Pairing: M/K
Rating: R for mature themes
Keywords: Post-colonization, Lyric Wheel fic
Spoilers: Up through Existence
Summary: During the war, unexpected events bring Mulder and Krycek together.
Disclaimer: Chris's, FOX's, 1013's. I make no money off the boys, even though they're worth a fortune.
Archive: Yes, to lists where it's posted. Everyone else just ask!
Date of First Posting: August 1, 2004
Notes: Thanks to Peach for the GREAT lyrics!
Feedback: Yes, please! Send it here!
“Wake up. They're coming.”
I bolt up at his voice. His glasses shine at me in the darkness owlishly. I nod, feeling sick.
I’ve learned to follow that voice without question. I’ve learned to not think of him as a child. He’s not one, despite his years.
"They don't know you're here. We have time," he tells me, but I dress quickly anyway and leave everything behind.
Gibson leads me down the tunnel, silent. I smell sulfur and sugar. We emerge from the end of the tunnel. Starlight blasts my eyes. I wince as though it were the sun. I take my first breath of real air, and then something explodes behind me, and fire singes the hairs on the back of my neck.
Gibson is running ahead. I lose my breath, pain trying to crack my spine with its heat. But I move. I’ve learned to put one foot in front of the other, no matter what. I’ve learned to just keep running. I’m not sure how to stop, or if I ever will.
I follow the boy through a maze of streets, sirens blaring overhead. It starts to rain. The rain is yellow in the light of fire and stop lights. The rain is acid. The city streets stink.
The boy’s too fast. His movements aren’t hindered by hesitation. He already knows where he has to go and what he has to do. As I follow, I trip over myself, boots untied, rain water splashing into them. I wince at the pain shooting up my ankle. A searchlight brushes over me, and I huddle. When I open my eyes again, it’s too dark. I blink and risk calling out in a frantic whisper, “Gibson?”
A dark figure materializes ahead of me. As I try to see, it walks calmly toward me. No one is calm in this world. Except them. I gasp and start to scramble backward, hands sinking into rotting, wet garbage, feet slipping on the asphalt. And then a hand appears, stretching through the black shadows and emerging before my eyes. A man’s hand.
“Mulder,” Gibson calls somewhere ahead.
I look at the hand before me. I take a breath. And then I take it. I’m pulled swiftly to my feet with easy strength. I expect to come face to face with a demon or some kind of apocalyptic Samaritan. I expect to fight and die or run. I wouldn't be surprised to see an angel. Even though this is hell. I can feel its wings brushing my face already, but…
There’s no one. A dark alley. Empty. I look down. My hand is empty. Just a ball of muscles and bone and skin, holding tight to itself in a fist. I look up and see only Gibson at the other end of the alley, standing in the rain, backing up against the wall, out of the searchlight’s way.
I run, ignoring the pain. I catch up to him, hearing the explosions in the distance. We run to the outskirts of town, until my lungs are burning and I’m exhausted down to my soaked bones.
It’s not until the woman pulls me into the small house and I’m led to a cot which I fall onto and I’m nearing the impossibility of sleep that I realize what I truly expected. Who I truly expected.
My eyes won’t stay open. She’s talking softly to another woman about soup and a bath. Their voices mingle, playing their quiet music down the hall.
I didn't expect an angel. I expected…
Him.
It should have been him.
It never really is. Because he’s gone. Not the kind of gone where I know I'll get some postcard from him fifteen years from now with a postmark from Belfast or Jamaica or somewhere else far away. A postcard that might read, ‘Remember when things were looking up?’ No signature. Because he never needs one.
No, he’s more than gone. A bullet sent him to hell, although I can't imagine anything worse than this. I'd envy him except that I think he’d rather be here, as fucked up as that is.
I thought I saw him once. Back before the war. I thought I saw the others, too. But him most of all. He told me things. I think he was trying to help me. I think I’ve gone a little crazy. Anyone would, living inside a black box of rain with the hellfires of war your only light.
I think back on my first case with Scully, telling her I'd never been closer as the rain pelted the motel windows and she looked at me like I was some fascinating animal.
Never been closer. I should have run the other direction.
………
“Wake up. they're coming.”
My ankle has been wrapped and a woman hands me a biscuit as I drag myself back out into the sulfur-fumed dawn. The food’s warm, and I moan, thanking her with my eyes, hefting the pack she gave me over my sore back. Gibson is moving quickly, and I need to go.
I almost can't look away. Her eyes hold a sadness for me that I can't understand. She’s holding a vision of me I can't see anymore. Someone I can't touch.
I hear the flap of wings near my cheek.
I hear the ships.
I hear my name and rip my gaze away, turning and trudging through the sludge toward another town, away from myself some more.
I look at the man across from me and narrow my eyes. He squints, wrinkles deepening the lines already announcing his age. I watch his face for signs that he’s lying.
“It’s the only one. I promise,” he says in thick Russian. His voice quavers slightly and I tilt my head, considering him.
I blink. My voice is soft, speaking his mother tongue. “You're sure about that, Comrade?”
He nods vigorously. His eyes shift for a moment, and I feel the sour bite of unease in my gut.
“Fifty rubles?” I ask, placing my prosthetic hand up on the table. For some reason, people find it menacing. He looks down at it for only a moment, but his intake of breath can't be undone.
He gasps, “Da.”
I squint at him for a moment longer, then I drink down the vodka he gave me, letting the bottom-heavy glass break the stiff silence of the room as I set it down empty. He jumps a little as I stand, stuffing my hand in my jacket pocket and withdrawing the money.
“Fifty, then,” I say, handing it over.
He smiles tremulously. “You drive a hard bargain, Alexei. Your father would be proud.”
I swallow and manage an insincere grin as he stands and turns, grabbing for the machine on the second shelf with hands that tremble with palsy.
“Joseph,” I admonish, coming around and gently pushing his questing hands down. He sighs gratefully. I take my purchase under my arm and nod at him. “I need the practice,” I tell him, lifting my prosthetic with an innocent look.
He doesn't buy it, flapping his hand at me and frowning, hunched over, turning slowly, like an old, worn-out doll and taking the back of his chair in a liver-spotted hand. He sits, and I put my plastic hand on his shoulder.
“Spasiba,” I tell him, quietly. My nose itches with the thick dust of the place.
“Da,” he replies tiredly, nodding. “Da, Alexei. You take whatever records you want, now. Take them all. Get them away from me, eh?”
I smile. I pick out three from his bin. He won’t let me pay him more; he’d consider it the deepest of insults. So I resolve to just happen by with a bottle of vodka for him tomorrow.
I tell him good-bye, and he waves me off as if I’m a shop-lifting kid he’d as soon call the police over as look at.
The bell on the door sings when I push it open.
It’s cloudy today as I walk the two blocks to my car. I like the clouds. They cover up the smoke. I nod to the man on the stoop. The one I always pass when I come into town for anything.
“Dobry den’,” he says, coughing.
“Dobry den’,” I answer.
I drive back up into the hills. My house peeks through the pines at me. I wind up the drive, disabling the two alarms, and park in the garage, feeling a kind of child-like excitement to get inside and set this up.
I wait for the retinal scan at the door and then hear it click open for me. I carry my bundle up the stairs and into the bedroom.
I didn't even know they made turn-tables anymore. I'd thought them obsolete.
I set it up near the window, pushing the lamp over on the little table. I pick an LP and then slip the vinyl from the cardboard sleeve and set the needle in the groove. The sweet, sculptural rhythms of Charles Mingus fill the room. I wander over, thoughtful, and lie back on my bed, arm thrown up atop my pillow. I sigh. The sun just barely peeks out from behind a dirty cloud and falls across my face. I pull the curtain closed and sigh again.
America. This is what it sounds like. Like New York and San Francisco and Memphis and Detroit. Like the exhaust from a 50s Cadillac, his voice.
The first song is a long one, rich jazz floating me away. I reach for the bottle under the bed. It’s too warm to drink, but I scoot up and bring it to my lips anyway, combining the sting of the Stoli with the soothe of the song.
I close my eyes, settling against the pillow, loosening the prosthesis and laying it on the floor, scratching the fading scars on my arm.
The sax is haunting and sexual. Too beautiful, almost, to keep listening to. I frown.
I should look at my watch. I don’t have very long. Not long enough to get lost under it. Certainly not long enough to remember things.
The next song starts, too upbeat now. I feel all the years of my life. Forty-one stony grey steps toward the grave. I reach for the bottle and drink again. I think about leaving early, taking a walk across the field to the hillside where you can see everything, the distant city burning up in otherworldly flame. I squeeze my eyes shut against the vision that will never wipe off my mind.
Forty-one. I feel like Joseph, wondering where the time went. I take another sip, knowing I can't get drunk. I have to keep my head. This music feels way too much like me. It’s ironic. I come back to Russia to get back to my roots, to disappear, to work in the vacuum of secrecy, and all I can seem to think about right now is…
Nothing is more American than the goddamned FBI, you know.
I shower, shave, dress.
I go to my meeting. It’s at a test site, a low building on the side of a hill over-looking the deep, scarred valley.
“When?” I ask, not sparing the scientist a look, my only focus the twisted metal and flying sparks from far below. It looks like a gutted animal, bleeding fire.
“Soon, Comrade Krycek,” he answers crisply. “Maybe three weeks.”
I turn my head, tearing my eyes away from the construction of the beast below. “You have one,” I tell him. And then I walk away.
It’s dark when I arrive back home. I pour myself some vodka and drink it with dinner, which I’ve brought up to my bedroom. I play more Mingus, looking out the window at the full moon night. I can see the tendrils of smoke caressing her blanched cheek.
I collapse after my meal, full and useless. I curl up on the bed, gun under my pillow, hard and comforting. I fall asleep on ‘Epitaph’. And I have the same dream I have every night. It changes minutely. But the theme is always the same.
Tonight, it’s raining, and I see him at the end of an alley. He’s shivering and skinny and scared and in pain. I can't not walk to him. He draws me without a word. I don’t even think he knows I’m here.
I can't see anything else but him. I can't stop my legs from taking me there, even though I can hear the explosions coming closer. I can't not reach down and help him up. So I do. It always shocks me when he takes my hand.
