You're Not Going Alone
AN: Ahh, the hormones and the angst come together and go POW!
The entire room fell silent as Mulder announced Scully was remaining behind. Even Alex Krycek. His gaze glittered as it flickered between Mulder and Scully, standing so close beside him, something unreadable on his face. Scully simply stared at him. So much of what had happened to her and her family could be traced back to him. Frankly, the two-faced son-of-a-bitch was lucky she had called Mulder off from killing him that day so long ago. She vaguely wished she had done it herself. Mulder wouldn’t be heading into that forest alone.
Skinner’s thought echoed her own, and thankfully he spoke up before she could even ask. “If Scully’s staying, I’m going. The hell I’m letting one of my agents into an area where people have gone missing.”
“Sir,” Mulder began, but Scully reached out and grabbed his arm. He paused, turning to her, frustration and fear bright in his green eyes. Mulder always wanted to take on the burdens alone, to carry the weight on his shoulders. But she wasn’t going to let him do this by himself.
“Someone is going to need to requisition the equipment. You’re in enough hot water, Mulder, they aren’t going to let you take it.”
Skinner saw her lead and ran with it, jumping in before Mulder could protest further. “I can cut through the red tape, Mulder, get us what we need and on the next plane back to Portland.” He glanced at the Lone Gunman, huddled quietly around his conference room table. “With something like that, what do we want to take with us?”
The trio glanced between them, faces grim as they silently considered. It was Langley who spoke first. “If this thing is cloaked in any way like he said,” he jerked his chin at Krycek without so much as looking at him. “Then you’ll need night vision equipment, infrared, anything that will be able to see energy frequencies, like heat.”
“It will be invisible,” Krycek clarified darkly, scowling at the three before glancing back towards where Marita Covarrubias hugged herself, looking vaguely sick. “You may get a heat signature, you’ll likely want something else, something that would be disrupted and scattered. Something involving light.”
“Like a laser pointer,” Byers offered, holding up his own keychain with the cheap, two-dollar kind one could get at any gas station.
“More like the industrial kind, the sort they use for survey work and construction.”
“We have some of those in our forensics lab, we use them at crime scenes,” Skinner glanced to Krycek. “How many?”
“A dozen. Maybe two.” The other man shrugged, a strange gesture with his heavy, fake left arm weighing him down.
“And a camera, maybe two, something to record with,” Mulder moved towards the table, grabbing paper and pen to make a checklist. “Microphones for sound, flashlights because it’s dark as hell there and a root can trip and kill you.”
Scully moved towards the nearest chair in Skinner’s office and sat, watching the proceedings in quiet contemplation. She noted how odd it was, to sit outside this circle, watching the proceedings, displaced, detached, knowing Mulder was going out there by himself, without her. It felt so...wrong. As if she were cutting off a part of herself and letting it go.
She couldn’t help it as she let her gaze flickered to Krycek’s arm. He sat by, watching her with a measured look. She met his gaze evenly, but when he didn’t back down, let hers flicker away. She owed nothing to this man, he owed her far more than he could ever pay. And she was tired...so tired. She only felt it then, sitting in her prim, pale blue linen suit, crisp and professional. Her joints ached, her head felt heavy, and she could oh so happily go to sleep and ignore all of this. And yet she didn’t. Because she was sending Mulder into those woods by himself. Since the moment she had first gone with him to Bellefleur so many years ago, she had stood by his side in nearly everything, even at her most ill. It killed her she had to stay behind for this.
She wondered vaguely if this was how her mother felt every time she had to see her father off to sea. If it was, Scully realized she had a newfound respect for Margaret Scully. To send her husband and the father of her children off on a ship where he may or may not come back, the uncertainty of that act. Mulder wasn’t her husband, nor would there ever be children, and this was hardly a life or death situation, no war, no guns, and he’d be home within a day, either triumphantly producing his long awaited and desired evidence, or despondent at yet another dead end. And yet, there she was, panicking, because he was going out without her there to babysit him? She would have laughed at her own ridiculousness if she didn’t feel so tired. It was whatever bug she had, it had to be, making her irrational and overreact.
