Heart's Desire Round 4 part 1

by Megaera

*******

It was no use. No matter how much he tried, it was like hitting a wall of shining glass that barred the way. He couldn't get past it no matter how hard he tried. It left him a prisoner inside his own mind, helpless to act.

It was worse than that. Like a bug in a jar, he was subject to the occasional gleeful scrutiny of his captor. He knew that if he should once anger Osebo, he would suffer horribly and that his pain and terror would be savoured by the evil one. But it wasn't his own fate that caused him such anguish, it was the possibility of his own hands being used to harm his Fox.

He had no control at all over his own body.

He had tried so hard to fight against the usurper. But thus far, he couldn't even twitch one finger by the tiniest degree.

Inevitably his struggles drew Osebo's attention towards him, so in the end, he found it wisest to wait and watch. Alex Krycek was a natural survivor, and he would do whatever he had to, to defeat Osebo. Huddled, if that was the word, in the furthest, deepest recesses of his own mind, he tried to erect a barrier between the evil one and himself. A place for him to hide and plot and try to find a way to fight back.....

To resist or serve? No real choice at all.

*******

Mulder stared morosely at the four grey walls that surrounded him as he sat in the hotel's poor excuse for a conference room. Skinner had tried to set it up as a base of operations, and now that the weather had improved so much, the full resources of the FBI could be brought to bear on their quest for Alex. A description f his lover had been sent to all of the law enforcement offices in the state, and Skinner had also requested that all unusual crimes, from murder cases to car thefts should be reported back to him. Which made for a whole lot of paperwork. Mulder, with his eye for detail and his profiler's insight, had been given the task of skimming through the piles of reports. This was his third day of searching for a clue, but so far, Alex seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth.

The door opened behind him, making him start. He was still on edge after his encounter with Osebo. But it was only Adam. The young man smiled shyly at him, and proffered a cup of coffee.

"I thought you could use this. You haven't had a break in hours."

Mulder nodded his thanks and put down the latest in a long line of useless reports. He tried to work the knots of tension out of his shoulders and leaned back in the chair with a sigh.

" I'm getting nowhere with this. I wish there was a way to narrow down our search......"

Adam looked thoughtful.

"Grandfather said we must be closer to your friend before we can fight the evil one, but he never said how we could find him. But I may know a way....."

He flushed. "There's a way that we could use to find out which direction he's in..... We could ask the spirits..... But you have to trust me, and you have to stay open minded."

He reached for a small pouch that hung round his neck. With a grace that left Mulder slightly open mouthed in admiration, he sank to his knees and emptied its contents onto he beechwood floor in front of him.

"Lock the door!" Adam murmured softly, "We need some privacy!"

Mulder flushed at the younger man's amused tone with its hint of playfulness.

"Kneel down in front of me," Adam said. "Close your eyes and concentrate on my voice......" He was holding some kind of carved wooden figure in his hand that looked incredibly old. Mulder did as he was told. What had he got to lose?

"We're going to try and contact your totem animal," Adam said. "It can guide you in the spirit world and help you to find what you seek. I want you to think of a warm and comfortable place where you feel safe......"

******

The old man smiled. At last their chance had come. Not perhaps the most opportune moment, but that was at the whim of the gods. He sank to his knees and took up his charms, beginning to chant.

******

As Adam's voice continued, the outside world had seemed to recede from Mulder, and he found himself drifting in a formless grey void. It wasn't an unpleasant place, in fact it was peaceful and quiet. There was no sense of danger. Adam's voice could still be heard at a distance.

"You must seek out a helpful spirit here. One who wishes to guide you through the other world. You will know him when you see him. There will be no doubt in your mind that he wishes to help you. Tell him what you wish, and he will lead you to that which will help you. But do not linger too long in the spirit world, for every moment that you spend there will drain the energy from your body. And remember, what happens there mirrors the real world, including life and death....."