“Wake up. they're coming.”
I keep my eyes shut.
“They're coming.”
I squeeze them tight. I’m not going this time. They can have me.
“You'll become one of them,” Gibson says, reading me. Then, “Worse.”
And that’s the thing that keeps me running. Not hope. Not some light at the end of this tunnel. But the knowledge that it could get even worse. Inconceivably worse.
He tugs on my sleeve, and I get up.
“Tomorrow will be different,” Gibson says, and I frown at him as I pull my boots on, not quite dry.
We walk for hours. He tells me they've lost the scent and are not close. But still we walk. It’s worse than the running, because now I can think.
I think about what Absalom told me as he led me to Gibson and sent us off together. About my DNA. Two strands ready to become twelve. He told me the colonists would blast open my psychic powers again, burn a hole through what’s left of my humanity, and then make me into the ultimate super solider. Their Chosen One. They'd turn everything good into everything bad.
I watch the leaves imprint the ground under my feet as I walk, trying to block out his words to me and failing.
“You wonder if you'll ever know the meaning of things as they appear to others,” he said.
I frowned.
“You're different,” he went on. “We all are. But you… It’s your time. You could be a leader for great peace, or a soldier for unspeakable darkness.” He had looked at me with eyes so eerie-blue I could hardly withstand his gaze. “Don’t let them catch you. Kill yourself first.”
Gibson and I are in the country now. It’s impossible how far we've come. Gone. And I don’t know if there’s a destination. Sometimes I feel like we're walking to our graves.
At night, we camp. He tells me it’s safe. I lay a thin blanket out on the ground and stare up at branches poking the stars. I feel desperately alone. Fresh tears start and don’t stop even after I close my eyes.
………
Wake up.
But my eyes are already open.
It’s him. I frown up into his face.
“I’m alive,” he says. He blinks several times.
What does he mean, alive? I saw him die. I watched him fall. I open my mouth to ask him.
“Find me,” he says.
“Find…you?” I ask. “How…?”
“Skinner,” he tells me.
I blink at him.
“Why?” I try, feeling confused and helpless.
“Hurry,” he snaps, and I jerk awake, out of breath and disoriented.
“Good morning,” Gibson says. His blanket is already folded.
I can't bring myself to say good morning back. I get up and brush the leaves off my jeans.
Gibson speaks again. “There’s a pay phone in the next town. It’s broken. We won’t need money.”
A pay phone? Won’t need…? For what? I stare at him.
“You know,” he says. Then he blinks, expressionless. “We should go. They know where to look now.”
I frown, but I nod, folding up my blanket and shoving it in the pack the woman gave me. I’m still frowning as we walk, but… Inside there’s this feeling…like…
Like today is different.
I want to run.
I wake covered in a sheen of clammy sweat.
This one was different. This dream was worse. I told him I was alive. I told him to find me. That’s the last thing I want. The last thing I need.
I wipe my hand over my eyes, the sweat burning. I get up and drag myself into the shower. The water’s cold. I relish it. It’s certainly better than scalding. And it rinses him away, down the drain, so that I’m calm again. Me again. As I dry off, I put a record on. This time Ella Fitzgerald. A little ‘Stormy Weather’. I make myself some toast and tea. I play the whole record and try to turn off my mind.
I visit the site, getting an update on the gun. I go over every detail, feeling the pressure of time sitting across my shoulders and making my neck ache.
I return to my house and fall into my desk chair. I check my email accounts, my bank accounts, and get everything in order. I’ve overlooked nothing. I’ve thought of everything. We're on schedule. All things are in place.
I have nothing to do but sit and listen to the blues. Sit and enjoy a drink…watch outside my window how the plumes of smoke rise from the west like great gods of destruction. And wait for the time to come.
It’s time to wait.
But I can't sit still. I’m pacing. Playing the fast jazz because nothing else can keep up with the frenetic pace of my heartbeat.
And by late afternoon, the urge to leave my house and go to the village is so great I’m sweating with it. I’ve rarely felt this way. The last time might have been just before I realized the car I was in was about to blow sky high. Certainly not since I got here. I’ve become an accomplished hermit and very good at waiting. And even when I’ve felt compelled to check up on the construction of the gun, or pay a vodka visit to Joseph to buy that record player… None of those times were like this. I’m having trouble even breathing.
Finally, I give in, wishing I didn't have to, but knowing to trust my instincts. they're honed as ever. Bright and sharp as truth. They exist like sight or thirst. I can't turn them off.
So I put on a jacket and leave, engaging my alarms behind me. I drive fast down to the village, hazarding corners at high speeds. The need is great, but I don’t even know exactly where I’m going.
I find myself pulling up across the street from the building where the old man sits on his stoop. I see him there, watching the leaves rush by on the wind. It’s picked up, and the smoke is blowing into town like a storm. I open the car door, frowning, and cross the street to him, feeling like my legs are not my own, not knowing what I’m supposed to say when I approach him. I only know that I have to, that he is why I’m here.
As I near, I look up at the sky. The sun is shining through a thin layer of smoke. It’s strange. I can look right at it without it hurting my eyes.
The old man’s pipe-smoke voice brings my attention back down to earth.
“You've gotta burn to shine.”
I narrow my eyes and look down at the man on his stoop. He’s looking out at the street calmly, past me. My lips part to ask him what he meant. And it was in English. I didn't know he was bilingual. He’s always spoken to me in Russian. But he looks up at me, then. He stands. And I can't speak. His eyes hold me still, looking deep into me in such a way that’s truly terrifying. Like he'll see all the bad I’ve done. Like he'll see what I’m doing here, see who I truly am. Like judgment itself.
And then he smiles. A gentle, knowing smile. And he sits back down, looking out at the street once more. “Dobrey den’,” he says, like always, making me wonder if the other was just in my head.
I stare down at him for a moment. Then I answer, voice thick, “Dobrey den’.”
I look up at the sky once more, then I turn around, get back in my car, and drive back home.
I’m sitting in a diner in a booth while Gibson uses a broken payphone to call the FBI. He told me it would be better, easier for him to tune into the energy if I wasn't right over his shoulder. So I’m eating a medium-rare sirloin and a huge baked potato while he talks to my former boss.
I can't tell anything from Gibson’s expressions as he talks. I can barely taste the steak, but I try to focus on chewing so I don’t choke and so my thoughts don’t contaminate the phone call.
After about twenty minutes, he hangs up and walks calmly over to the booth, sitting down.
“Well?” I ask around the gristle in my mouth.
He looks down at the bowl of apple sauce I ordered him then back up at me. “It was him. His signal was clean.”
“Yeah? And?” I no longer have the energy to control my impatience. The boy just blinks, unfazed, as I knew he would.
“He'll have the information by morning. But I already got that he’s in Russia.”
“He is?” I ask, fork lowering slowly. He’s alive. It’s true. And Skinner knew.
“It was a deal,” Gibson explains, picking up his spoon. “Assistant Director Skinner faked Krycek’s death in return for disabling the nanocytes.” He eats a bite of apple sauce calmly.
“He told you that or you grabbed it?” I ask, leaning forward.
Gibson shrugs which is a sure sign he took it from Skinner’s mind. I nod thoughtfully, cleaning my teeth with my tongue. I'd probably kill for some toothpaste at this point.
“There will be some in the suitcase he’s sending,” Gibson says.
I open my mouth to ask about it, no longer even really the least surprised when he accesses my thoughts like that. But the waitress returns to take my plate and to ask Gibson one more time if he’d like a shake.
“Or I make a reeeelly good chocolate malt,” she adds, looking hopeful.
I want to tell her that not only will she not be able to beef up our ticket to get a better tip, but we're going to have to run out on the tab as it is when she takes her cigarette break, so she really shouldn't bother.
Gibson just answers, “No, thank you. I’m lactose intolerant.” Then he takes another bite of apple sauce.
She frowns but catches herself, smiling again and nodding, backing away.
“But I'll take a large bottle of water if you've got it,” I tell her. She gives me a tight smile and I return it.
“The man at the counter thinks she’s cute,” Gibson tells me, nodding that direction. “He’s going to tip her more than the price of your steak.”
I breathe a quiet laugh at how he’s trying to placate my guilt, when he himself is so unaffected by any of it.
“Where’s this suitcase going to be?” I ask.
“Raskel.”
“What?”
“It’s a town. It’s called Raskel.”
“Where’s that?” I ask, frowning.
We're quiet as the waitress returns with my water. I thank her and Gibson waits till she leaves to speak back up again.
“About twenty miles away,” he tells me easily. “You're catching a private plane there in two hours.”
“Two hours?!” I retort, trying desperately to keep my voice down. “Have you forgotten that we're walking? You told Skinner we could be there?!”
He blinks. “We're going to hitchhike,” he explains.
I look around the diner, realizing an old Patsy Cline tune has come on. “With who?” I attempt, feeling frustrated. True, he hasn't fucked up yet, but I can only put my trust in him so far.
“A farmer whose truck is going to break down,” he tells me.
“Break down?” I sigh. This is insane.
“No, it’s not,” he defends, eyebrows rising slightly. There is no other sign of his ego being bruised. Then he adds, helpfully, “you'll help him fix it.”
I scoff, leaning back now, nearing tears. “I can't fucking fix trucks!” I tell him hopelessly.
He just shrugs.
I curse. “Shit.”
He gets a look on his face. Like he’s listening. Then he says, “We should go now. Dorals burn fast.”
………
An hour later, the sun is high and hot. There’s no wind today. Definitely Spring transforming into Summer. We're on a straight two-lane highway with weeds tickling our calves and locusts buzzing in the distance. It’s such a relief to get away from the explosions that I almost don’t care that I’m burning up.
I get out my water bottle and open it, taking a sip. It tastes incredible, fresh and clear and still cool. I offer some to Gibson, but he shakes his head no. I screw the cap back on tightly, knowing I'll need to conserve it just in case, and keep walking.
After an hour and a half, my stomach is in knots. We've walked probably four miles and there’s been no traffic whatsoever. Not even a broken-down truck. I wipe the sweat from my eyes and stop, turning to Gibson.
He speaks before I can. “We're almost there.”
