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Mulder groaned and tried to bury his head further into the pillow. He glanced over at Skinner lying next to him, heard the slow even breathing of a sleeping man, and then yelped when a hand descended unkindly on his buttocks. The blow stung, even through the comforter. “What the hell--?” Reluctantly, but unwilling to risk another smack, Mulder rolled over onto his back and looked up into Alex Krycek’s eyes. He recoiled visibly from the fierce look on the man’s face, and reached out to touch Skinner’s arm, drawing strength from him. “You don’t have the luxury of that!” Krycek hissed, “and he’ll be dead if you don’t get up right now and come with me!” “No.” Mulder pushed himself up to a sitting position, rubbed his eyes and frowned, suddenly transformed into the world’s biggest four year old. “You’re dead, and this is just a dream. Go away!” He sounded on the verge of a tantrum. “I’m not dead yet,” Krycek replied with a grimace. He tugged on Mulder’s arm. “I’m still sick.” Petulant now. Krycek wasn’t giving an inch on this one. “Get your head out of your ass, Mulder. There’s no time!” He leaned in close, and Mulder swore he could smell peppermint on the man’s warm breath. “They’re coming!” he exclaimed. His green eyes blazed, and Mulder suddenly believed him, although there was no good reason for his trust. “I don’t know if I can,” he suddenly confessed, but he was moving at the same time, working his way slowly out of the bed. Krycek caught an arm when he faltered, and guided him to his feet with unexpected gentleness. The leather of his gloves felt cool on Mulder’s bare skin. Mulder glanced back at Skinner. “He’ll be fine, if we get going now. Where are your clothes?” Mulder realized simultaneously that he was both standing and naked, and was pleased by the former and embarrassed by the latter. Krycek seemed not to notice, and was instead looking around the room for something that Mulder could wear that wasn’t dirty or bloodstained or both. Mulder took his cue from him, and ignored his nudity, moving slowly towards the dresser at the foot of the bed. He had stacked his clothes there when he first found the place, before the illness had completely overwhelmed him, and now he pawed through the pile to find boxers and socks, while Krycek kept a hand on his back to steady him. He was still self-conscious as he dressed, and found himself slightly short of breath for even that small effort. As he buttoned up his jeans and pulled the long sleeved t-shirt over his head, he hoped that Krycek wasn’t expecting too much from him. “Nah, just your typical duck and cover,” said Krycek, and Mulder frowned at him and snapped, “Get the hell outta my head.” In the dim light of approaching day, Krycek’s eyes gleamed and his lips turned up in a cynical grin. “How can I, Mulder? Isn’t that where you think I came from?” Before Mulder could reply, Krycek was steering him towards the door, and he turned back with a despairing look for his lover. “Look, Mulder, there’ll be plenty of time for the both of you, I promise, but not if we don’t get the hell outta Dodge, and right now!” And he pulled Mulder from the room. In the living room, early morning sunlight was pushing valiantly at the curtains over the large front window, providing more than enough light for Mulder to see and then catch his shoes when Krycek threw them at him. He sat heavily on the couch, and felt blood pounding in his temples as he bent to pull on the heavy work boots. When his fingers fumbled with the laces, Krycek was there, brushing his hands away impatiently and tying them with quick ease. Then he was being hauled to his feet again, and he stumbled as Krycek dragged him towards the door. “Hang on!” he complained. “I’m—I—“ “No time. We have to get you out of here now!” But he did slow up slightly, and wrap an arm tight around the barely recovered man as he brought him out of the cabin to squint at the sudden bright light. “Mulder, listen to me. They’ve already gotten the tree you dropped out of the way, and they know the truck there is Skinner’s. But if you’re not here, they’ll think you’ve gone somewhere else. They haven’t quite put two and two together, and they think you’ve gone looking for Scully, and that Skinner went looking for the two of you together.” Krycek was speaking rapidly, and Mulder was having a hard time understanding. “What do you mean? Scully and I—“ “No time, Mulder. You have to go.” He turned Mulder towards the back of the cabin, and released him. “Where am I supposed to go?” The whine was back in his voice, and he flinched when he heard it, but he was suddenly desperately afraid, and he found himself waging an inner battle with himself. One cold and hard part of him, the part that had gotten him this far without losing himself, either by death or descent into madness, recognized that there was more going on here than just his mind playing Krycek-shaped tricks on him, and that there was going to have to be an end to this sometime. He couldn’t run forever, but he had to give himself, not to mention his friends and lover, some time to regroup, and plan, and somehow win. Unfortunately, this semi-rational voice was being drowned out by