Then, with no sense of transition, he was standing on a flat featureless plain, windswept and desolate, totally alone. He could no longer hear Adam or anyone. He forced back a shiver of fear. This must be the Otherworld Adam had spoken of. Many world cultures also maintained a similar tradition, which Mulder had never believed in, Until now. He wasn't sure exactly what he was doing here. Adam had said to look for an animal, so with a shrug, he set off in a jog toward the distant misty shadows on the horizon which he presumed were hills of some sort.

Wrong. As he drew closer, he realised that it was woodland that he saw. But not like any trees that were around today. These trees were tall and magnificent, like they must have been before the first humans came and cut down the forests with their axes and chainsaws. This was the raw, untamed face of nature that he was seeing. Beautiful, but slightly intimidating.

A rustling sound made him turn towards the thick brushwood, and then he saw it. With a curious sense of inevitability, he found himself staring at a big dog fox, bigger than any normal animal, with the most incredible green eyes that he had ever seen. Even ignorant as he was about Native American traditions, he knew the animal was special. The green eyes were filled with a startling, impossible intelligence. Wise and knowing, yet with a vulpine slyness that was somehow reassuring. What it would be to have this being on his side.......

"Are you my totem? I think you are!" That certainty that Adam had promised came to him. "Please help me. There's someone I love, and I need to find him!"

The brilliant green eyes watched him unblinking. Then the fox turned and ran through the woods towards the direction Mulder had arbitrarily designated as South. It paused on the edge of the clearing and turned to check on him. Mulder realised that he was expected to follow.

"Okay, lead on," he said. "Why does this feel like an episode of Lassie?" The green eyes somehow managed to convey a sense of reproach. "Sorry!" Mulder muttered.

*********

Osebo had killed again.

The first awareness Alex had that something was wrong, was an inexorable summoning force that had forced his mind out of its huddled refuge and into full consciousness. He had suddenly found himself looking out of his own eyes, like a passenger through a car window, while his body acted out Osebo's evil fantasies. As before, he was unable to affect his body in any way.

Osebo was smiling as he stared through the car windscreen at a pretty young woman who had caught his eye. He was stalking her with every intention of enjoying her pain and terror. Alex began to beg him with growing desperation not to hurt her. His sense of horror grew, as Osebo paused in his hunt and chuckled softly.

"Pretty Alex. Shall I show her a good time?" The images of blood that he sent to Alex left no doubt as to his intentions. Yet at the same time, he eagerly savoured Alex's revulsion.

"You decide how she dies, my sweet. Shall I make it quick? Or would you prefer something slow and special, with blood and the music of her screams? Shall we take her, my pretty Alex.....?"

"No.....!" Alex whispered. "Please....!"

"You will collaborate with me, Alex. Or it will be the slowest of possible deaths for her....."

"Never!" Alex whispered, with a sob. He felt Osebo use his body to direct the car towards the girl. And the surge of nauseating desire that flooded through his vile mind.

And yet, that hunger brought with it carelessness. Complacent and thinking Alex to be cowed, he let go his iron grip on the human's mind. For the briefest instant, as Osebo was distracted by the sudden hardness off his arousal, pawing at it, Alex was able to move his own body.

It was enough.

Alex stamped his foot down on the gas pedal, in a desperate act of rebellion. Osebo was almost instantly back in control. But too late. The car was moving too fast and caught a patch of ice on the road. It spun off the road, and crashed in a tangle of metal, into the nearest telegraph pole. Alex shrieked as he felt something snap in his leg. Then his face smacked into the dashboard and he was instantly unconscious.

********

It seemed like Mulder had been following the fox for hours. The terrain was becoming rougher and several times he had lost sight of the animal for a few moments, as he trailed after it. They seemed to be heading higher up in the mountains, and Mulder could feel the burn of his calf muscles as he climbed, his body unused to such sustained uphill effort. Just as he was about to call a halt, unable too go any further and a little discouraged by now, the fox stopped. He saw it ahead of him, silhouetted against the sky as it paused atop a rock.

Then he saw its new companion. A smaller figure, sleek and graceful, darted out of the undergrowth and halted in front of the fox. Mulder saw it stop and extend its nose upwards towards the fox. Then Mulder had the disconcerting experience of two sets of inhumanly bright, emerald eyes turned towards him.