I close my mouth, swallowing what is edging toward panic. Scully would say I'm making the face. I squint, trying to see my future down this wheaty-brown road.
Five minutes later, I hear a choked whirring. It sounds distinctly like an overgrown locust. I frown, trying to see where the noise is coming from. We turn a corner, and there it is: a rusted, broken-down Ford that probably used to be white.
Ego flies out the window and I look down at Gibson with open relief and gratitude. He just shrugs again. God, if the kid gets me through this alive somehow… What do you do for a boy with psychic gifts as powerful as he has? Buy him a pony? I have no idea what he’d actually want, but I wish I could give it to him.
“You will,” he pipes up as we near the gurgling truck.
I swallow and turn my attention to the man now kicking his tire and cursing.
“Sir?” I ask.
I look down at Gibson. He nods almost imperceptibly, then whispers, “Clean.”
I speak louder as the man’s head is under the hood now. “Excuse me.”
He bolts up and hits his head. It’s just like a sitcom. So normal. It almost hurts. He’s one of the first human beings I’m going to be allowed to speak with prolongedly, if superficially. I haven't talked to anyone besides Gibson for over a year. I think a part of me loves this man.
He looks at me with rooster eyes, small beads that hint of misanthropic tendencies. “Whosat?”
“We, uh, need a ride,” I tell him plainly. I’ve learned that, even when it feels foolish to do so, when Gibson has had a vision, it’s best just to get to the point of it when it shows up so as not to change the outcome with free will, which I’ve done a number of times.
You can take the man out of free will but you can't take the free will out of the man. Especially me. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen Gibson roll his eyes.
“A ride?” croaks the old man. “You one’a them…drug addicts?” I frown, and he continues, “This piece ‘a scrap ain't ridin’ nobody nowheres.”
I nod at him impatiently, and then ask the question I’ve been dreading. “What’s, uh…what’s wrong with it? Maybe we could help.”
He looks us both over skeptically. I can't exactly blame him. “Cain’t help lessen you got coolant in yer pack. Dang thing’s overheated.” He pulls a yellow-stained white handkerchief from his pocket and wipes his face with it, turning away.
I swallow, remembering the water I got at the diner. “Wait!” I yell, running over, excited to fulfill my destiny, even…*especially* one as far-fetched as this. It may be simple and ordinary, but it’s the least plausible thing I can think of finding myself able to do.
You can take the Armani off the man, but…
“Here,” I say, handing over my water bottle. “Do you think that might get you as far as Raskel?”
………
I’m alone.
Gibson said he was supposed to stay behind…that I'd be safe on the flight. He said the pilot was a nice man who liked to drink non-stop Dr. Peppers and thought a lot about his hometown of Bloomington, Indiana. I thanked the boy, hand on his shoulder, and he just blinked at me.
It was work not to become emotional. I hate that he read it right off of me, even if I managed not to cry in front of him. I'd like to think he afforded me the dignity of my private thoughts. I hadn't anticipated not wanting to leave him. I really had no idea how much this has changed me…being hunted down like an animal. He was the only one I’ve been able to depend on, and now that’s going away, too.
I was terrified. Nearly to paralysis. I almost couldn't walk away. I haven't used a public bathroom lately without Gibson’s okay first. I very nearly collapsed in petrified fear rather than get on that plane. I was trembling.
“You won’t need me,” he said quietly.
My instinct was to panic, deny, cling to him… To not trust. But he’d been right about everything else. Down to the truck. He’d kept me alive, and I had to believe it was for a reason. This reason.
And I knew Gibson knew about the dreams.
Find me…
I nodded, and the first step onto the plane was like stepping off a cliff into an abyss.
I feel the plane lifting off the ground now. We'll stop to refuel in upstate New York, far enough away from the city not to be detected. Then we'll stop again outside of London.
I sigh and lean back, turning my head to watch the ground get smaller, and then as we turn, the sun glinting off the silver wing. I close my eyes when it gets too bright. But the blindness is too much, so I just turn forward and bravely face the interior of the plane.
His face appears unbidden in my mind’s eye.
Skinner didn't kill him. The realization is only now hitting me. Not dead. Never dead.
I'd listened raptly as Gibson spoke, and when the name Krycek had passed his lips, I nearly gasped. He said it like it was nothing, just a label so that I would know which human to whom he was referring. No personal connection to that name whatsoever. But I knew even as he uttered it, that my own recognition bloomed high across my cheeks, purely physical and intense and readable as if the man alluded to was suddenly sitting in the booth with us.
I haven't allowed myself to speak his name. Gibson was the one who contacted Skinner and asked for the information for a reason. Both because he could discern any psychic disturbances and because…
I can't bring myself to say his goddamned name.
Not since that night in the parking garage. Two years ago.
………
Somewhere over the Atlantic, I fall asleep. It’s against all the will power I can exert over my body.
In the dream, I’m running. I’m panting and aching and tired. But I’m running. And not away from something, from them, but toward something. Toward him.
“Find me.”
“Krycek,” I whisper. It stings my throat to finally say it.
“Mulder,” his voice returns, through the choking smog of hellfire. “Find me.”
I fight to see him. “Why?” I ask. Even though I’m running hard. Even though I have nothing but the sound of his voice to keep me going. “Why?” I try again, moving so fast the wind burns my eyes.
Then just that same answer – “Hurry.” And I do, pushing my legs to carry me to him against all reason.
The phone rings, and I jump. I pick it up on the second ring and say nothing.
“It’s Gordieva,” comes the hushed voice.
“Yes,” I answer.
“They're going ahead. Three days.”
I close my eyes, sighing through my nose. “Anything else?”
“No,” he replies. “I have to go.”
“You report any change to me,” I assert.
“Yes, sir. Good-bye, sir.”
The line clicks dead.
Three days. The gun has to be ready before then. Because what they're planning is worse than fire, worse than nuclear winter and the death of all living things.
I sigh and put on Ella again. Her voice heralds the old beauty of the earth. That ripe blue orb flashing through the cosmos. Her voice reminds me of what it felt like to be human. Truly human. I’m not one any more. A human at war is merely a machine. I had to become one to fight them. Become something two degrees warmer than cold death.
Krycek, you're an invertebrate scum-sucker whose moral dip-stick is about two drops short of bone-dry.
The remembered timber and cadence of this voice mixes with hers, singing to me, and I can't help the apparitional smile that hovers at the corners of my lips. Both so alive: Ella and Mulder. Smoke and passion. Both so human.
I make a pot of coffee, strong, and breathe in the dark fragrance. Sometimes the human me glimmers around the hard edges still. Like now, when the song blisters what I thought was already a charred heart, when the smell of coffee is so perfect it makes me want to cry, and when I think of him…before the war…before they turned him into a dog, when he was brilliant and blade-sharp, and he burned.
He used to make me burn.
You’ve gotta burn to shine.
I shake my head, frowning down at the turn-table. I knock the needle off the groove, silencing the music.
I finish my coffee, putting it all out of my mind: Ella, Mulder, the old man on the stoop, the hot feeling in my chest.
The colonists are going to unleash their own WMD in three days. An ultra-low frequency transmitter antenna with the power to control the minds of every human on this planet. I’m the one that can stop it. I’m the one that has to. Nothing can burn in me but that knowledge. There’s not room for jazz or coffee or Detroit or breathing. There’s only me, and the gun. And we're as cold as they come.
At night, I pray I'll wake up and it will all be a dream. I'll wake in a bed, realizing I’m late for work, and Scully is going to be pissed.
Then I downgrade. I bargain. Just give me Gibson back, I try. Just let me wake up and not be alone anymore. He said I didn't need him. He was wrong. God help me, he was wrong.
Every morning, it’s the same. I’m alone somewhere in the Russian forest, and I’m scared.
I’m not even sure where I’m going. All I know is, I get these feelings when I’ve turned the wrong way. My guts burn. I have coordinates, and I consult them, but there have been times when something has told me to take the long way, to not go directly there, not chart the easiest course, and I’ve obeyed because it was that or vomit, the intuitions are so strong.
I think I’ve learned it from Gibson. And I’m keeping myself alive with it.
But I need him anyway. I need a face to look at, a voice in the darkness. And the only one who’s speaking to me…is Krycek.
Every night.
Mulder…find me…
And when I ask why, I wake up.
The plane set me down about twelve miles away. It’s easily a two day hike in my condition. And if I’m honest, it could possibly be three. I’ve been going for a day and a half, and I’m exhausted. The plane couldn't land any closer to my destination. Where Krycek is, dense forest covers, thick enough that a satellite certainly couldn't find his house amidst the tall pines and deep ravines. And it makes it all the more difficult to traverse.
I thank God for Walter Skinner. He packed me fresh clothes, toiletries, and food. And even though it’s a heavy pack to carry, I’m grateful for its weight, because I know I'll eat every night and bathe if ever I find a creek. And know myself as something not less than human.
I hope he’s safe. I hope Scully is safe. My old life seems farther away than the ocean dividing us. I haven't seen a computer for a year, haven't slept in a bed that wasn't a cot, haven't visited a grocery store, worn a tie… And that last thing, I guess, isn't so bad.
And it’s with a weary smile on my face that I first see it. Two story, easily four thousand square feet, surrounded by fir trees at the crest of a rise.
I’m assailed with venom. Which is not what I'd expected. That son of a bitch has been living here, like this, all this time! While they chased me through historic districts, wealthy neighborhoods turned ghetto, while they've hunted me, while I’ve sometimes starved and gone without sleep just to keep alive. While the United States has become a war zone. He’s been here.
He gave up. And he sold out. I should have known.
I let the anger push the tears away as I press forward, fighting gravity and nature and pushing on to the end of this dream-guided journey. Maybe this is how it ends. Maybe after this, whatever this is, I can rest.
But not yet. I have a score to settle.
I feel the alarm go off before I hear it. Just a raising of the hairs on the back of my neck. And my left arm ignites with fire.
Then its shrill cry echoes through the rooms as I run. Armed, I crouch at the monitor overlooking the back of my property. Nothing. I reach into a drawer and pull out the knife I keep there, stashing it at my back. I switch the view to the front and squint at the still trees, breathing hard and quiet.
