Scatter

Fanfiction
Title:	Scatter
Author(s):	Vehemently
Date(s):
Length:	935 words
Genre:	het
Fandom:	The X-Files
External Links:	on dreamwidth
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Scatter is a Mulder/Scully & Krycek story by Vehemently.

It is the first part of a trilogy.

Reactions and Reviews

This is a very powerful story that explores the relationship between Mulder, Scully and Krycek. The mystery of who Krycek is and where he comes from is always a popular subject with authors. When I first read this piece, with its mixture of the mundane and the dramatic, I believed that this was one of the best characterisations of him I'd ever read.

Mulder and Scully are in a relationship which is subtly blended into the narrative. They are called into a school shooting case which grows into something more sinister. They bump into Krycek in a stairwell (literally!) and after a rocky start they forge a tentative alliance.

I admire the style of this story which is told from the POV of Mulder, Scully and a first person Krycek, but never becomes confusing. Although Krycek is the pivot around which the story moves, it's Scully who is the most powerful character here. Scully could always make the tough decisions, but here - after the cancer arc -she has developed a strain of ruthlessness. There is one scene where she is questioning Krycek that is so viscerally frightening that I always find myself holding my breath when I read it.

Here's a small extract from the story to give you a taste of the descriptive power of Vehemently:

He removed his clothes with the efficiency that a career soldier can strip a gun, despite the false arm which Scully rather thought impeded than assisted his mobility. He did not need her help to get that off either and it shuffled to the floor in a strangely horrific way. She stood back, her hand on the butt of her gun, and watched him climb into the shower, facing her, naked and without shame.

Krycek spent a long time under the hot water. Scully had the leisure to inspect him through the frosted glass, to watch how he maneuvered with a skinny stump on one side, to count the marks of red irritation the prosthesis made on his torso. She toed his pile of clothes with her shoe, finding jeans with grease stains on them, a ragged pullover, and a leather jacket which had suffered long with its owner. Krycek's t-shirt and underwear were gray, that color whites go when they have been washed for a year without bleach. Bachelor gray, homeless gray. Stark and humiliating and so quotidian Scully couldn't associate it with the Boogeyman currently standing in Mulder's mother's shower.