The fox's companion was the biggest rat he had ever seen. Yet he felt no sense of revulsion, as he might have for a normal rodent. The creature in front of him was far beyond that. It possessed the same wild and beautiful nature as his fox spirit.

With a startling insight, he realised who the rat reminded him of.

Alex! The rat was Alex's totem animal. And it had come to him too. He found himself on his knees before both of the spirit animals.

"Help me find him!" he begged. Their green eyes watched him in cool assessment, and he sensed that he was being judged. As if something more was needed from him. He poured his heart out to them, what had he got to lose?

"Please....... I love him! I'd do anything to help him. Do you hear me? Anything!"

The two spirit creature looked at each other. Then they came towards him and he found himself transfixed by their jade green eyes.

So intense..... So beautiful.......

It seemed that words formed in his mind.

*His body is hurt*

Mulder moaned in fear.

*There is a chance that you can free him from evil. Alex is in such pain that the dark one has lost his grip on Alex's mind. You must strengthen him, so that Osebo cannot claim him again. Go to him. Protect him. It will be your only chance!*

They showed him which direction he must travel in the spirit world.

*******

His surroundings in the spirit world changed. The landscape became darker, more chaotic, and soon, there were hints of vileness. As if some great evil had warped the landscape. Instinctively, he moved more cautiously.

********

Alex had found, to his horror, that there were things more terrible than his worst nightmares. When his body had been hurt, he had been swept into a dark place that seemed full of screaming figures, one of which was his tormentor. Then, in agony, he had found himself lying in a strange, haunted landscape. He was in a monstrous, windswept place, a land of warped senses and colours with an alienness that took his breath away. He was surrounded by vilely dripping vegetation and clinging, yellow vines, the plants had oddly malformed shapes that signalled nature gone mad. The thin air smelled musty and rotten, vaguely mouldy, and it was unexpectedly cold there, so that the young human immediately began to shiver. Strange animal noises sounded in the distance, howls and shrieks as if from hell.

He was still alive, against all expectations. Though he might beg for death soon enough. Dark figures rose from concealment nearby, and were advancing eagerly on their helpless prey. One of them as the beautiful woman he had seen earlier. Others were unfamiliar, but there was no sign of Osebo Alex whimpered, tried to shrink back uselessly. He had never in his life felt so powerless, but then, he had never been so badly hurt before. The pain and shock were taking their toll on his body, and he knew that he was going to be defenceless against them.

He sobbed softly as two of them came towards him. It didn't take them long to realise that he was no threat, then the two of them seized him, and he was pinned to the ground by the weight of their bodies. Their eyes were dark pits of shadow, swimming with blackness, and their avid expressions promised unspeakable torments.

The woman raised one hand to Alex's face and stroked away a thread of blood from a gash on his forehead. She voraciously sucked it off her fingers, and smiled in obscene pleasure.

"Please......," Alex begged.

His head was seized and slammed back against the rocky ground. With a throaty laugh, she lowered her head to lap at the fresh blood, as the male dropped his mouth to the semiconscious human's leg wound. As the two vampirically sucked their human captive's blood, Alex lost whatever hope of rescue he had and screamed in sheer, unmitigated horror.

**********

Mulder paused, face turned into the wind and frowned at the slightly bitter scent he detected again from over the ridge. He was beginning to suspect that there were more dangers in this place than he could cope with. He guessed that the odd animal sounds he heard in the distance belonged to something predatory and dangerous. There were signs though, that something big had passed this way, broken branches and a few spots of blood. The trail led upwards towards an area of high ground. He wasn't going to give up until he knew Alex's fate for certain.

He had come here unprepared. It was a possibility that Alex was dead or badly injured by the dark things that lurked here. The thought was like a stab of pain in his heart. Then he heard a cry rose from over the ridge, a long , forlorn scream of anguish and despair.

