AUTHOR: Mia Munro

E-MAIL: f68mm52m@students.su.se

GENRE: SKipper, X, Romance

KEYWORDS: SKipper, Krycek, Scully, Scullyangst, romance, X.

RATING: R, no violence, sex and mild language.

SPOILERS: None, unless someone, if not on this planet, then reading x-files fanfic, has missed the removal of certain appendages from our favourite Russian ::BG:: oh, and a mild one for 'Grotesque.'

ARCHIVING: Sure, anywhere, as long as you tell me you've archived it and where.

DISCLAIMERS: I own no one apart from some boring secondary characters. Nor am I making any money - actually, it's costing *me* time and thus money, so really, CC and FOX owes me, for creating such fascinating characters who positively invite that most dangerous of all questions: 'What If...'

NOTES: This is my first x-files story (come to think of it, the first finished fanfic I've ever written) and it's due to some very special people. Everyone always thanks their betas - rather like the Oscars - but in my case the thank yous are especially relevant. To Megan for tireless and swift feedback, and for asking the kind of questions that made this a much better (and longer!) story, blame her not me ::VVBG:: and for not minding when she got mailed scenes and scraps on the weekends. A special thanks also to Kelly for not only taking time out from her incredibly busy RL to help me, but also indirectly by introducing me to the people on x-forum who made comments and asked questions that made the story even longer (and I hope better). And to Amanda who had no idea what she was getting into when she so kindly offered to read it for 'grammar and spelling stuff.' Oh, and heck, while I'm at it, Meredith for being a great editor, and dedicated Scullyist, and for telling me why Scully won't do certain things. And for making it a better (but surprisingly not longer) story.

Err, a few notes on spelling. I've got an American spell-checker, everyone who's seen this story are American, and yes I know it's an American show :-) But, I spell British, or as most of the rest of the world would have it, the 'right' way. ::VVBG:: So the spelling of certain words is insconsistent. Sorry.

FEEDBACK: The more the better. I don't mind criticism as long as it's constructive. I don't even mind if you tell me it stinks, as long as you also tell me why.

SUMMARY: Scully receives some interesting information and an old acquintance reappears to make her a deal, but then things take a rather unexpected turn....
 
 

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Years later, Dana Scully would always marvel at how normal everything seemed. There had been no sign of the coming upheaval. Nothing but the normal rush and harassment of life as a Special Agent, assigned to the smallest, though most notorious department at the FBI, the X-Files, open for business once again.

The day had started bad and gone straight downhill from there. It began when her alarm didn't go off, so she was late. She could just imagine Mulder's not-so-disguised hints about late evenings; the man really needed to get a life so he wouldn't be so morbidly interested in hers. Then the toaster exploded, so she'd had to grab a very suspicious looking bagel on the way to work, which was doing the most peculiar things to her insides. Finally to crown it all, someone had jostled her so she'd spilled coffee all over her new mocha pumps. Life was just wonderful, Scully thought sourly, sipping the lukewarm coffee, and grimacing faintly. Given the legend that the Feds were supposed to live on the stuff, it was strange they *still* couldn't brew up a decent cup. What was that old joke Mulder used to tell her? Ah, yes, how is FBI coffee like making love in a canoe? Answer: it's fucking close to water. The first time he'd told her she had nearly spit coffee all over her keyboard.

Scully sat down at her desk and opened her briefcase to take out some case notes she'd taken home last night to review. On top of the folder were four letters she had just grabbed on the run this morning. Glancing around for the man who was both her partner and her best friend, she suddenly remembered that he was off arguing with AD Skinner about his expenses again. With an inner smile, Scully wondered what Skinner would say to the $600 lightsabre, the $800 life-sized Yoda figure who would say, 'May the Force be with you' when you pressed a remote, and the illegal 'director's-cut' Matrix DVD copy, selling for a mere $200 (not including shipping). All items, Mulder claimed were vital to keep the Lone Gunmen working smoothly and well on whatever weird business Mulder employed them. Scully had asked reasonably if a cash bonus wouldn't be better, but that had been vigorously denied.

But no, according to her partner, the 'personal touch' was needed to make the three scruffy men feel properly appreciated; she wondered what Skinner would say to that brilliant argument. Just imagining the face of the Assistant Director had her holding back another smile. She could just *see* his pained expression at Mulder's earnest rationale, and she wondered if the solemn AD would ever catch on to the fact that half the time Mulder was doctoring his expense sheet with outrageous items just to watch their boss' reaction.

Scully absently reached for a paper knife and started to open her mail, neatly folding each envelope. The first letter she opened was from her insurance company, raising her rates *again.* She thought sourly that having cancer was a killer in more ways than one. One was from Bill, who still preferred the mail, bless his old-fashioned heart. The third informed her of the fabulous prizes (including an all expenses paid vacation to the Bahamas, a brand new BMW, or $10,000 in cash) she could win if she just filled in her name and returned the coupon. Scully sighed, dropping it in the waste-paper basket. Well at least with the current FBI recycling program, it would not be entirely wasted. The last envelope was thicker than the others, padded; with a small frown she noted the lack of a stamp or postmark. Strange...

The envelope opened easily. Scully shook it and a small photo slipped out. Curiously, she picked it up and turned it over. She froze, heart hammering. Melissa Scully smiled up at her. Missy was cuddling a kitten half-hidden by her long red hair and smiling into the camera, her other hand holding a newspaper. It was Melissa looking exactly like she did when she was teasing her sober younger sister. The same impish smile, the mischievous eyes. Scully dropped the photo as though it burned, staring at the image of her older sister. She buried her head in her hands, but through her fingers she still saw the smile that broke her heart.

It must have been at least five minutes before she even noticed the small note clipped to the photo. Five minutes of trying to cope with a tidal wave of guilt and grief and shock. She had thought she'd dealt with Melissa's death, all those long talks with her psychiatrist, the shared grief with the others in her family, and now the mere sight of a photo had her shaking.

The small hand-written note accompanying the photo said simply, "Take a look at the date of the newspaper." No signature, no hint of who had sent it.

It was a hoax, a cruel joke, it had to be. For a moment she wanted to kill whoever was responsible. But her eyes never left the newspaper her sister, her dead sister, was holding. The newspaper was dated two weeks ago. It was an impossibility but it was there, nonetheless, in colour in front of her eyes. Turning the note over with hands that shook, she saw the scrawl on the other side. "Meet me at the Hotel Dorada at ten tonight, room 305. Alone...."

Trembling, Scully picked up the phone and punched in a number. "Davis?" she was vaguely surprised at how steady and normal her voice sounded. "Hi, this is Dana Scully, look could you do me a favour? ... Great! I need you to check a photo for me ASAP! I need to know if it's been manipulated at all.... When? Today! Yes, I know, but I'd really owe you one Davis ... You will? Thanks! I'll send it down to you now." She put the phone down, and taking a blank envelope from her desk carefully unclipped the note, realizing as she was doing it that she may have destroyed any previous fingerprints and swearing at her own idiocy.

Personally taking the photo to the lab, and a little judicious persuasion, although not flirting - as Mulder had once accused her - had the results back in hours rather than days. It never ceased to amaze her how eager for recognition, and a friendly chat, the people buried deep in the forensic labs were. It was something she had never been able to teach Mulder; the simple fact that most people reacted better to calm courtsey than being shouted at. Or, to be more correct, he understood, he just didn't have the patience for it. Which was why he usually let her deal with the technical experts when they were on a case.

Afterwards Scully always wondered how much would have been different if Mulder had been there when she opened the envelope. For a moment she considered waiting for him. But some deep-seated instinct, and an impatience she didn't even try to contain, had her heading for the FBI lab and Davis. By the time she returned from the lab, Mulder was gone again. Off to interview a 78-year old woman who claimed that Louis XVI visited her every night because he wanted her to build a new Versailles in Brooklyn. Or so he informed her in his vile scrawl. At any other time she would have smiled, but not today.

Dana Scully sat for a long time in the empty office and stared blankly at the result, setting out in dry, scientific fact, an impossibility. No fake, no manipulation, nothing except her dead sister being alive and well, months after her death. The old absurd saying of Mark Twain's,'the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated,' kept running like a thread through her mind. Could it be? Could it actually be the truth? Touching her ear-ring, a nervous habit she had when thinking, Scully acknowledged this might be trap, or a hoax. It didn't matter. Absolutely nothing would prevent her from keeping this appointment.* * *

Driving slowly downtown that night Scully reflected a little nervously on the fact that all secret meetings seemed to take place in seedy back-street places. Once, just once she would have liked a clandestine rendezvous with an informant to be held in a nice clean office, rather than an underground garage or squalid motel. Mulder thrived on the atmosphere, but it mostly left his partner with the desire for a bath to clean the real, and metaphorical, dirt off. Finding a spot nearby and, wonder of wonders, under a working streetlight giving her at least a faint hope to find her car unharmed when she got back, Scully parked.

Locking her car carefully and glancing around her at the dark, deserted streets, Scully supressed a shiver as she walked to the garish pink neon sign over the battered door. Not exactly the best parts of Washington she thought wryly, her hand going almost instinctively to the gun strapped at her back. The touch of the smooth metal gave her an indefinite sense of security, and unconciously her mouth trembled into an almost-smile remembering one of Mulder's lectures on the phallic symbolism of guns.

Pushing open the door Scully stepped inside. In the light of a single dim lightbulb swaying slowly from the ceiling she saw a unshaven, surly man behind a desk in the opposite end of the lobby. He completely ignored her, absorbed by something which probably had a triple x-rating on the small black and white TV propped up on the desk. Crossing the faded, torn carpet, Scully thought with another small shiver, that it was the perfect place for an anonymous meeting. Having to choose between an ancient creaking elevator and some rickety stairs, she decided on the stairs as marginally safer.

Reaching the third floor and glancing up and down the dim corridor with its dark patches of mould and other things, Scully heard the faint noises of the all-night cable TV, the smell of hotplates, souring milk and beer. The *stench* of the people who lived here, on the outskirts of society. The losers, the alcoholics, the drug addicts. She should be used to it by now, but the sheer hopelessness and misery still made her faintly depressed.

Conciously clearing her head of all extraneous thoughts to concentrate on the mission at hand, she located room 305 and hesitated briefly before knocking sharply. There was no answer, but when she gingerly tried the handle it opened easily and the door swung inwards, revealing a dark room.

Scully stepped through the door. Every nerve tense, heart beating hard, gun ready.

"Hello? Is there anyone here?" her voice floated into the darkness, more hesitant than she'd wanted, and she firmed it to its usual crispness. "You said you had some information about my sister. I want to know how you got hold of that photo."

The door swung shut behind her, and she swiveled with a curse, gun raised. A sharp click and suddenly the room was lit by a small lamp by the window.

The light illuminated a bed with broken creaky springs, a basin, the enamel cracked and broken, the taps rusty. A tattered armchair, the stuffing peeping out, and sitting in it a tall shadow blending perfectly into the darkness.

"Agent Scully, please put away your gun, you won't need it here."

Frowning, recognizing but not able to place the voice, Scully took one more step forward, not lowering the gun. "Who are you? How did you get that photo?" she demanded.

He shifted slightly and the light fell across his face.

Dana Scully gasped a single word. "You!?"* * *

Alex Krycek said softly, "Hello, Scully."

She opened her mouth but no sound emerged. Rooted to the floor she could do nothing for a minute but gaze at him in utter shock. Stare at the last man she would have expected. The man ultimately responsible for the death of her sister. The man who had killed Mulder's father, the man behind her abduction, and only God knew how many murders. Alex Krycek, professional assassin, Consortium infiltrator, traitor... A brief mocking smile touched his face telling her he knew exactly what she was thinking as well as his amusement. And she knew she was in the presence of a man without conscience, without mercy. Quite possibly the most dangerous man she had ever met.

"How, what..." her voice trailed away and she shook her head. She should have known, but it had never occurred to her it was Krycek who had sent the note and picture. A foolish and stupid oversight, Scully thought in self-disgust. If anyone knew anything about her sister, it was the man who had killed her.

Krycek simply waited. Silent. Unmoving. He was good at that, Mulder had told her once. He possessed the art of silence, of using it as a shield to protect and deflect attention from himself. Her eyes narrowed, trying to discern why he was here and what it meant. Finally lowering the gun and holstering it, she sat down on the only other furniture in the room, the bed, facing him. Irresistibly her eyes were drawn to the place where his missing arm should be, and she experienced an unexpected flash of sympathy, and.... sadness? Sorrow for the loss of something she could appreciate and regret even in an enemy; a physical beauty maimed and destroyed.

He followed her glance. "Not pretty is it?" he asked softly, daring her to pity him.

She matched him stare for stare, "Nothing less than you deserve, Krycek."

He laughed with little real amusement. "Hard as nails Special Agent Dana Scully. You and Mulder suit each other. Neither of you would spit in my face if it was on fire."

There was another long silence, and then Scully broke it saying abruptly. "I'm here, Krycek, now tell me why you sent me the photo."

Still he didn't move. Only his eyes, a translucent green, glowing in the darkness like a cat's stalked her silently. They moved over her body so intimately it felt like a physical touch. And gleaming in their depth was a strange hunger.

Scully shifted restlessly, angry with him, and angrier with herself for letting him get to her. Finally she snapped, "Stop it! You wanted to talk. Then talk!"

He shook his head with a hint of mock-disapproval, "Still so impatient Scully. .. All business in that strict little outfit of yours, designed to neutralize the fact that you're a woman." The mockery deepened. "What an exemplary little Fed you are."

She bit her lip, forcing back the hot reply. She couldn't afford to lose her temper, not until she'd gotten out of the bastard the truth about the photo. "The people at the lab said the photo was genuine."

He raised an eyebrow, "I am disappointed, Scully, did you really think I'd send you a faked photograph?"

"How the hell do I know what you'd do?" she asked exasperated. "You and Mulder like to play mind-games, but I don't operate that way." It made her feel like a traitor, equating her partner with his worst enemy, but she couldn't help herself. At times the comparison was unavoidable.

Cat-soft, "And how do you operate, Special Agent Scully?"

She stared at him, repulsion darkening blue eyes, "Honestly, Krycek. Unfamiliar as you may be with the concept."

He laughed, and she was disconcerted. "Ah yes, that delightful wit of yours. No wonder Mulder was so desperate to get you back." Slyly, "did he ever tell you the price he paid for your return?"

She suddenly felt very tired, hating the memory of the months she'd been gone. She thought of her desperate attempts to remember, and the soul-shattering fear that she would.

"What do you want in exchange for the truth about the photo? Is that my sister? Is she alive?" Disgust and loathing for this man who played with her life hardened and iced her voice.

Krycek leaned back, leather creaking softly as he shifted, stretching out long legs. "So many questions, my dear Scully. Of course, the question is, will you believe what I tell you?" He smiled blandly, "I am you will remember, the rat bastard who betrayed Mulder." His eyes taunted her wariness. "Who arranged the murder of his father and your sister, and who is responsible for every dastardly act ever committed, including the Greenhouse Effect."

She could have hit him then, fingers curling to stop her clawing at his grinning lying face. "Dammit Krycek! This is my *sister* we're talking about! Tell me!"

Unmoved by her outburst he said very calmly, "First things first. What are you prepared to pay for the information?"

"Anything," she replied automatically, honestly. And too late she realized the trap she'd fallen into as his smile widened. She muttered a curse under her breath and brushed back her hair determined to sass it out. Back unconsciously straightened as she faced him squarely. "So now you know." Very crisply. "I repeat, what do you want? A deal? Immunity? Money?"

He shook his head, "None of the above. I don't need FBI immunity," reminding her subtly of his strange and unknown protectors. "Nor do I need money, though I admit that's hard to believe seeing my present surroundings." A wry twist of the mouth, "but they do have the advantage of anonymity, you'll agree. Actually, I probably net about ten times your salary, Scully."

She looked as disgusted as she felt. "Why does that not surprise me?"

He slowly stood up, stretching and suddenly looming over her. And she had to repress a sudden instinct to scoot back, or grab her gun.

"Because, truth, justice, liberty and the American way don't exactly pay well. You should try it on the other side for a while. Trust me, the fringe benefits are much better, not to mention the dental health-care plan."

"When hell freezes over," she retorted caustically. "Some of us have standards and something called morals, Krycek. Not that I would expect you would know anything about *that.*" She stiffened her spine, refusing to be intimidated. Still, she had to admit to being just a little unnerved by his closeness and the way his shadow fell across her. She crossed and recrossed her legs, realized his eyes followed the motion and flushed.

She cleared her throat, trying to recapture the initiative, voice curt and businesslike, "So if it's not money or my help with the FBI, why are you here? Why did you send me that photo? To torture me?" A sudden thought struck her, "or is this some kind of sick revenge on Mulder? Another twist of the knife?"

Krycek cocked his head curiously. "Why would I want to do that?"

She stared at him, "Because you and Mulder have unfinished business." Because you have made it your goal in life to torture Mulder, she thought. It was hard to look at Krycek and not see Mulder's pain, as he detailed all the ways Alex Krycek had betrayed him.

He laughed softly, "Wrong. Mulder has unfinished business with me, not the other way around." He shrugged, unconcerned. "Besides, have you even told Mulder about the photo?" She ducked her head, and her silence told him everything he needed to know. "That's what I thought, for two partners who are reputedly closer than Siamese twins you hide a lot from each other."

Scully bit her lip, not answering, unwilling to acknowledge the truth in his words.

The mattress creaked and shifted, dipping under his weight as he sat down beside her on the bed. He sat close enough to make her very uneasy, but not quite touching. Silently she acknowledged his cleverness. If she moved now she would be admitting he made her nervous.

Sternly she suppressed her first instinct, which was to jump up and out of reach; she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction. Damn but she hated these games of subtle psychological and physical domination. This was Mulder's area of expertise, not hers. She dealt in realities and hard facts. If it had been her partner sitting here, facing the former agent, no doubt he would have soon beaten Krycek at his own game and enjoyed doing so.

Still, she had learned a thing or two watching Mulder in action. And she knew that the biggest mistake one could make was to show any kind of weakness. So when she half-turned, facing him calmly, there was no hint of insecurity or doubt in her voice. Eyes cool and unreadable she was every inch the professional FBI agent.

"Talk to me Krycek, is my sister alive? I saw her body with my own eyes."

"No," he corrected, appreciation at her attempt to maintain a professional distance between them glimmering in his eyes. "Actually what you saw was *a* body. Scully, you've hung around Mulder and the X-files long enough to know that there are, ah, alternatives and that the dead do not always stay dead."

"My God," she breathed, eyes abruptly widening, leaning slightly forward. "Are you talking about the clones? The shapechangers? But that's impossible, there was an autopsy done and they would have discovered anything suspicious. That's standard with any homicide victim."

He was visibly amused, pity for her naiveté colouring his voice. "How thoroughly did you study the autopsy report, Scully?"

Silently she shook her head. She'd been at the scene, there was nothing it could tell her that she hadn't already known. She had only skimmed it once to check that there were no glaring irregularities. Furthermore, Scully acknowledged silently, it hurt too much to read about Melissa in the cold clinical terms of the coroner's report.

"Unfortunately, you won't have another chance to read it. Since it's been, ah, mislaid." A slash of white teeth, "but of course, I could be lying. That photo could just as well be of a clone. You have no way of knowing. Or I could have found a doppelganger for Melissa." The name of her sister fell from his lips with the ease of familiarity. She wondered just how well he knew Missy. At least it resolved some of her doubts over the authenticity of his story.

He continued smoothly. "With the resources of the Consortium that wouldn't have been too difficult. Or I could have access to some kind of new technology making it impossible for the FBI lab to distinguish between a manipulated photo and a genuine one."