the equally desperate need to run back into the cabin, and dive into the bed with the one man who’d ever made him feel safe and loved, without reservation, without fear. “There’s a path around back,” Krycek told him. “Follow it ‘til you come to a stream. Cross the stream, go up the little hill there. You’ll find a dugout on the other side. The doors and roof are sod covered. It’s small, and dirty, but you’ll be safe.” At the note of real concern in his voice, Mulder gave him a startled look. Krycek looked almost embarrassed, and he covered it with a gruff tone. “Go. Go now.” “What are you going to do?” “Well, I won’t be taking coffee orders, that’s for sure!” he snarled suddenly, and then at Mulder’s honestly fearful expression, he softened, and added, “I’ll make sure you and Walter live to fight another day.” He leaned forward quickly, and pressed a cold kiss to Mulder’s lips, shocking the other man, and making him back away, eyes wide. One hand came up to his mouth. “I waited too long for that.” Krycek’s nasty grin was back in place, but only for a moment, and then he looked serious and grim again as his hand encircled Mulder’s wrist. He pulled his arm towards him, and turned it so Mulder’s palm was face up. He placed a small gun in Mulder’s hand. “Just in case,” he said. In the silence of early morning, both of them started at the sound of birds taking flight from the trees en masse, and in the far distance, the soft drone of a vehicle engine. They stared at one another for a moment, and then Mulder turned, steadied himself, and started walking quickly to the back of the cabin. Krycek watched until he was out of sight, then, as the approaching vehicle got louder, he sprinted back into the cabin. *** Skinner woke with a start, sitting up and pawing at the end table for his glasses before he was even fully awake. Some sound, thick and sleep-muddled, came out of him and it might have been his lover’s name. He fumbled the glasses onto his face, shivered as the comforter fell away from his chest, and looked over at where Mulder was lying asleep beside him. Mulder wasn’t lying asleep beside him. “Oh, hell…” He reached over, found the bed still warm to the touch, and said a quick but fervent prayer. Tossing aside the covers, he jumped from the bed and scanned the room quickly for his clothes. He heard a banging sound and it only took him a moment to realize that it was the front door being forced open, and that the snarling word sounds from the living room were not his lover announcing his return from a nature walk. Instinct took over, and he dove under the bed, just as the bedroom door flew open with enough force to splinter the frame. From beneath the box spring, he could see two sets of combat boots moving quickly around the room. He could hear heavy breathing, and whispered communications and barked orders. He could smell the sweat of the men, the iron tang of their weapons and the sour stink of their clothes. The boots left muddy prints on the hardwood floor. He experienced one moment of sheer blind panic, realizing that they’d been found, Mulder was gone and he was naked save for his briefs. Almost immediately, though, he found himself formulating and discarding plans in an intense yet controlled way that he might not have been able to do if not for his trials in the war, combined with the constant tension he’d been undergoing for months now. Maybe even years. He slid silently to the middle of the bed, foolishly crossed his fingers, and listened. The men were tossing the room as efficiently as a couple of low rent neighborhood robbers, throwing his and Mulder’s things around, dumping drawers and raking through closets. A thump as the mattress was pulled askew, and he bit his lip to keep from crying out. Then low muttering, and he couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he didn’t think they were planning a birthday party for him. Another set of boots entered the room, and Skinner recognized their spit polish gleam as that of a superior officer. More muttering, and he thought he heard them say Mulder’s name. Dread filled his stomach like hot lava, and the worry he’d been trying to suppress tried to come up on him like indigestion. He gulped it back, doused the heat of it with cold fury at the situation, then flinched at a crashing sound that told him the mirror over the dresser was now so much shrapnel. The shards crunched under the men’s feet as they moved around the room, and then, blessedly, the footsteps started receding. He waited for long minutes, biting his lip and worrying about Mulder, but at last he felt that the men would not be back, at least not for the time being. Instead of crawling out from under the bed, he shifted carefully to one side, feeling just slightly claustrophobic, but not wanting to take unnecessary chances. He reached out slowly, ears still exquisitely tuned to every whisper of sound, hoping that he wasn’t making enough noise for them to hear him, and praying that if they came back, they would be louder than he was. He found a pair of jeans crumpled on the floor and dragged them towards himself, wondering if they were his or Mulder’s, and knowing he was going to look pretty ridiculous if they were his lover’s. They were his. Achingly aware of time passing, not to mention the dread forming icicles around his heart at Mulder’s persistence absence, he shimmied into the jeans, waited several more minutes, then eased out from under the bed. He stayed crouched low and tried to ignore the voice in his head that told him no amount of crouching was going to hide him if the men chose to return right at that moment. Instead he concentrated on first trying to remember where his gun was, and then not despairing when he realized the men were between it and him. “Okay, Walter, new plan,” he murmured to himself. “No gun means you need to get one, or get away. 