Mulder yelled in fury, and took off at a dead run, towards the sound, never stopping to wonder where his sense of protective fury came from. The cry rose again, weaker this time, a desperate, hopeless pleading. Scrambling to the top of the ridge, Mulder crouched in concealment and scanned the scene before him. What he saw made him grab hold of a nearby dead branch and heft it in his hand.

Alex lay on the ground, and was being brutally assaulted by two humans obviously corrupted by one of Osebo's blasphemous games. Mulder knew the dangers, but didn't pause. Alex was desperate, and his pathetic struggles argued that he was already gravely injured. Unhesitatingly, Mulder lunged towards him.

Alex screamed a third time, far weaker than before, a lost and plaintive sound as if he couldn't comprehend his terrible fate.

Mulder readied himself. He would never get a better opportunity. He hefted his makeshift weapon, and aimed at the stronger looking female.

Alex Krycek lay unmoving as the creature fed off his blood.

The branch moved in a perfect, arching trajectory and buried itself in the female's skull. She toppled over, dead, and the other one gave a screech of terror, and fled. Mulder ran towards the injured Alex.

*******

Alex was in a hell past comprehension. He had to be. With vile fiends that preyed on humans, and wanted to kill him. They had eagerly drank from him, with inhuman snarls, and he had been unable to fight them off. Several times, their renewed assaults had made him scream, as a fresh bite sent agony through his already injured body. There was a burning like acid in his lower leg, where his blood had been taken, and he felt feverish and light-headed.

There was a crashing sound nearby, and he saw a figure standing above him. Gradually, his wavering vision focused, and he realised who it was. Mulder reached towards him, then Alex's unresisting body was being lifted. The younger man found himself being carried by the man he loved, but the shock and the pain made him faint almost immediately.

Mulder was in luck. From the top of the ridge, he had seen some sort of overgrown structure nearby. Now he shouldered Alex's limp body and headed towards it. It proved to be an abandoned building of some sort, maybe a lodge of some kind, since he could see traces of artefacts and charms hanging round the door. He staggered inside, taking out the door with one explosive kick, and lowered Alex gently to the floor.

He spent precious moments searching the place and found that that it had in fact been built into the hillside. And as if waiting for him, a small pouch of leather, containing some sort of magical charm, and a number of packets of herbs.

He seemed to hear the distant sound of chanting, and even as he looked at them in wonder, two green eyed figures detached themselves from the gloom, came close to him and nudged at his fingers urgently. Suddenly, he knew what he had to do.

*******

Alex Krycek was naked. Naked and cocooned in blankets, a hand gently steadying the back of his neck as something vile and bitter in a cup was held to his lips. Automatically, he swallowed the acrid stuff, and immediately had a fit of coughing. He feebly tried to escape from the other's firm hold.

//No! Don't want any more.....//

There was no choice. It was drink or choke. With a moan, he submitted, gagging at the taste of the foul brew. Then his rescuer let him sag back onto the bed.

Alex felt cold. He couldn't seem to stop shivering, despite the warmth enfolding him. There was pain somewhere distant. But curiously anaesthetised. He guessed that the bitter stuff had been some kind of drug, and tried to focus his thoughts on his surroundings.

He was in a room with rocky walls, a cave maybe, somewhere underground and fairly warm. It had long since been abandoned and the rampant vegetation had begun to intrude even here. He could see his rescuer sitting close to him, brown hair half concealing his face. Fox Mulder.

Mulder had lit a small fire on the stones in the middle of the room and was heating something in a small pottery container that he had suspended over the fire. He drew off a little of the stuff into a cup, then gently knelt at Alex's side. A hand pressed against his burning forehead, and Alex saw his Fox frown

"Alex," Mulder said softly.

"Fox......." the younger man tried to speak.

"How do you feel?" Mulder approached and gently stroked strands of hair away from the younger man's fever-damp forehead.

"Sick..... so cold.......Where ......" His voice trailed off as a sudden shiver wracked his body.

Mulder's hand was somehow in his, gripping tightly, and Alex clung to it until the fever-symptom eased.