But Krycek kept watching her. And it unnerved her, unsettled her in that way that silly portents of doom in old, horror movies did. As if something was coming. And with Krycek, it could be anything. He had his own agenda, had always had one, and had been more than happy to let Mulder rot in Siberia, infected with a virus that could have killed him and should have. Had Krycek known then about Mulder’s so-called immunity? Or had he not even cared? Either way, it made her question all of this. Mulder had long been a dispensable pawn in the long game Krycek played. And she wasn’t so sure she liked the calculating way he was watching her.
“Scully,” Mulder’s voice caught her attention, turning her back to the activity at the table. “We’re going to go down to the forensic lab, see what we can get there. You think you can babysit this bunch?”
The Lone Gunman looked highly insulted by Mulder’s claims, but Scully knew that wasn’t who he was referring to. “Yeah, they’ll be fine.”
“Be right back.” Turning for the door, Mulder absently folded the list in his hand, Skinner trailing behind. Scully watched in silence, her heart in her throat, dread pooling at the base of her spine, torn between exasperation with herself for being overdramatic and the desire to break into tears. Ignoring the others, she flew up to follow, wrenching open the heavy, double doors that opened out from Skinner’s office to the outer hallway.
“Mulder!” Her voice rang louder than she meant it to in the now dark hallway. The rest of the floor had long since left, it was already nearing seven. Mulder and Skinner paused, turning to stare at her, as the foolish feeling reared again, flaming her face as she realized just how silly she looked. Honestly, she was five-years-old again, crying because Bill wouldn’t take her with him to the playground and made her stay and play dolls with Melissa.
Mulder seemed to understand all the same. Without saying a word he moved back towards her, wrapping arms around her, not seeming to care that their boss stood watching the silent tableau. She felt tears prickle and wondered what in the hell had gotten into her.
“Seriously, Scully, it’s just Oregon and back, I’ll be back to pack my desk in a day or two.” He was joking, she knew it, but she could hear the concern and worry. He didn’t understand this reaction in her, and frankly neither did she. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t had separate cases before. Hell, he’d run off on her more times than she cared to think about. And there she was, crying because he was taking Skinner and leaving her behind.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, more than a bit tearfully. “I just...I’m scared.”
His arms tightened. “You’ll be fine here. I told you, I won’t let anything happen to you. The guys will keep an eye on you.”
“And Krycek?” Her voice waivered at that. She could feel him stiffen, almost sensing the anger just under his skin. Krycek was who had been instrumental in her disappearance the first time.
“Even he’s not that stupid.” Mulder’s words were more confident than he sounded. “If anything happens to you and he’s anywhere in the vicinity, I’ll kill him, and he knows it.”
It wasn’t a jest. Something told Scully that Mulder meant it.
“Mulder, we don’t have much time.” Skinner wasn’t unfeeling, but he was firm as Scully pulled away, feeling ashamed for such a display in front of their boss no less. She let him go, but not before he snagged her fingers and brought them to his lips, a brief, chaste kiss before he turned to follow Skinner.
She didn’t want him going without her.
“Mulder!” She stopped him one last time, a whimsical, mad idea hitting her. Fingers flying to her neck, she reached for the clasp of the gold cross at her throat. It had been her talisman since she was fifteen, a gift from her mother to her, a gift she had tried to pass to Emily. It wasn’t much, there was nothing magical about it, but for whatever reason it made sense. It was something to give him, to have with him while he was out there.
Mulder was polite enough to only look mildly confused, a bemused smile on his face as she took the necklace off and held it out to his outstretched fingers. “What’s it for?”
“Luck,” she said, trying to smile but feeling it wobble as it fell. “Nothing about this feels safe, Mulder.”
“Scully, it’s the least crazy adventure I’ve had ever. I’m out with Skinner in the middle of the woods. No glaciers, no trains, no gulags in Siberia.”
“I know,” she muttered, closing his fingers around the delicate gold strand. “Just...humor me on this. Call it my Irish intuition.”