Scully bit her lip. Hard. Jesus but the bastard was clever. Every alternative she'd thought of, every doubt she had articulated to herself, he'd anticipated and used to taunt her.

"I assume you're not going to tell me." Some of the defeat reflected in her voice, notwithstanding her attempts to hide it.

There was no pity, no compassion in the wolfish glance he gave her. "And destroy my reputation?"

He moved a shade closer, their shoulders suddenly touching, and instinctively she shifted away from him. He didn't follow but a strange unknown emotion darkened his eyes for a moment suddenly making her very nervous. She had to wait for a moment before she could say in a steady voice, "So, I'm asking you again, what do you want?"

A breath of silence, and then silkily, "You, Scully. You're the prize."

She gaped at him. "I, what, I don't understand," she said faintly, sure she hadn't heard correctly.

He chuckled, so close she could feel the warmth of his breath on her face. "I think you heard the first time, Scully." He slid his hand up her thigh, and she jumped.

She sat still as a statue, trying her best to ignore the touch of his fingers on her leg. "You're insane," she finally breathed. "Stark raving mad. For God's sake, Krycek, you can't be serious!"

He laughed, sending a shiver down her spine, "I'm surprised you have so little confidence in your looks, Dana." His hand slid higher and she felt it burn through the thin protective covering of nylon. Silently she cursed her decision to wear a skirt rather than pants to work today. "Why don't you believe I simply want you?"

Staring at Krycek the vulnerability of her situation made Scully extremely uneasy. Alone in a hotel room with a known assassin, she was suddenly all too aware she could expect no help, no backup. Especially since no one knew where she was. Facing him, half-turned, balancing on the softness of a mattress, she couldn't even reach for the gun digging into her back. And somehow she doubted she could physically overcome Alex Krycek, even a Krycek with only one arm. The body beneath the leather and denim was hard and muscular and she was all too aware he was a far more ruthless and proficient killer than she'd ever be, or want to for that matter. If that was what he was after, the man she was facing could kill her and no one would ever be the wiser.

After all the times she'd chewed Mulder out for going off on his own and almost getting his behind shot off, she was following in his footsteps. Who said bad influence didn't corrupt?

Ignoring his use of her first name she said reasonably, in the voice you use to humour a madman, "Because you wouldn't go to all this effort and expense just to umm..." she hesitated and he finished, amusement lacing his voice.

"... get in your pants?"

"Crude but succinctly put," she muttered, cursing the pale skin that blushed so easily. "Besides, umm," not quite believing she was having this discussion with *Krycek* of all people, "I thought you and Mulder were, uh, involved. That you weren't," she flushed even harder, feeling like an idiot, "ah, interested in women."

Another soft chuckle slid over her skin, making the fine hairs at the back of her neck stand straight up. "So Mulder has spilled the beans? Quite true, we did fuck. The Consortium, and my boss, wanted to establish an emotional hold on him, and that seemed the easiest way since they knew he played both sides of the street."

She lifted her head, and looked him straight in the eyes, not backing down, "And you do as well?"

A half-shrug, "Not really, although I can. Which is damn convenient in my line of work." He leaned forward and kissed her, tasting her mouth slowly, with a lazy satisfaction. For a moment, she was too astonished to voice a protest.

Scully froze. This *can't be happening!* she thought with the blankness of shock. She opened her mouth to tell him to back off, but he used the opportunity to deepen the kiss. His tongue thrust into her mouth making her gag, and gasp for air.

"Get away from me!" Psychological advantage be damned! That did not include being mauled by Alex Krycek. She leaped from the bed as if scalded, her mouth twisting in disgust. She almost spat on the floor to rid her mouth of the taste of him. "How dare you?!" She was genuinely angry and more than a little frightened.

She pulled her gun and aimed at it him uncocking the safety. "You son of a bitch!"

A soft mocking laugh ripe with lazy sensuous satisfaction answered her. "Ah, the universal cry of an outraged woman. I dare, Scully," his eyes suddenly hardened, and he seemed completely unfazed by the fact that she was aiming a gun at him. "Because without me you'll never know the truth about your sister. You can shoot me, I'm unarmed," he held up his hands, the real and the prosthetic, "or you can haul me in to the Feds, but that means you'll lose your only chance of ever knowing the truth about Melissa. Want to risk it?"

That stopped her, as he knew it would. She lowered her gun, poised to run, but still undecided. "So what you're saying is that if, if, I..."

His grin was smug enough to make her long to hit him. "What's the matter, Scully dear, having a hard time getting the word out?"

"Fuck you, Krycek!" she blazed. Training the gun on him once again.

"See, that wasn't so hard, now was it?" he mocked.

She shook her head, a strand of red hair falling across her face, the weight and solidness of the gun giving her back some of her confidence. "I don't understand, Krycek. Why *me*? God knows I'm no raving beauty. As you said yourself, you're well-off. There must be hundreds of beautiful women you can have, *willing* women," she clarified pointedly. Women willing to overlook your little drawbacks such as being a murderer, a traitor and a thief, she added silently, acidly.

Krycek shrugged, kicking off his shoes and swinging his legs up on the bed, back resting against the headboard, moving a little awkwardly. "True, but I don't want them, I want you."

"But why?" she asked again, almost plaintively. "This is ridiculous, Krycek, you never do anything for just one reason." A sudden thought struck her. "Is this a Consortium plot? If he ever finds out I slept with you, his enemy it would shatter him."

There was no need to say his name. They both knew who she was talking about. The third person in this little drama. Not physically present but nevertheless hovering there between them like the ghost of Christmas Past.

Green eyes narrowed and hardened a little. "I was wondering when your partner was going to get dragged into this conversation again."

Enraged she hissed, "Mulder doesn't trust easily, but me, he would trust with his life and more!" An odd expression rippled across Krycek's still face, "and if he was ever to find out, to *see* you and I - " she stopped abruptly and then said grimly. "Let me guess, there'll be little cameras hidden in the ceiling and walls, and once you've got it on tape you'll send it to Mulder, destroying him, unless I rein him in whenever you want."

His response more than startled her. He burst out laughing in genuine amusement. "I didn't know paranoia was contagious. Sorry, you're just not that important, trust me. Nor is your precious Mulder to be frank. No, Dana," he gave her a glance hot enough to scorch from long lashed emerald eyes, "Mulder was an assignment, company business if you will; you, on the other hand, will be all pleasure..."

The soft, sensuous voice scraped against her raw nerves. "Jesus Christ, Krycek! Do you really want to sleep with a woman who hates you?!"

A large yawn, the tip of his pink tongue curling, he sprawled loose-limbed across the bed. "Who said anything about sleeping?" She flushed hotly." And yes, since it's just about the only way I'll ever have you, absolutely. So it's your choice, Dana, you can storm out of here in righteous indignation, or you can stay and give me what I want, in return for what you want."

She wondered at the odd bitterness pervading his voice when he added softly, "Everyone has their price, my beautiful little Fed, even you. Even Mulder..."

She stared at him, the anger and fear slowly replaced with a thoughtful calculation. "So what you're saying is, if I," She hesitated briefly, searching for the right word. She had already tried sleeping, and been mocked. She could hardly think of a less appropriate phrase than 'making love' so that left either the clinical medical terms, or the more vulgar ones. And whichever she used, he was sure to pounce on it. In the end she finished lamely, "uh, accommodate you, you'll give me information about Melissa?"

One dark eyebrow lifted. "That depends on how accommodating you're planning on being."

"Oh stop it!" she snapped, allowing herself the luxury of losing her temper. "You're being childish! Look," she continued briskly, "personally I can't think of anything more off-putting than going to bed with someone who not only doesn't want me, but hates my guts. Still, if that's how you get your kicks..." She shrugged. "However, before I do anything, I want more evidence than one picture."

He nodded, unsurprised. "I expected as much, knowing you, Scully. Look by the window."

She had to restrain the impulse to tell him to go to hell. Or to show the unease she felt at the thought of something, *someone* behind her back. Slowly, she holstered her gun and turned to the window. But the only thing there was a brown manila folder. She walked over picking it up.

Scully opened it and read it by the faint light of the lamp. There were more photographs; Melissa in the garden... Melissa in the kitchen pouring coffee... Melissa in the living room dancing to herself... And she felt the tears prickle in her eyes. Then she turned her attention to the papers. There were surveillance reports, and at the back three letters in Missy's characteristic loopy handwriting. Handwriting can be forged, but the style, the character of the writer is harder. And this was Melissa to a T. Her scatty mind wandering from thought to thought, little careless references to her family, to old boyfriends, to her eternal search for the Whyness of the Wherefore. When she finally closed the folder, Scully remained very still for a long moment. Finally she slowly turned to the man watching her.

"All right, you've convinced me," she said simply. "I don't know how the hell you got this, or how Melissa can still be alive after I saw her body with my own eyes. But, I'll pay any price for this information." Unbidden, the image of Melissa rose before her. Her sister who's only crime was being related to Dana Scully. Missy who had died for her sister, or had she? Staring at Krycek, eyes wide, unblinking she remembered Margaret Scully's terrible anguish. Her own unending guilt and grief. How many times had she dreamed of turning the clock back? Of somehow making it all right. If Krycek was telling the truth... she bit her lip.

Trying hard to still her beating heart, she walked over to the bed, looking down at him. "What do you want me to do?" she asked trying to mask her unease.

Special Agent Dana Scully, fabled for *always* keeping her cool and composure, was suddenly feeling very awkward. Yet a flash of the errant humor that cropped up at the most inappropriate moments wondered how the hell you ever trained for *this* kind of situation. 'How to go to bed with your partner's mortal enemy offering valuable information 101.'

He held out his hand, and after a visible moment of hesitation, she slowly took it, feeling the warm strength of the fingers closing around hers. "Sit down," he said softly, levering himself up until his back rested against the headboard. He moved over, making room for her to sit down beside him.

Stiffly, she obeyed.

"Relax," he murmured quietly, reaching up to stroke her cheek with the back of his hand. "I'm not about to eat you." The quirk of one black eyebrow acknowledged the unintentional pun. "Or at least not yet," he corrected himself.

She shook her head, having to fight down a slight smile, as his humour unconsciously relaxed her a little. Suddenly curious, she studied his face. Since the first time she had seen him, Alex Krycek had been in the shadow of Mulder. Certainly whenever she'd thought of him, it was in relation to Fox Mulder. In some ways, he had not possessed any real substance except in connection to her partner and best friend.

It had been easy to dismiss him back when he was first assigned as Mulder's partner as too young, too pretty, too worshipful to take seriously. Then too, he and Mulder had not been together long, when she was abducted and even before that she had consciously avoided them. Hers and Mulder's separation had been too painful, without the constant reminders of all they had lost.

Most of the other agents and employees stationed at FBI HQ had only seen Mulder's aversion to his new partner. The way he had treated the young, adoring puppyish agent with ill-disguised contempt and even open dislike. But Dana Scully knew her Mulder, and during her convalescence after waking from the coma, she had managed to ease the truth from him. If Fox Mulder was the only person with the key to Dana Scully's soul, then the opposite was true as well. And she had known from the first time he spoke of Krycek when she lay in that damned hospital bed, that there was more to the dark, bitter rage when he mentioned his former partner, than he first wanted to admit. Patient, gentle persuasion with a hint of nagging now and then, soon had him admitting everything. And she had listened in silence without condemning, without judging, as he haltingly told her of Krycek's betrayal. As an enemy agent, and.... more.

Krycek met her eyes, returning the look steadily. His green eyes calm, a little amused. But deep inside them was a steady unflickering flame. "God, you're beautiful," he murmured, almost reverently. His body had relaxed, a barely noticeable tension released from his shoulders. A tension she hadn't been aware of until it was gone. Almost as if, she thought in a sudden flash, he hadn't been quite as confident of himself as he'd seemed.

Gently, he grasped her waist and tugged until she was half-lying down, pressed against him. They lay in silence for a long time, Scully's heart beating so hard it echoed in her ears. She had been afraid, when facing mysterious lake monsters, Mexican Aztec demons and telepathic homicidal maniacs, but at least then, it had been work, she had known what to do. This time she felt woefully out of control and suddenly uncertain; it was not an emotion she relished. She felt his arm go around her, and a hand tilted her face up.

She had been prepared for anything from a brutal assault to selfish lust. Everything but the soft, gentle touch of his mouth on her lips, lazily stroking them apart.

"Wha.. what are you doing?" she finally managed to say. It emerged in a breathless whisper.

"Shh..." he murmured against her mouth. "Don't think, Dana, feel." His tongue invaded, exploring slowly, thoroughly. Opening her eyes wide, she wondered if she looked as bewildered as she felt.

"No, don't be afraid," he murmured, seeing confusion and dawning fear reflected in wide, deep-blue eyes. She wanted to snort and tell him she wasn't afraid of him. Only of the feelings inside her. He kissed them closed, a sudden gentleness that could almost be called tender softening his voice. "I'm not going to hurt you."

She didn't encourage or resist him, just lay there passively. And then she felt his hand slip under her jacket, tugging up the blouse she wore underneath. The first touch of his fingers on her bare skin made her gasp and stiffen, flinching away instinctively.

She suddenly started shaking, more than a little afraid, again, not of him, but of the turmoil inside her. She had to get away, to think. To gather herself.

"Please, Krycek," and suddenly she didn't care she was begging. "Please don't do this. Don't make me do this." She shuddered. "I *can't*, I'll," she thought wildly of anything, everything she could give him instead, "I'll pay any amount of money you want!"

Too late she realized the mistake she'd made. That strange disconcerting gentleness abruptly wiped away as his eyes hardened, narrowed. The smile he gave her was a mere baring of the teeth. And when she looked at him, all emotion had been leached from slitted brilliant green irises. With another shiver she realised they reminded her of a wolf's stalking its prey.

"I'm hurt, Scully," he told her with a deadly softness. "But if that's how you feel, no need to drag it out, eh?" He rolled away from her abruptly. "Strip," he ordered. And smiled grimly. "Oh, and Dana, don't forget to make it worth my while. I do want value for money."

She leaped from the bed, already opening her mouth to tell him to go to hell. When she swung around, staring at him with icy blue eyes, she was ready to scream her hatred of this man who played with her life. But before she could say anything, he asked her silkily.

"Does this mean you want to renege on our agreement? Poor Melissa, I'm sure she won't appreciate hearing her sister wasn't even prepared to, ah," a caustic smile, "what is the saying? 'Lay back and think of England.'"

Scully went still and pale as a marble statue. "You've *seen* Melissa? She's alive?" she whispered, arrested by his words. "You've spoken to her?"

Krycek shrugged, "Perhaps, but I thought you were leaving?"

Suddenly she wondered if it was all a cruel game. The photo, his demands. With Krycek and the Consortium anything was possible and usually the truth exceeded even Mulder's paranoia. But Dana Scully knew she could never take the chance that he was telling the truth. For the chance, however slim, to have her sister back, alive, she would do much worse than sell her body to slime like Krycek. Besides, she had to stifle a nervous half-giggle, more than one female FBI agent might have been willing to change places with her. At least judging from gossip making the rounds of the FBI HQ corridors.

"Are you really so hard up for a woman you need to rape one?" she asked between stiff lips. Praying that would at least make him stop and think.

He shook his head. A strange, cold, pitying smile transformed his eyes into an enigmatic dark-green. "Oh no, Dana. I won't rape you."

Taking her by surprise, he too rose and from behind the bed, pulled out a gun. How typical Krycek, she had the time to think in almost-amusement. And to wonder how many guns he had hidden in the room. "If I was to point this," he trained it on her, cocking it. "At your head and tell you to strip and spread your legs, that would be rape." The safety clicked on again. "Or if I were to bash you over the head with the barrel, handcuff you," he reached under the bed for a pair of handcuffs," and take you, that would be rape." He carefully placed the gun and the handcuffs on the small bedside table. "I'm not going to do either." He crossed his arms, leaning against the wall.

"There is the door. You're free to leave, no one is stopping you." He gave her a long, taunting look from under the long black lashes fanning out across tanned skin. "And if you stay, that's your choice as well."

"You bastard!" she hissed, almost relieved when anger blotted out the earlier confusion. "Fine! If that's what it takes!" She marched over to the bed, already unbuttoning her blouse, slender fingers, tearing angrily at the small mother-of-pearl buttons.

She stripped in silent defiance, neatly folding her skirt and blouse, tucking the pantyhose into one shoe. But by the time she was naked some of the anger had faded away and been replaced by crawling unease. Still, she turned and faced him, head up, chin defiantly raised.

He looked at her for a long time, while her discomfiture grew and she had to consciously stop her hands from covering her body or shifting from foot to foot. She felt, she thought bitterly, like a slave-girl about to be auctioned. Dana Scully had never been attracted to the romance of 'days past' or ever entertained any BDSM fantasies. Personally she much preferred equal rights under the law, her independence and paying her own taxes. And if she'd ever had any desire to experiment, this certainly cured her of it. She felt only disgust, with herself and him.

When he finally spoke it was to say, a little huskily. "I've imagined this more times than you'll ever know. But none of my fantasies ever did justice to reality." His sweeping glance drove the colour onto her cheeks, "I'm glad to see you are a natural redhead, not that I ever really doubted. Now, I want you to undress me."

She opened her mouth to refuse. It wasn't that she hadn't undressed a lover before. But this time was different. Of course it was! she thought half-hysterically. This time there was no soft candle-light, romantic music or good food. And most importantly, no man she liked and respected. A man she had agreed to share pleasure with. No, this was a bargain struck with possibly the most evil man she had ever come across. Her hatred and disgust made her feel nauseous. My God how she hated him for what he had done to her family, her country and her partner.

His eyes narrowed, the pupils contracting to dark points as he watched the expressions chase each other across her face. "Now, what's up in that contrary little mind of yours?" he asked silkily.

She replied without thinking, "I was thinking that you're the most disgusting person I'm ever likely to meet. And that includes Tooms, who - "

She didn't get any further as he grabbed her arm hard enough to bruise.

"Are you trying to make me angry?" he asked levelly.

"No. You asked me what I was thinking and I answered," she replied, incurably honest.

He stared at her for a moment, and then a wry smile turned up the corners of his mouth making him far too attractive for her peace of mind. "Christ, Dana, I'm surprised no one hasn't tried to strangle you by now." His hand slid slowly up her shoulder, lightly circling her slender throat. He slowly shook his head. "I don't know where you get your guts from. Most men not only outweigh you by fifty pounds or more, they're also taller and stronger."

"You'd be surprised," she said tartly, his words hitting a sensitive spot. "I may be small, but you know what they say, the bigger they are, the harder they fall."

"Undress me," he repeated softly, cupping her jaw, fingers slowly shifting along her neck.

"Do what?" She stared at him.

"You heard me, undress me. I want to feel your hands on me," he explained politely, still smiling, but his breathing was coming a little more rapidly.

He was watching her, obviously expecting her to refuse, but taking her bottom lip firmly between her teeth, and reminding herself grimly of Melissa she obeyed.

It was beyond her power, or her desire, to make it the teasing, sensual experience it usually was. And yet, there was something almost unbearably intimate in their positions. In standing mere inches from him, slowly unbuttoning his shirt, sliding it off his shoulders. Then reaching for his jeans. The zipper made a faint, scraping sound as it slid down easily. They fell to his feet as he stepped out of them and kicked them away.

Scully slowly ran her hands along his shoulders, feeling the heat of his skin through the thin T-shirt that was all he wore. Whatever else he was, she could not deny he was an uncommonly attractive man. Another time, another place; another man, and she might even have enjoyed herself. The human body was no mystery to her, in her professional capacity, or on a personal level. She reached down to remove the thin layer of cotton, and unconsciously her thumb and index finger formed a circle, her other fingers curling into a loose fist. She could almost hear the calm voice of the professor lecturing the class. 'You cut straight through here...' he jerked lightly as she unconsciously pressed her fingers into his skin.

