face, as if she had been crying. "Why should anything be wrong? I've just learnt that my whole life has been written." It wasn't Scully, but he heard the pain beneath her sarcasm, and understood. "What do they want me to be, Mulder - their saint?" Her voice was frightening - brittle and so unlike her own. "I have to forget my own needs and think only of theirs? Why should I do that? And what does it make me, if I refuse?" But he said nothing. She would think he was patronising her, but he had never respected her more than in that moment. She was admitting her fears, and that was hard. "I don't want to be believe in fate, Mulder." She knelt down in front of him, and took his face between her two hands. Her eyes were shining with tears. "Sc...." he began, but could not speak. "Why weren't you in my dreams, Mulder?" she said, almost cried. "Through all of this, it was only us. I don't want that to end." "Neither do I." His throat was choking on unshed tears. A dark knowledge inside him - a knowledge that spoke with the voice of the crow - told him that it would be his last night with her, unless.... And nothing could keep him from crying out - a quiet, despairing cry. "Why should our lives be dictated, Mulder?" Her thumbs caressed his neck. "From the start, they used us, and manipulated us. Can't we escape that?" "I..." "No...." "We _can_" Her eyes were fire. Fiercely, almost harshly, she pulled his face towards hers and kissed his lips, then his closed eyes. "Scully..." He responded to her, kissing her back. Panic fluttered against her thumb on his neck. "I love you, Mulder." Her hands slid down his neck, plunging deep down his shirt. Her fingers dug into the flesh of his back, pulling his body towards hers. "Scully...." She pulled a hand out, rapid and almost painful. Blindly, she struggled with his buttons, opening first one, then another. Her head lowered to his chest, her lips seeking his skin. His mind was screaming. "Scully." He grabbed her - held her wrist with a hand that shook. "No." "I'll be careful." A soft finger circled the bullet wound. When she touched it, gentle and caring.... He was on the precipice then - the closest he had come to giving in. She was his Doctor Scully he had dreamt of when hurt, when sick. Warning. "No." He pulled her hand back, trying so hard to stay in control. "Not like this." She bit her lip. "I...." "I know." And he did know - oh, how he knew. "I love you, but not like this." It was if he had slapped her. Her face froze with rejection, then, in an instant, was controlled again. She was his Scully - breathing deeply and fast, but still his Scully. She shook her had, accepting. No. "Don't do it because you're angry. Don't do it because you have something to prove." He smiled, and touched her face. "We know, now, but.... not like this, Scully." "No." She raised her chin, and there was a grim defiance in her eyes. "Never think it was just out of anger, Mulder." "I...." And then, on impulse, he confessed something he had not even realised himself. _She_ had exposed so much of herself, her soul as naked before him as her body might have been. "They all ignore me. It makes me feel.... " He gave a weak laugh, wondering if he could disguise it all as a joke. "I'm jealous, Scully." Her face quivered, fighting fresh tears. "I wish I'd dreamed of you, Mulder." There was a "but" in her voice. Afterwards, he would wonder if it was in that moment that it was decided, and in that moment that his life ended. ****** But they moved to the bed and slept in each other's arms, clinging together like two survivors of a shipwreck, needing each other's warmth. And, on soft whispering feet, Richard Fry came to them, as on the wings of a crow. ****** He opened his eyes. "The colonisation is proceeding, Fox." There was something close to compassion in Fry's eyes. He was a man of a thousand moods, and now he was gentle. "There are thousands of survivors - hundreds of thousands. If the colonists can be stopped at source, there is hope - only then is there hope. You care about the world, don't you?" Mulder moved his head. Beside him, Scully was asleep, her face a mask. "Or would you put one woman before the whole world?" "I..." His voice choked in his throat. "I'm fighting everything you've ever hated, Fox." A hand on his brow, and he flashed to a kaleidoscope of images. Samantha disappearing into light; Scully on a metal slab; his father, dead.... "_They_ did this, Fox. We can still salvage something." "Yesss..." It was a soft sigh, a longing moan. Tears trickled down his face. "Then come. Leave her now. Walk away into the night. It will be easier...." He bit his lip and sobbed, as, beside him, Scully slept. ****** She opened her eyes, and saw the grinning face of death. "No....!" Hands ripping