The second alarm sounds, signaling that the entity is but fifty yards away from the house.
“Shit.”
I run low downstairs, gun ready. They can't get in here. The walls are steel. Even a band of replicants would have to work for several minutes to create a dent. I have time. I lean back against the wall and try to think.
Nothing yet on the monitors, so there can't be that many of them. So just one or two of them, then. They found me. I have enough magnetite bullets to at least set them back long enough for me to escape.
I creep into the main room, flicking my eyes to the monitor on the wall. I see him at the same time I hear it. He’s ringing the buzzer on the gate.
Christ, it’s Mulder.
I frown deeply and side-step toward the door, also thick steel. I flit my eyes down to the monitor there, gun slick in my hand, and look at him, standing at my gate.
I frown still further. Because it can't be. It has to be a shape-shifter. That or they…
Got him.
Oh, fuck.
I speak roughly through the intercom which distorts my voice anyway, “Turn around. Bare the back of your neck.”
He swallows. I watch his every move, his every breath. He’s dirty. Looks like he shaved two days ago. They normally don’t show signs of weariness, and he…God, he looks exhausted. Rings underline his eyes. I watch him turn. His shirt is ripped in the back. His hair is longer, reminding me of our days in Russia before, so many years ago. We were children.
I find myself believing that it’s him before he even pulls at the collar of his shirt and exposes the straight, smooth column of his neck to me. Smooth. Only the very human slope of vertebrae, that one knob protruding because he’s too thin.
I swallow and take a deep breath. He could still be a shape-shifter. I pocket my gun and pull the knife. It’s no plam, but it'll do the trick. I’m sweating. God, it can't be him. He’s in America. He’s running. If he’s here… Fuck, they could be, too.
I adjust the monitor so that I can see the entire expanse of my property again, scanning all sides. Nothing. I consider turning him away. My thumb brushes over the talk button once as I look at him. He sways.
I push it. “Turn back around.”
He does, slowly, eyes searching for my camera. And something in his expression tells me he knows where he is, that he’s found me. Triumph wars with curiosity and exhaustion. He knows I’m here. Knows I’m alive.
I flash on the dreams – I’m alive. Find me.
I flirt with the button again, feeling the words under my tongue like a bitter pill. I press down. “Come in.”
Then I touch the button that opens the gate, knife hilt still clutched in my fingers tight against my palm. I watch him step inside.
I walk cautiously inside the gate, careful not to touch it just in case.
He’s in there. The voice was distorted for security, but the demands he made came from someone who knows the game inside and out and who knows what to look for.
It scared the shit out of me to turn my back on him. But I had to do it, both to gain entrance and because that feeling roiled up in my belly again, and I can't disobey its warning even if I can ignore his.
As I near the house, I take in the details. The smell of damp needles absorbing my steps like sponges. The stillness in the air. The ordinary look of the house, its black windows.
And him inside. I can feel him there. I might have known even if I hadn't had the dreams.
I climb the steps. I think about drawing my gun, but the idea makes me sick. And he’s watching me, so he would see it and it might just secure me my death. I’ve come all this way. It’s not going to be just to die by his hand.
I stand in front of the door for a moment before the voice instructs, “Open it.”
I reach out and close my hand around the knob, half expecting an electric shock or something. But it turns easily in my hand, and the door starts to open inwardly.
Suddenly, I’m jerked inside as it swings open with my hand still grasping it. I’m off-balance as a hand shoves at my back and I feel my front connect with solid steel.
Then more steel, sharp and cold at the base of my neck, and I go completely still, stopping even my breath.
“What’s gonna happen if I push?” he asks, exerting just enough pressure that the knife-point slips between my bones and sinks deeper into the soft flesh, not yet breaking the skin.
I inhale, and that very act draws the knife point further into me. I bite my lip.
“Hands up, flat on the wall,” he demands, that voice so familiar, so distinctive. I comply, raising my hands and sliding them along the cool metal until they're even with my cheek. I can't see him.
“That you in there, Mulder?” he asks silkily.
I swallow.
“Care to prove it?” he continues.
I panic as my mind blanks. All I can think of is my own blood spilling. I feel the knife, ready to slice my spinal cord in half, just an inch between life and death. He’d have his answer either way: with my death or my pain. I close my eyes and wait for him to decide which will satisfy him.
“Left hand,” he says. “Pull down your collar in front. Slowly,” he adds with a little cruel jab of his knife. My own feverish skin is starting to warm the cold steel of it.
I take shallow breaths and mindlessly do as he asked. As I reach for my shirt, with my left hand as instructed, I realize what he wants. What he needs to see.
The bullet scar.
I'd sigh with relief, but I’m fairly sure that would get my neck sliced open, and then he’d have his answer that way and I'd never get my chance to even our score.
My fingers close on the dirty, stiff cotton, and I ease it down past my collar bone. I feel him nearing over my left shoulder. I cut my eyes down and to the side and wait, feeling his breath on my exposed skin. His shadow looms over me. Chills rack my body.
Then the knife-point is gone, and I feel him relax just the slightest bit. I don’t hesitate as I plunge my elbow back into his stomach and then whirl on him, slamming my fist into his face.
He grunts, hunched over and bleeding, and his knife clatters to the floor.
I’m about to take another swing, my body awakening to the feel of this base human touch, when he stands once more, and now there’s a gun in my face and his eyes drilling into me.
He’s breathing heavy, but his hand is steady. I look down the barrel. It’s the first time I’ve laid eyes on him since…
Pain. The memory is pain. I feel bile slithering up my throat and wash it down with spit, focusing on him here and now before me.
More grey at the temples. More lines at the corners of his eyes. Still those haunting eyes. Still that filthy snarl curling his lip. Still the man I’ve hated for so long.
Still alive. Both of us. Still alive.
“What the hell are you doing here, Mulder?” he asks.
Feeling like hitting you again, I think. And it’s accompanied by a little thrill riding my body, skating my skin.
“You mean instead of in America fending for myself thinking you're dead?” I counter.
He presses the ungiving gun to my cheek, hard. “How did you find me?”
Find me…
His words aloud, his words in my head, echoing. I blink. And then my whole being swells with anger. “You son of a bitch,” I spit. I don’t give a shit about his weapon. He’s not going to shoot me. I know it as surely as I know my name.
His lips part, the sneer widening in incredulity.
“Get that gun off me and let’s settle this,” I hiss.
“What is it, Mulder?” he retorts, eyebrows arching over his innocent eyes. “You disappointed you didn't get to be the one to pull the trigger?”
And with that, he backs away fast, reversing his grip on the gun and holding it out to me.
“C'mon, you wanna change history? You wanna crack?” He throws the gun at me and I catch it against my chest. He opens his arm out to the side, the prosthetic lifting as well. He dares me with eyes so dangerously dark I almost can't see him underneath the adrenaline. “C'mon, Mulder. Do it to me.”
I feel the weighty gun shifting in my hand. I see him feel it. He just stands there, chest heaving, arms spread, eyes glittering with green flame. And it’s then that I realize he knows I won’t do it either.
I lower the gun in my right and backhand him with my left. He doesn't even stumble and comes back up to knock the gun from my hand with a hard chop to my wrist. Then we're struggling, flinging each other around the small entryway.
I grab for his face with my hands, sinking my fingers into his cheeks, his eye, his soft throat. But he’s bigger, stronger, well-fed, and he slams me backward into the hard metal wall, leaning in with his weight.
“You're gonna get me killed, you selfish prick,” he growls at me before I knee him in the groin, and he goes down with a grunt. I follow, wrestling him to the floor and straddling him, pinning his prosthetic and dodging his punches.
He’s actually trying to punch me. It nearly stuns me enough for him to connect. We end up slapping at each other’s blows like overly-aggressive children.
I gasp as he throws me over onto my back, taking my throat in his big hand. I claw at his skin and beat at his ribs. He grunts and tries to pin my arms with his legs.
“Fuck…you… You…fucking…coward…” I get out around his fingers clamped down on my airway.
Suddenly, his knee comes down hard on my shoulder and his hand makes a fist in my hair. “What did you say?” he snarls high above me.
I gasp for breath and then glare into his eyes as I repeat myself. “You heard me, Krycek.” His name. I said it. I feel fantastic. Even though I can't wait to spit the epithet again. Even though this hurts. He’s crushing me. His weight, crunching me down into the floor. “You're a fucking spineless little coward,” I tell him and watch his eyes fill with shock.
Faster than I can comprehend it, he’s off of me, pushing my head down and ripping his fingers from my hair as he rises up and stalks away from me.
I scramble up and wait for his return, wait for an attack, seething, eyes wet, clothes torn, body bruised. He turns around. And his expression is a chilly mask of hatred.
“Coward,” he breathes. Then, “You don’t have a fucking clue, Mulder.”
I laugh quietly, squaring off against him in his foyer. I gesture at the opulence surrounding us, even just now noticing the huge dining room to my left. “You've been living it up while they've hunted me like an animal, Krycek!” I spit at him. “You gave up,” I grit past bared teeth. He’s begun walking toward me, chest filling with indignant pride, wounded. I keep going, standing my ground, though I’m thirsty and almost shaking and haggard and nearly too tired to stand. “I’ve been in hell, and you've been on vacation. Fuck you,” I snarl. “Fuck you, Krycek. Fuck…”
But he grabs me by the front of the shirt and hauls me in, his face close to mine. I take his wrist, squeezing painfully, and stab my hatred into him, feeling a ball of unease twist in my stomach. And then he smiles. Even though I’m hurting him. His teeth white and straight. Pretty. I swallow.
“Vacation, huh?” he asks, tilting his head. I stumble. I rip his hand away from me, and he takes some of my shirt with him. I’m breathing heavy. He squares his shoulders. “You think you have it all figured out, right?” He licks his lips and then narrows his eyes. “Fuck you, then. Get out of my house.”
“What, no tour?” I retort. And the pain that began when he told me to get out expands and fills my body with sick heat.
He blinks, not smiling. I swallow again. And I don’t move.
“Why are you here?” he asks again, softly though. Aching with frustration. “If you think I’ve given up… Why are you here? Unless you think you wanna join me.”
