All Bets Are Off

 

Author:  Shannon

Pairing:  M/K (pre-slash)

Rating:  PG-13

First Posted:  07/02/08

Dedication:  To 4NickLea for her birthday (one day early)!!!!  Satina and I challenged one another to find quotes in my Women’s Lit Anthology to inspire a short fic.  This is mine.  HAPPY B-DAY!  You are a wonderful friend and I’m blessed to know you.  Hope you like it!

  

“Where now the many white men hurry about like ants.”

                         ~Oodgeroo of the tribe, Noonuccal, from her poem, “We Are Going”

 

 

---

 

Mulder had stopped covering his mouth and nose.  The smell was either lessening, or he had already become accustomed to it.  The FBI’s lights bounced off the metal of the hanger walls as the forensics team and Scully worked to examine the bodies of those burned.

 Mulder started when his cell phone began to vibrate in his jacket pocket.  He pulled it out, frowning, and examined the face.  It wasn’t an incoming call, but a text:  “Excuse yourself from the others.  I’ll call in ten minutes.”  There was nothing else.  It wasn’t signed.  There was no explanation.  Mulder had to wonder who it could be.  Most everyone he knew was either with the investigative team in the hanger or burned on the hanger floor.  One of the few people unaccounted for was Diana.  He knew what Scully thought of her, was unsure what he did, but one thing he knew was that he wouldn’t wish this kind of death on anyone, even if what Scully and the Gunmen had found out about her time in Europe and Tunisia were true…if she *was* instrumental in helping C.G.B catalogue MUFON women like labrats.

 Mulder pocketed the phone once more and edged around bodies to where Scully was bending over a yellow bag, frowning.  He looked past her to Skinner, on his own cell phone, out of earshot.  Then he tapped Scully on the shoulder.  She looked up, expectant.

 “I have to go,” he said, and she frowned.

 “But Mulder…  We’ve just begun to examine these bodies…”

 “I know.  It’s not my expertise anyway,” he hedged.  “There’s just something I need to check out.”

 He could tell by her face that she suspected it might be Diana, too.  He saw her glance at Skinner.

 “I think it’s best if we leave him out of this for now,” said Mulder measuredly.

 Scully hollowed her cheeks, sighing.  She was angry.  Mulder guessed that she wasn’t so much angry again as still.  He sighed, too.  “I won’t be long,” he said, although he wasn’t sure who was contacting him, much less what they wanted and how long that might take.

 After a few more moments, Scully turned away from him, back to the body she was investigating, without another word. 

 Mulder turned, too, walking out of the hanger and into the dark road alone.

 His phone rang exactly ten minutes after the text message had come through.  “Who is this?” Mulder said by way of greeting.

 “The future is here, Agent Mulder.  And all bets are off,” said the silky, dark voice on the other end of the line. 

 Mulder tried not to gasp.  “What game are you playing, Krycek?” he asked.  “What do you want?”

 “Those men who died tonight -- all those old, white men hurrying around like ants to prevent their own destruction – they’re all that were holding you back, Mulder.  They were colonization’s last best hope.”  He breathed out over the phone, and Mulder could nearly feel the rush of breath in his ear.  “And now what are they?  Well-done.”

 “Did you call me to exchange barbeque jokes?  Because I’m not really in the mood,” Mulder answered.  He looked around the deserted road, but all agents were back in the hanger doing their jobs, all except for him.

 “I’m not joking, Mulder,” Krycek said smoothly.  “I’m calling to give you the last pieces.”

 “Pieces of what?” Mulder said, exasperated with the word games.  “The truth?  I think you’re a little late.  I heard it all from your old boss.”

 “You heard what he wanted you to hear.”

 “And what makes this conversation so different, Krycek?” Mulder said angrily.  “You’ve never given me anything close to the truth!  You wouldn’t know how!”

 There was a silence and Mulder was afraid maybe he’d pushed Krycek too far and he’d hung up.  He found himself barely breathing, trying to hear the other man’s pulse in the quiet.  Then Krycek spoke again, “I gave you the whereabouts of the captured rebel alien…”

 “Which I don’t remember!”  Mulder interrupted.

 “I gave the old Brit the vaccine that saved your partner’s life.”

 “That he probably threatened you for or you gave him as part of a deal to save your own ass, Krycek!  Not to mention, he’s dead now.”

 “They all are,” Krycek answered.  And Mulder hated the sound of that voice, like the Bourbon his father used to drink, that Fox used to sneak, and how it burned him from the inside, just like Krycek did.  Like he always found a way to do.

 “What do you *want*, Krycek.”  How many times had he asked that question?

 Krycek sighed over the phone.  “There’s no reason now.  There’s nothing stopping us.  That is, if you don’t stop it yourself and for the worst of reasons.”

 “Stop what?”

 “An alliance.  Yours and mine,” Krycek said, and for the first time, Mulder heard the breath leave the other man, and the past few months fell away.  He could smell him, too close in his living room, and he could feel his own gun bruising his chest.

 “Why the hell should I not hang this phone up right now, Krycek?” Mulder asked tiredly.

 “Because then you’ll never have what we both want,” Krycek whispered in return.

 “And what is that?” Mulder asked, trying to sound bored but knowing it came out as sad as it always did.

 “A way to fight them.  A way to win.”

 Mulder sighed.  “What makes you think I’ll just trust--?”

 “I don’t.”

 “You don’t?”

 “No,” Krycek answered.  And Mulder thought he heard an answering sadness.  “I know you don’t trust me yet…”

 “Yet?!” Mulder erupted, but Krycek subdued him with a quiet, resigned voice.

 “Yet.”

 Mulder firmed his lips and breathed out impatiently but let Krycek continue.

 “You don’t have to.  You just have to know that I’ll be contacting you again and soon.  And when I do, I’ll have something for you that will change your mind about working with me, about your work, about life on this planet.  And that’s when we can start…earning each other’s trust.”

 Mulder was about to answer indignantly, but the line clicked dead and Krycek was gone.  He stood in the dark, staring at the phone lighting up the dust around him until it, too, went black and left him confused and trying not to hope in the midnight chill.

 …

 Two Weeks Later

FBI Headquarters

Office of Assistant Director Kersh

 

 Kersh was looking at the photos of the massacred group.  “Who burned these people?” he asked self-righteously.  As if Mulder and Scully had somehow let it happen.

 Mulder answered calmly.  “They burned themselves. With a choice made long ago by a conspiracy of men who thought they could sleep with the enemy.”  He swallowed, remembering a phone call in the dark for the twentieth time.  Remembering the circles his mind had gone in again at Krycek’s persuasion.  Remembering the feel of the well-thrown curve-ball sinking into the palm of the glove…painful but still perfect.

 “What the hell does that mean?” Kersh demanded.

 It means I’m about to jump off the deep end, Mulder thought.  It means I may be doomed to the same fate.  It means I may spontaneously combust before that happens.  It means I think I’m going to do this.

 “It means the future is here,” Mulder said, then.   “And all bets are off.”

 

END

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