“You don’t believe in intuition,” he teased, but slid the chain into the front pocket of his shirt. “Don’t get worked up, Scully. Keep an eye on Krycek. It will all be okay.”
“Okay,” she murmured, watching as he turned for good this time. She waited till he and Skinner rounded the corner to the elevators, then quietly went back into the office. The boys were engrossed in the maps and data in front of them. Krycek sat apart, however, Marita curled quietly next to him, watching the others work. He, however, had was watching her.
“Something got your eye, Alex?” She spat out the words more harshly than she had meant. She really had wanted to be dismissive. But he only laughed, his cold, blue eyes for a moment softening to compassion.
“If he finds this, it will change everything. You know that.”
“If he finds it,” she shot back, wrapping arms around herself and wishing that a dark hole would open up and swallow Krycek and take him back where he belonged. “You told him it is out there.”
“If he gets to it in time, and if he can get the proof.” Krycek nodded towards the table. “It’s out there, I know it is.”
“Any reason you couldn’t go out and snag it yourself?”
“And do what with it? Wave it around? Leak it to CNN? I’m a wanted man, Scully, there’s still a warrant out for my arrest, you know.”
“Yeah, for abducting me and killing my sister,” she growled, catching Marita’s attention. The blonde woman turned, pale eyes solemn and sad as she regarded Scully.
“This isn’t just about you, you know that. What they’ve done…” She trailed off, turning in on herself in that way that Scully knew all too well from others. Penny, Cassandra, she’d experienced it. They’d done something to her. “They are hiding the truth of what they’ve done, the evidence of everything that’s happened. Mulder is the only one who can get it out there, that’s why him.”
“And what do you get out of this?” Krycek never worked without an angle, she knew that about him.
He shrugged mildly. “Freedom. I get to be my own man. I think maybe you can relate to that, can’t you?”
The idea of relating to Alex Krycek on anything made her skin crawl and her already touchy stomach lurch violently. “I am nothing like you.”
“Aren’t you?” He laughed ruefully, and for a moment looked as if he truly regretted the course of his life. “I wasn’t always two-faced bastard, Scully. Like you, I got drawn into something much bigger than myself, and unlike you, I wasn’t given the nobler choice.”
Anger flared red hot within her, the image of her sister, comatose in the hospital fueling the flames into a storm. “You murdered my sister, you destroyed her life, you had them take me, to use me, to take away my choices. And you can sit there and tell me I’m anything like you?”
Even the Lone Gunman stopped to stare, eyes wide at the scene in front of them. But Krycek didn’t flinch, taking the blast of her fury as evenly as he regarded her in that long moment.
“You may find, Scully, that you have been blessed in ways I haven’t, and you’ve been given second chances that I’ll never have. What I did was unforgivable, there’s no denying that. But at the end of the day, you get to walk away with your head held high, off to go be a doctor and live a normal life. There is no white picket fence for me, not for what I’ve done. All I get is revenge, to see the truth exposed and to pay back that cancerous son-of-a-bitch in kind for every wrong committed. To hold him and all of them accountable for what has happened, and expose it...stop it in a way they were too coward to do. Maybe then, I can begin atoning for the tiniest bit of my crimes. When this is all said and done, Scully, you get to sleep at night with the knowledge you have a soul. I still have to make amends for the fact they stole mine.”
Whatever Scully had expected to hear out of Alex Krycek, that wasn’t it. The rage that simmered within banked, and she felt herself drain of indignation and energy. Too tired to even contemplate what he was already suggesting.
“Krycek,” she sighed, wishing she could do nothing more than go home and curl into a ball and never, ever come out again. “If anything happens to Mulder because of this, I will make sure that I find you, and that they lock you up, and they never, ever find the key again.”
Krycek only smirked. “I’ve been locked up in worse places. But yeah, if anything happens to Mulder, you can be the first in line to kick my ass, okay?”
“I’ll be second,” piped up Frohike, glaring in pugnacious anger at the far-from-impressed Krycek. “Nothing about this smells right. It’s too perfect.”
“Believe what you want, but I’m not here to trick you. No gimmicks.”
Scully could only turn away, too disgusted and doubtful to believe a further word out of him. “I hope for your sake there isn’t any.”
