These characters and their environs on the X-Files belong to 1013 Productions and Chris Carter. No infringement is intended. I just want to play with the boys for a while before I let them go back to the lives they don't have on the show. This is just for fun, no money is being made from this. This story involves sex between two men, aka: slash. If that is *not* your cup of tea, sweet as it is, then don't read it! (simple, ain't it??) Feedback is *very* much appreciated, and always answered. Flames will be passed around to friends and chuckled over. :) Twentieth in the Tapestry Series. You might want to read the others first, just so we're all on the same page, here. Previous stories can be found at: http://members.tripod.com/~AiR_WSW/Amirin4.html For Sickleweed, who wanted a story with a happy ending for the boys. This will be about as close as I can get. And for Desiree, who wanted a story where Krycek doesn't die. And for Toddie, for every other reason. Just so you know, assume spoilers for everything. And I mean everything. If it sounds familiar, it isn't mine. I don't intend to slavishly follow canon, but some plot strings may dovetail when convenient. Things that seem kind of warped, may not be. Things that make sense probably won't for very long. And nothing is exactly as it appears to be. More to come... Warp - Answers by Amirin #152 *********************** Maybe a simple truth. "I was there. Yes." Sometimes the simplest answers just aren't, you know? He just looked at me, waiting for me to explain this one, as I had the others. So I did. More or less. "Did Scully tell you she'd been warned that someone she knew and trusted would try and kill her?" "Umm, yeah. She thought it was Skinner. They were having a Mexican stand-off in my living room when I came back from the dead." "It wasn't Skinner." "Obviously." His eyes widened, turned wary and unbelieving, and I cursed, silently, yet fervently, as I felt something tenuous slowly slipping away. "Are you saying that *Melissa* was the one who...? No fucking way!" "Yeah," I answered softly and sighed and cursed some more, because he wasn't any closer to believing me. "How in the hell is that *possible*?" "They drugged her. With something called 'AH'. It's supposed to make someone highly susceptible to suggestion. Mind control." "Yeah. Anionic histamine. Scully told me about it," he said, haltingly. "She got shot up with it in Vegas. And Langley. They used it on him to program him to kill... someone." His eyes met mine and I nodded and then, suddenly, he looked pissed again. "Alex, *fuck*, there's an antidote...!" "Mulder, there wasn't three fucking years ago, okay? Deprogramming was an option but an option that Cardinale's trigger-finger removed from the realm of possibility." "Why? Why did you...?" "Scully was necessary, all right? To keep you alive and in the game. She could do what I couldn't, what no one could, because she was one of the few people you could bring yourself to trust. She *had* to be there. With you." That was the warm and fuzzy reason. The not-so-warm-and-fuzzy reason was that she was a much more immediate liability than Samantha was. And a weakness. A nice, red-headed, exploitable weakness. And you couldn't exploit a dead partner. And they knew that. Jesus, did they know that. "If you felt like that, then why didn't...When they took her..." This was getting fucking absurd. "Listen to me." I tried to keep my voice just on this side of deadly, still comfortably in firm, but I hadn't entirely succeeded, if the look on his face was anything to go by. Forgot who you were dealing with, there, for a moment, didn't you, Fox? "You're right if you're thinking I had choices, that they *gave* me choices. But you need to understand that my choices, *weren't*. They were an illusion, nothing more." I licked my lips and kept going. "Kill Bill Mulder or kill you, or kill neither, let someone else kill you *both* and kill me, too, for blowing off a direct order. No choice, Fox. Not a goddamned choice at all." He just looked at me, but the gears were turning, I could fucking *hear* them. "Kill Melissa Scully, or let her kill Dana. And they'd have killed Melissa anyway, as soon as she'd done what she'd been programmed to do. Again, no choice." Mulder sighed and it sounded raspy, wrong. "I know that Old Smokey has told you things, *let* you find out things, that make me look like your worst enemy." "The Morleys in the ashtray." "Exactly. Did you really think it was simple carelessness?" Mulder dragged a hand over his face and I went on. "He couldn't afford to have you trust me, once he figured out what side I was on. And this is no triangle, believe me. There are only two sides." "Resist or serve," he muttered. I nodded. "Exactly. And having you against me put you on *his* side, by default, right where he wanted, *needed* you to be. Right where Bill Mulder had been until it was too goddamned late for him to save himself." Mulder was doing his best to look at me, but it was hard for him. So hard. "Fox, Spender *let* things slip to me, deliberately, knowing *exactly* what I'd have to do: horrible things to keep something even worse from happening. He knew damned well that he was doing because he'd set them up, them *and* me, in the first place, and *knew*, the bastard *knew* I'd have no choice..." I mean, really, why do you tell an assassin *anything*? Why do you bring a problem to his attention? To get his fucking *sympathy*? "What do you want from me?" Jesus H. Christ. Like I was supposed to tell him *now*? And have him believe me, have him there for me, working with me, helping me commit a damned illegal