'Cos guns don’t kill people, super soldiers kill people.” He dashed across the room and put his back to one side of the doorway, then peered out into the hall, expecting a bullet and dully relieved when there was no movement from outside the room. A moment more of listening and waiting, and then a mad dash brought him to the bathroom. When no one with an agenda that included killing him seemed to notice, he closed the door, turned, and faced the bathtub—and above it, the small window that opened on the back of the cabin, and the woods beyond. He stood paralyzed for a moment, skeptical of the size of the window, not to mention his own ass. Sounds from the living room, boots and guns and barked orders, got him moving, and he wondered if the window opened easily because Mulder had already done this, or if it was just his own fevered imagination. Wincing and cursing at every small sound, expecting to get caught at any moment, he stepped into the tub and pushed at the window. A second, harder shove, and the frame shuddered under his large hand. On the third try, wood splintered with a small unpleasant squeal, and he waited for the cavalry charge. When nothing happened, and the echoing of the sound that he imagined he heard had abated, he gave another hard tap to the window, and the whole thing fell out of the wall. If there were men outside, he was done for, and he knew it, but apparently the patron saint of former Assistant Directors was paying attention today, and his actions continued to go unnoticed. As he worked his way through the small opening, he imagined that he would be getting his ass shot off at any second, and fluctuated between appreciating the grim humor of an ass full of lead, and sick dread at the same thought. He took one moment to wish he’d lost just five pounds more, thought that made him sound like a sissy, and then, with a deep breath, he popped through the window like a cork out of fine wine. He brought his hands out and caught himself as he tumbled to the ground, wincing as tremors from the impact jarred the muscles in his arms painfully. He scrambled to his feet, nearly slipped on the damp grass and weeds growing thick around the back of the building, and cried out sharply when his bare foot hit a shard of glass from the window, which had broken on its impact with the ground. “Shit,” he muttered, again hoping against hope that no one was outside, but not thinking it likely. He limped forward, heading towards the woods, changed his mind and instead hugged the back of the cabin and sidled painfully towards the corner of the building. When he reached the corner, he took several quick breaths, trying to ignore the throb in his foot and calm his spiraling thoughts, which wanted to send him running in blind panic into the woods, calling out Mulder’s name and shrieking like a madman. He blew out the scared air, drew in deep lung fulls of calming nature scents, and turned the corner. It was a toss up who was more surprised; Skinner, or the military man who apparently was not investigating any noise, but was instead looking for a place to piss. The man held his rifle loosely in one hand, and was singing something off key when he turned and came face to face with six plus feet of strung out former marine. The urine he’d been planning to spread around the grass instead ran hotly down his leg as, with a growl befitting a grizzly bear in full frenzy, Skinner grabbed him around the throat and threw him up against the cabin wall hard enough to nearly knock him senseless. The gun fell from his hand, and Skinner quickly kicked it off to the side. The man began struggling, his hands coming up to slap and claw at Skinner, who ignored the efforts in favor of covering the man’s mouth roughly while still squeezing him around the neck. His back protested as he continued to hold the man off his feet, but he ignored that too, and in a few moments, he felt the soldier’s struggles grow more frantic but less effective, and then he was suddenly heavier, and Skinner let go and the man collapsed in an unconscious stinking pile at his feet. Skinner tried to pretend that didn’t feel good, and went to collect the man’s gun. Once the heavy rifle was snug in his arms, he suddenly felt better, and his thoughts again turned to Mulder. He hoped he was okay, prayed he’d had some precognitive insight into these events and was hiding in the woods. But he was a realist too, and knew there was just as much chance that Mulder was dead on the other side of the cabin, having been surprised by the attack much like the soldier had been surprised by