The entire room fell silent as Mulder announced Scully was remaining behind. Even Alex Krycek. His gaze glittered as it flickered between Mulder and Scully, standing so close beside him, something unreadable on his face. Scully simply stared at him. So much of what had happened to her and her family could be traced back to him. Frankly, the two-faced son-of-a-bitch was lucky she had called Mulder off from killing him that day so long ago. She vaguely wished she had done it herself. Mulder wouldn’t be heading into that forest alone.
Skinner’s thought echoed her own, and thankfully he spoke up before she could even ask. “If Scully’s staying, I’m going. The hell I’m letting one of my agents into an area where people have gone missing.”
“Sir,” Mulder began, but Scully reached out and grabbed his arm. He paused, turning to her, frustration and fear bright in his green eyes. Mulder always wanted to take on the burdens alone, to carry the weight on his shoulders. But she wasn’t going to let him do this by himself.
“Someone is going to need to requisition the equipment. You’re in enough hot water, Mulder, they aren’t going to let you take it.”
Skinner saw her lead and ran with it, jumping in before Mulder could protest further. “I can cut through the red tape, Mulder, get us what we need and on the next plane back to Portland.” He glanced at the Lone Gunman, huddled quietly around his conference room table. “With something like that, what do we want to take with us?”
The trio glanced between them, faces grim as they silently considered. It was Langley who spoke first. “If this thing is cloaked in any way like he said,” he jerked his chin at Krycek without so much as looking at him. “Then you’ll need night vision equipment, infrared, anything that will be able to see energy frequencies, like heat.”
“It will be invisible,” Krycek clarified darkly, scowling at the three before glancing back towards where Marita Covarrubias hugged herself, looking vaguely sick. “You may get a heat signature, you’ll likely want something else, something that would be disrupted and scattered. Something involving light.”
“Like a laser pointer,” Byers offered, holding up his own keychain with the cheap, two-dollar kind one could get at any gas station.
“More like the industrial kind, the sort they use for survey work and construction.”
“We have some of those in our forensics lab, we use them at crime scenes,” Skinner glanced to Krycek. “How many?”
“A dozen. Maybe two.” The other man shrugged, a strange gesture with his heavy, fake left arm weighing him down.
“And a camera, maybe two, something to record with,” Mulder moved towards the table, grabbing paper and pen to make a checklist. “Microphones for sound, flashlights because it’s dark as hell there and a root can trip and kill you.”
Scully moved towards the nearest chair in Skinner’s office and sat, watching the proceedings in quiet contemplation. She noted how odd it was, to sit outside this circle, watching the proceedings, displaced, detached, knowing Mulder was going out there by himself, without her. It felt so...wrong. As if she were cutting off a part of herself and letting it go.
She couldn’t help it as she let her gaze flickered to Krycek’s arm. He sat by, watching her with a measured look. She met his gaze evenly, but when he didn’t back down, let hers flicker away. She owed nothing to this man, he owed her far more than he could ever pay. And she was tired...so tired. She only felt it then, sitting in her prim, pale blue linen suit, crisp and professional. Her joints ached, her head felt heavy, and she could oh so happily go to sleep and ignore all of this. And yet she didn’t. Because she was sending Mulder into those woods by himself. Since the moment she had first gone with him to Bellefleur so many years ago, she had stood by his side in nearly everything, even at her most ill. It killed her she had to stay behind for this.
She wondered vaguely if this was how her mother felt every time she had to see her father off to sea. If it was, Scully realized she had a newfound respect for Margaret Scully. To send her husband and the father of her children off on a ship where he may or may not come back, the uncertainty of that act. Mulder wasn’t her husband, nor would there ever be children, and this was hardly a life or death situation, no war, no guns, and he’d be home within a day, either triumphantly producing his long awaited and desired evidence, or despondent at yet another dead end. And yet, there she was, panicking, because he was going out without her there to babysit him? She would have laughed at her own ridiculousness if she didn’t feel so tired. It was whatever bug she had, it had to be, making her irrational and overreact.