How many bodies had she handled over the years? Cut into without fear or hesitation. Dissembled to understand what had caused their deaths. Why should she feel awkward just because this one was alive? She bent her head to hide the sudden uneasy smile. And she wondered how he would react if she asked if he could please kill himself to make her feel more comfortable.

She pulled at his T-shirt lifting it over his head. The prosthetic arm gave her a moment's problem and she had to stand on tip-toe to pull it over his head. The action forced them into very close proximity, and she almost jerked back as his lips closed over her breast.

A sudden flood of warmth pooled in the pit of her stomach, her body suddenly feeling flushed and hot, her other nipple puckering and hardening. She heard his soft satisfied chuckle, and closed her eyes in shame. She suddenly remembered his earlier words, and silently she acknowledged that in some ways, rape would have been easier to deal with than *this.*

Dana Scully had honestly believed that she would never, under any circumstances, have been attracted to a man like Alex Krycek. And that paying him off with her body would entail some discomfort, even perhaps, some slight pain. But pain had never frightened her. After all, it couldn't be worse than the cancer treatment. Or the agony of standing by Melissa's grave hearing her mother's quiet sobbing and knowing it was her fault Missy was dead.

Uncannily Krycek seemed to read her thoughts. "That would make it too easy, Dana," he murmured, sliding his arm around her waist, long sensitive fingers splayed across her hip, exploring the soft fine skin, in a caress that made her catch her breath and then shudder deeply. "If I raped you, that would just reinforce your thoughts of me as a slimy bastard, not fit enough to wipe your shoes on! You and Mulder," a sudden harsh bitterness deepened his voice. "I know what you think of me. I've seen your looks. Watched you sweep past everyone in the corridor, so intent with each other you don't even notice anyone else."

She bit her lip. Mulder, always Mulder. Bill Scully had once accused his sister of being 'unhealthy obsessed with Fox Mulder.' Unfortunately, it seemed she was not the only one with that problem.

His hand moved lower, cupping her mound, and then smiling in satisfaction at her small gasp, and the sudden wetness dampening his fingers. "Yes, Dana, you're hungry," he murmured roughly. "Mulder may be many things, but you're not lovers, are you? You're his Goddess, his Madonna, not to be defiled by common hands."

"No, you don't understand, Krycek," she said weakly, closing her eyes hating the betrayal of her own body. "Neither Mulder or I ever thought that!"

And she thought bitterly that once again she was caught up in a maelstrom created by her partner. She made one last futile attempt to make him understand.

"Whatever is between you and Mulder, it has nothing to do with me! Why do you have to drag me into it?!"

He shook his head, clicking his tongue, "Foolish Dana, did it never occur to you that it was *you* I wanted, not Mulder?"

Her eyes widened. "I, I don't understand," she stammered.

He bent his head, feathering kisses along her jaw, licking and tasting the taut arch of her throat. "That's painfully obviously," a mirthless smile. "I doubt you were even aware of me as an individual, much less a man, Dana." His grip around her waist tightened as he slowly moved backwards towards the bed. He turned so she was standing between him and the bed. His hand moved to cup her neck and tangle in her hair. Holding her still as he looked down at her, his eyes lit from within by a strange light.

"You can be so infuriatingly blind at times. You hated me because I was where you wanted to be; at Mulder's side. And therefore you never saw *me.*" He gave her an odd smile. "Truth is, neither of us were we wanted to be back then."

Scully fought to bring order to her thoughts. Was he right? She wasn't sure. She had listened, and smiled, at the ribald cafeteria gossip about him. And she had never denied he was one of the most good-looking men she had ever seen. But he was right that to her the fact that he was Mulder's partner had overshadowed any other emotion. Ever since the first time she'd seen Krycek all she had been aware of was an intense jealousy that he was Fox Mulder's partner. Mulder's partner was *her.*

Her eyes widened as she tried to absorb the knowledge that Krycek had wanted her, not Mulder. A knowledge that was not only profoundly shocking, but deep, deep down in some dark, hidden place in her soul, lit a tiny flare of something uncomfortably close to satisfaction. But, she only said, "I honestly didn't even think you saw me as anything but a nuisance."

"A nuisance?" he raised one dark eyebrow, rolling the word thoughtfully around his mouth. "That's a strange choice of words. I would call you many things, Dana. Beautiful... Exquisite... Brilliant... but definitely not a nuisance. A dangerous distraction perhaps?"

He leaned into her a little harder forcing her back, as she slowly sank to the bed. He followed, muscles flexing under his skin as he knelt between her legs. Hot green eyes focused on her body, silently detailing each inch of ivory-pale skin, each delicate curve and hollow. She wanted to tell him to stop looking at her. To stop looking as if what they were going to do could indeed be called 'making love.'

"I know what you thought." He told her as his mouth softened into a gentle smile. "You're not a very good liar. And perhaps I should have let you know how I felt back then, but Mulder was my assignment, and I am a professional, Dana. But trust me, we are definitely *not* entwined. As for the rest," he half-shrugged, "I don't really care. The assignment is over, and therefore my interest, bodily or otherwise with Fox Mulder."

"I don't believe you," she said flatly. "Whatever happens, the two of you will always be linked. You slept with him, Krycek, and then you killed his father. His *father* for God's sake! Don't you understand what you've done to him?"

Warm breath brushed across her skin, and then she almost jumped as he gently bit her ear, his one good hand closed gently around her breast, thumb flipping over the already sensitive and erect nipple. Her back arched instinctively, fine shivers running down her skin.

Krycek said calmly, "Mulder hated his father. Actually I did him a favour offing the old son of a bitch. He was dirty as hell. Why do you think they took Mulder's sister, hmm?"

Shadowed blue eyes reflected the pain she felt for her partner. "You don't understand," she whispered, hands clenching. "I know how Mulder felt about his father, and that's exactly why he can never forgive what you did."

An unpleasant smile twisted his face. "Quite the little psychologist aren't we?" His eyes hardened, "and I'd appreciate it if you would shut up about Fox Mulder! There are much more interesting topics, like last week's weather in Timbuktu."

It was her turn to feel a hint of smugness, at his sudden show of temper. "You're the one who brought him up," she pointed out irrefutably.

She opened her eyes wide, to stare up at him with all the hatred, the contempt and anger she felt. She had suddenly realised where all the soft little smiles, the gentle caresses were leading her. Why the hell did he have to be such an accomplished seducer? Well, it might have worked with Mulder, but she'd be damned if it was going to work with her!

Speaking in a deliberately bored, weary voice, she said, "Well, if you're in that much of a hurry, get on with it. I've got more important things to do." And although she had never felt less sleepy, she yawned.

He stiffened. "You little bitch," he said slowly. But then his eyes lost their anger and changed to a cold speculation. "Ah, I see." He murmured, "what, did you think you could just lie there, passively? Like a living inflatable doll?"

She raised an eyebrow in genuine surprise. "Did you think it would be any differently Krycek? You want lies? Someone to tell you what a fabulous lover you are? Go find a whore like yourself! I'm here, because of my sister. There was nothing said about pretending, and I'm not going to lie."

She said flatly, "You're scum. A traitor, a killer and a common thief. I'm not expecting to get anything out of this but information about Melissa. As I said, if your price is a few moments of meaningless friction, then that's your choice." She affected a shrug, looking nonchalant. Not an easy thing to do when you're naked on your back, with a furious, nude and aroused man leaning down over you. So she was rather proud of herself as she continued coolly, "and if you're after a power-kick, blackmailing a FBI agent. Well, trust me, I already feel degraded enough just being here with you."

There was a moment of absolute stillness, and she felt a sudden panic at the expression on his face. The frozen rage in his eyes.

But all he said was, a little too calmly, a little too evenly, "You have no idea what true degradation means, Dana. But you will. Before you leave this room, I promise you will."

Everyone needs to keep some illusions about themselves. Dana Scully no less than anyone else.

Control, over herself, and her environment had always mattered to her. Too much, according to Mulder. And in a few devastating moments Krycek showed her what true powerlessness meant. He was far too skilled and clever to use violence or pain to drive home his point. Instead, he stripped her of most of her remaining illusions. As well as her self-respect and honor.

She paid, and paid dearly for her impetuous, contemptuous words as she learned what it meant to have her body turned against her. To have her body used to punish, and yet pleasure. Until the two mingled and pain became the ultimate expression of desire.

He swooped, a bruising, almost violent kiss, pushing her back into the pillow, cutting off her breath. Scully closed her eyes, drifting. Her whole body felt curiously alive, but brittle as if made of glass. She was sure if he pressed just a little harder she'd shatter into a thousand shards. Her emotions were too raw, the sensations of her body too overwhelming. All she could do was submit to them.

Again Krycek seemed to read her mind, and at another time and place that might have alarmed her. "Don't think, Dana," he whispered against her skin. And she couldn't even dredge up any anger at his use of her first name.

Warm lips burned a path down her body, soft little kisses scattered across the plane of her stomach and then a lightning bolt of pleasure knifed through her. She gasped and then moaned as his tongue traced the cleft that divided her mound, delving deeper.

"Ahh!" she shuddered softly, "please!" she exclaimed, yet not sure if she was protesting or asking him to continue. Wave upon wave of sensation drowned her in pure pleasure! His mouth and hands had her feeling things she didn't want to feel. A complete sense of helplessness overwhelmed her, and wide, blue eyes widened in panic at the realization that this diabolical man knew her own body far better than she did. That no matter how much she hated him she was helpless to prevent him taking her over.

He ignored her soft pleas, merely laughing, and the feeling of his warm breath against her, *inside* her, was almost more than she could handle. Hips thrusting, head flung back, she was moaning, clutching at his hair not sure if it was to pull him closer or to push him away. But as his lips fastened on the small erect, throbbing flesh, sucking hard, all she was able to do was to ride the emotions to its ultimate end, sobbing loudly, head thrashing, until with a high desperate scream she went over the edge into the abyss.

It took a long time to float down again. Too tired to even move, Scully was vaguely aware of the picture she must make, legs sprawled wide, breasts still heaving as she tried to catch her breath, skin damp and flushing. Krycek pulled himself up, looking down at her with hooded, gleaming eyes, smiling in satisfaction. "Did you enjoy that, Dana?" he asked softly.

She flushed, turning her head away, refusing to answer, conscious now that she could think again, of intense shame and humiliation.

"Look at me, Dana," he demanded still in that silky soft voice, and slowly, unwillingly she turned her head facing him. "Before the night is over, you'll be begging me to take you."

"Never!" she told him. The hatred, and self-loathing contrasted oddly with the sated, slumberous blue of her eyes.

His answer was a cruel, fierce smile. "It's so easy to forget, isn't it? You may hate me, but your body betrays you every time I touch it." His hand slipped between her legs, just a quick casual touch but it still made her move restlessly, hips pushing against his fingers. Oh God, she thought, I wish I were dead. Too weary to move even a muscle, her only escape was to close her eyes against the knowing, mocking smile of Alex Krycek. But that only made her more aware of the touch of his fingers, the slow slide of skin against skin.

"Yes," he murmured, voice husky and rough. "You're one hot little bitch. Does Mulder know, I wonder?"

Her voice a mere breath of sound, Scully answered tiredly, "Why don't you ask him the next time you meet. That'll be sure to get your head blown off."

He laughed, "He does put you on a pedestal, doesn't he. But I think it might be fun, just to see his reaction. However, in the meantime, you still owe me." Scully shivered, suddenly very, very cold.

"Cold? No matter, I'll soon have you all warm again." She wanted to tell him that it wasn't cold that made her shiver, or not only cold. She was feeling desolate and stupidly had to hold back the tears that burned against her eyelids. Tears at the loss of her illusions, her integrity, *herself.*

He leaned over her, "Crying, Dana?" If she hadn't known better she could have sworn there was a brief glimpse of... something in the shadows of his eyes, before he blinked and they were once again shards of green crystal. "Can't have that now, can we?" the soft smooth voice reminded her of a leopard about to pounce.

When he moved again she wanted to flee but a terrible lassitude had invaded the very marrow of her being. So she just lay with closed eyes, tremors racking her body as he started again to weave his spell. But this time he wasn't content with simply letting her feel, this time he demanded something more, as he bent his head, lips tasting each inch of her hot damp skin. Dizzily Scully wondered how it was that a one-armed man seemed to have a thousand fingers to tease and linger exactly where he knew she would writhe and moan. Panting, body afire, Scully had long since lost all coherent thought, everything but the pleasure riding her body, a pleasure so fierce she thought she was going to die.

Again and again he drove her right to the brink, but never giving her release. In the end she was clinging to him, slavishly following his commands, doing things that had her flush even days later when she thought about what he'd made her do, what he'd done to her. And then he did indeed make her beg.

Nails digging into his back, Dana opened her legs and arched into his body. She shuddered at the feel of him pressed against every inch of her body. His lips moved over skin made violently sensitive from repeated touching, from white hard teeth nibbling at it. She vibrated at his slightest touch, at a whisper of breath brushing against her. And once again she felt her body dissolving under his experienced hands. But then he suddenly stopped. Slowly she opened her eyes, confusion reflecting in their depths.

He was watching her intently. "Feels good, doesn't it, Dana?" He murmured, and laughed at her expression. "Tell me, Dana, beg me to take you," he murmured, bending his head and pressing small, hard kisses along her throat.

"Go to hell," she said weakly closing her eyes again, hating him.

He didn't say anything, just brushed his fingertips across her stomach, and lower. Her hips thrust up, thighs opening even wider. And then he went still, waiting. He knew each trick, knew exactly when to linger, where to tease, until she was near mindless, moaning wordlessly, lost in the sensations he invoked with a single touch, a slow lazy lick of his tongue, Scully was vibrating like a finely tuned instrument. Again and again he slowly drove her higher and higher, until she could *feel* herself ready to explode. And then he ceased at precisely the right moment, waiting while she moaned her frustration and need. Watched as she almost went mad from what he was doing and the frustration racking her body.

And so, to her own eternal shame in the end she heard her own voice, soft, faltering, give him the satisfaction he wanted.

"Please," she whispered, eyes still tightly closed as she reached for him with shaking hands, body rubbing up against his. "Please, I want you Krycek. I want you." She had to force down the tears clogging her throat. And she had never hated herself more than at this moment. "Is that what you want to hear?" she demanded brokenly.

"Yes, Dana," he murmured softly, as he finally moved, sliding into her in one clean thrust. "That's all I wanted to hear. And she heard herself moaning in time to his every powerful movement, "please, please, please...." Then, finally he gave her the release she craved, only this time she was not the only one. As if illuminated in a strobe light, once when she opened her eyes, she saw him, eyes wide open watching her with a hungry desperation. Dimly she thought he looked as if he wanted to burn her image into his memory forever.

She had not lived like a nun, although the past years had given her little time for a social life. There had been lovers, not too many perhaps, just the normal amount of men she had shared a bed and pleasure with. But her previous lovers had been polite civilized men, men she liked and respected. And not one of them had ever touched the core of her being like the killer and thief who took her body with a brutal passion that allowed no holding back.

She never knew whether she imagined it or not. But once, as she lost all control in his arms, he slid his hand along her thigh murmuring with an emotion, which in anyone but him she would have called pain, "Well, at least I can always give you this..." And when she looked up at him with huge, dazed eyes, blinking the sweat from long, heavy eyelashes, she caught on the beautiful face leaning down over her, a fleeting expression of.... pain? But then he bent his head, and she lost all ability to think coherently.

All through that night they, not loved. No never that. *Fucked* was what they did. There was a leashed violence that hovered on the brink of cruelty in the way he wrung every last ounce of feeling, of pleasure from her body until she was too exhausted to do anything but sleep. Deeply, dreamlessly almost a coma, in the only escape from him, that was possible for her. * * *

When Dana Scully finally woke again it was morning. Opening her eyes slowly, blinking against the light, she realized she was alone in the crumpled bed. Moving brought a faint moan to her lips, as muscles strained by last night's activities protested.

Krycek stood by the window looking out, already dressed in black jeans, T-shirt and sneakers. Hearing the bed move, he turned around. "Ah, awake at last, good." He nodded towards the small table beside him and the envelope lying on it. "There's your payment."

Scully flushed hotly, realizing the kind of picture she must make, naked in a strange, disheveled bed, tousled hair and with faint bruises in some very unusual places. Shifting, she was aware of the tenderness between her legs. She repressed a wince. If he had wanted to make her feel like a whore, he had succeeded in spades.

"Thank you," she whispered, avoiding his face carefully. "I, uh - "

"Don't thank me too soon," he told her abruptly, walking over to the bed to stand looking down at her with hooded, watchful eyes. His mouth thinned sardonically as he noted her averted face, the hands clutching the sheet around her breasts, the rising flush.

"What do you mean?" she asked, uncertainly.

He sat down beside her, his arm brushing against her breast. He ignored her instinctive flinch away from him. "I mean, Dana, that this is not the end but the beginning. What you've got there is more evidence of your sister if you chose to believe it. But if you really want to know, then I guess you'll have to come running the next time I whistle."

Shock betrayed her into looking at him. "You can't be serious! I paid last night, I did what you wanted!"

He laughed, bending down to kiss her shoulder, and despite herself, she shivered at the touch of his lips on her skin. "And very nicely too." The soft mockery had her clenching her teeth. "You're so naive, Scully. Last night was payment for what you had already received. If you want anything else, then you'll have to give me something in return."

Looking into implacable, coolly feline eyes, her shoulders slumped. If she had thought it would help, she would have pleaded and begged. But searching his face there was no hint of compassion or mercy, just grim determination and a strange hunger that had grown worse rather than sated.

Half-choking, she finally got out. "How do I know you'll keep your word?"

He chuckled, "You don't. All you can do is hope." Straightening he stood up, "I'll be in touch." Grabbing his leather jacket, he stopped with his hand on the door handle, giving her a last lingering look, "and if you continue to please me as you did last night, then who knows? I may even be persuaded to let you meet your sister..." a pause, "and then again, maybe not."

The door slammed behind him, and she was alone.

Scully pulled her knees up wrapping her arms around them and for the first time since she was told she had recovered from her cancer her eyes filled with tears and she started to cry helplessly....* * *

Exactly as he had promised, or rather threatened, it was just the beginning. The beginning of a nightmare - and something more.

In darkened rooms where neon lights flooded the bed in blinking garish fluorescent pinks and blues, Krycek taught her about lust. About a craving fierce need that had nothing to do with liking or respect. She hated him with every fiber of her being yet the sound of his voice on her answering machine, made her tremble, a liquid heat spreading from the pit of her stomach. He had become a drug she loathed and craved simultaneously. She hated him, God how she hated him, yet one touch of those devilish long fingers, and she melted.

A week later he simply phoned, told her the place and time and hung up again before she had the time to say anything. She wasn't going. Of course she wasn't going, she would be mad to do so. She would tell Mulder and Skinner and they would help her get the truth from the slimy bastard. But even as she told herself this and a thousand other things, she was getting into her car, driving to the small motel just outside town, knocking on the door to the room.

The door opened, Krycek glanced beyond her, to the left and right, and apparently satisfied that she hadn't been followed he pulled her inside and kicked the door shut.

"You took your time!" he growled.

"I wasn't going to come," she admitted.

"Well, now that you are here, let's get on with it," he snapped at her.

"You're such a romantic, Krycek," Scully couldn't resist telling him dryly. She almost smiled, despite knowing what he was going to do, she felt vaguely amused.

It was the last time she felt like smiling for a long time.