I open my mouth to retort, but the weight of what he said settles in my heart. I realize that’s why I’m angry. Maybe I want what he has. Goddamn it… I do want to give up. I want to lie down and give up…show my underbelly and feel the relief of taking the coward’s way out. I *want* this.
I blink the tears back and firm my lips.
He squints.
And the tears won’t blink back. They hang there, emasculating me, and I hate him for it. I wipe at my eyes, very nearly hitting myself in the violence of it.
“Fuck off,” I tell him, striding determinedly for the door. My guts spasm, but I make my legs take me forward anyway.
He steps in front of me and launches his hand out to the side, bracing it on the doorjamb and barring my way. I won’t look at him.
“Get the hell out of my way,” I growl. I’m staring at his chest. His unripped clothes. They smell like laundry detergent. And I’m about to walk back out into hell. My tears fall and suddenly, I’m fighting him, shoving at his chest and spitting in his face, “Go to hell, Krycek! Fucking go to hell! You coward! You fucking dirty coward!”
And he’s taking it. My exhausted blows to his belly, his ribs, the slaps to his chest and neck, the nails clawing, my body ricocheting off his with the force of my assault. I’m only wearing myself down, not him.
“Mulder…” he murmurs, and I punch him for that. Right in the mouth.
“You piece of shit,” I hiss.
He takes my wrist and whirls us around, so that my back is against his door and we're still face to face. His lip is bleeding. He pushes me into the steel with his body and licks the blood away.
“I never gave up,” he says. My mouth peels back from my teeth on another accusation, but he continues, hot breath in my face, “I haven't stopped fighting them since I got here.”
His grip on my wrist slackens, but he stays close, gauging my reaction. I can't believe him. It’s bullshit. Forever and always bullshit with him. I open my mouth to tell him so, and my stomach revolts. I gag, and before I know which end is up, he’s whisking me into a hallway and then into a bathroom where he shoves me down over a toilet and I start to heave. It’s just bile. I haven't eaten since morning, trying to ration my food to last.
I grip the bowl and he stands behind me, sighing. God, he doesn't even have the decency to leave me alone. The thought brings more slime up from the pit of my stomach, splattering the bowl as I expel it violently.
“Jesus,” he curses. Then I hear the faucet turn on.
When I finish, I’m shaking. A string of yellow gunk hangs from my bottom lip, and I’m about to just lay my head on the porcelain lip when his hand touches my shoulder.
“Mulder.” I turn my head as far as I can and blink rolling eyes at him. He holds a dripping washcloth in his prosthetic, extending it out to me. I hesitate, but then I take it and wipe my mouth.
The water runs again and he hands me a glass of it. “Drink.” There is no hesitation this time. I gulp it down. It tastes revolting and wonderful at once. Like sugar water, juxtaposed against the bitter bile coating my mouth.
Krycek takes the glass when I’m finished. I’m so scared he’s going to turn me out. I think about spending another night on that damp, stinking ground, the wind at my back and my body aching, my mind racing with fear, heart lonely… So fucking lonely. The tears are back. But the thought of staying here, receiving his charity… I expect to feel the bile inching its way up my throat again, but all I feel is exhausted. Heavy with the inability to turn him down but full of enough stupid pride to hope he doesn't offer.
“C'mon,” he murmurs.
He takes my hand and wraps my arm around his shoulders and neck, then he helps me stand.
“I don’t want your help,” I tell him dishonestly. I haven't leaned on someone in years. Really, physically leaned. I want to curl into it like a child. I can put aside my hate and anger for a few hours. I can whore myself to this feeling of dependence. It feels so good. Anybody in my place would, I tell myself.
Anybody would.
He doesn't answer, just walking me down the hall and to a staircase. My feet stop and won’t start again.
“Shit,” he mutters. Then he turns me around and marches me slowly back in the other direction. He walks me back out into the living room. When I see the place where we grappled, it gives me the fight I need to wrench myself away, although it takes great effort not to just go sprawling across his floor.
I turn to him, frowning deeply, gut turning. “What did you mean…you never gave up?”
His lashes flutter at me as he considers something. “You're a piece of work, Mulder,” he says. Then he sighs, raking a hand through his hair once. “I tell you what,” he finally says, eyes dropping to look over my body once.
Suddenly, I feel deeply self-conscious about all of it. My stink, my appearance, my ratty clothes, how I can't not tremble now. But his eyes don’t hold any pity. Just… Well, if I didn't know better, I'd call it concern. Although grudging.
“I'll tell you tomorrow,” he offers. “If you agree not to kill me sometime in the middle of the night.”
Letting me stay. He’s telling me to stay.
I get to stay.
I fight the emotion that wants to squeeze its way out of my chest. The words slip past my lips before I’ve even thought them. “So you weren't going to kill me?” His eyes register confusion. “That night?” I add, but my voice has dropped. I’m about to fall down.
His eyes narrow, jaw firming. Then he shakes his head. “No.”
I stare at him, that face I haven't seen, except in my dreams and memories, in what feels like lifetimes.
God, he looks good. He’s another human being, standing there, talking to me, looking at me, seeing me. And it’s good.
I nod. And then I sway and stumble backwards. His hand shoots out and he guides me down to his couch. It’s chocolate brown and soft. Fuck, it’s so soft. I’m gone, literally before my head hits Krycek’s pillow.
Mulder’s here.
Fox Mulder. Here.
He’s sleeping on my couch.
I’m sitting in a chair…watching him. Out of fear, out of survival, out of concern, out of fascination…
He found me. Son of a bitch found me.
It was Skinner. I know because…I told him. It was in that dream. And it had to be Skinner anyway. He was the only one who ever knew I was alive. And Mulder is the only one he’d put his own life in danger to tell. How he found the exact location probably doesn't matter.
After all. It’s the end of the world as we know it the day after tomorrow. Either by mind control or by the Gun. It’s fitting that Mulder be here for it. Maybe that’s why he’s here. Even if he doesn't know it yet. He’s been looking for a way to stop them for years now. I’ve got one. He should know. It’s his right.
Plus, I can get him underground before it happens. We can ride out the holocaust together, resurface in the new world.
He’s sleeping very soundly. Quite different than he has most of his life. Probably hasn't seen a bed or couch for long, horrible months. I find I’m…glad I can give him that. His first real sleep in maybe two years. I know what running can do to a man. I know what it did to me.
He looks like shit. He’s dirty. Smells sour like old sweat, and salty like new. There’s also now the stench of vomit on his breath, which before was surprisingly sweet. Like a name brand toothpaste. Crest, I realize. Exactly like Crest.
He also smells very vaguely of shit. I know if he’s been bathing in the streams and lakes, they're all down from drought, and there are few if you're coming in from the west from St. Petersburg, which he probably did.
It’s not too unpleasant…that scent rising up from his crotch and ass. There are worse things. The smell of the black oil after it vacates your body is one. A Tunisian prison is another. He’s not making me want to breathe through my mouth or anything. I can open up my nostrils to him and fill myself with his scent and want nothing more than to see him get clean because it so obviously pains him not to be in my presence.
And again, I understand.
The smell of cooking flesh and gushing blood beats out an unwashed asshole hands down.
He’s also thin. Way too thin. I'd actually say skinny. He hurt me more with those pointy bones as he wailed on me than with his shaking fists. I’m tempted to wake him up just to feed him, but I don’t. I just lean my head against the cushion of the chairback and watch him. He doesn't move. Not even once. And the sun is just starting to come up.
He thought I'd given up. Of course he did. He thought I'd taken my ball and gone home. Death, he can forgive. Getting out of the game, even if I wasn't always on his side…no way. A smile perches itself on my lips. Only Mulder. I’m supposed to play by his rules, but if I don’t play at all, that’s even worse.
What a shock he’s going to get when he sees what I’ve been doing. I almost envy him the surprise.
I stretch slightly, feeling the bruises he gave me. The new little aches. We really went at each other. I felt it from the moment he walked in and I got him pinned to that wall with my knife in his neck. I knew we'd have to start it up. Regardless of how it might finish.
I knew I had to get my hands on him. Even the one that doesn't feel. And it felt great. Him hitting me, us going down together, hitting the floor, rolling, choking, squeezing, punching, wrestling.
Fighting. And touching.
I don’t know about Mulder, even though I suspect the same is true and then some, but I haven't touched someone in a really long time. I needed a good fight. I’ve needed out of my head so bad. He’s always been good for that. Slamming me back down into my body. Grounding me with the pain.
But it didn't hurt as much this time. And I couldn't just let him get his punches in and then push away like he always used to do. No, I wanted to feel what it would be like to make it a struggle. For heaven and earth. For right and wrong. Good and bad. Make him work me over, even exhausted as he was. I know he’s probably grateful.
I didn't pull any punches for him. And he fell on me like a feast. It didn't matter that he’s sick and starving and fucked up. It didn't matter that I only have one arm. We needed the time to get back to each other. To get to the root of us. The physical fight, hand in hand with that good old mental tug of war.
I’ve missed it.
I stretch again, feeling my eyes wanting to close. Mulder’s out. He could probably sleep for days at this point. I can't let him. I wish I could. He could sleep right through the death of the world and I'd see him on the other side. We could pick up the fight there.
The thought widens the smile that’s already been trying to lift the corners of my lips.
I can't go on wishing he’d never shown up. Not when having him here feels like the final piece fitting into the grid.
I close my eyes, letting oblivion swell up over me, taking me down into the inky black of sleep. I’m safe with Mulder. If he wakes up, the most I'll suffer is a split lip. And I can deal with that.
Yeah. I really can.
I’m over him. Choking him. His neck is hot under my fingers. Beams of destruction impact all around us.
“I found you,” I grate out. His eyes gleam beneath me. He blinks rapidly, just looking up into my eyes. “What else do you want from me?” I plead. “What the fuck else do you want?”
He closes his eyes, and I feel him swallow under my thumbs.
“Forgive me.”
My hands loosen. I lean back, afraid of him suddenly. He rises up, following me. My eyes widen.
He says it again. “Forgive me, Mulder. Please.” Lashes laced with tears.
I blink.
And then I’m awake, his voice still a haunting cello-sound in my head.