But Krycek kept watching her. And it unnerved her, unsettled her in that way that silly portents of doom in old, horror movies did. As if something was coming. And with Krycek, it could be anything. He had his own agenda, had always had one, and had been more than happy to let Mulder rot in Siberia, infected with a virus that could have killed him and should have. Had Krycek known then about Mulder’s so-called immunity? Or had he not even cared? Either way, it made her question all of this. Mulder had long been a dispensable pawn in the long game Krycek played. And she wasn’t so sure she liked the calculating way he was watching her.
“Scully,” Mulder’s voice caught her attention, turning her back to the activity at the table. “We’re going to go down to the forensic lab, see what we can get there. You think you can babysit this bunch?”
The Lone Gunman looked highly insulted by Mulder’s claims, but Scully knew that wasn’t who he was referring to. “Yeah, they’ll be fine.”
“Be right back.” Turning for the door, Mulder absently folded the list in his hand, Skinner trailing behind. Scully watched in silence, her heart in her throat, dread pooling at the base of her spine, torn between exasperation with herself for being overdramatic and the desire to break into tears. Ignoring the others, she flew up to follow, wrenching open the heavy, double doors that opened out from Skinner’s office to the outer hallway.
“Mulder!” Her voice rang louder than she meant it to in the now dark hallway. The rest of the floor had long since left, it was already nearing seven. Mulder and Skinner paused, turning to stare at her, as the foolish feeling reared again, flaming her face as she realized just how silly she looked. Honestly, she was five-years-old again, crying because Bill wouldn’t take her with him to the playground and made her stay and play dolls with Melissa.
Mulder seemed to understand all the same. Without saying a word he moved back towards her, wrapping arms around her, not seeming to care that their boss stood watching the silent tableau. She felt tears prickle and wondered what in the hell had gotten into her.
“Seriously, Scully, it’s just Oregon and back, I’ll be back to pack my desk in a day or two.” He was joking, she knew it, but she could hear the concern and worry. He didn’t understand this reaction in her, and frankly neither did she. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t had separate cases before. Hell, he’d run off on her more times than she cared to think about. And there she was, crying because he was taking Skinner and leaving her behind.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, more than a bit tearfully. “I just...I’m scared.”
His arms tightened. “You’ll be fine here. I told you, I won’t let anything happen to you. The guys will keep an eye on you.”
“And Krycek?” Her voice waivered at that. She could feel him stiffen, almost sensing the anger just under his skin. Krycek was who had been instrumental in her disappearance the first time.
“Even he’s not that stupid.” Mulder’s words were more confident than he sounded. “If anything happens to you and he’s anywhere in the vicinity, I’ll kill him, and he knows it.”
It wasn’t a jest. Something told Scully that Mulder meant it.
“Mulder, we don’t have much time.” Skinner wasn’t unfeeling, but he was firm as Scully pulled away, feeling ashamed for such a display in front of their boss no less. She let him go, but not before he snagged her fingers and brought them to his lips, a brief, chaste kiss before he turned to follow Skinner.
She didn’t want him going without her.
“Mulder!” She stopped him one last time, a whimsical, mad idea hitting her. Fingers flying to her neck, she reached for the clasp of the gold cross at her throat. It had been her talisman since she was fifteen, a gift from her mother to her, a gift she had tried to pass to Emily. It wasn’t much, there was nothing magical about it, but for whatever reason it made sense. It was something to give him, to have with him while he was out there.
Mulder was polite enough to only look mildly confused, a bemused smile on his face as she took the necklace off and held it out to his outstretched fingers. “What’s it for?”
“Luck,” she said, trying to smile but feeling it wobble as it fell. “Nothing about this feels safe, Mulder.”
“Scully, it’s the least crazy adventure I’ve had ever. I’m out with Skinner in the middle of the woods. No glaciers, no trains, no gulags in Siberia.”
“I know,” she muttered, closing his fingers around the delicate gold strand. “Just...humor me on this. Call it my Irish intuition.”
“You don’t believe in intuition,” he teased, but slid the chain into the front pocket of his shirt. “Don’t get worked up, Scully. Keep an eye on Krycek. It will all be okay.”