In silence they undressed and in silence they slid between the cool sheets. Sneaking a quick peak at him, she saw that his face was carved into harsh, distant lines, eyes cool and impenetrable. She had the sudden odd feeling that he wasn't really there but lost in some private hell of his own.

Closing her eyes, Scully shivered as the bed beside her dipped under his weight. She wanted badly to run, to scream her disgust and hatred of this man and the cold, soulless bargain he'd forced on her. But then it was too late, as he reached for her. And her mouth closed on the words of rage and opened in a soft moan of lust as his hand and mouth slid over her skin.

Staring up into the ceiling, over his shoulder, listening to the harsh rasp of his breathing in her ear, Scully had to blink away sudden tears, feeling icy cold despite the heat of the wiry, lithe body covering hers and the sweat-slicked , damp skin clinging to hers in a sensation somehow even more intimate than the invasion of her body. Krycek bent his head, and to her own mortification, she heard herself breath out in a soft sigh of pleasure.

He was, not brutal exactly, just uncaring, using her body for his own pleasure. Not that he hurt her, far from it. Yet she cold not shake the feeling that he never really saw her. That it could have been any woman giving him the same kind of responses.

As soon as he was finished, he abruptly rolled away left the bed, grabbed his clothes, and walked into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him

Sitting on the bed in the tawdry motel room, naked and cold, Scully had never felt so used and dirty. She wasn't sure who she despised more right now: Him for degrading her, or herself for letting him. Slowly she gathered her clothes, and dressed, fingers fumbling with buttons and zippers. Once dressed, however, she hesitated, should she knock on the bathroom door? She never wanted to see Krycek again in her life but she must not forget why she was here. Melissa, she reminded herself. Remember Melissa. A quick glance around the room had already informed her there was no file, no papers.

Dana Scully had never lacked guts, not when she was ten and playing baseball and a clean hit took out the living room window of Rear Admiral Jake "Thunder" Connors, Ret, the fear of all the neighbor kids. Dana alone had not run away, but faced him, head up, so pale you could see the band of freckles across her nose, red pigtails bobbing. The adult Dana Scully would not run either.

Standing up, she walked over and knocked on the door, "Krycek?"

He opened it, dressed as well. "What the hell do you want?"

"My payment," she said as steadily as she could, trying to keep down the blush.

He laughed, an unpleasant jeering sound. "You're kidding! I said you'd get it, and you will, when I decide. Now get the hell out of here, unless you want some more?" he leered at her, making her palm itch to slap him.

Without a word, holding on to whatever shreds of dignity remained, she turned on her heel and left him and the motel behind. It wasn't until she was driving home, she realized there were tears slowly sliding down her face. * * *

Dana Katherine Scully, MD, had never had much time or even patience for passion. Her relationships had been built on mutual regard, shared interests, friendship and respect with sex a minor, all right, a very minor part at times. Her companions had all been civilized, polite men. All of them able to discuss Camus and the latest Senate Bill. To chose the perfect white wine to go with the fish. To ski and play golf. To keep up a witty, intelligent conversation. And in the bedroom each person did what they needed to in privacy and without undue emotion.

Alex Krycek was not something she had ever imagined she'd encounter. There was a darkness, a rage in him that found its outlet not in violence, but in the mockery of passion, that was their bargain. To her, what he seemed to enjoy most was not his own release, but her subjugation. More than once, while she went mad in his arms, she would catch that strange, hungry look in his eyes. There was no shame, no inhibition in him, and just thinking of what he did to her, what he made her do had her silently writhing, not in passion but with shame, when she was alone and sane once again.

Again and again his mocking laughter echoed in her ears. He seemed to enjoy the shock she couldn't quite hide at what he demanded from her, the response he wrung from her body and soul. She had never met a man like him, and she prayed she never would again. She found in herself a capacity to hate that startled and frightened her. She hated the way he made her feel, the way he made her beg.

Yet all the while she knew just how easy it would be to drown in the dark, sweet poison of his lust.

Scully had often smiled in mingled amazement and pity when her female friends admitted to losing their heads over some handsome hunk that they knew was completely wrong for them.

"I couldn't help myself, Dana," her friend Anne once told her. "We have nothing in common, I mean I hate everything he stands for. He's a racist, the kind of reactionary idiot who thinks women are only good for one thing. He never reads anything but the sports pages and maybe the comic strips. His idea of entertainment is mud wrestling. But Dana, when he touches me I just forget everything." At the time, she had shaken her head, not understanding why Anne just didn't finish with the creep, but now....

Chewing her pen absently, Scully almost bit through the top in her frustration for once profoundly grateful for Mulder's absence. Her partner for all his fabled kookiness at times saw far too clearly for comfort.

It was an added strain to the whole mess that for the first time since they became partners, she had to lie to Mulder. Dana Scully had always hated lying and despised liars. She had told Krycek nothing less than the truth; there was little she prized above Mulder's trust in her. He never doubted that she would tell him the truth, even when he didn't want to hear it she thought with a tiny smile. Perhaps because she was the only person in his life who *didn't* lie to him on a regular basis. Or, hadn't.

Still she could see no other alternative since she knew only too well how he would react. Just the thought of Mulder finding out had her stomach in knots. He would go completely mad. For all his seeming carelessness, there was a deep streak of protectiveness in Mulder's makeup. Especially after her abduction and cancer, she had noticed him keeping an eye on her. If he ever found out about the bargain she and Krycek had struck.... Scully shuddered.

It hurt, she acknowledged. Every time he gave her that special Mulder grin - the one he reserved for her alone - of unsuspecting trust and faith, she felt a stab of regret and guilt. There were times when she had already opened her mouth to tell him the truth before sanity prevailed. Part of the problem was that in the years since they had first become partners she had become so accustomed to sharing her problems, all the little ups and downs of life,. To discuss with him everything from the best way of unblocking drains to dealing with car mechanics demanding half her monthly net wage for changing the oil. And in turn, she listened patiently through endless conspiracy theories, complaints on the few takeout places open at four in the morning, and lately, rants over slimy traitorous ex-partners, who slept with people and then betrayed them... Mulder would always get a certain hungry look when he mentioned Krycek, but whether it was because he wanted to see the 'rat bastard' dead, or because of certain intimate memories of the former FBI agent, Scully never quite figured out.

Mulder's partner never mentioned that she, too, knew, from personal experience, the kind of hunger Alex Krycek could generate. Sometimes a week or two would go by and with mingled fear and frustration she would wonder if he had tired of the game and decided to leave her hanging, always wondering over Melissa. Then a file would arrive in the mail or be left on her doorstep, there would be a scrawled note or an abrupt message on her answering machine and the dance would begin again.

"It doesn't bother you?" she asked once, as they were in bed staring up into a sagging ceiling with dark mould patches and peeling paint. He had rolled away from her, and was lying on his back, arm flung over his eyes, what little of his face she could see, blank and aloof.

Krycek glanced at her, "What?"

"That I hate you. That this," she gestured vaguely at the bed, "is all you'll ever have."

He did not, as she expected, reply that it was all he ever wanted. Instead, he slowly shook his head. "Nope, because if I didn't have," a strange half-smile, "this, as you so eloquently put it, I'd have nothing. Better half a cake..." His voice died away and he shrugged, eyes sliding shut, clearly not interested in saying anything else.

She sat up and looked around for her clothes, flung off in the, though she wouldn't admit it even to herself, mutual haste. Slowly she started to dress, trying to blank out the man watching her with indolent, deceptively sleepy eyes. Pulling up the zipper of her skirt, she muttered, "I'll never understand you, Krycek."

A strange smile played on his lips. "I know, that's what I'm counting on. I, on the other hand, understand you very well..."

Red hair fell across her face like a curtain, hiding her expression as Scully buttoned her blouse. "What do you understand?"

Krycek sat up, and she did her best to ignore the way the sheet rode low across his hips. Taut sinews and muscles moved beneath tawny skin she knew from personal experience had the texture and softness of satin as he took a deep breath.

"You despise and scorn me for what, who I am. But what kind of woman are you, Dana, who can lie in the arms of a murderer and moan in ecstasy?" He stretched, and hypnotized, her eyes followed the movement. He caught her helpless glance and laughed softly, tauntingly. "All I have to do is look at you, and you want me, Dana, what does that say about you, hmmm?"

She swallowed, "I wish to God I knew," she whispered harshly, "I don't know what you do to me, but I *hate* it!"

His mocking laugh followed her outside, ringing in her ears....* * *

The weeks since she and Krycek had made their bargain had taught Scully one painful truth. Unlike most whores, and whore was exactly what she called herself in the darkness of the night, she was unable to separate mind and body. She knew deep inside that the degrading transaction he had forced on her was destroying her soul. Feeling more and more desperate and afraid, Scully frantically pursued all the leads for which she paid such a high price. Each time she prayed that this would be the one leading to the truth about her sister.

But to her frustration, and growing suspicion that Krycek was playing games, each trail lead her exactly - nowhere! It wasn't that the information she got was false. Just that it all seemed to lead to dead ends, to people who had moved away twenty years ago, to gravestones and dusty yellowing obituaries. And sometimes to even greater mysteries....

"Oh yes, I remember her. A lovely woman," the old man said. He was a neighbour of the house where Melissa had supposedly lived, according to the file Krycek had sent her. The man peered at Scully. "You look quite a lot like her," he gave a cackle, "always did like a feisty redhead."

Scully bit back the hasty reply and instead asked as calmly as she could, "And when was the last time you saw her?"

He thought for a long time. "Hmm, let me see, it must have been last month. No, wait, I paid the bill on Tuesday, and UPS came on Thursday, or was it the other way around?" he scratched his head. "Beats me, but the daffodils were blooming so it can't have been too long ago. I remember 'cause I thought how pretty they were against her red hair."

Scully kept her rather fixed smile. "Thank you sir, and if you remember anything else, please call me immediately." She handed him her card.

He took it, but gazed at it in a vague fashion before stuffing it into an already bulging pocket. She repressed a sigh, knowing the likelihood of him ever phoning was slim to none. However as she was unlocking the car door, she heard steps behind her, and turning saw the old man tottering towards her.

"Miss, miss, I remembered something!" he looked very proud.

"Yes?" She gave him an encouraging smile.

"There was a fella who used to visit her, and once or twice we talked."

She tamped down her excitement. "Can you describe him to me?"

The old man nodded eagerly, "I sure can, he was a young feller."

She caught her breath. "Young? Was he dark? Green eyes, only one arm?"

He absently scratched himself, "Nah, this 'un had two arms, smoked like a damn chimney. I told him it would kill him, and he started laughing an' coughing, like I'd said something real funny."

He didn't notice the sudden paleness of the woman who thanked him rather automatically before getting into her car.

Driving back to Washington, Scully raged in helpless frustration, wondering what game Krycek was playing, if the information she paid so dearly for were all subtle lies and deceptions. But he was all she had, and as long as there was the smallest chance that he would eventually lead her to Melissa, she knew she would never give up, would always let him pull her strings.* * *

Perhaps what disconcerted Scully most were the abrupt changes in him. The feeling that she never knew what to expect. It left her constantly on edge, trying to second guess his actions, his behaviour - she didn't even want to hazard a guess as to his motives. It forced her to think of him far too often for comfort. Once or twice she wondered if that was his intent. He was certainly devious enough to plan it that way.

At times, he would use her body in silence, saying nothing as he took her quickly and almost indifferently. It left her feeling shamed and degraded. Yet she still preferred those encounters to when his expertise forced from her a slavish, helpless response. And then, once or twice, he startled her with a gentleness that bordered on tenderness. A look, a gesture that frightened her more than the most studied brutality.

For some reason she didn't want to think of Alex Krycek as human. As a man like any other with emotions and weaknesses. As long as he remained a monster she was safe. Scully never reflected on *why* it was so important for her peace of mind to think of him as nothing but a ruthless fiend.

Yet as time passed it became harder and harder to maintain the mental detachment, to keep herself psychologically disconnected. The odd flashes of humanity that bewildered and taunted her with the hints of another Krycek did not help her cause. The first crack in the wall came a month after their first meeting. Like he always did, he'd just phoned and told her the time and place. This time, however, it was more than usually inconvenient.

He was waiting for her outside the motel, leaning against the wall, reflecting sunglasses keeping the world out and giving the rest of his face a diffuse and distant look. As soon as he saw her, he straightened and although his eyes weren't visible, she thought he must have given her a sudden sharp look.

Scully was only too well aware of how she looked. Not even careful makeup had been able to successfully conceal her ashen complexion and strained expression. However, she walked toward him briskly, chin lifted defiantly, determined to conceal at all costs just how miserable she was feeling.

And although she could feel him examine her, to her relief he said nothing, just gave her a nod before turning and opening the door and waiting for her to proceed him inside. Scully bit her lip. So, he was in one of his silent moods. She wasn't sure if that was an advantage or not.

As soon as the door closed behind them she turned around, hands twisting nervously for a moment, before she put them in the pockets of her jacket.

"I can't sleep with you today," she said bluntly feeling a fierce blush rising on her cheeks. "I mean, umm..." her voice started to fade into silence and suddenly she wouldn't look him in the eyes, instead studying the dusty brown carpet at her feet with intense interest.

He came closer, eyes narrowed as he frowned. The hard, wiry and graceful body she was coming to know as well as her own was suddenly taut with anger. "Are you reneging on our deal, Dana?" Krycek demanded harshly.

She shook her head quickly, "No, no, I'm not. I'm, it's just that -" her face felt like it was on fire, and she was incensed with herself for her inability to just tell him the truth. She was a modern, professional woman for heaven's sake!

"Then what is it?" he gripped her chin, tipping her head up so he could look into her eyes. "Are you playing games with me? Don't do that, Dana," he warned silkily, "trust me you wouldn't like the way I play."

Flustered, in the end she simply shouted at him, "I've got my period, you idiot!" And then her teeth clenched as she waited for the inevitable mockery. Waited for him to humiliate her as only Krycek knew how.

He stared at her for a moment, a very strange look in his eyes before he started laughing. But the mockery, if mockery there was, was self-directed. When his laugh had settled down to soft chuckles, he shocked her, by gathering her into his arms. "Poor Dana, I'm sorry I laughed." His hand moved over her stomach, long fingers slowly stroked over the knotted muscles, soothing them and dissolving some of the tension. Despite herself, Scully relaxed into his arms, restraining the impulse to purr like a cat. He murmured into her ear, "Does it hurt?"

She shook her head automatically but then nodded once, quickly, and admitted haltingly, "A little, sometimes. I would have told you, if you'd given me a chance." She looked up at him, unconsciously pleading, "I swear I'm not trying to cheat but, but..." she couldn't finish.

"Shhh," he said quietly, "I believe you."

She almost sighed in relief, "Then I can leave?"

Krycek shook his head, and she bit her lip. No, of course he wouldn't let it go so easily. There were still things she could do, ways to satisfy him. Feeling suddenly very tired, she closed her eyes for a moment. "I see." Her hands started to move down his body, thinking that if she was lucky he'd be easily pleased and she'd be able to go back to her bed and collapse in an hour or so.

But he caught them, grasping her slender wrists in his hand. "No, don't, Dana," he smiled a little at the confusion his refusal caused. "That's not what I meant." He carefully smoothed away the furrow between her eyebrows put there by the pain she did her best to hide. "You know it's not necessary to always be Superwoman, Special Agent Scully," he said, almost gently. "Why don't you admit to a hint of weakness now and then? It's not going to make anyone think the less of you. On the contrary, it just makes you human like the rest of us."

"What do you want Krycek?" she asked harshly, not eager to think about the fact that he was just human. She was suddenly frightened, and therefore angry, at the surprising temptation to dissolve into his arms, seeking comfort and support. She much preferred him acrimonious and mocking to the faint caressing note in his voice, the emotion that bordered on softness warming his eyes. If she ever gave in to fantasies like that it would be far too easy to forget the real reason of what brought her to a succession of tacky motels and dingy rooms. Scully made her body go stiff and unyielding, moving away from the inviting warmth of his closeness.

But this he wouldn't allow, arms tightening around her instead." At the moment? Nothing at all." He frowned, "How bad are your cramps?"

"None of your business!" she snapped, feeling horribly embarrassed to be discussing this with Krycek of all people. And although she would rather have died than admit it, she hated the fact that he was seeing her like this, bloated and puffy, her skin pale, clammy and having to fight down waves of nausea.

He almost sighed before he caught himself. "No, because you're determined not to make it my business." He took a step back, arms falling to his sides, leaving her prey to an unexpected feeling of loss.

"As you're obviously of no use to me, or to yourself..." he continued, with the malicious mockery she'd expected before, but which felt like a slap in the face after his earlier unexpected kindness. "You're quite free to leave, I'm not going to force you to stay. Despite what you may think of me, Dana, I don't particularly want someone distracted by cramps." He gave her a glittering look, "A little pain can be a great aphrodisiac at times you know," she flushed, "but not when it's inflicted by your own body. Run home, Dana, go to bed with a hot-water bottle, and dream of me," he laughed at the sparkling look she sent him, "or at least of what I can give you..." he finished with soft, decidedly double-edged, insinuation.

She bit her lip, once again, to restrain the hot, angry, words spilling out. Yet, not willing to look a gift horse in the mouth, she mumbled an awkward thank you, fiercely resenting the fact that she had to *thank* the son of a bitch, and for what? Simple human decency? And then she quickly scurried out the door. She didn't need his taunting voice behind her to know she resembled a rabbit running for cover. But by then she'd already lost whatever remained of her dignity, and she desperately wanted to leave before he had a chance to change his mind.

Much later, however, burrowing under the duvet in her bed and clutching the hot-water bottle Krycek had recommended, her thoughts returned to him. She had to wonder why he had let her go so easily; it wasn't what she'd have expected from Alex Krycek. She would have thought that he'd have liked to rub her nose in her body's weakness. Instead he... she couldn't help but remember the odd look on his face when he massaged her tense, strained, stomach muscles. * * *

Still, often she was sure the supposed gentleness was just another kind of subtle domination, that one time aside. Krycek's way of proving to her time after time just how easily her body became his. She caught herself wondering about his past life, where he had acquired such a thorough knowledge of a woman's body and needs.

Standing by the window in the cheap motel watching the sun rise wearing nothing but a satin slip she felt Krycek come up behind her, and put a hand on her shoulder. She didn't try and shrug it off. She knew better by now than to offer open provocation. So she remained still, even when long skillful fingers slowly explored the sensitive skin of her nape.

"What are you thinking about?" warm breath ruffled her hair.

Scully kept her eyes on the rising sun, needing to keep at least a part of herself private and aloof. Still he seemed to expect an answer, and finally she said, weariness dulling her voice.

"Does it matter?"

Silence descended between them, and then he snaked an arm around her waist, pulled her against him. "To you, perhaps not, put it down to morbid curiosity." He bent his head, lips sliding along a slender white shoulder, and despite herself she shuddered, body unconsciously relaxing as she tilted her head to give him more access. "Do you still hate me, Dana?"

"You know I do," there was no hesitation, no ambiguity in the calm voice. "More and more if that's possible."

His arm tightened around her ribcage in a subtle punishment. "Who do you hate more, me or yourself?" he asked silkily.

She shuddered. "Both."

He spun her around so she was facing him, anger and something else darkening emerald eyes. "I know what you're doing," he told her in the silky tone she had grown to know and fear.

"What are you talking about?" she asked, more uncertainly than she'd have liked. In this mood, although she would rather die than admit it, he scared her.

He laughed harshly. "Don't lie, Dana. Last night, I heard you call *his* name. His name on your lips, when you were in *my* arms. What were you doing? Pretending it was Fox Mulder inside you? Mulder taking you?"