at her face, she screamed in naked terror. Beside her, Mulder slept, his face pale and peaceful. She half moved to waken him, needing someone to share the horror with, then stopped. She was Scully, and she would stand. "Dana...." It reached for her with its claws for hands, sharp, like a birds. "No...!" She curled up in a corner of her mind. "No...!" And she recognised the old familiar dream voice, and knew it for the first time. It _was_ her. It was the part of her that lived in dreams, and believed them. It was the part of her she had been refusing to listen to. Somehow, she knew that - the same way as she knew the other survivors. "Dana...." Lip quivering, she looked, and knew him, and understood. And, as she understood, he winked away, leaving her alone with Mulder, who slept on. ****** One hand on the window, she fingered her cross. Outside was the beauty of another winter morning. She was beginning to hate the sun. It made it worse, somehow. There were so few left alive to enjoy the beauty. "Dana?" She sighed. "Bethany." "Two more people have come, Dana. They want to see you. One of them is hurt." She sighed, and took up her burden. It was heavy and if chafed, and it gave her no relief, but it was right. Oh God, it was right, and she hated it. ****** She buried her head in her hands, rubbed deeply, then looked up. "He can't travel." There was blood on her hands from the newcomer's broken leg. Water was still a luxury. She knew that, wherever she chose for them to settle, it would have to be near a river. If they hadn't poisoned them.... She gave a wry laugh. Mulder was watching her silently, and she was desperate - desperate - to delay what she feared would be the end. "He fell just outside, you know. If he hadn't walked through the night to come to me, he'd be all right." His hands were clenched together. "So, you're staying - here, with them." It was not a question. Nodding was the hardest thing she had done, yet something felt right about it. She had expected weeks of soul searching, but it had been the merest second in a dream, and the knowledge that part of her had always known it. She had been dreaming about these people before it had even started. Resisting the dreams, fighting the responsibility, had torn her apart. At least now she was whole. It had been not an earthquake or a fire, but a still small voice of calm. Once more, she touched her cross, fiercely glad that she had never stopped wearing it, even when she had sometimes forgotten what it meant. "There have been nine in two days, Mulder." She shrugged. "How many more will come? I can't take all of them to Florida. When we're settled somewhere, maybe I can go myself." He shook his head, lost. "You're accepting them?" "Yes." It was a confession of faith. "I've been dreaming this all along, Mulder, though I didn't realise it." She swallowed. "You know the real reason I didn't want to leave the bunker? Part of me knew they were waiting for me. I was scared of what they meant. I was scared of the responsibility." "And now?" "I'm still scared, Mulder - how can I not be?" She took a deep breath. "Once I dreamed that they were hanging from my hand over a cliff - all of them. I couldn't hold them." "You can." He reached up a hand and touched her face. "I trust only you, Scully." They were speaking farewells without saying the words. She wondered how long they had known - if last night was a last desperate rebellion against the future they had always known they could not avoid. Doomed, she had thought of him before. Doomed. "And you?" But she knew his answer - she saw it in his eyes. "If you're following your dreams.... My dreams tell me differently, Scully." It was time. "I know." She clutched her cross tight enough to hurt. "Is it Richard Fry that you dream about - the man in the Gunmen's office?" A veil fell across his face, and she couldn't read him. She took it as a yes. "I saw him last night." She held her head high, refusing to lower her gaze. "It was him, but it was.... He was evil, Mulder. I think he's the Dark Man." "He's...." He shook his head, struggling. He did not have to words to describe what Fry was to him. His hope, and his damnation, perhaps. She tried to hard to keep pity from her eyes, knowing she would lose him. "He's not who you think he is, Mulder." "You don't know him!" Quick and fast. He was hurt and defensive, like a child who has seen his hero attacked. But there was enough doubt in his eyes to give her hope. "And you do, Mulder?" she asked softly. "He's fighting aliens, Scully." He balled a fist and slammed it into his other hand, hard. "Before, he fought _them_." And she had to bite her lip to keep from crying. There was so much she needed to say to him - so much she couldn't say to him. "I can't, Scully." And