“Okay,” she murmured, watching as he turned for good this time. She waited till he and Skinner rounded the corner to the elevators, then quietly went back into the office. The boys were engrossed in the maps and data in front of them. Krycek sat apart, however, Marita curled quietly next to him, watching the others work. He, however, had was watching her.
“Something got your eye, Alex?” She spat out the words more harshly than she had meant. She really had wanted to be dismissive. But he only laughed, his cold, blue eyes for a moment softening to compassion.
“If he finds this, it will change everything. You know that.”
“If he finds it,” she shot back, wrapping arms around herself and wishing that a dark hole would open up and swallow Krycek and take him back where he belonged. “You told him it is out there.”
“If he gets to it in time, and if he can get the proof.” Krycek nodded towards the table. “It’s out there, I know it is.”
“Any reason you couldn’t go out and snag it yourself?”
“And do what with it? Wave it around? Leak it to CNN? I’m a wanted man, Scully, there’s still a warrant out for my arrest, you know.”
“Yeah, for abducting me and killing my sister,” she growled, catching Marita’s attention. The blonde woman turned, pale eyes solemn and sad as she regarded Scully.
“This isn’t just about you, you know that. What they’ve done…” She trailed off, turning in on herself in that way that Scully knew all too well from others. Penny, Cassandra, she’d experienced it. They’d done something to her. “They are hiding the truth of what they’ve done, the evidence of everything that’s happened. Mulder is the only one who can get it out there, that’s why him.”
“And what do you get out of this?” Krycek never worked without an angle, she knew that about him.
He shrugged mildly. “Freedom. I get to be my own man. I think maybe you can relate to that, can’t you?”
The idea of relating to Alex Krycek on anything made her skin crawl and her already touchy stomach lurch violently. “I am nothing like you.”
“Aren’t you?” He laughed ruefully, and for a moment looked as if he truly regretted the course of his life. “I wasn’t always two-faced bastard, Scully. Like you, I got drawn into something much bigger than myself, and unlike you, I wasn’t given the nobler choice.”
Anger flared red hot within her, the image of her sister, comatose in the hospital fueling the flames into a storm. “You murdered my sister, you destroyed her life, you had them take me, to use me, to take away my choices. And you can sit there and tell me I’m anything like you?”
Even the Lone Gunman stopped to stare, eyes wide at the scene in front of them. But Krycek didn’t flinch, taking the blast of her fury as evenly as he regarded her in that long moment.
“You may find, Scully, that you have been blessed in ways I haven’t, and you’ve been given second chances that I’ll never have. What I did was unforgivable, there’s no denying that. But at the end of the day, you get to walk away with your head held high, off to go be a doctor and live a normal life. There is no white picket fence for me, not for what I’ve done. All I get is revenge, to see the truth exposed and to pay back that cancerous son-of-a-bitch in kind for every wrong committed. To hold him and all of them accountable for what has happened, and expose it...stop it in a way they were too coward to do. Maybe then, I can begin atoning for the tiniest bit of my crimes. When this is all said and done, Scully, you get to sleep at night with the knowledge you have a soul. I still have to make amends for the fact they stole mine.”
Whatever Scully had expected to hear out of Alex Krycek, that wasn’t it. The rage that simmered within banked, and she felt herself drain of indignation and energy. Too tired to even contemplate what he was already suggesting.
“Krycek,” she sighed, wishing she could do nothing more than go home and curl into a ball and never, ever come out again. “If anything happens to Mulder because of this, I will make sure that I find you, and that they lock you up, and they never, ever find the key again.”
Krycek only smirked. “I’ve been locked up in worse places. But yeah, if anything happens to Mulder, you can be the first in line to kick my ass, okay?”
“I’ll be second,” piped up Frohike, glaring in pugnacious anger at the far-from-impressed Krycek. “Nothing about this smells right. It’s too perfect.”
“Believe what you want, but I’m not here to trick you. No gimmicks.”
Scully could only turn away, too disgusted and doubtful to believe a further word out of him. “I hope for your sake there isn’t any.”