act which could possibly end in an international incident? Oh, yeah, right... "I've had enough. Just tell me," he murmured with a heavy sigh echoed from a heavy heart. "What do you need my help with?" "It's a long story," I whispered, staring up at the ceiling, and Fox rolled onto his side so he could maintain eye contact with me. Which actually made me feel more naked than I already was. "Bill Mulder." "What about him?" "God, Fox." "Please, just...I need to know." "What do you know about a project named 'Emerald'?" He got a little unfocused for a minute as he accessed every damned file stored in that incredible memory of his. And came up blank. "Nothing," he shook his head with a frown. "Lab-created, Mulder. And I'm not talking gemstones, here. Something just as valuable, though." "What have they got?" "A three-year-old child. A little girl." "A clone?" "No. No, she's not a clone." "Lab-created...?" "She's Scully's daughter, Fox." "Oh, fuck." "And m...She's a Mulder." Jesus, Alex, watch it. It's too damned soon for *that* piece of the puzzle. "What...?" He trailed off, mind going like crazy, thoughts, theories flying across his face, being considered and discarded until he came to one. *The* one. "My fa...Bill Mulder's...?" And here I thought his eyes couldn't possibly get any wider. "Yeah." No, actually, not Bill's. But it's just a small lie, Alex. Just keep telling yourself that. "Daughter?" "Yeah." "Christ," he ground out, falling back to do some of his own staring at the ceiling, and I came up onto my side to keep the connection with him. He shook his head and muttered and cursed and thought and cursed some more and looked up at me and glared. The son-of-a-bitch *glared* at me. "Did you think I'd say *NO*?" Spoken with a grinding snarl. Ohh, shit. "Did you think I'd refuse to help you, is that it?" Damn. "Krycek, fuck, where's my gun? *Damn* you!" "No." I said it softly enough to get his attention. "If you didn't trust me, you wouldn't have believed me in the first place. You'd think it was a trap, or worse. It isn't. I just don't want her to end up like Emily, that's all." I saw him instantly remember Scully's other daughter, and the memory of another doomed child pulled a wince across his face. "Was *she* part of this...project?" "Similar thing, different name." "Jesus, how many of them *are* there?" "I don't know." "How did you find her? Where is she?" "Nova Scotia." "Alex...How?" A heavy sigh on my part. I'm good at sound more defeated than I am. "I found her when I was looking for information on Samantha." "What?" "I've got access to resources I didn't have before. I've been...using them." "And you found her, how, exactly?" "The Mulder code." "The what?" "Another long story." Gee, how did I know that answer wouldn't satisfy him? "Tell me." "Damned near everyone in this country has a code, made up of several sequences of letters and numbers. Each sequence is like a pedigree, for your parents, grandparents, as far back as they can go. And if you take anyone's code, minus their own unique sequence and their mother's, you get their father's." "You used my...his code to try and find something on Samantha." "Bingo." Actually, no. I used the Mulder code, yes. Just not Bill's. "What if Sam isn't his child, either?" "She isn't. I know that, now." "Ohh, shit." His eyes shut and he shook his head, probably already knowing the answer to the question I knew he was going to ask. "But, I found his daughter," I rushed in, on a wave of half-truths, trying to stave off the inevitable. "His *real* daughter, and Scully's, using the code." Try and hold back the tide, why dontcha, Alex? "Who is Sam's father?" "Another long story, Fox." "Aren't they all?" he asked dryly. "You're asking me to explain about fifty years of history in minutes, here." "Spender?" He sounded so tired. "Yeah," I nodded. "She really is his daughter." "Yeah." "Fuck. He was just taking her back, wasn't he?" It was close enough to the truth. For now. "Basically, yeah." He thought and thought and fortunately he was distracted enough that he couldn't get into it any further. "Nova Scotia?" "Yeah. She was in Mexico. I caught the transfer order for her shipment. The code was part of the order." "You really *were* in Mexico, weren't you?" he grinned. Sort of. "I told you I was," I smirked. Sort of. "You also told me you'd gotten your leg signed by Zorro, asshole!" "The truth is in the details, Mulder." He snorted. "Sure it is, Livy." I've got to admit, I liked his reference to the Ancient Roman historian and my grin told him as much. For Livy, the important truth was *never* in the details but in the major lesson of an historical event. It's a lesson Fox still needs to learn. And one I'll be more than happy to teach him. He sighed, stretched, and then grinned wider when my eyes focused like a hawk on a rabbit, watching him move. "So, when do we leave for Nova Scotia?" he asked casually and it took a moment to register, to pull my eyes off his body, tear my attention from his eyes and his mouth and...Christ. What the fuck had he asked me? Oh, right. "Tomorrow." He nodded, brain working a mile a minute. "Is she okay? She's not sick, is she?" "Not yet." "They're going to be testing her, aren't they? Because she's part of the hybrid experiments?" he asked in a moment of clarity based on a hunch born from his usual brilliance and cursed when I nodded. "Are you going to be all right to go, tomorrow?" He looked worried. About me. Shit. "Yeah," I murmured, feeling his concern settle around me like a blanket. God, don't let me get used to this. Please. "Okay," he frowned, nodding thoughtfully. "Tomorrow." ~~~end