then she wondered how much she _had_ said aloud, not meaning to. "It's what I am. Without it, I'm...." "Different." She caught his flailing fist, and held it tight. "The world's different now, Mulder." He pulled against her. "I need to fight...." "What if there are no aliens?" she asked, relentless. She was hurting him, she knew, but the alternative was losing him. "What if _they_ did this, and it all got out of hand? What if the Consortium and the aliens destroyed each other in the end?" She had accepted so much. The existence of aliens seemed so tiny, now - an indulgence. "What if _he_ has already destroyed them and is building an army to attack...." She paused, then laid all her cards on the table. "What if, by helping him, you're killing me?" He looked as if she had shot him in the stomach. "I do not accept that, Scully." Cold and desperate. "I saw him last night. He's evil." "I saw him last night. He's my hope...." His face twisted, in grief and bitter anger. "He told me to come to him then, not even saying goodbye. He said the cause needed me. I stayed, Scully. Once more, I betrayed him for you and now...." He took a deep breath. "You're destroying everything that keeps me alive, Scully." She tried to pull him close. "I'm trying to keep you alive, Mulder." "I won't have my life dictated, Scully - not by you, not by anyone." In a dead voice, he echoed her own words back at her. "But you are." Desperate. It was life and death, now. "You always have. You've always cared so deeply about what you've been searching for.... Mulder, anyone just has to come to you and offer you some information, and you follow them through Hell. Even if you don't trust them, you listen to them. If there's the slightest chance that they're right, you act, even if it might kill you." "Yes." He was shaking his head, puzzled. He could not comprehend what was wrong with the picture she had painted. He knew no other life. She swallowed hard. "Even if it might hurt me to lose you." His expression froze, then he sighed, and touched her face. "I can't let this go, Scully. I hear what you're saying, but...." He gave a wan smile. "Maybe he _is_ evil. Maybe there are no aliens. Maybe you're right.... Can't you see, Scully? I _have_ to find out. I can't live with a constant not-knowing, wondering if there was something I could have done. I've lived with that for twenty-seven years, and believe me, Scully, it's not something I want to go through again." She made no effort to stop the tears. "I can't go with you, Mulder. Like you, I can't let this go. If I leave them now, I'll always wonder...." "I know." Silence. With tears on her marble face, she pulled him close and kissed him, gently. It was almost chaste - nothing like the previous night - but it was somehow deeply sensual. "I'll come back," he whispered, his hands in her hair. "If you're right, and it doesn't work out.... If _I'm_ right and we win.... I'll come back." She nodded. Afterwards, her eyes dry in the night, she would wonder if either of them truly believed it. "If you're right, Scully...." His face clouded, and suddenly she remembered a younger Mulder, beautiful and untroubled, overjoyed to see an "alien". he had said. She shook her head abruptly and was back in the present - back to a Mulder who saw an alien as a nightmare horror, not as a thing of wonder. "If you're right, Scully...." He was trembling, his breathing fast. "You understand, don't you?" She smiled through her tears, grieving for him, and pitying. Admiring, too. She had never loved him as she did then. "You're not evil, Mulder, even if he is. I know you're doing it out of love. I know it's because you can't bear to give up on the old world." "While you have?" His tone was unreadable. "No." Fierce. "I've.... I've adapted. It doesn't mean I like it. It doesn't mean I don't mourn what is gone. It's just.... " She shook her head, at a loss for words, then struck into her past. "Mulder, when I lost three months of my life, I just had to forget it and get on with my life. For my own survival, I needed to do that. You understand, don't you?" He was silent. "This...." She gestured around her at the house, at the distant voices. "This is something to put my back up against. I fought it, but I think this will help me cope." He swallowed hard. "You think I'm a child, looking for impossible miracles?" "I think you're Fox Mulder." She reached for his hand and, chaste and companionable, held it. "You're my partner. You're the only one I trust." Oh, but she felt old - far older than him. She didn't like it. She wished she could see life through his eyes - to be so driven, so sure of who to hate. And there, at the end of everything, she felt that they had gone full circle. He was the man she had always known, while