A enigmatic smile shaped her mouth. "Perhaps." She met his eyes calmly, not hiding her satisfaction that Krycek knew she had pretended. That she had closed her eyes and imagined that the man above her, had brown hair not black. Warm, loving golden-brown eyes, instead of a hard wary green.

His face twisted in rage, but deep in his eyes, and, too briefly for her to be sure, there was an emotion closer to anguish than anger.

"Yes, I was thinking of Mulder, are there not times when you do the same?"

An breath of absolute silence. "You honestly think I'm dreaming of *Mulder* when you're with me?!"

Not even if she could have put it into words, would Scully have told him the truth: that she had never felt so naked or vulnerable with anyone. Not with Mulder, not when trying to remember the lost months of her life. Striking back however she could, she used the pitiful weapons she had left, chief among them Krycek's strange obsession with her and Mulder.

She almost shrugged, "Don't tell me there aren't times you compare us."

He suddenly laughed, pinning her against the window, bruising her lips in a kiss hard enough that she could taste her own blood. "Trust me, there is no comparison." * * *

Outside the window a car backfired and Scully jumped at the sound, abruptly brought back to reality. She glanced around instinctively, to make sure no one had caught the betraying red that ran along her cheekbones.

Reassured she was alone in the office she relaxed slightly but didn't make any attempt to resume her typing. Scully moved a little restlessly on her chair. God how she hated the rising heat deep inside even the thought of him caused. How she loathed the passion he had wakened, nurtured and fed so carefully. Staring blindly at the computer screen, she once again found herself reliving their last meeting....

He was standing by the door, on his way out, when he suddenly returned to the bed where she was still sitting too spent emotionally to get up, knees drawn up to her chest, hands loosely clasped around them. Krycek looked down at her and for a moment, she caught an odd look crossing his face.

"Sulking, Dana?" he asked pleasantly.

She shook her head, too weary and dejected to lie. "I can't do this any longer, Krycek, please, let me go," she closed her eyes, feeling numb, deadly tired. "I know you hate me, but..." she had to stop for a moment before she could continue. "Right now I would rather you just put a bullet through my heart." She didn't care if she made him angry. "I'll do anything you want, bankrupt myself, steal FBI secrets, just, just not this." Even to herself, Scully was unable to articulate her strange fear.

A fear of losing herself, who she was, in his arms.

He reacted strangely to the pleading, the mute appeal in her eyes. And not with the anger she had expected. Instead, he just leaned down and pressed a kiss on trembling lips. Tasted the saltiness of a single tear slowly rolling down her face. Catching it on the tip of his tounge, he slowly licked it dry. And despite herself she shivered at the warm wetness on her skin.

"Hate? I don't hate you, Dana, far from it..." he murmured enigmatically, "and only you can set yourself free."
 

She looked at him puzzled, "You're speaking in riddles."

He smiled, his one good hand tilting her face in a small quick caress. "Let me know when you've figured it out." He straightened and left her staring after him wondering what exactly he had meant.

It was strange, she no longer even noticed the missing arm, it was as much a part of him as the leather jacket he wore; the tall, lean body that never lost its tan, even in the middle of a Washington winter, the long-lashed verdant eyes that could turn warm as a summer's meadow or cold as ice. The pretty face with its almost delicate boyish features that made it so easy to underestimate him until it was too late. He was a drug, a drug that like the alien black oil crept deep inside your soul and used your own weakness to wreak havoc and destruction.* * *

"Come on, Scully!" She started, as Mulder bounced into the room, rudely interrupting her thoughts. "Skinner wants us upstairs ASAP, there is something big going down."

Rising immediately, she smoothed down her skirt and tried to calm her racing heart. "Coming, let me just save this first." She pushed the key on her keyboard.

Mulder frowned at her, and as they waited for the elevator, he asked casually. "You all right, Scully? You've seemed a little worn and distracted lately."

Scully suddenly wondered what he would say if she told him. 'I sleep with your former lover and mortal enemy, Alex Krycek. I hate him, but he turns my brain to mush every time he touches me.' She almost smiled, answering aloud, "Just a lack of sleep. It's been a bit hectic lately, burning too many candles I guess. Not," she added with a sideways glance, "that it's any of your business."

"Hey, cut me some slack, Scully, you're the only person who can stand me more than a week. I'd hate to have to break in a new partner."

She didn't want to remind him of the *other* partner he'd had. Instead she just shook her head at him, as they exited and went into the conference room, where there were already ten or more people, seated around a horseshoe shaped table, and talking quietly. They found two empty chairs at the end of the table, and then Skinner walked in carrying a thick folder. He was looking very grim. Two more agents followed behind him. Scully recognized one of them and her eyebrow went up.

"That's Elliot Carstairs, Bill Patterson's replacement as head of the BSU out at Quantico," she murmured to Mulder. "This really *must* be big."

Although Skinner couldn't have caught her words, he glanced at her with disapproval, and she felt a slight flush rise. She could feel Mulder grinning beside her, making her long to kick him under the table, and then any desire for levity disappeared as Skinner started speaking.

"Okay, heads up people, we've got a case and its bad, very bad." He nodded, the lights dimmed, and the projector showed the first picture. A pretty, dark-haired elfin girl, grinning into the camera, showing one missing front tooth, her hair in pigtails and arms around a big Labrador.

"This is victim number one, Rebecca Branson, age eight, living in Charleston, West Virginia with her parents and two older siblings. Snatched three months ago." Another nod and the projector changed with a click. Scully had to fight a soft gasp and beside her, she could feel Mulder suddenly tense. The next picture bore no relation whatsoever to the first, it showed a body, and as used as Scully was to bodies, mutilated, decomposing pieces of flesh, as she'd learned to think of them, this was, as Skinner said, very bad. It had been crudely mutilated, nose, lips, eyes carved out, fingers and toes burned.

"Her body was recovered two weeks later. The markings on legs and torso was made by battery acid," Skinner said matter of fact. "The forensic team is of the opinion that it was done while the girl was still alive. Prior to her death she was also sexually assaulted, sodomized and, from the remains of semen found in her throat, we suspect she was forced toperform fellatio on a number of occasions. Unfortunately, she was not the last one." Skinner took off his glasses cleaning them carefully, before putting them on again.

"So far there have been eleven victims, all in the ages between six and ten. All girls, five Caucasians, two Asians, four African-Americans. All from different social backgrounds. Three were from single mothers living on welfare. Rebecca," he nodded at the screen, "was well-off middle class. Father works for a multinational company as a mid-level executive, mother stays at home. One of the others is the daughter of a local millionaire. There is no pattern or connection between the choice of victims, it seems almost elaborately random."

"The MO is always the same, the girls are snatched in the morning on the way to school, a message goes to the school that the girl is sick, by the time the family becomes worried, the perpetrator already has hours of head start. No one ever sees the girls being taken. No contact is ever made by the kidnapper and the bodies are found in the vicinity of the next victim's kidnapping. We were handed this yesterday and it is to receive top priority."

Skinner paused and gave a nod in the direction of the tall blond man standing beside him. "For those of you who don't know him, this is Elliot Carstairs, head of the Behavioral Science Unit out at Quantico. He is going to be helping with this case. He is setting up a special task force to try to profile the perp. The rest of us are dividing into smaller groups, we'll meet here once a day to report progress and exchange ideas." He glanced around the room.

"Let's crack this one people." There were mutters of agreements and grim looks around the room. They might be FBI agents, but they were also human and there was hardly anyone around the table who couldn't easily imagine a sister, niece or daughter as one of the victims.

"Mulder?" Scully was more shaken than she wanted to admit by the pictures, and so was Mulder she was betting, feeling the tension radiating from him. "You okay?"

Mulder looked faintly irritated, "Why shouldn't I be?"

She held back a sigh. He could be so prickly at times, and before she had time to say anything else, the man walking in with Skinner came over to them.

"Fox Mulder? I'm Elliot Carstairs, we've never met, but Bill Patterson told me a lot about you."

Mulder ignored the outstretched hand. "Plus some of the others I'm sure." He added with an acid irony. "'Spooky' Mulder. The madman who believes in little green men and UFOs."

Not offended by Mulder's surliness, Elliot said calmly, "Actually, at the moment I am less interested in Spooky Mulder, than in the man whom everyone, Bill Patterson, included, claim is the most brilliant profiler ever to come out of Quantico. Look, we don't have to like each other, and frankly I don't care if you believe in God, Buddha, ET or Mickey Mouse, but right now we need you, Agent Mulder, or there will be more dead girls. Can you live with that knowledge?"

Mulder shook his head, a grim smile twisting his mouth, "You're very persuasive, and you're also right, I couldn't. So why don't you give me all the material you have?"

Elliot nodded, "When you're ready, I've got some of the best talent from the BSU downstairs." He stood up and strode away briskly.

"Charming man," Scully murmured.

"I like him," Mulder replied almost in surprise. "A hell of an improvement over Patterson."

Scully glanced at the other people leaving the room. "Good. Look, I'm going to go talk to the forensic guys, I'll see you later?"

He nodded rather absently, not even seeing her as he started to jot down notes on the pad in front of him. Scully left him after a last thoughtful glance. Whatever he said, this case was bound to remind him of Samantha Mulder's disappearance. Which meant they were all in for a rough ride. Mulder was always stubborn and contrary, but when it touched his sister....Scully repressed a shudder.

When she gave her partner a last look just before going out the door, he was writing rapidly, head bent, glancing up occasionally at the picture of what had once been Rebecca Branson. She had noticed before when he started a new case everything else disappeared. When they were first partnered it had bothered her, but by now it was so much a part of Mulder that she hardly noticed. * * *

"Tell me what you've got," Scully, said pushing open the door into the forensic lab. She walked forward to the table where the remains of Helen Andersen, victim number four, were exposed. Glancing down at the body in the cold, revealing light of the overhead lamps, Scully was aware of a fleeting gratitude that there was no personality, hardly any humanity left. Although she always maintained her professional mien, some cases, some... bodies were harder than others.

The young stork-like man on the other side of the corpse looked up and blinked beneath his protective glasses. "Subject is a Caucasian female, age nine..." Scully let the familiar recitation wash over her as she began her grim task of trying to coax the body to reveal all its secrets, including who killed it.

Scully spent the next week buried deep in the lab, examining each scrap, each microscopic fragment doggedly pursuing the puzzle that often led to a perpetrator and an arrest. It was true that science could produce amazing results and a faint patch not even visible to the naked eye could convict a murderer.

However, this time there was no such luck. Whoever he was, he was careful and clever, or, as Scully suggested during one midnight session in the lab, he had someone cleaning up after him.

"But that's impossible," one of the younger pathologists pointed out, unwrapping his submarine sandwich. "All the evidence points towards a lone perpetrator, isn't that what the profilers say?"

Scully nodded, popping the tab of her coke, "Yes, that's what Mulder claims. Of course it's all very general and tentative at this stage."

"I thought the profilers could all but tell you his shoe size and social security number and whether he wet his bed when he was four," a lab technician murmured.

Scully smiled, "That's what they'd like to have you think, but the truth is that *we're* more likely to tell them, than the opposite. Everything they know and extrapolate to build a profile they base on what we feed them. Profiling may be called a science, but it's based on psychology, and as we know the human psyche persists in being unpredictable." She drank down the last of her coke, and stood up.

"Forensic facts on the other hand are hard and incontrovertible evidence, so let's get back to work again. Let's see if we can't nail this perp." There were groans but no protests as everyone split up again returning to their work.

The next morning they were all working by seven in the morning despite the late hours they'd kept. Just before lunch, Scully was talking to one of the young lab assistants when the door suddenly opened.

"Come on, Scully, there is someone I want you to meet." She looked up from the autopsy table and saw Mulder sticking his head through the door.

"Who?"

"Sheriff Tom Bowles from Ladona County. Victims number six and seven are both from his jurisdiction."

"Coming," Scully pulled off the latex gloves and dropped them in the waste paper basket, taking off the protective glasses. "Keep at it Steve, I'll be back later today. Oh, and don't forget to send the DNA sample to the university. I talked with Professor Johnson and he's agreed to have the university computer analyze it."

Mulder was waiting for her outside in the corridor and they fell into step as he briefed her. "Sheriff Bowles arrived last night, I think you'll find what he's got to say very interesting."

Before Scully could ask anything else, they arrived at the interview room. Opening the door, she saw a middle-aged, tanned man standing by the window. Dressed in jeans, boots and a sheepskin jacket, he seemed profoundly uncomfortable in these surroundings, awkwardly clutching a plastic cup in his right hand.

"Sheriff Bowles?" Mulder asked, "I'm Special Agent Mulder, and this is my partner, Special Agent Scully."

The man turned quickly, showing them a homely and wrinkled face with a pair of brown, honest eyes. Transferring the cup to his left hand, he offered a large calloused hand. His shake was firm but not hard. "Glad to meet you, Agent Mulder, Agent Scully."

"Please sit down," Scully said, doing the same. Mulder perched on the table and she had to repress the urge to tell him to sit on a chair instead of his usual restless prowling. "You had some important information about the case we are working on?"

Sheriff Bowles abruptly put down the mug, "Yeah, I do. Look, I'm just a local sheriff from the sticks, but that doesn't mean I'm stupid."

"I'm sure no one has ever thought that," Scully said calmly, while Mulder's mouth quirked sardonically. "Please tell us why you have come."

Tom Bowles looked grim as he began to talk. "When we discovered the first victim, what we *thought* was the first victim, Mary Sue Driscoll," grief and anger roughened his voice, "the entire sheriff's department, hell, the whole town was up in arms! We all thought it was a crazy tramp but we wanted this guy! We all put in hundreds of hours of unpaid overtime."

He paused. "See, in a small town like this, everyone knows each other. Mary Sue used to play with my youngest daughter, I'd see her pedal past our house on her bike every morning on her way to school. I go to the same church as her mother and father. This was *personal*." He glared at them.

Scully nodded. "We understand."

"So you never knew Mary Sue Driscoll was actually victim number six?" Mulder asked.

Sheriff Bowles shook his head. "Nah, my deputy checked the wires, but there was no mention of anything. So, we're working like crazy, lots of leads but nothing definite, when Johanna Bowles disappeared."

His eyes dared them to ask.

Mulder did. "Any relation?"

"My niece." There was a world of grief and guilt and fury compressed in those two words. "My brother John's only child. Her mother died two years ago, and ever since John's been raising her on her own, and doing a damn fine job of it!" He squared his shoulders. "When Jo was kidnapped, it destroyed my brother. Hell, we were all devastated, and then three weeks later her body was discovered in a ditch just outside town."

He had to pause for a moment, compose himself, before he continued in a cold, concentrated rage. "No one should have to die like that, raped, tortured, then thrown into a ditch like so much trash. Much less an innocent little girl. I can only thank God that John wasn't there. But I was, and it will haunt me till the day I die. Standing over Jo's body, I knew what I had to do and, I called in the Feds the same day. I knew I couldn't handle whatever this was. Look, the sheriff's department is four men. Me and three deputies and old Spike who cleans the office. We sober up drunks, break up bar fights and get called out on domestic disputes. I know when I'm outclassed, I didn't give a damn about jurisdiction and territory. I *wanted* this guy caught, so I phoned the FBI."

"This would be the Center City office?"

Bowles nodded, "Right, and I talked to Robert Tamblin, the head of the office, he said he'd look into the matter and then get back to me. Three days later, a car pulls up, and Agent Tamblin gets out." A snort of contempt. "Real suave, slick guy. Thousand dollar suit, smelling of some fancy shaving water."

He gave Mulder a disgusted look that clearly said, 'real men don't wear after-shave', and had Scully suddenly bending over her notes to hide a smile. "So he asks if he can talk to me privately, and I say sure, we go into my office, he flashes all his credentials, and after asking four times if I'm sure no one could overhear us, he started whispering in my ear. I had to keep telling him to speak up."

Mulder's eyes narrowed and he leaned forward intently, "And what did he say exactly?"

Bowles snorted, "He fed me some long cock and bull story about national security, and the need for discretion. Hinted at international intrigues, spies, it all sounded like a third-rate novel to me, but hell what do I know? It could be the truth. Claimed the best thing I could do was to keep my mouth shut and not make a stink. Well, I wasn't going to let it go so easily, not with little Jo dead, and I told him so. Next thing you know I get a call from the Governor's chief of staff, and basically ordered to back off or else..."

Scully played with her pen, "And you did?"

Bowles glared at them. "Yeah I did," he looked at them defiantly. "See, Tamblin came back, told me this was in strictest confidence, but they'd caught the guy who did it, but because of," his mouth twisted, and he almost spat on the floor, "'national security' he wouldn't be tried publicly. But he would be put away forever. Guess, I wanted to believe him."

"Very understandable, Sheriff," Scully said soothingly. "So what made you come to us?"

He shifted and the flimsy chair squeaked faintly in protest under his weight. "I had an errand in Center City two weeks ago and when I passed the FBI office, I thought I'd look in. Check with Tamblin. Only when I asked for him, a guy I had never met before in my life came out. Claimed not only that he was Robert Tamblin, but that he'd never heard of me or the murders before in his life."

Mulder stood up, starting to pace, "You're sure it wasn't the same man?"

Bowles shook his head vigorously. "No way! This other guy was much older, grey hair, dark eyes, walked with a slight limp on his left leg."

Mulder nodded, "That's Robert," adding to Scully, "he got that limp more than fifteen years ago when he was working on the Mexican border and was in a shoot-out with some smugglers." He looked at Bowles. "What did the man who claimed to be Robert Tamblin look like?"

"'Bout your height and age, maybe a little younger. Dark, short hair," he snorted, "my secretary called him a 'dreamboat' whatever that is. Look, I realized then that something was very wrong, but I didn't know what to do. And not even a week later, Dan my deputy, told me about the serial killer the FBI were hunting. I did some checking, and the MO matched perfectly with Mary Sue and Jo. I told your director, Mr. Skinner all this on the phone, but hell, I wanted to *see* the people who were after this guy, and make sure this wasn't just another smokescreen."

He sighed, "I reckon all this has made me a little paranoid so I took some leave and flew here."

"For which we are most grateful," Scully said briskly standing up, "we really appreciate your help, Sheriff, and let me assure you we'll look into this matter most seriously." She held out her hand, "and I can promise you that we are very determined to catch this man."

He took her hand, "You do, give me a call, Agent Scully. I'll tell you something else, I'd throw the switch on him myself." He cleared his throat, looking away a little embarrassed, "and if you ever need a favour in my neck of the woods, just let me know."

She repeated her thanks, then glanced at her partner. "You want to add something, Mulder?"

Mulder frowned slightly, "Would you recognize the fake Robert Tamblin?"

Bowles replied curtly. "Anywhere, and if I ever see him again, I'll be hard put not to shoot the son of a bitch."

Mulder pursed his lips thoughtfully, "I may send you some pictures later, see if you can identify him, all right?"

"Sure, anything."

After Bowles had left, Mulder and Scully walked back to their office together.

Scully asked, "Did you check with Tamblin?"

Mulder nodded, "I did, and as the sheriff said, he'd never heard of the murders. Also the phone log show no call from Ladona was ever put through to the Center City office."

"You don't think he's hiding anything?"

"Bowles? No, he's genuine, but you do realize what this means, don't you Scully?"

She opened the door to their office and turned on the lights. "That FBI security has been compromised."

Mulder hooked his chair with a foot, turning it around and straddling it. "That or the phone lines. I talked to Byers this morning, and he says all you really need to do is to put a scrambler on the outgoing line. That way any call is automatically rerouted." He added thoughtfully, "and they would know enough to keep an eye on Sheriff Bowles after they realized the personal connection."

Scully sat down and switched on her computer, "That doesn't make sense, Mulder, if he called from the office phone, there'd be literally hundreds of legitimate calls, if they didn't go through, the sheriff's department would realize something was wrong."