Skinner. Shots from inside the house made him flinch and run for the front of the cabin, forgetting all his hastily made plans. If they were firing inside, it had to mean there was someone in there fighting them. And there was only one man who would be doing that. “Mulder!” Skinner came round the front of the cabin and froze as an older soldier, this one apparently far more experienced, not to mention wiser than the man he’d subdued around back, leveled a gun at him and yelled “Drop it!” When Skinner hesitated, the man didn’t. He hefted the rifle and took a shot over Skinner’s head. Answering shots came from inside the cabin, and someone yelled. Skinner lowered his gun and the man took a step forward, the barrel of his own weapon now firmly aimed at the other man’s stomach. He wrenched the rifle out of Skinner’s hands, said, “move”, and indicated with the gun that Skinner should walk towards the front door of the cabin. At the steps up to the door, the soldier walked behind Skinner and pushed him to his knees. “Hands behind your head!” he barked. Skinner complied slowly, cursing himself, the soldier, and the whole damn situation. His heart ached with worry for Mulder, and he found himself thinking less of his own death and still trying to plan, even as he peered into the gloom of the cabin, where the front door stood ajar, trying to figure out what was going on inside. The soldier took the steps backwards, watching Skinner and keeping the gun trained on him the whole time. On the porch, he called into the cabin: “Rush! Scott!” A pause, and Skinner realized they were names, not suggestions. “Miller?” The only response was another shot, this one from a distance, not from the cabin at all, and Skinner’s worry increased tenfold, as he regretted briefly not killing the man he’d subdued. He watched as the soldier stuck his head into the cabin, and moved to rise as soon as the other man’s attention was off of him. He didn’t get far. The soldier leveled the gun again, having let it grow lax in his hands as he called out for his fellow officers. “Don’t even think it, you pathetic old queer,” he hissed. Skinner’s eyes widened. “You think we don’t know? We know everything about you, Skinner. Everything about you, and Mulder—hell, all of you.” He grinned nastily. “This may be just another job, but in about ten seconds, I’m going to take great pleasure in greasing your dirty cocksucking ass.” Skinner couldn’t find any rage left in him, just resignation, and a hint of exasperation at not only having his life taken by a man who would in all likelihood never be punished for the crime, but would instead take some stupid pleasure from the act. The soldier aimed the gun, and in what felt like clear silence, Skinner heard the click of a hammer being drawn back. His last thought was of Mulder, and the first shot rang out. Alex Krycek stepped between Skinner and the soldier, and the first bullet took him high in the shoulder. “What the hell--?” Without pause, the soldier shot again. This one tore through Krycek’s arm, producing a wince and shudder but nothing more. “Krycek!” Skinner cried out in shock. The young dark haired man never turned. The third shot was the kill shot. Right between the eyes, and Krycek fell to the ground. Skinner scrambled forward, ignoring the soldier’s command to “Hold it right there!” There was no blood. Only Krycek, smiling painfully up at him, green eyes clear but quickly losing focus. “Good luck, my friend,” Krycek whispered. The sound of the shot caught Skinner off guard. He looked up just in time to see the soldier drop his gun as the side of his face seemed to crumple, taking on a caved in look like an empty tin can. This time there was blood, plenty of it, and it gouted out of the wound in the man’s head like a fountain. And then the man fell forward, his ruined face hitting the porch with a wet smack. Skinner felt bile rise in his throat at the sound. Mulder came around the side of the building, smoking gun in his hand, looking pale and scared, but determined, and his eyes locked with Skinner’s for an indefinable moment. Skinner looked back down at the man who had saved his life, thinking of both of them now, Krycek and Mulder, and thinking that he had to get them both some help now, and that he should take charge of the situation. There was no one there. “Walter?” Mulder’s voice, weak and teary, brought him to his feet. And then he was trying to run, shambling and limping instead, and Mulder was stumbling towards him, and they caught one another in the front yard, crushed each other, tried to climb inside one another. Mouths and arms and tears intermingled. Mulder dropped the gun to clutch at Skinner’s shoulders, and Skinner didn’t notice when his glasses fell to the ground as he tried to devour his lover, and be devoured in return. Both men recognized the onset of shock in the other, and knew it had to be addressed. Both men realized that there was going to have to be a lot of plans made to end this war, if that’s what it was, and that those plans had to be made now. Both men thought of Alex Krycek and wondered what exactly he had been. But neither of them moved for a very long time...
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