Not cello. Bass. I know that sound. Air through wood. Strings vibrating deep so that it resonates through your pores and down into the pulsing marrow of your bones.
I open my eyes to a liquid-pink light filtering over me. And someone’s voice singing over the strumming bass. A clatter, then. Like a pan in a kitchen. The sound your mother used to make on Sunday mornings. Not my mother. But somebody’s. Somebody on TV.
I try to lift my arm, to prop myself up, and I groan. My body hurts.
Silence, except for the sweet, crystalline voice crackling slightly over the speakers.
“I have eggs and toast or orange sugar rolls,” Krycek’s voice calls from somewhere to my left.
I stifle a wince as I leverage myself onto my elbows. I’m awake. But it’s still Krycek’s voice. I close my eyes, still partly in the dream.
Forgive me…
It wasn't him. He’s awake. He’s…cooking.
Oh God, food.
“Mulder,” he says, coming into the living room and looking down at me. “Which do you want? Eggs and toast or orange sugar rolls?” He’s frowning, looking quite serious. There are webs of tears caught in his eyes. Then he blinks, and they're gone.
I clear my throat. I have to start this day out right. “What the hell are orange sugar rolls, Krycek?”
That was good, right? I’m cursing at him. It wasn't desperate. Nothing piteous about me.
“I'll just give you some of each,” he decides, turning around and heading back to where I can't see him. Then he yells, “it'll be a few minutes. If you want, there’s a shower down the hall. Towels in the cupboard next to the sink.”
I frown deeply, sitting up all the way. My gaze falls on the record player across from me on the coffee table. Real, live record player. So that wasn't part of the dream. He’s got music on. A kind of bluesy-jazz. And he’s making me breakfast. And offering the use of his shower.
Oh Christ… Tears flood my eyes and I’m humiliated even though he’s not here to see them. I stand as quickly as I can without inducing black-out and find the hallway, and soon thereafter, the bathroom. Same one I puked in last night. It’s clean today. No trace of me being here.
I catch my reflection in the mirror and do a double-take.
No. It can't be. Is that really…me?
I lean in, eyes wide, and actually reach out to myself, stroking my fingers along the glass, feeling it hard where my cheek should be. My lip trembles and I watch my already red eyes fill with sorrow.
I quickly turn away and start the water running in the shower. I strip my clothes off, flitting a glance at the closed door furtively as I drop my pants. They fairly fall off of me. They were barely riding my hips as it was.
I piss in the toilet before I climb into Krycek’s shower. The water is hot and hard and I go ahead and let myself cry as I get clean, because the tears wash down my face as fast as they fall.
I wash my hair twice, my body twice over from face to feet. I scrub at my balls and inside the crack of my ass. My poor cock that hasn't been touched in months -- by me or anyone else -- it gets a gentler hand, and several tears fall when it twitches in my palm once, still alive, if saddened like the rest of me. I stroke its softness a few times, not caring that I can't yet get it hard or that I’m not alone in this house. Only that I can do this. This simple thing I'd given up on a long time ago. I pull my flesh gently, feeling the soap suds drip off the end, closing my eyes and sighing.
After I rinse, I step out and open the cupboard to find a towel with which to dry myself. I pick up the one on top, only to reveal…
Clothes.
He laid out clothes for me.
I frown, lashes dripping. I pick up the T-shirt with a wet hand, darkening the cotton. It’s blue. There are jeans beneath the shirt. Soft, worn, blue jeans. they're going to be a size too big and they're probably his smallest ones, but… I bring them to my face and inhale the clean scent of newly washed denim. The heavy fabric still holds the fragrance of fruit and vanilla.
And suddenly, I’m starving.
I dry and dress quickly, feeling weird at pulling Krycek’s white brief underwear up over my crotch, but loving the sensation of clean cotton holding my cock and balls just the same.
I towel-dry my hair and run a shaking hand through it. If I don’t eat soon, I’m going to puke up more bile.
I emerge to the smell of breakfast. It nearly knocks me over. I walk, barefoot, back into Krycek’s living room. The carpet under my feet is decadent. Steam wafts out of the kitchen. I have the distinct urge to draw a weapon as I approach.
“Have a seat,” I hear.
I didn't even know he heard me. I clear my throat, and, too hungry to pick a fight with him, sit at a kitchen table as he puts a plate down in front of me.
“Help yourself. Don’t wait for me, mine’s still cooking,” he adds, heading back into the kitchen where he takes up a spatula next to a sizzling skillet. I can watch him through the open archway if I feel like it.
I turn my attention down to the plate and dig in. It’s delicious. Eggs over-medium, toast buttered already, and the rolls…cinammon swirled with a sweet orange glaze. I peer into the kitchen again, and from the assortment of dirty mixing bowls stacked together in the sink, I'd be willing to bet he made the glaze himself.
And he remembered how I like my eggs. It must have been that time…but God it was years ago. Denny’s. Post-case. The Original Grand Slam. I can't believe he remembered. Ten years of history between us and those eggs.
I take my first bite and struggle not to weep.
Krycek brings his own steaming plate over, and though he has double what he gave me, in fact gorging himself on four eggs (scrambled), two pieces of toast, and four rolls, and he joined in late, we finish at the same time.
I thank him awkwardly, saying it into my napkin and then feeling ashamed of myself.
But he just answers with a, “No problem,” getting up to clear the table.
I push my chair out, feeling much more capable of having the conversation we probably should have had last night before I passed out on his couch. I lean back, legs spread, and watch him take one dish at a time back to the sink.
“So,” I begin.. “What exactly did you mean last night? That you'd been fighting them since you got here.”
He pauses with a spoon in his hand, ready to rinse it. He lets it drop into the sink and turns to me, leaning his butt back against the counter and resting his hand on the lip of the sink.
“You want show and tell?” he replies.
“No, actually,” I retort, voice rising. “Just tell. Right now, Krycek. Everything. Start talking.” He licks his lip, and I warn, “And no bullshit. I’ve had a really bad couple of years, and you don’t want to test my patience right now.”
His eyes flare a bit, like maybe he does want to try it. But when I continue to stare at him, his face turns serious, his eyes squinting through a slight flinch. “I know,” he allows.
I take a deep breath.
He sighs. “I’ve got a weapon,” he tells me. “I’m going to take them out.” His T’s are very sharp. He’s so goddamned cocky. I almost scoff, then catch myself. Did he say weapon?
My eyes go wide, then they narrow suspiciously. “Keep talking.”
He pushes off the counter, sensing an advantage somehow. I frown at him, letting him know he’s going to have to do some more necking before he gets me into bed on this.
He approaches slowly.
“I call it the gun.”
“The gun?” I echo. I have that roiling feeling in my belly again. “What exactly is it, Krycek?”
Then, before he can speak, I flash on a vision. One so powerful it would knock me down if I weren't in a chair already. It’s Krycek, ordering the firing of… My eyes squeeze closed tighter. It goes rocketing into the sky. Krycek watches from the ground as it targets the mother ship. And then I watch it impact, the ship seeming to implode first for a split-second in which the earth holds its breath, silent, serene, before the resulting atomic explosion sends a shockwave so fierce it wipes out an entire continent in one moment before spreading, behind it a wall of fire, reaching to the edges of the planet and taking all remaining life with it. Until there’s nothing. The fires banked by a rain of ash that lasts for five years.
My eyes jolt open, and a wave of nausea rocks me. I double over in the chair, tears clouding my vision, and I can't breathe. Oh, fuck, I can't breathe.
Until I feel his hand alight on my shoulder.
I draw a ragged breath, bolting out of the chair, over-turning it as I back away from him. “You're going to kill us all,” I hiss. My back hits something, and I stare at him, repulsed and stunned.
He stares back, slowly beginning to frown deeply, his lips parting only to bare his teeth to me. “Not all. There are bunkers. I can take you there now that you're here,” he tries. Seeing my anger, he continues on a snarl, “It’s the only way, Mulder.”
“The only way?” I hurl back. I can't believe what I’m hearing. I shake my head. “You're insane. You're psychotic, Krycek, if you think that’s the answer.”
He takes a menacing step toward me. “Am I? Tell me, Mulder, what fucking answer have you come up with? Huh? Because I don’t think running away is going to work against what they have planned.”
I flinch. “Son of a bitch,” I whisper. How dare he? “I had no CHOICE!” I roar, pushing off the wall and shoving him backward. He stumbles but gets his feet under him fast, panting, eyes throwing hard sparks of challenge.
“Neither do I,” he counters, squaring off.
I walk into him, chest to chest. “I won’t let you do it, you crazy mother fucker,” I tell him. “You can't make this decision. I don’t care what they're planning, Krycek.”
And then, not even giving me time to take a breath, he utters, “Mind control.” I stop. I stare at him. He swallows and continues. “The ultimate weapon. Tomorrow night, Mulder. This planet will be populated by drones. I don’t plan to be one.” He tilts his head, not backing away. I have no choice but to drop my gaze to his lips. “Do you?” he asks.
Oh God. I close my eyes. And I see that it’s true. I stumble back. His hand wraps around my upper arm, squeezing tight. I shake him off and turn away, the heels of my hands fitting into my eye sockets, blocking out all light.
“How do you know?” I manage to ask.
I hear him breathe deeply behind me. “I know,” he says with such weighty responsibility that I'd have to believe him even if I hadn't just seen it for myself. “I’ve known for over a year now.”
I whirl on him. “You what?” I advance on him again. “You knew for that long and…”
“I’m dead, remember!” he shouts.
I shove him again. “I could have DONE SOMETHING!”
He comes back at me, and I deck him, going for the jaw. He staggers sideways, hand coming up to cup his face. He turns his eyes up to mine.
“Everyone who so much as DREAMS about you winds up dead, Mulder!” he accuses.
My eyes narrow. He said dream. Does he have them? Like me? I search him, but he looks away. And he’s right. The son of a bitch. I’ve gotten more than one informant killed when I thought I was being completely safe. Anybody who values their life in the least hasn't as much as bothered to breathe my name in the last two years.