"Not necessarily, all you need is someone sitting there listening in, once he realizes the call is unconnected to the business at hand, he just hits the switch and the calls go through as usual."

Scully frowned, "You keep saying 'they' but you know that all the forensic evidence points to a lone perp. One person could not set up the kind of surveillance and tampering that you're talking about. You're talking a well-organized group of people."

Mulder said grimly, "Now you're getting it."

"You talked to Skinner?"

"Yeah, he wasn't happy to put it mildly. He's going to have a talk with Ma Bell, but I doubt it will give anything,. They would be long gone by now and without a trace."

Scully started downloading her mail. "This is getting stranger and stranger."

Mulder suddenly grinned at her. "Honey, you ain't seen nothing yet if I'm right, and I usually am."

"You really have to do something about your lack of self-confidence and excessive diffidence, Mulder," she told him dryly and turning her back on him, started reading her incoming mail.* * *

That weekend Scully firmly pushed away all feelings of guilt over her colleagues working overtime and took Sunday off for her nephew's third birthday. Her brother, Bill, and his wife, Tara, had come up to Washington staying with good friends, and they had insisted that Dana come to the birthday party. Perhaps she could have resisted their entreaties, but when Margaret Scully entered the fray, her daughter knew she was beat, and promised to be there.

The noisy, cheerful party was slowly winding down when Scully wandered down into the garden of the big old white clapboard house with a glass of white wine. Finding an old abandoned bench from which the paint was peeling, she sat down. From a distance, she could still hear the high, blithe voices of her nephew and the other children. The sound caused a tiny ache deep inside her chest. The knowledge that she would never carry a child inside her body for nine months to nurture and care for remained an open wound, no less hurtful for being buried as deep as she could.

Thoughtfully sipping her wine and looking out over the lake, Scully let the peace of the sunset, the soft breeze whispering through the leaves slowly fill her. If only she could remain here, never go back to FBI, to....

"You're looking very solemn."

Scully glanced up as Tara Scully brushed some leaves off the bench and sat down beside her. "Who is looking after the offspring?"

Her sister-in-law smiled. "His father, performing his paternal duty." She sighed softly, "I love my family, but sometimes I envy you, Dana. I think I would give my soul for a moment's peace and quiet."

The bitter smile startled Tara Scully. "Envy me? Oh yes, I am really to be envied, going back to an empty apartment, forensic reports and a serial killer who likes to carve up little girls."

With faint concern, Tara said, "I never thought you felt like that, Dana. You always seem so self-assured, so sure of what you're doing."

Scully breathed out. "It does seem that way, doesn't it?" She took another swallow of wine, "and I don't regret my choices, not really." A sudden bitter-sweet smile, "I love what I do, I've got good friends, I'm healthy again, I don't know what I'm complaining about."

Very softly, Tara asked, "What about the most important thing of all, a man to love? No don't look like that Dana, I know you think I've been cheated - "

"Of course not!" Scully exclaimed a little too emphatically.

Tara Scully laughed softly. "Yes you do, Dana, don't try and pretend. But you know I've never regretted what I did. One day when the children are older I may go back to the law. But in the meantime I am content raising them and being there for Bill when he needs me, just as I know that he will be when I need him." She gave her sister-in-law a penetrating look, "I know you always claim Fox Mulder will be there when the chips are down. I've seen with my own eyes how much he loves you. When you were gone, and sick he was absolutely frantic! So why are the two of you so afraid of getting close?"

Scully shook her head. "You don't understand, Tara, I doubt anyone does. Mulder..." her voice died away as she tried to put into words her confused feelings for her partner finally just saying lamely. "It's complicated."

"It always is, but if it's not Mulder," a mischievous grin, "and never was a man truer named, he really is foxy, Dana. Then why are you tense as a bowstring, walking around as if the weight of the world rests on your shoulders?"

"Well you know this case we're working on is getting to us all," Scully said. She hesitated, needing badly to talk to *somebody.* She and Tara were friendly enough but circumstances and geographical distance had prevented them becoming intimate friends. However, to her own surprise she suddenly found herself saying aloud, "have you ever hated a man Tara? I mean really hated him? But at the same time wanted him?"

"Never at the exact same time," Tara smiled, but then sobered seeing that Scully was serious. "Sure, I had a boyfriend like that back in college. He was a philosophy grad student, used to smoke hashish from a Turkish pipe, read Nietzsche and Sartre, and had some very bizarre ideas about women and relationships. We'd have the most violent quarrels, but the sex..." she winked, "was *almost* worth it."

Then she added thoughtfully, "You know it's men who are supposed to be driven by their urges, but the fact is that women are as well. It's an illusion to think that men are sex-maddened beasts and women are pure. Actually both sexes have physical needs and desires and I've never understood why women should be ashamed of admitting that. Men certainly aren't!" She grinned.

Scully joined the smile, but her eyes remained troubled. "This isn't the same thing."

"Anything you want to talk about?"

Scully hesitated, "I don't know." There was a tiny pause, "in my line of work I see a lot of slime, and some," wryly, "are more slimy than others, and usually it's easy. You may be shocked and sickened what some so-called members of the human race are capable of, still, once they're caught and convicted, that's the end."

She picked up her wine glass slowly turning the slender stem around and around, watching the remains of the pale golden liquid slowly settle at the bottom, and when she spoke again her voice had changed. "And then there are those that continue to haunt you. The ones that for some reason or another, physical attraction, a look in their eye when they think no one is watching, you start wondering if perhaps there is something more inside them. Something worth saving. So you start asking yourself the most dangerous question of all, *why*."

"Dana, you're not making any sense," Tara told her.

Scully tucked her hair behind her ears, "I'm not, am I? Tara you go to church every Sunday. And not just because you should, but because you really believe."

Tara said quietly, "You know I do, and I thought so did you."

Scully looked away, "I used to, but since I joined FBI and especially the X-Files I've seen so much evil, Tara, and I don't use that word lightly, I've started having doubts...." A long silence. "You know how the Bible tells us to forgive those who trespass against us? I used to think that was one of the easiest commandments to practice. To forgive. But lately I've realized that some things, some *acts* are unforgivable."

"God never said it would be easy Dana, but I believe in forgiveness and redemption, yes. Nobody is born evil."

Scully glanced at her. "Not even people like Hitler, or Pol Pot or Ted Bundy?" Only self-preservation and iron control stopped her from adding, 'Alex Krycek...'

Tara shook her head, "Not even Satan. What is that quotation from Isaiah? 'How art thou....'"

"....fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the Morning," Scully finished softly. "Funny you should mention that. I remember when I was a girl I always wondered what Lucifer looked like." A sudden smile, "I would fantasize about what it would take to redeem him. I always imagined him as tall, and dark, beautiful, and very sad."

"Because he could remember what being good was, before the Fall," Tara said equally softly, and they shared a look of perfect understanding.

Scully bit her lip, shocked at the sudden recognition that at some point the face of her Lucifer had acquired green eyes and a mouth to tempt a saint. "But what if someone killed Matthew, Tara? Could you forgive the murder of your son?"

A harsh indrawn breath, "I, I don't know, Dana, I want to say, that yes I would forgive. But I honestly don't know. Just the thought of someone harming Matt is enough to make me ready to kill."

"You see what I mean? In theory one can forgive, but when it's personal, it's suddenly very different." A long silence, and then, seemingly out of the blue. "I loved Melissa. We didn't always agree, or see eye to eye, but there was no one I loved more. Not a day goes by that I don't think of her, and miss her."

Tara Scully looked more than a little confused. "What are we talking about Dana?"

Scully propped her chin in her hand, looking out over the lake. "We have always been taught that if someone repents and is sincere they, he, will be forgiven, that there is good in everyone. Do you know, for the first time since I stopped going to Sunday school, I find myself needing to believe in that." She added quietly, more to herself than to Tara, "despite all the evidence to the contrary, I *must* believe that there is something worth saving in him. Otherwise, how can I explain what I feel? Or perhaps that's just rationalization, and we are both damned...."

Her sister-in-law frowned, "You realize I have no idea what you're talking about, don't you?"

Scully abruptly remembered where she was. "Don't mind me, Tara, I'm getting morbid." Shaking the mood she added, "come on, let's go and see if there is any birthday cake left. I'm in the mood for something gooey and fattening."

Tara glanced over at her sister-in-law's slender figure and snorted. "It's not as if you have to worry, unlike some of us."

Scully laughed and stood up. "Neither do you, Tara. Bill's always said he liked a bit of meat on his women so I don't think you have anything to worry about. Besides it's not as if he's exactly a cover model himself."

Side by side they strolled back up towards the house, chatting about the children and other simple commonplace things.* * *

Scully was sitting in the FBI cafeteria on Monday after hours in the lab, thinking of her nephew and picking half-heartedly at her lunch when she heard a tentative voice behind her.

"Agent Scully?" She looked up at the young, slightly apprehensive face.

"Yes?"

"AD Skinner would like to see you in his office immediately."

Scully nodded her thanks and leaving the half-eaten lunch behind, she went immediately to the office. Knocking politely and waiting before Skinner's deep voice told her to come in, she opened the door and saw Mulder, Elliot Carstairs and Skinner all grouped around the desk.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" she asked Skinner.

He gestured for her to sit down, "This just arrived by mail." For the first time she noticed the small black tape recorder in the middle of the desk. Skinner pressed the play button and a weird, hollow, echoing voice filled the office.

"Computer generated obviously," Carstairs muttered.

"Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse ran up the clock, the clock struck twelve... the little fox plays in the bramble bushes.... Jack and Jill went up the hill... Becky's been a naughty girl... pretty, pretty Sam." The sudden high, thin shriek had Scully almost jumping out of her skin, "I didn't mean to do it! I didn't mean to hurt her Mr. Mulder! I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." Skinner pressed the stop button.

"It goes on and on."

Scully frowned, seeing Mulder's white set look. "It's genuine?"

Skinner removed the cassette. "Definitely. Not just from the clues he drops, but because the package also included a small silver heart on a chain. Rebecca Branson was wearing it the day she was abducted. The parents have identified it."

"How was it delivered?"

Mulder was deceptively calm. "Postmarked Atlanta, day before yesterday. Nothing out of the ordinary, no prints."

Scully looked at Skinner, a faint question in her eyes. He said, "It was addressed personally to Agent Mulder."

She breathed out softly. "Interesting. Do you have any idea who it might be, Mulder?"

He shook his head. "I'm going to start going through my old cases." He didn't say it. But she knew that if this was a personal vendetta from an old enemy, Mulder would never forgive himself.

Scully almost pounded the desk in frustration, but keeping her professional detachment, she did the only thing she could and said. "I'll help you."

Mulder didn't say thanks, but she thought she could read a faint gratitude in his eyes before he turned away. As always it was more than enough.

"Let's go," he said abruptly standing up.

Mulder was already half-way down the corridor before Scully had even reached the door. Hand on the handle, she heard Skinner behind her.

"I'm relying on you to keep him in line, Scully. Don't let him go off the deep end. We all know what happens when Mulder starts taking things personally."

She turned around facing him squarely. "Sir, how can he not? The tape was addressed to him. This case has already reminded him too much of what he's lost, his own fears."

"I know, but we need him together and sane, Scully."

She didn't answer that, just closed the door carefully behind her.* * *

For some reason Krycek hadn't contacted her since the case began. Which was just about the only good thing that could be said for the past three weeks - she had almost succeeded in convincing herself.

It was while she was patiently checking and rechecking some fiber fragments found under Mary Sue Driscoll's fingernails that Scully finally admitted to herself that her feelings were closer to frustration than relief. Of course it was natural that she was worried about his silence. Without Krycek she would never know the truth about Melissa. And despite the brutal pace of the investigation she never for a moment forgot her sister. She moved a little restlessly trying to ignore the small taunting voice at the back of her mind asking if it was *only* Melissa that had her worrying about Krycek's return.

Gently sliding the small square of glass under the microscope and examining it under ultraviolet light, Scully bit down a curse, nothing! Dammit! She'd been so sure. Restraining her first impulse which was to throw the damn thing against the wall, she leaned back on the creaking chair. Forgetting that her hair was secured in a ponytail, she finger combed it absently.

Apart from Krycek's absence, which was a *good* thing she thought firmly... hell was probably the most accurate description of the past three weeks. Spending day after day in the forensic lab analysing the grim remains of the little girls was bad enough, having to sit through interviews with the distraught families was worse, giving her a graphic and unwelcome reminder of the kind of torment her own family must have suffered after her abduction. But worst was the growing fear that Mulder was losing his mind. For the past weeks he had worked like a fiend, putting in eighteen, twenty-hour days.

Leaving the lab, Scully recalled that it had been three days since Mulder'd even been home and changed and showered. Heading to the room where the profilers were located, she finally succeed in dragging him forcibly from the building and all but pushed him into her car ignoring his grumbles and the amused looks of their co-workers.

"You need to take a shower, have a warm meal and sleep in a real bed for a change," she informed him tartly to hide her concern. "If not for your sake then for that of your co-workers. To put it plainly, you stink, Mulder."

That won a reluctant smile from him. "You're such a diplomat, Scully, that's what I love about you." She flinched, although she knew he meant it casually, it cut deep flicking her on the raw. Thank God he was too tired to notice her momentary betrayal. Smiling cheerfully, making some silly off-hand comment that made him smile again, she brought him home, stuffed him in the shower, cooked him a steak and potatoes and made sure he was tucked into bed, and before she left she made sure to turn off the alarm he'd put at three thirty. Closing the door to Mulder's apartment, she phoned Elliot Carstairs.

"Sir? This is Special Agent Scully, mission accomplished, I've put Mulder to bed and hopefully he won't be back in until tomorrow afternoon.... That's right sir, and disconnected his phone, and turned off the cellular phone. ... Yes sir, I'll go by and check on him tomorrow morning... Thank you, sir."

Scully disconnected, wondering for a moment if she had the strength to drag herself home or whether she could just camp out in Mulder's corridor. But finally finding the energy, she slowly went outside, got into her car and drove through the dark deserted streets to her own apartment.

Unlocking her door, Scully kicked off her shoes, and threw the coat over the sofa. The answering machine was blinking and for a moment she considered ignoring it. Instead she wandered into the kitchen where she found nothing but half a tomato and a pear. Too tired to start cooking for herself, she returned to the living room nibbling on the pear. Conscience finally won and she pressed the rewind button. There was a message from her mother, reminding her of a cousin's birthday next Saturday. One from a good friend who'd just flown in from Boston, suggesting dinner if she had time, and then, the last one. A soft dark voice, "Tonight, Hadley Place, number 653." It clicked, disconnecting.

Scully sat very still for a long time. Logic and common sense told her that she was too exhausted to move. That what she needed was to fall into bed and sleep. But then what did logic or common sense have to do with Alex Krycek? Or her strange conflicting feelings for him for that matter.

You never knew with Krycek, if he took offense, this might be the last she ever heard of him, and with him went her only hope of finding Melissa alive. Dammit! if she had only been able to contact him, to explain, but as always his number was coded so she couldn't phone him back.

She just *could not* risk angering him.

Picking up her coat again, Scully tried her best to ignore a very small traitorous sliver at the very edge of her consciousness. A voice that whispered of her need to be held. To forget for a few hours at least the grim reality that surrounded her. Right now she didn't care, or at least not much, that the man making her forget was a blackmailing son of a bitch who held her sister's life in his hands. A man who cared for nothing but the use of her body. She smiled a little grimly. He had used her enough God knew, perhaps it was time for a little using of her own...

Before she had time to reflect over her complete lunacy, Scully grabbed the car keys and went out to her car again. She was unaware of, and would have been horrified to realize, that she moved with a new light in her eyes, a new spring to her steps.

It had started to rain and the wind was picking up. Definitely not the night to be out, she thought wearily. Finally finding Hadley Place, her eyebrow went up a little, not exactly Krycek's usual place. It was a solid and not unattractive block of apartments grouped around a rather nice leafy courtyard. Driving through the gates, she parked the car and opened the door. The icy rain, spiked her skin and made her hunch her shoulders and hurry across the asphalt. Heels clicked sharply, echoing against the walls. By the time Scully finally found the right apartment, she was wet, cold, hungry and completely exhausted. With a wry half-smile she thought that if Krycek wanted a passionate partner tonight he would be disappointed. Most likely she'd fall asleep in the middle of proceedings and offend him mortally. Stifling a yawn, she rang the door bell, actually finding herself leaning against the frame to keep herself upright.

Krycek opened the door, wearing the usual black jeans and T-shirt. The man did love black, she thought a little fuzzily. Although she had to admit it suited him perfectly. So perfectly she suspected he cultivated it as part of his persona. In any case it made him even more attractive. As did, in her personal opinion, the slightly longer hair. Hair she suddenly realized she wanted to run her hands through. Scully blinked. She must be even more fatigued than she'd suspected to have thoughts like that.

Krycek looked at her for a minute and then a slow smile spread across his face. He stepped forward, catching her in his arms as she swayed lightly on her feet. She was too weary to feel anything but thankfulness of his support as her legs actually trembled with exhaustion.

"You look terrible, Dana," he said a thread of amusement running through his voice. "Dare I hope it was my absence that's had this effect on you?"

"Don't be ridiculous! This isn't about you," she snapped, grateful that he wasn't in one of his 'slam, bam, thank you ma'am' moods, tonight. She even had problems holding back something perilously close to a smile. "We've got a new case, and it's - "

He shook his head, interrupting her firmly. "Before you tell me anything else, go have a bath or you'll get a cold. You're completely soaked through."

"You should have thought of that before you dragged me out tonight," she retorted but her tone still lacked it's usual bite.

He laughed, "That's my Dana. Now go have a bath before I undress you myself."

Mumbling, "I'm not your anything," she nevertheless headed to the bathroom where she found soap, shampoo and herb-scented bathing oil as well as a big fluffy bathrobe. She filled the bathtub with steaming water, sinking down with a heartfelt groan of contentment. Twenty minutes later she suddenly sat up with a jerk, at Krycek's knock on the door.

"Have you drowned in there, Dana?"

She called out, "I'm fine, I'll be out in a few minutes." Rubbing her eyes, Scully realized she had almost fallen asleep. However, once awake, she quickly washed her hair, and wrapping herself in the bathrobe she padded barefoot into the living room.

Not until much later did she realize just how unselfconscious she was feeling with the man waiting for her. How skillfully he had taught her to accept his body, *him* as a part of her life.

Krycek was kneeling by the fireplace, stirring the fire with a poker. But hearing her approach, he turned around and stood up. "There you are, I was considering coming in and bodily removing you from the bath." His smile told her just how much he'd enjoyed the thought.

Scully ignored him, focusing instead on the tray sitting on the low table by the fireplace. There was a plate of delicate chicken rolls, half a ripe brie, pate, small open smoked salmon sandwiches, a bowl of ripe peaches, blue grapes, cherries and plump red strawberries, and beside that a silver bucket with a champagne bottle wrapped in a white linen serviette sticking up. She blinked once, twice, what the hell....?

She glanced at Krycek who was watching her expectantly. "What is this?" she asked sharply to hide her unease.

"What is what?" he replied innocently.

"This!" her sweeping hand took in the table, the candles, the open fire. "Not really your style, is it?" It was supposed to be a taunt, but emerged closer to a question.

He didn't answer but bent and picked up the bottle. With a little manipulation he managed to pop it open, pouring the frothy pale liquid into a champagne glass and handed it to her before pouring himself another one.

"Actually, Dana, I don't spend *all* my time hanging out in cheap bars and seedy motels. Did you know that you can hide even better in classy places than on back-streets?"