"We're safe for the moment," he said gently. "But I'm going to have to treat those bites on your leg. I think that's what's making you sick!"

Then he drew the blankets away from the young man's injured leg.

Alex whimpered as he saw how they had mauled him.

.

********

Mulder watched over his charge with a concern that he couldn't explain. It wasn't just that Alex and he were occasional sexual partners, it was more than that. There had always been something else between them that neither man had wanted to acknowledge, a wistful longing for a closer relationship. So now Mulder stayed close by Alex's side and held his hand, even when the other man seemed deeply unconscious. He knew now that he loved Alex with a passion that astonished him. Alex fought with an astonishing tenacity. But the evil would not give up easily. Mulder knew that this fight would be long and hard, and only the strongest spirit would survive.

********

Alex Krycek did indeed fight the fever. Fire and ice seemed to take possession of his body in alternate waves that swept over him. It was so hard to hold on to his thoughts, to stay in control of his sanity. Darkness seemed to batter at his semiconscious mind with untiring patience. Foreign thoughts that urged him to get away from this place. Calling him. Threatening him. Sliding tendrils of darkness into his brain.

He became delirious, and the hallucinatory quality of the world around him intensified. He felt so sick.

The need inside him crystallised into a single focus.

"Fox! Please..... help me! Don't leave me alone! I'm sorry I left you behind...." His desperate pleas eventually degenerated into hopeless sobs.

Mulder held the whimpering Alex and felt unexpected tenderness for him. Baines seemed to be calling out to him, Mulder realised, but the fever was likely to get much worse, and that at some point, a crisis point would be reached.

********

It came down, in the end, to how strong a mind Alex had, and his body's capacity for endurance. Mulder frowned as he sensed that his lover's' fever was beginning to peak. The younger man's skin was burning with heat and even the remarkable qualities of the medicine he had found seemed to have little effect. Alex no longer spoke coherently, muttering disjointed phrases, tossing his head from side to side.

********

The pain that seemed to have been a constant wearing ache, even through his fever, abruptly disappeared. Alex sighed in bliss, the relief was so great.

"Alex!" A soft, concerned voice. "Alex......Let me help you!"

Was it Fox?

"Yes......," he mumbled. "Please, ......."

"You have to come to me Alex! I can't help me until you come to me!" The voice patiently explained. "Come to me my love..... Let me hold you. I can stop the pain Alex. All you have to do is come to me....."

Alex struggled to rise, barely aware of his injuries. He fought against something that seemed to be blocking his way. He felt so hot, and he could sense a coolness nearby. Help was in the cool place, his lover calling him. Fox would help him. Fox would soothe away the sickness......

********

Mulder held tightly to the struggling man. Alex's eyes were bright with fever, and the delirious man fought to escape the restraint, desperately trying to get outside. He would quickly die if he managed it. A strange storm had blown up outside, and the temperature was rapidly falling. The sound of the wind was more like the screaming of a thousand tormented souls.

*******

The voices changed. Suddenly Alex could hear Fox pleading, begging him for help, his voice terror filled. Calling his lover's name. Screaming in pain, his voice becoming weaker and sounding so hurt and vulnerable.

"Alex! Help me. I'm hurt so bad..... If you don't help me, I'll die out here..... Please Alex, help me....."

Alex fought wildly, screaming Fox's name. Mulder found it desperately difficult to hold on to the struggling man, who didn't seem to hear him. Finally, he was forced to wrestle Alex to the ground and tie the younger man's hands and feet so that he couldn't move.

The fever was at its height now. The younger man stopped fighting and lay still, exhausted. In the next hour, it would become clear whether he lived or died. Mulder could do nothing more. Mulder wrapped his arms around the unconscious man and pulled him closer. If Alex were to die, he would not be alone. He enfolded the two of them in blankets and felt the slight shivers that wracked the other's body, and the harsh rasping sound of Alex's laboured breathing, as he lay still, unaware of his surroundings.

Would Osebo win him back? And would they be able to banish his evil spirit and escape from the spirit world?

********

Maybe Tara will tell us more? <g>