“Tomorrow?” I gasp, the thought stealing my breath. He straightens, stretching his jaw…nods. I close my eyes. “God…”
I realize what I have to do. It doesn't matter what the aliens have planned. There has to be another way to fight it. It doesn't matter. He can't do this. I can't let him do this.
I open my eyes, looking at the floor, because I can't meet his gaze right away. I swallow the sickness, swallow all thought, and just try to act. But as I take a step toward him, our gazes lock. My eyes widen in horror. But I throw myself on him anyway, hands going around his throat, the force of my attack taking him to the floor under me.
I get my legs on his arms and tighten my fingers, squeezing out the life.
I can't look at him now. I can't meet those eyes. can't connect. Even as enemies. He kicks at me, and I accept the blows and the pain as my due. I tighten my hands more, hearing him choke, unable to breathe.
And then… I arch in a rictus of pain so intense it blinds me. My face twists and a strangled cry tears out of my body. My hands wrench back from his throat and I fall away, dizzy, hot, hurting, sick.
I feel the contents of my stomach violently pushing up my throat, through my mouth, down my front, and I’m convulsing on the cool tile.
“Mulder…” Krycek croaks beside me, larynx bruised, and his hand closes on my arm and hauls me up. I try to run, to pull away, but my feet leave the floor, too. My whole body, thrown across his, and I’m carried quickly from the kitchen.
I have no choice but to let myself relax. I can't fight. I’m useless. I let him cart me into the bathroom, lowering me cautiously to the ground next to the toilet. Then, as the next eruption of sick clogs my airway, he holds me over the bowl by the shoulder, and I retch.
The vision of killing him slips away. I can't hold onto it. Just the vibration of that memory as I push it away from me is such pain that I can't imagine surviving it.
My insides contract as though trying to squeeze themselves through my esophagus. I seize up, mouth wrenched open as my jaw locks and I can't inhale. I can only see the ooze as it gurgles out of me and feel Krycek’s hand slipping down back.
I’m dying. I tried to kill him, and I’m dying. My only helpless thought as I plummet into darkness is that I guess that wasn't the answer afterall.
“Shit. Fucking shit.”
I pace the bathroom, Mulder a rigored shell on the floor beside the toilet. This is the second time. And I don’t know what to do.
I kneel next to him, trying to turn his face with my hand. “Wake up,” I spit. “Wake up, Mulder.” But there’s nothing. I stand and punch the wall, then begin pacing once again.
He woke up from the last one in about forty-five seconds. He seemed better, but then once I had him sitting up, he just went into convulsions all over again. I got him over the toilet and held him there, hand close to shaking, as he vomited up his guts. Then he passed out once more. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he went stiff. I caught him as he started to fall sideways to the floor. I laid him down as gently as I could. He’s been out for over a minute now.
“Shit!” I yell. My throat is torn, a tight mass of bloody pain he gave me. He tried to kill me. And I know why he did it. He can't believe this is the only way. Not like I do. He’s not built for this level of destruction. It’s not his way. Not his make-up.
I don’t know what to do. I think he might be dying. Oh God… Maybe poisoned by someone. I can't let him die. Even if he wakes just to be able to have another crack at killing me. I can't allow his death. I can't. Fuck, I’m scared.
He groans and blinks.
“Mulder,” I whisper, falling to his side.
His eyes flutter open and have trouble finding and then focusing on me. When he does, I attempt a smile. It falters on my lips. Probably for the best. He can't think that it would be sincere.
I hold his gaze with nothing but sheer will. “Mulder,” I command. “Stay with me, Mulder. All right?”
He tries to sit up, and I reach out and cup the back of his neck in my palm.
“Easy,” I growl. “Mulder, take it easy. Just breathe.”
His eyes look to me in fear. He sees a monster in me. Like everybody else. I swallow, feeling the muscles of my throat burn with ache.
Then I watch his eyes widen, the fear enveloping him. He tries to hold it back, but I see that it’s going to happen again, despite his blatant, horrible terror of it. I tip him gently over the toilet, my own insides revolting, and it starts all over again, the retching coming from deep inside his poor, trembling body. I stroke his shoulder with my thumb as tears spring to my eyes.
“Mulder…” I whisper. “It’s okay,” I murmur inanely. I have nothing else for him. He vomits loudly, bringing up nothing, but it seems unending. “It’s okay,” I try again, but my voice catches and a tear slips down my face.
God, I’m so scared. I’m so fucking scared.
I just got him here. Two days before the end. I don’t want to go on alone. Completely alone. Not when I thought he was going with me.
“Mulder,” I whisper. But he’s already gone again. I lean down but only see the whites of his eyes. I swallow my sound of distress and lay him down again, on his side.
I put my hand over my mouth, crouching beside him, and I watch his still body silently.
My body can't take this. I must be dying. I find I’m more grateful for Krycek’s hand on my back than I think I’ve been for anything in my life up to this point. It makes me just a little less afraid, and that’s monumental right now.
As I fall into the pit of black once again, I try to take that with me…the simple feel of his warm hand.
………
I’m quiet. At peace. I feel neither hot nor cold. I feel like nothing. And then I hear that sweet sonorous melody. A woman’s voice, floating through the room like a ghost.
Say nighty-night and kiss me.
Just hold me tight and tell me you'll miss me.
While I’m alone and blue as can be,
Dream a little dream of me.
I open my eyes to see Krycek. He’s standing over the record player. There’s a lamp on, but otherwise the room is dark. The orange-gold glow bathes his body in warmth. His chin is dropped and he’s listening, swaying slightly once.
“Krycek…” I try to call, but he can't hear me. I try to say it again, but his name dies in my mouth as I watch him. He turns just slightly. Just enough. And I can see that he’s crying.
I reach out, and suddenly, I’m impossibly far away. I frown and blink. And when I open my eyes again, I see the bathroom. But I can still hear the music, eerily drifting down the hall. And I don’t feel sick.
I’m lying on the floor. Krycek looks different. He looks like a kid, hair long, leather bomber jacket falling off one shoulder. Two arms. He’s holding a gun, looking down at his own hand as if it belongs to someone else.
My father is next to me, dead.
I gasp, but then I look back to Krycek as he stashes the gun. The bathroom dissolves around us. My father fades away. And it’s just Krycek and me in a dingy motel room, and he doesn't know I’m here. Tears stream down from his closed eyes..
I blink again, this time keeping my eyes closed for a long moment. When I open them, I’m sitting on the edge of the bathtub in Krycek’s house. I look down and see myself, lying on the floor, pale, stiff, eyes horribly open.
Krycek is pacing. He’s shaking. I watch him move about the small room. I stand, as if to go to him, but something roots me to the spot.
He kneels next to my body. He touches me. Softly. Right at the temple, brushing away my hair with the backs of his fingers.
His lips don’t move, but I hear, clear as day, “Forgive me.”
I blink, but the same vision persists. I watch him duck his head, hiding his face from me, and his shoulders start to shake.
This time, when I blink my eyes and open them, I’m back in my real body, the one with all the pain, collapsed on the bathroom floor. All the ambient noise is back. The buzz of the light bulb, the toilet running, Krycek’s ragged breathing beside me...
I turn my head, slowly, even already feeling the pain start to recede. He’s crouched like he was in the vision. His breath seems to stop when he notices my movement. His wide eyes implore me. I’m infused with a feeling of tranquility.
I hold his gaze. I take a breath, feeling it fill me with purpose. And I whisper it: “I forgive you.”
His eyes shift between mine. The hand that had been caressing my face withdraws as though scalded. He starts to stand, backing up slowly, now frowning. I just follow him with my eyes, feeling my body relax into the relief at having said it. All pain leaves, and I just watch how my words change him.
“Wh—“ he starts, lips pursing on the unasked question. Then he laughs, short and cynical, but I see the truth behind it. The truth in his eyes. His gaze skirts away from me, like a frightened animal, like a guilty man. A man on the edge of breaking.
He backs against the door. I hold him steady in the light of my forgiveness. I feel it fill me up, more and more. I offer him a compassionate smile.
He balks, laughing shortly again, unaccepting. His palm flattens against the bathroom door behind him. He drops his face. He shakes his head. I just wait. And then I see the first tear fall.
………
I’m in bed. Krycek carried me here. I’m not sure how with the one arm. I made the trip asleep. But somehow, he lugged me up the stairs and into his bedroom.
I had no idea how strong he was. Really strong. Hard muscles, healthy bones, solid frame…and courage. He has a strange kind of courage I hadn't recognized before. This kind of brute perseverance that animates his entire being.
I still have to stop him. I have no idea how. I know the beast of his strength needs tempering. I just don’t know with what or where I come in.
Forgiveness seems not to have changed the final outcome of this world.
I guess I'd hoped it would.
I’ve kept down 7-Up and Saltines. I tell him I feel fine when he checks on me, which is often, but he just scowls as though I’m trying to deceive him with platitudes.
I do feel fine. I feel infinitely better. Just exhausted now.
This room is the one I saw in my vision. The one where I saw Krycek crying.
I think of Gibson. I wonder if this is how he sees things. These horrible, wonderful visions. I wonder if he’s learned how to respond correctly before the pain and nausea come to take him over. I hope he’s safe wherever he is. I hope he can know the comfort of being taken care of again. He’s strong, too. Strong in his head. But like the rest of us, he needs more.
Krycek needs more. I need more.
“Thirsty?” Krycek asks from the doorway, holding a bottle of soda.
I turn my head on the pillow. I nod slightly. He walks into the room, taking it over with this presence.
I fear this man. What power he has and what he plans to do with it. But alongside the fear…I understand him. I wish I didn't. But I do.
He stands beside me, and I scoot up a little as he hands me the drink. I close my eyes as it washes down my abused throat. I finish, panting. As I pass the bottle back, our fingers touch.
“Please don’t,” I hear myself whisper. He inhales sharply. The room is too quiet. I find his eyes with my own. “Please don’t do this.”
He frowns at me, eyes lit with tears. “I won’t become a drone,” he hisses. But it’s soft. He’s careful with me.
I reach out and put my fingers to the back of his hand. “There’s hope,” I say, not knowing where it’s coming from, knowing he can't just believe me but saying it anyway. “Alex…there’s still hope.”