she.... What was she? ****** That night, he slept alone. He was cold, so cold, and he wept. He was alone in a desert of the dead, and the night was a smothering blanket. He was alone... "Scully," he whispered, and pulled the blanket closer. But the face in his dreams smiled, and it was not her. "Fox...." He moaned. "Sc...." "No." The voice was like a slap. His head slammed back against the ground, and his face smarted. "No. You have chosen, Fox, and you mustn't weaken now. I need strength from you now. "Strength...." Scully's hair like fire in the sunset.... Claw-like fingers dug into his chin. "We will stand, Fox, and we will be formidable." "Yesss...." ***** "Dana?" She stood alone, watching him, though he was hours gone, now. She was alone, but he.... "Oh God!" She spoke aloud. To be travelling alone in this world was more terrible than she could imagine. "Dana?" She sighed, and put on the mask that she would ever afterwards wear. Then, ready, she turned around. "Bethany." "Dana. Two more have come in. They want to see you." She shouldered her cross, and made herself smile. There was hope in the little girl's face, and safety, and that was a start. That was where the hope was. ****** END ****** End? Well, let me know. Of course, there are questions to be answered: Who is right about the identity of the Dark Man? What will Mulder find in the north? Will he grow disillusioned - and what will Fry have to say about it if he does? Are Byers and Frohike in the north, too? What about Scully's family? And so on.... Also, while I know that I have quite a record for writing sad or inconclusive endings, this is an ending I am NOT happy with leaving. I want the answer to the above questions, and I want to write them. There are, though, a few problems with it (such as how to destroy ultimate evil without resorting to cliche or contrivance), so, as I said, please let me know. (I am also, as I've told several people in email, willing to accept bribes regarding the fate of the remaining Gunmen....) ____ Other notes: The title, comes from a political tract by Thomas Hobbes. While some other writers were claiming that society without government would be a lovely paradise of caring and sharing, Hobbes thought that the natural state of mankind, without government, was truly hideous anarchy. In the end, desperate, mankind would willingly sacrifice their liberties and accept an absolute ruler, since safe slavery was preferable to anarchic freedom. "Leviathan" is the word he used for this absolute sovereign power - and is exactly the theory that "They" were working on in this story. "The Stand", for those who haven't read it: Briefly, "The Stand" tells of a plague, accidentally unleashed after an accident at a military installation, and quickly spreading across the world. Only a few people are immune, and the book follows these survivors. As the world collapses, the survivors start having dreams - of a very old lady called Mother Abigail, and a terrifying "Dark Man." Guided by these dreams, the survivors manage to group together around Mother Abigail, and begin to rebuild some sort of life for themselves. However, there are also some survivors to whom the "Dark Man" seems exciting, and powerful. His name, at the moment (though he has had many names, and always beginning with the same letters) is Randall Flagg, and equal numbers of survivors group around him. After a period of consolidation, the stage is set for a confrontation.... And I won't say any more, since the second half of the book will be my model for the sequel, should I write it. Of course, this story only follows the broad outline of the book, as described above - basically just the fact that _something_ happened to destroy most of the world; that the survivors were having dreams; and the Dark Man himself. The crow imagery is also from the book, and one or two scenes - most strongly, perhaps, the scene in part 1 when someone is killed by the army while on air on the radio. The immediate inspiration for this story, though, was an article on the Millennium Bug, and the first sentence of "The War of the Worlds". HG Wells set his own near end of the world at the turn of the century, which made me start thinking.... I had been planning nice Sunday in bed reading that book, but ended up starting writing instead. And how it turned out.... Well. I have never written a story without a single written note. I have never written a story with kissing in it. I have never written a crossover. I have seldom written a long story in which the angst came from the plot, rather than the angst being the initial inspiration, and the plot being constructed around it. I have never written a story that I enjoyed more - or which disturbed me more. I had _dreams_ about this one....