Sipping the champagne, and enjoying the sensation of the cold, dry bubbles sliding down her throat, Scully lifted an eyebrow. "You're on the run?"

Krycek laughed, gesturing for her to sit down in the sofa. "Nope, I'm in better with my bosses than I've ever been. I just wanted you to know that I am familiar with places where there are no ketchup bottles on the table and the silverware *is* silver. Here," he held out the chicken rolls to her. "Have something to eat, it will improve your temper."

Not even considering refusing Scully reached out and started nibbling on one of the rolls. She found them irresistible and soon she was wolfing down the food, not noticing how many times Krycek refilled her glass, or aware she was telling him everything that had happened the past three weeks. She never reflected that this was *Alex Krycek.* She needed to talk and he was there.

All the frustration and anger over the monster who was responsible for so much misery and pain just poured out. Even her fear that Mulder in his desperate attempts to get inside the mind of the man, was slowly losing his own.

Lips curving in an unconsciously tender smile, she finished, "....so tonight I just grabbed him, forced him home, cooked him a meal and put him to bed."

Beside her Krycek moved slightly, "Put him to bed?"

Scully stiffened abruptly remembering who it was she was talking with. She put down her empty glass, "That's right, to bed," her tone holding a definite challenge.

"Hey, I never imagined anything else, Dana," a faint, wry smile. "After not consuming your mutual lurking passion for the past six years, I doubt you'd do it when you're both exhausted and Mulder is half-mad. So pull in your claws, okay?"

She relaxed again, deciding to ignore his allusion to hers and Mulder's complicated relationship. "Sorry," wondering, why am I telling this man I'm sorry? Still she added, as a sort of apology, "I guess I was a bit sensitive, but I've had enough insinuations already to last me a lifetime."

Scully sighed wearily picking up her glass again and held it out for a refill. "Half the agents think we're sleeping together, the other half think that I'm his keeper and mother all rolled into one, and a small minority are sure I'm both." She felt herself relaxing, sipping the wine, "God I'm so tired, Alex." She didn't notice the way his name rolled off her lips, or his tiny start.

Voice laden with fatigue she murmured, "I'm so tired of being the strong, calm, logical one. Of picking up the pieces when Mulder falls apart. I owe him everything, including my life. I love him, goodness knows he's been there for me when I've needed him, but, but.."

"But there are times when you need to crawl into someone's arms and cry." It wasn't a question, just a quiet statement of fact.

She had to blink back sudden tears. "Something like that, yes," a wobbly attempt at a smile. "I don't know, maybe being with Mulder so long I've gotten out of the habit of relying on anyone else. So when he *isn't* there, there is no one else. And with my abduction and cancer, I don't want to burden my family any more than I absolutely have to," she admitted.

A gentle touch on her shoulder made her turn her head. Krycek was holding out his arm, "I only have one arm Dana, but I'll hold you."

Scully wasn't sure what amazed her most. That Alex Krycek, traitor and assassin extraordinaire would be capable of so much understanding and empathy. Or that she, Dana Scully not only accepted but craved it.

Putting the empty plate down on the table, she crept into his arms, the tears beginning even as she burrowed her face into his shirt. Dimly she heard him whisper something in a foreign language, Russian she thought, and then his one remaining hand tangled in her hair, stroking, massaging the scalp. She cried until she had no tears left, until her nose was red and her eyes hot and burning. She cried for all the young lives ending in pain and terror. For their grief-stricken families, showing her all too graphically what her own family must have gone through when she was gone. She cried for herself, for the frustration and helplessness she felt. And most of all she cried for Mulder. Her poor, tormented love, pouring over the files, the pictures, trying to crawl into the mind of a monster.

In the end she was curled against him, every muscle in her body limp in utter exhaustion. He was still stroking her hair, holding her loosely, and she took an obscure comfort from the strong body under her. The slow steady beat of his heart under her ear.

Finally she felt him shift and move away slightly and then the arm returned, holding a box of tissue. "Here, blow your nose."

Scully took it, in wordless gratitude and blew her nose. She thought, God I must look a mess, and realized she didn't give a damn. After she had wiped her eyes and wadded the used tissue into a small ball dropping it on the floor, she cuddled back into his arms as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Closing her eyes, she relaxed, half-drifting. Funny how this seemed so right, so right... Scully yawned, realising there was something in the last thought to alarm her, but too tired to try and sort it out. The body under her vibrated briefly in a soft laugh.

"Are you falling asleep, Dana?"

She nodded sleepily, another yawn surprising her as she opened her eyes briefly focusing. A gentle touch on her cheek and she blinked not sure of what she was seeing. Certainly not that Krycek was capable of the mingled pain and sweetness softening the lines of his usually so hard face.

Hazily she wondered what had caused him to look like that. She yawned again, eyes sliding shut, forgetting her thread of thought, and from a distance she heard a soft laugh, and then someone was lifting and carrying her to the bed, gently removing the robe, and sliding her between cool clean sheets. For a moment a residue of the old resistance and distrust made her wonder if he was going to exact payment for his kindness tonight. But all he did was tuck her in, tenderly, as you do a small child.

At some point during the night she was vaguely aware of a draft of cooler air, and then a warm, solid, somehow comforting presence beside her. She muttered a little, turning and burrowing instinctively into the warmth going back to sleep again. She never felt the arm going around her waist, or realized that the man by her side spent a large portion of the night awake, simply watching the woman sleeping so trustingly in his arms, in his bed.

Scully woke slowly, trying to remember when she'd last felt so rested, so good. Then wondered why that thought should worry her. Stretching slowly, arms over her head, unconsciously sensuously, she pushed the covers back, uncurling her body. Yawning, a soft smile lingered on her lips. And then her eyes flew open in shock at the feathersoft touch on her mouth.

Startled she found herself looking up into leaf-green eyes. Smiling, *tender* eyes. A soundless "Oh!" of surprise, gave him the opportunity to deepen the kiss, stroking her lips open, tasting them with a thoroughness that left her breathless and melting. Scully, half-closed her eyes, letting the wave of passion take her, one hand behind Alex's neck as she slowly, pulled him down with her, sinking back against the mattress....

"Open your eyes, Dana," he told her softly, and languorously she obeyed. Krycek was smiling down at her. His face looked younger and somehow different, and for a moment she couldn't figure out what had changed. But then she realized that this was the first time she had seen him without the wariness he carried like a shield around with him.

"Say my name," he coaxed.

Confusion reflected in blue eyes and she whispered, "Krycek, your name is Krycek..."

He brushed back a lock of hair that had fallen across her forehead. "Not that. Alex, call me Alex, like you did last night..." he kissed her again, with a heartbreaking gentleness, "like I was your lover..."

"I, Alex," she repeated obediently, more than a little uncertain of what he wanted.

His smile widened, "Yes, like that Dana..." a soft, sensuous drawl, as his lips wandered over her face and throat, whispering of her beauty, and how much he wanted her. Wooing her gently, tenderly.

Scully closed her eyes, back arching into his too knowing hands and mouth. She heard his soft laugh feathering across her breast, hardening already sensitive nipples. But even when she started to grow frantic, wrapping her arms around his neck, pulling him down he wouldn't quicken the pace.

A lazy smile, "Don't be in such a hurry, Dana," he murmured, warm breath whispering over her sensitive skin.

"Alex, oh God, Alex," she moaned, wanting him with a desperation that frightened her. Hands feverishly running along hot, damp skin, she tried to urge him closer. Fine shivers ran continuously under her skin, and she opened huge dazed, blue eyes expecting to see the usual triumph lightning them. Waited to hear his demands that she beg.

He suddenly frowned, checking, when he saw the fear, and the hatred in the crystal clear depth. "No," he murmured, closing his own eyes in a strange pain, "no, *dousha* not that." He bent down and kissed her eyes shut, lips warm and firm. "Never again, I promise...."

Scully blinked, not sure what he meant. He seemed to require some sort of answer, and unbidden the words rose to her lips. "Please, please, please."

Abruptly his fingers dug into her arm, and he reared back. "Nyet! Dousha moy.." he spoke in a soft rapid Russian. But seeing her confusion, he switched to English. "Dana, don't. Never beg again."

A small bitter smile, "Isn't that what you want?"

"No..." he whispered, trailing kisses along her shoulder moving to taut white breasts, making her bite her lip and writhe under the warm wetness of his tongue, sliding over curves and hollows. Teasing softly at erect, throbbing flesh. "Oh no, Dana. I want..." He slid a knee between her legs, one hand stroking down her flat stomach, almost playfully, lingering at the hip, teasing.

Her nails dug into his slick, sweat-soaked back, cupping his buttocks, bringing him closer to her, legs wrapped around his back. "What do you want, Alex?" she gasped breathlessly.

"I want you, only you. You, open and warm and willing.... You're so beautiful you make my bones shake," he, murmured, fingers tangling gently in cinnamon and cinnabar damp curls. His hand moved lower and deeper, first one then two fingers slipping deep inside her. He smiled at her wordless moan, as she pushed against his fingers. Thumb flicking repeatedly over the most sensitive bundle of nerves in her body.

She shook her head bemused by the emotion she saw in his eyes. "I'm not beautiful, but you are, Alex..." she reached up and kissed his shoulder, one hand moving between their bodies to run a long teasing caress along his flanks, laughing low in her throat at the sound he made. She slowly explored the taut, flat planes of his stomach, tracing the muscles bunching under her fingertips. "How can a man be so beautiful," she murmured, looking into green, green eyes. "And those eyelashes, they're totally unfair, you know."

Krycek closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again she was surprised to see something that looked close to pain.

"Alex?" she asked, suddenly uncertain.

He smiled, a heartbreakingly sweet smile. "I'm not beautiful, dousha. But you..." He whispered something in Russian again, and then, "you're the most beautiful person I've ever seen, inside or out. Sparkling, like a diamond. Brilliant, lightning up those around you. Yet hard enough to shatter an unwary man's spirit and soul."

She slid her arms around his neck, a little shaken over the fervor in his voice. "You make me sound dangerous." She kissed his neck, tasting the salty skin with her tongue, loving the feel and weight of him against her.

"And so you are. I'd rather face a hundred armed men, than one unarmed, tiny, fragile woman with eyes that can freeze with a single look." He laughed softly, and there was no triumph, no gloating in the sound as he took her open mouth. Their tongues tangled as he deepened the kiss. She felt as if he was trying to absorb everything she was, into himself. When he finally broke off, she was gasping for air. He whispered something against her skin, a curse, a prayer. He was talking in Russian again, and although she didn't know the words, she had no problems understanding their meaning when he shifted sliding slowly between slender thighs. Scully shuddered at the sensation of satiny skin rubbing against her legs.

When she finally climaxed she was crying his name, and not caring. And she knew that this time she wasn't alone. Dana could hear him sob her name, again and again, face hidden in her hair, his entire body shaking with the force of his need. She held him close. Slowly, stroking back damp silky-soft black hair, hands trembling slightly. Unable to think anything, but Alex, Alex, in a stunned litany.

Once their breathing had calmed down a little, Alex shifted, so he was lying on his back, her head on his shoulder. She curled up against him, feeling safe and happy, and for once quite willing not to think of anything at all.

He slowly stroked her hair, fingers combing and tangling in the short silky strands. His body was completely relaxed but when she glanced up at him, his face was blank.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked a little shyly.

He raised himself on one elbow, looking down at her. "That I've never met a woman like you. Dana," he hesitated, suddenly changing what he was going to say. "Come back tonight?" His tone making it a question not a demand.

She too hesitated before agreeing, "I'll try but you know what it's like when you work a big case like this. And Mulder -" she broke off abruptly, sitting up. "Oh my God! Mulder! I promised I'd come by and pick him up this morning! Carstairs' going to kill me, not to mention Mulder!" She threw the bedcovers aside, swinging her legs over the side. "What time is it? Do I have time to go back home and change? Where are my clothes!?"

"Calm down, Dana," Alex's hand on her arm stilled her movements. "It's ten, so you'll be late no matter what. As for Mulder, if he was in the kind of state you describe no doubt he's still sleeping. You can shower here, and drive straight to him. He won't notice that you're still wearing the same clothes," his mouth quirked wryly, "If I know him right, I doubt Mulder'd notice if you walked into his place stark naked."

Scully repressed a bubble of laughter, and a strange burst of something that felt uncomfortably close to jealousy, that Alex was able to predict Mulder's likely response so accurately. And to her utter shock, sh wasn't sure who it was she was jealous of... Mulder or Alex. She removed his hand from her arm.

"Thanks for nothing, Krycek," but her tone was more amused than angry as she headed into the bathroom for a quick shower. And, thank goodness, remembering to bring her purse with her so she could repair some of the traces of last night, as well as this morning. Looking at herself in the mirror, Scully grimaced faintly noting the slightly swollen lips the faint mauve shadows under her eyes. She could hide the red mark at the base of her neck by buttoning up her blouse, but not the languorous, satisfied look that deepened the blue of her eyes.

You look like a woman who has been well and truly loved, Dana, she told her reflection, and then caught her breath in shock. When had what she and Krycek done in bed ever been called love? And yet, though she'd never tell the man outside, this morning *had* been love. For her at least, crazy as it might sound. Quickly pushing away that disconcerting thought, she replaced the lipstick and mascara, brushing out her hair into its usual neat perfection, with a few energetic strokes. There, Special Agent Scully. Satisfied, she gave the mirror a last nod and opened the door.

Krycek was standing by the balcony doors, dressed in nothing but a pair of sweats. She avoided looking at the vast expanse of smooth exposed skin. Seeing her, he poured her a cup of coffee from the pot on the table that smelled like heaven.

"Here, drink this before you go."

She took it, drawing in the rich, strong aroma with a deep sigh of contentment. "Thanks," she sipped it, and then exhaled in pure pleasure, "ahh, that's wonderful!"

He chuckled, "You look like a woman in love."

A hint of red ran along her cheekbones and she avoided his eyes, "I think I may be."

"What do you mean?" the abrupt change in his tone, made her give him a quizzical look. He had gone tense as a bowstring, green eyes sharp and hard as emeralds.

"Ah, nothing much," she said a little uncertainly, "I've always been a secret coffee afficianado, and you know the kind they have at the FBI. Why what did you think I meant?"

"Nothing," he mumbled, and it was his turn to avoid her eyes. He had relaxed again, but before he turned away she had time to see, an expression of... disappointment? No, surely she was wrong, he couldn't have thought she meant - Scully quickly drained her coffee, not eager to follow up on her thought. "I'm off," she said instead.

He nodded, and when she looked at him next his face was smooth, untroubled. "Drive carefully."

She dipped her head a little awkwardly, putting down the cup carefully, "I will, I, umm, I'll see you later..." her voice trailed away and she quickly turned around picking up her coat.

Driving to Mulder's, place Scully resolutely pushed back all thoughts of the man she had just left and the conflicting emotions he caused. Right now she had time for nothing but the case and her partner. So no more thoughts of Alex Krycek and the way he could melt her body with a single look. Nor about the unexpected tenderness this morning. The unselfish giving, the taking that took its pleasure from sharing and tenderness.* * *

The moment the door closed behind Scully, the softness left Krycek's face, drained away like a mask being taken off. He walked over to the sofa and picked up his cellphone, pushing the buttons rapidly.

There was a short pause as he waited for the call to connect. "Sir? Krycek here, yes sir, the plans are proceeding. I am leaving now. Yes sir, she suspects nothing." He pressed the disconnect, and slowly folded up the phone, walking into the bedroom.

When he emerged again he looked a far cry from the usual scruffy hit man lurking in the shadows that Mulder and Scully were used to. Wearing his Gucci leather shoes, Armani suit, silk tie, and black briefcase as if born to it, Krycek left the apartment. Sliding on a pair of sunglasses he hailed a cab and gave a downtown address, getting out outside a bank, and handing the driver a twenty.

"Keep the change."

He walked through the big glass doors, sitting down under the enormous cubic structure dominating the entrance and unfolded a newspaper. He scanned the crowd of people, waiting patiently for his victim. It was a little past one when Alex finally saw him. A thin nervous man who kept glancing around, looking out of place and extremely uncomfortable in these surroundings. He kept tugging his cheap tie; his forehead damp with sweat.

Alex folded his newspaper, right on time. Doctor Hans Van der Weldt, brilliant nuclear physicist, and passionate humanitarian. The briefing also had him as an important part of the underground network smuggling out Chinese dissidents and leaders of the Tibetan underground resistance. For a moment Krycek speculated on why the Consortium wanted him dead, a deal with the Chinese government perhaps? The information in exchange for resources, perhaps a future sanctuary? Not that it mattered.

At the moment Hans Van der Weldt was the possessor of a computer disk detailing the names, places and routes of the underground railroad out of China. He was also alive. Krycek meant to change both those conditions. Standing up, every movement, smooth, unhurried, he walked towards Dr. Van der Weldt, brushing against him and knocking the briefcase from his hand.

"Oh, look here, I am so sorry!" The eager young man exclaimed, picking up the case, and brushing off the older man anxiously.

"Yes, yes," Hans Van der Weldt batted irritatedly at the hands. "Ouch!" he suddenly jerked, feeling a slight sting at the back of his hand.

"I am most frightfully sorry, did I hurt you?" the young man continued to apologize, even as Dr. Van der Weldt pushed him away grabbing the black briefcase held out by the man repeating his apologies, that was by no coincidence virtually indistinguishable from the one the polite young man was carrying.

"Yes, no, do not bother," the older man grabbed his briefcase eager to be away, leaving behind the dark youthful man, who looked after him still stammering his apologies. After seeing the doctor leave, he just shrugged and left quietly.

When Doctor Hans Van der Weldt collapsed, bleeding from the nose and mouth three blocks from the bank, the young man was long gone. The doctor died on the way to hospital despite the heroic attempts of the medical team to resuscitate him. His death was ruled as natural, especially after it was discovered that he had suffered for many years from a weak heart and chronic sickness. The obituaries the following day praised the scientist's accomplishment, and his commitment as a humanitarian. Mention was also made of his deep involvement with human rights organisations.* * *

Alex Krycek took a deep breath, body loose, face cool, and opened the car door. The shadow in the opposite corner waited until he'd got in, sat down opposite him, then said softly, "Hello, Alex."

"Sir," voice calm, respectful.

"Do you have it?" Not a man to waste words, his boss.

Krycek dug into his pocket and withdrew a small computer disk, handing it over. "I got it."

The man took it, glancing at it briefly before tucking it in the inside his coat. "Good," he looked over at Alex. "It doesn't bother you?"

"What, sir?"

"The data on that disk will mean the death of hundreds, possibly thousands of people." A smile slid across his face. "Innocent, brave people."

Krycek barely stopped himself from shrugging. "None of my business."

The other man cleared his throat, lighting up a cigarette, "Very true. However, I had been wondering if your recent, ah, involvement, with Special Agent Scully had changed your point of view. I wouldn't like that to happen Alex, I wouldn't like that all."

The not so subtle warning in the gravelly voice made Krycek's stomach clench in tension, and he had to make an effort to breathe evenly, "Yes, sir."

A dry cough, Krycek finally identified as the old bastard laughing. "Very good," he picked up a small briefcase that was standing by his feet, giving it to the younger man. "Your payment."

Krycek took it, but gave it only a brief cursory glance. He had no doubt his payment, in full, would be in there. Cheating on money was not the way the Consortium worked. They would steal your soul, but they would always pay you for it.

"Thank you." He started to open the door grateful to get away when the older man blew out a cloud of smoke and froze him with his words.

"There is another small service we would like you to perform for us, Alex."

Krycek sank back, very carefully. "You know it doesn't work like that, sir, I'm strictly freelance."

Dry as dust, "You may like to think of it that way. But don't forget we still have a leash around your neck."

And he could feel it choke him right now. Trying to gather his composure, he said brittly, "I appreciate the confidence, sir, but right now I've got more than enough money."

"There are other forms of payment. You have recently exhibited a close interest in the death of Melissa Scully."

Krycek stiffened abruptly, voice toneless. "I don't know what you're talking about."

A harsh rattle he identified as another chuckle. "My dear, Alex, do not insult my intelligence. Don't you think we know what you've been doing? As well as your rather interesting solution to Special Agent Scully's dislike of you?"

Krycek sat very still. God how he wanted to kill the old son of a bitch, if he could just get his hands around that scrawny neck. A single twist and he could almost feel the bone crack. Suppressing the thought, he said cautiously, "And what exactly are you offering, sir?"

"Information on Melissa Scully's whereabouts."

Krycek almost laughed, "I already know that's not her in the photo, so why should I want to find another clone?"

A cloud of smoke filled the car, "Are you sure, Alex?"

Krycek stiffened, "Yes, sir."

"Ah, well, perhaps Agent Scully would be more interested."

Knowing when he was beat was something Krycek had learned from painful experience. Levelly he asked, "What's the mission?"

Not a muscle moved in the smoker's face, but Krycek could *see* the smugness. "This," he handed the dark man a photo of a young, pretty woman getting into a car. "Dr. Elizabeth Berkley, she works at the Sun Alliance R&D department. She is currently heading a project on artificial intelligence. We want to know everything she does, and then we want her, shall we say, disposed of."

Krycek took the photo, "You want her dead? How soon?"

"You misunderstand, we want her taken care of yes, but before she dies we want to know everything she knows."

Krycek looked up with a frown, "Why me? This looks like a fairly simple snatch and debrief mission."

"Again, you misunderstand, the moment her superiors know she has been taken they will immediately destroy all the data we need to access. Thus we need the right person to, ah, persuade her to cooperate, and then we want her death to be considered an accident and completely unconnected by her work."

Krycek stiffened. "I don't do honey pots any more," he said flatly.

"You may want to change your mind about that." A sudden deadly softness, "you're one of the best, Alex, but no one is irreplaceable, especially a man who's loyalties are, shall we say, suspect..."

A small involuntary motion before schooling himself to stillness. "So why am I not dead?"

"Because for the moment you are of more use to us alive than dead, but do remember that can change at any moment."

Not something he was about to forget. However, Krycek only said flatly, "I'll do it, but the price has gone up."

An affable nod, "What do you want?"

"This is the last one I ever work for you, you stay out of my life, out of Scully's as well. Take it or leave it."

There was a long silence and then, "Very well Alex. It is a deal, you give us Elizabeth Berkley and all debts are canceled."

"I walk away."

"You walk away."

A just noticeable relaxation, hoping against hope that the old s.o.b was telling the truth. "Fine," he opened the car door, "I'll get in touch as soon as I've got what you want."

Shoulders hunched, Alex Krycek walked away from the black car with its forged license plates and the man he both hated and needed.* * *

Scully eased her car to a stop outside Hadley Place and turned off the engine, but didn't get out immediately. She badly needed time to think, to try and bring some kind of order into the chaos that her life had become. She had meant to drive home. But somehow she found herself here, on her way to a man who hated her, who she hated. Except... with an exclamation of disgust, Scully bit her lip. All through the long, wearying day the memory of Alex Krycek holding her during the night had given her a funny little twinge and had provided her with a much needed comfort.

The day had been, to put it plainly, horrible. Mulder had fumed over her 'underhanded tricks' as he called them, and had gone off to sulk, and work, with the other profilers. Skinner had gone after her for the failure of the forensic labs to be more accurate, all but accusing her of not putting in 100%. If she hadn't seen the strain, the dark pouches under his eyes, she might have snapped back. But as it was, she had bit her tongue and just said, yes sir, and no sir, in the right places. It just went to show just how much this case had them all rattled. Yet she couldn't help wondering why it was that everyone but her was allowed to act out their emotions.

Finally she had spent five frustrating hours going through the Highway Patrol logs, trying to discover a link between the murders, pouring over literally thousands of records, definitely not her favourite occupation. It was pure grunt work, but with the small size of the task force they were all having to turn their hands to doing things below their dignity - only yesterday she had caught Skinner actually making coffee. A little abashed he'd explained that his secretary was off making a database search for him - well, everyone except for the damned profilers, that was...

To top it all off Elliot Carstairs had acted as if she'd spent the night making mad passionate love to Mulder - not that she'd want him to know the truth about where she'd been last night and with whom, Scully thought grimly - but his smug disapproval still had her grinding her teeth. By the time she was ready to leave, and feeling damned guilty for doing so since she knew Mulder was still working, Scully was ready to tear out her hair and shriek at the top of her voice. A reluctant smile curled her mouth, that would be the day when Dana Katherine Scully, MD would ever do anything so insane. Of course, some people would think sleeping with a man like Alex Krycek would class her as certifiable.

Two months ago she would probably have agreed.

Scully sighed and picked up her briefcase with all the forensic reports as a little light bedside reading. She knew how microscopic was the chance of getting Mulder out and home tonight. But perhaps she should scoot up there, see if she could help him. Acting on impulse she changed direction and walked upstairs to the room where the BSU were housed. Not bothering to knock she pushed open the door. Mulder was sitting there alone, with his back to her, feet on the desk, a can of coke perched precariously on top of a pile of folders, leafing through yet another report.

"Mulder, put that down and go home," she said sitting down opposite him.

He scowled at her, "I'm not talking to you at the moment."

"Is that supposed to be a threat or a reward?" she asked mildly.

He gave her a dirty look. "Go away, Scully."

She stood up again, "That's what I was planning on doing." In reply to the question she saw in his eyes, "we finished the autopsies two days ago and they've called in expert crisis counselors to help the families deal with the trauma." She sighed heavily. "What's left is just a lot of legwork, I've been searching the DMV registers, and the Highway Patrol reports hoping for a lead. How are you doing?"

"Like shit!" he growled, tossing the file on top of the others. She had to dive forward to save the papers as the whole pile started to glide. For which she, naturally, received no thanks just another glower.

"I can't get a grip on him, Scully. It's as if," he searched in frustration for the right words. "He's constantly changing. Slipping through my hands like smoke."

He paused, scowling at the can of coke, "You remember Bill Patterson?"

"How could I forget?" she said dryly. "It's not every day one of the country's most respected FBI agents turns out to be a psychopathic serial killer."

Mulder half-closed his eyes, leaning back on the chair until it balanced on two legs.

"Yeah, well he always told us to understand a killer, we had to *become* the killer. It wasn't enough to just understand how his mind was working. A profiler had to absorb everything the killer is and was." He frowned, "do you understand, Scully? To crack this I have to *understand* what makes him tick. To feel the same kind of pleasure he feels in abducting and torturing and murdering those girls. I honestly always thought that was too high a price to pay, I still do. But for this case," he pushed his fingers through thick disheveled hair, "I can see his point of view."

Very quietly, hiding her sudden fear, she asked, "Is that what you're doing Mulder? Becoming the killer?"

"I've been trying to. But it's not working!" he sounded frustrated. "He keeps changing, as if..." his voice trailed away and suddenly the chair thumped to the floor, "as if he's not one but several, which is impossible from the forensic evidence gathered at the scenes, we're dealing with a single killer. Scully!" a rising note of excitement. "What if the killer suffers from a multiple personality disorder?"

"Mulder, Multiple Personality Disorder is extremely rare, and medical science is still divided on whether it should be classified as a clinical illness, furthermore..." she stopped at his frown and evident irritation. "But certainly if the killer was to suffer from genuine MPD then obviously none of the usual profiling methods would work on him. One or several of his personalities would be completely unaware of what the murderous personality was doing."

Speaking very calmly she continued. "And even if we had the murderer himself in for questioning, *he* would be innocent, hence we might have to discount some of the eyewitness accounts."

"Yes, yes, yes!! That could be the key! Where the hell is Carstairs?!" He grabbed a pencil scribbling frantically, muttering to himself.

As soon as Carstairs and the other profilers arrived, she and Mulder presented their idea, and there were exclamations of immediate agreements, and a new eagerness and sense of purpose as everyone rushed to their desks working with the new theory.

Scully left to pour herself a cup of coffee from the thermos on the bench by the window. Holding the plastic cup, sipping the lukewarm bitterness, she almost smiled watching Mulder argue with one of the other profilers, hair askew from having hands pushed through it repeatedly. No tie, and shirt wrinkled and with half the buttons missing completed the picture.

"What a waste," startled, she looked up and realized Elliot Carstairs was standing by her shoulder, watching Mulder as well.

"What do you mean, sir?" she asked.

"Mulder, throwing away his life on chasing after UFOs. Bill was right, he is brilliant. Damn! I wish I could get him back to Quantico with us after this case is over."

"He wouldn't come, sir," Scully said, a bit of an edge slipping into her voice.

Carstairs glanced at her, "I know, which is why I said it was a damn shame. Agent Scully, you're a scientist, a realist, you tell me, it doesn't bother you that Mulder is skulking in a cellar somewhere investigating Elvis sightings, when he could make a real contribution, save lives, as a profiler."

Scully let her eyes rest on Mulder for a long time, and then she replied slowly, "I used to think so yes, but I've come to realize that he makes a different but equally valid contribution in the X-Files."

She shook her head, "Besides, to be frank sir, I don't think Mulder ever should have become a profiler, brilliant or not. He," she searched for the right words, "is too intense, too obsessive. He would have either burned out by now, or followed the path of Patterson. It's not that he's afraid of responsibility, far from it. But I have seen him on cases where lives depend on him, and he turns... *driven* is the best word I can think of. He will do literally anything to save a life. If his every assignment was a matter of life and death, especially with multiple innocent victims like the ones involving the serial killers and terrorists you specialise in at the BSU out at Quantico, I think he would go insane. This way," she smiled a little wryly, "the grimness is occasionally enlivened by such sheer weirdness, it helps liven things up, and refresh him."

Carstairs crossed his arms. "You seem to know him well, Agent Scully."

"We've been partners for some time now," she said calmly, "he's saved my life more than once, we've been through some bad times together, that tends to bring people close."

"True, but you and Mulder are closer than most," there was just a hint of insinuation, that made her silently bristle. Yet she knew by now there was little use in defending herself or Mulder, so she contented herself with an enigmatic look, turning away from Carstairs and walking over to Mulder, quietly interjecting a word or two, listening. In an unconscious completely natural gesture, Mulder moved his chair so she could sit down, drawing her into the discussion, and soon they were bouncing ideas off each other, so closely attuned they were all but finishing each others sentences.

Sitting in the darkness of her car Scully thought of the closeness, the rightness of working with a man who so completely understood her. Who accepted her for what she was, 'warts and all,' and how mad she must be to risk it all for - what? A man she despised? A man who doled out crumbs when he felt like it. Why didn't she just tell Mulder? Together they could surely break Krycek, *force* him to give her the information she craved. Why did she continue to play his game? To come running when he whistled? And, oh God, what would she do if Mulder ever found out?

All her life she had sought what Mulder had so casually given her since the first day they were partnered; unqualified acceptance. Of course, her career choices, first as a doctor specialising in forensic pathology and then the FBI, making her way in a male dominated world, she had gotten used to being judged in advance for what, rather than who, she was. No one before Mulder had looked at her and seen not a woman, not a doctor, not a scientist or FBI agent, but simply Dana Scully. Most men saw only the slender curvy figure, the red-hair and blue eyes, and treated her accordingly.

Her hands slowly clenched on the wheel, and her lips curved into a bitter smile as she realized only one other man had ever treated her like a complete equal; neither giving nor asking for mercy. And that was the man waiting for her in the apartment above. Whatever else you could say of Krycek; uou had to admit he was decidedly Political Correct, in that he didn't care if you were a man or a woman. Whether he was seducing or killing you.

Scully slowly opened the car door, knowing there had never been any choice to make. She knew what he was. And yet, whatever it was that tied her to Alex Krycek it wouldn't let go so easy. Hadn't she always known what she was going to do in the end? She couldn't fool herself any longer it was only Melissa who kept her coming back. She was caught and she knew it.

Knocking on the door, she waited for a minute before it opened and Krycek was standing there. He must have just showered, because his hair was still damp and curling slightly at the back. He was wearing a white shirt and the usual black jeans, and he looked younger, more vulnerable tonight, she thought as she walked in. Hiding her sudden awkwardness beneath briskness.

He didn't touch her, stepping back a little putting his hand in his back pocket. "I wasn't sure you'd come," he said quietly.

Scully gave him an enigmatic look, "I wasn't sure I had a choice."

He stared at her, and to her amazement he actually looked hurt. "No, no Dana, that's not what I meant this morning."

She looked at him steadily. "Then what did you mean, Krycek? You're playing games and I don't know what the rules are."

He turned away. "I didn't mean anything. I wanted you to come here, because you wanted to. Not, not, because of anything else."

Scully bit her lip, "Krycek, you blackmail me into sleeping with you, you treat me like a wh -"

"NO!" he suddenly swung around, grabbing her shoulders shaking them hard. "No," a little calmer, "I never thought of you as a whore, and trust me, Dana Scully, I've got a hell of a lot more experience with whores than you do."

She stared at him, a little frightened. "I didn't mean it like that, I," she broke free, "I don't know what I meant," she muttered. "I knew this was a really bad idea, maybe I should just leave."

"No, I," he pushed his one good hand through his hair, "look, Dana, I'm sorry, this wasn't the way I wanted it to be. Look, I," he broke off and walked over to the sofa table and picked up a thick folder. Returning he held it out to her silently.

"What is this?"

He looked at her steadily, but his hands were actually trembling slightly. "This is every scrap of information about your sister, about Melissa. She is dead, at least I," he broke off, "I honestly thought she was dead, Dana. I really did."

Scully stared at the folder, at the file taking away her last hope that Melissa was alive. A long slow tremble started, grew until she was shaking like a leaf, "No, you're lying!"

"No, I'm not," Krycek muttered, eyes sliding away, and still holding out the folder. "I, *chort!* I'm sorry Dana."

She whispered through stiff lips, "You said you'd met her."

Krycek turned away, putting the folder on a small table by the door, "I lied."

"You bastard!"

"I know," his voice was strained. "But, Dana," he hesitated and then said softly, "today, I met someone, and they, he, claimed that what is in that folder may not be all the truth."

Her eyes were enormous, dark pools of misery and vulnerability. "Please, please, Krycek, don't do this to me," she begged. "I can't stand being torn between hope and despair any longer. Why are you doing this?" Anguish thickened her soft voice, "why do you hate me so much?"

"Oh, Dana. Christ no! I don't hate you, I've never hated you!" He came forward, taking her in his arms, gentle as if she was made of spun glass. "I never meant it to be like this."

"Then how did you mean it, Krycek?" she demanded bitterly stiffening at his touch. "What did you mean to do? Screw me until you had enough and then just leave, that," she nodded at the folder, "as a good-bye present?"

He breathed in shakily. "I didn't think at all. All I knew was that you would never have let me touch you if I didn't have some leverage."

She jerked away, "Nor would I!"

He bit his lip, not making any further attempt to touch her, almost as pale as she. "So, that was my only chance. But I can't do this to you. I want you to come to me because you want me, as I want you."

Despite herself, she couldn't help the question burning on her lips. "How do you want me? An itch that you just couldn't scratch? As a substitute for Mulder? *What* Krycek?!"

He flinched, and for a moment she didn't think he would answer. But then he told her, evenly, "I want whatever you're willing to give me, Dana. I've sunk that low. I want you, body, mind and soul. I want you to think only of *me* to want only me, half as much as I want you!"

All anger drained away and Scully just stared at him, stunned, not sure she had heard right. She wondered if this was just another of his cruel games. Waited for him to laugh and mock her credulity. But when she finally focused she saw only the stark white of his skin, the desperate intensity of dark-green burning eyes, the hand opening and closing convulsively.

Reaching out she took the folder from him. He released it easily, almost thrusting the thing at her.

"I can walk out that door, and never come back, Alex, you know that."

Mutely he nodded, not willing to risk his voice.

She didn't open the folder, didn't glance at it even once. "Damn you, Krycek, damn you to hell!"

A twisted smile, "Been there, done that, didn't even get a T-shirt."

She almost laughed before she caught herself. "I should go."

He said nothing, just waited. Still. Withdrawn.

She didn't know why she wasn't already out the door with the folder clutched to her chest. Why was she was still standing there, staring at the dark man watching her so intensely.

"Why, Alex?" she said very softly, and wasn't sure what she asking. Why had he blackmailed her, why had he decided to be honest at last, why did he want her....

He was silent for a moment, and then he said, "I once read somewhere, I can't remember where, that 'the worst sin - perhaps the only sin - passion can commit, is to be joyless. It must lie down with laughter or make it's bed in hell'... I never knew what the author meant until this morning."

A sudden weary bitterness, shadowed his voice and face. "Oh, don't get me wrong, I've bought, and sold, lust, often enough and it's never bothered me. Not until today. But this morning," he paused, lifting those amazing eyes to look at her steadily. "This morning showed me what true passion is. And now the memory of those other times makes me sick. I don't want your reluctant acquiescence. I want you like you were then. Laughing, happy, taking as much as you were giving. A, a lover, not a fuck."

Very softly he said, "You can walk out that door, Dana, and never come back. I swear I won't say a word to Mulder." And oddly enough, considering their past dealings, she was certain he was telling her the truth. That he would keep his word. "I have nothing left to bargain with."

She didn't know what to say, what to do. She took one step towards the door; Krycek made no motion to stop her. He remained where he was, quiet, waiting.

She looked at him, at the man who had humiliated and degraded her. The man she owed nothing. The man who was a killer, a liar, and a thief. The man she hated, except it wasn't true. Not any longer. At some point he had stopped being Krycek and had become Alex, her Alex.

Slowly, her eyes never leaving him she took another step: He tensed, but still didn't move. She put her hand on the doorhandle and he made a small involuntary movement before checking it sharply. Apart from that he was still as a statue. Only his eyes lived, watched as the light walked out of his life.

That one small motion sealed both their fates.

She would have left, never to see him again except across the barrel of a gun, but for that unconscious movement. It reminded her, not of the morning, but of last night, of the way he covered her hand with his one remaining one. Of him holding her while she cried in his arms.

It was, in the end, not the ecstasy he wrung from her body that made her stay but the memory of the man who held her while she wept. Who was tender when she needed tenderness, the man who seemed instinctively to know, not just how to hurt, but to give her comfort and something more... Safety? Solace? Love? She was never sure, she just knew in that moment that she could never walk away from him.

The folder dropped from suddenly nerveless hands and slipped to the floor with a soft flutter of paper.

"Dana? *Dorogaya*?" He sounded uncertain, apprehensive.

Scully lifted her hand and slapped him, hard. His head snapped, and he staggered back against the wall.

Krycek lifted a hand to his chin touching it gingerly, and smiled ruefully, "I guess I deserved that."

"Yes you did, and more. You really are a bastard."

"I know." His smile grew from deep inside his soul. "But you're not going, are you?" She didn't say anything and his smile slipped. "Dana?"

"No, I'm not," Scully said quietly. "But if you ever lie to me again, Alex, I will not only never come back, but I will personally make sure you spend the next thirty years in a maximum security prison. Do you understand?"

Far from looking frightened his smile widened. He looked more like a man promised eternal salvation than one being threatened with imprisonment. Krycek took one step, two, and suddenly she was in his arms. They closed around her as if he never intended to let her go again.

He murmured into her ear, "That was your last chance, Dana. I was going to let you go, but you've made your choice, forever." And standing in the circle of his arms, Dana Scully knew that it was indeed too late, for either of them.

Continued in Part Two