He backs away from my touch, from my words. I know what he’s thinking. That the only hope we have is to release those we can to death, to destroy the destroyer, to free ourselves by any means necessary. And if I didn't feel that there was another way, I'd agree. God, I'd agree. But it’s not the way, even though I don’t know what is. It’s not him I won’t be able to forgive if this happens. If I can't stop him from wiping out fully ninety-nine percent of this world’s humanity.
I'll always know there was another way. And I'll die knowing I could have stopped it.
To my surprise, he doesn't leave the room. He sits in a chair next to the record player he brought back up. “What kind of music do you like, Mulder?” he asks. It’s almost dispassionate, his voice. Anyone would think so. Except me. I see the pain he’s guarding. I hear the lost hope.
I smile a little. “Got any T-Rex?”
He laughs before he can stop it. It leaves his lips, aborted. His lashes flutter. I can see he’s uncomfortable with the simple, human connection. Well, he asked.
He clears his throat. “No.”
“Well, how about the Stones?” I try.
He slants me a look. He blinks. Then he reaches into a cardboard box, thumbing through the album sleeves. He pulls one out and shakes the vinyl out into his lap. Then he sets the sleeve aside and puts the record on.
The angel voices sing, and then the first lovely, poetic guitar strains of “You can't Always Get What You Want” start up. I close my eyes on an indulgent sigh. It’s perfect. We listen in what has to be termed companionable silence until I drift back off into sleep.
………
Ships. Dark and menacing and dotting the sky like malignant cells. I’m looking up at them as the explosions near. Krycek is beside me.
There are screams in the distance, and Krycek is tense, but I feel hope surge through my being.
Hope because…
They're here. God, they're beautiful. Fully triple the size of the biggest of the other ships. They glide into the atmosphere, and what light they block out passing over the sun, they emanate from their pulsing, saucer-shaped bodies. So light. So beautiful.
We’re coming.
I hear it as a flowing, harmonic voice in my heart. Not my head. My heart. And it’s wonderful.
Don’t give up. We're coming.
I look over at Krycek, and he’s looking at me, fearful indecision in his eyes.
“Trust,” I tell him, taking his hand. “Just trust me.”
He blinks. And I wake.
I hate doing this to him. I'll come back for him once it’s set. I'll come back for him. I’m not going in the ground without him. I just have to do this. And I know the stupid shit would try to stop me.
I pull my jacket on and hurry to the door.
“Alex, no.”
Fuck.
Quit fucking calling me that, Mulder. Jesus, he’s going to make me actually punch his goddamned lights out. Or tie him down. I turn, jaw set.
“Mulder, you don’t under…”
I stop, because he’s standing there leaning in the doorframe, trembling. He looks too weak to stand. And his eyes are brimming with tears. But he’s smiling.
“Alex,” he says again. I grip my car keys until the dull, jagged blades dig into the soft flesh. “Just listen to me,” he says, offering his hand out, palm up. I drop my eyes to it, blinking madly. I bring my gaze back to his.
“I don’t have time for this bullshit,” I tell him, starting to turn again, stuffing my keys into my pocket and taking the door.
“You've been having dreams, haven't you?” he says, louder now, making me stop again, turned away from him. “Dreams about me.”
I quiet my gasp, hand on the doorknob.
“I know you have,” he continues, persistent. I hear it in his voice: life or death. “You told me to find you. You're the one who brought me here.”
I shake my head. But I can't deny it. I do have the dreams. I did say that. I just didn't mean it.
“I see things, Alex,” he goes on. “I see the future.”
I hear him swallow thickly, losing his breath. I half turn to him, fingers still grazing the metal. I can see my reflection in it before I turn my gaze on him, frowning.
His eyebrows lift. “I heard you…when you called me.”
“But I didn't…” I begin, voice rough.
“Something in you did,” he says, cutting me off. Then he licks his lips. “I believe your soul did. Because it knows the truth. Like I do.”
I squint. “What truth?” Finally, I face him. “Mulder, if I don’t get to the site and start the detonation code, we're going to be mindless lemmings by the end of today, is that what you want?”
He shakes his head, taking a step toward me, visibly fighting off his exhaustion to stand before me. “No,” he tells me. “No, Alex. I don’t. And it doesn't have to be that way.”
“Mulder,” I growl.
“Just listen!” he growls back, and his conviction holds me in place. Even though I know I should go. Even though I can't believe what he’s telling me. He holds me here. “I’ve had other visions. I saw your gun,” he says. “I saw what will happen if you use it.”
I just stare at him, and he rolls his eyes in frustration. “Look, there’s an alpha-numeric string painted on the side in red, all right?” He closes his eyes. “It’s X264RT79B. isn't it?” he pleads. His eyes fly open. “isn't it, Alex?”
Before I can stop it, I’ve taken a step toward him. He got the number right. That part was right. God, but how can I believe him? When he has no alternative…no plan…nothing concrete for me to stand on with him. No real hope for me.
He takes a breath. “they're coming, Alex,” he sighs. He steps forward…closer…edging toward me. I frown. “Positives, friendlies, benevolent extraterrestrials, beings of light…they’re coming, and the war’s going to end. You have to wait.”
I frown deeply. “Are you telling me you dreamed this?”
“Damnit, don’t get closed-minded on me now, you asshole,” he says, shaking his head. “I know you've had the dreams, too. You told me to find you and you told me to hurry. Didn't you?”
I drop my eyes in defeat. I close them.
“Alex,” he stresses, and now his hand reaches out to gently take my wrist. My eyes open on it, not restraining, just touching, encircling. “they're coming to bring us peace. They can stop the colonists. But we have to let them.”
I sigh in sick frustration, “Well, fuck, Mulder, where are they, then? Today’s the day!” Then I yell, “They're LATE!” and wrench my wrist away.
He just steps forward and grabs it again. “The world had to choose peace. The more that choose, the faster they come.” He shakes my arm gently. “They helped lead me to you. they're sending me messages every day and every day they get stronger. Alex, we have to wait for them! You have to trust me! Please,” he whispers. “Trust me.”
I look into his soft gaze. His breath is hot on my cheek. He’s standing close. “I…” My eyes drop to his parted lips. I feel my heart nearly stop as I answer. “I can't.” I pull free from his grasp. I walk backward, away from him. I turn to the door and take the knob.
“You asked me to forgive you,” he says softly.
I gasp.
I hear him walking up behind me slowly. I tense. But I can't turn. And I can't leave.
“That was real,” he murmurs. “It’s all real, Alex. It’s all true. I need you to trust me.” His hand touches my shoulder. I gasp again. He whispers, “Please, trust me. You're the one. It has to be you. Alex, YOU have to choose not to hate anymore.”
I close my eyes. And I see what he’s asking me to choose. Not just peace. Not just trust.
He’s asking me to…love?
I feel something I’ve been trying to ignore begin to surface. I feel something shift inside, something deep into the core breaking free.
“I can't,” I whisper, already feeling myself fall apart. I have too much hate. Too much pain. I’m too angry and with too many damned good reasons. This world has taken my arm, taken my humanity, my freedom, anything good and just spat on it…and I’m supposed to…
God, all I remember, all I know of this world is shit. My superstitious Russian mother telling me, “Alexei…you were born under a bad sign…a bad, bad sign.” Shaking her head.
I shake mine, now. I speak through gritted teeth, “I can't.”
The hand on my shoulder tightens. “Just me, then,” he says, so close to my ear. “Can you just feel it for me…Alex?”
I inhale, tears falling down my flushed cheeks. I’m the one shaking now. I feel the weight of this decision falling between my shoulder blades, pressing down. I feel Mulder’s hand stroke over that very spot, soothing.
“Mulder…” I start, but I have no way to finish.
“Just…me. Start with me,” he says, lips touching my ear. “And I'll do the rest.”
And I find myself taking a breath, holding it, and then nodding. God, nodding. Saying yes to him, letting him take my hand off the doorknob, letting him turn me, bringing my eyes to meet his. I blink furiously, denying the tears that hang there in my eyes.
His voice is a whisper, “Thank you.” And then he’s falling, collapsing into me, and I have to hurry to wrap my arm around him and hold him up.
“Mulder?” I gasp.
He nods, letting me know it’s different, not like the last time. I nod in return, frowning into his hair.
The buzzer goes off, and he jumps. I tell him, “they're here for me. To take me to the site. I planned it.”
He leans back, watching me confront my first opportunity to take it back, to choose differently.
I let him go to push my thumb to the buzzer. “I’m not going,” I tell them. “We're not going through with the launch.”
There’s a pause as I look at Mulder, then a voice comes over the line. “Sir…I’m under orders from you to get you to the launch site today at any cost.”
I frown and push the button again. “I’m rescinding those orders. You may go.”
“I can't do that, sir,” the voice announces.
I curse as he continues, knowing the others are probably already working on my security. I grab Mulder by the hand and pull him toward the back of the house. “C'mon,” I mutter. “They think I’ve been compromised. C'mon!” I hiss, and he runs behind me until we reach the stairs that lead down to the basement and the underground passage leading out.
Krycek grunts as he shoves the door open and daylight spills down on us. We take off together down into the dense forest, having come up on the outside of Krycek's security.
I push my legs to take me and focus on Krycek’s hard breaths next to me, hearing the shouts echoing at our backs.
“At the bottom of the hill, go left,” Krycek tells me.
I pant, letting gravity propel me down the slope, praying that I don’t fall. At the bottom, we both veer left and run together down the crevasse of a steep ravine. I follow his lead, dodging rocks and trees and just staying as close behind as I can.
He motions with his hand off to the right, and I see some dense undergrowth. When we get there, he holds up some branches that he’s obviously cut to conceal the opening, and gestures with his head, “Go through.”
I crawl on my belly, getting to the other side, and then hold the branches up for Krycek as he follows, slithering through with a grunt. I meet his eyes for just a moment and I wonder if he's remembering Tunguska like I am.
He motions to wait and stay quiet. I grimace to control my breathing. Soon, we hear them trampling through the ravine, passing where we crouch in the brush. A Russian phrase is shouted and another answers it, and then the sound of their crushing boots is fading in the other direction.
Krycek motions, and I follow him in a crouch until we're out of the undergrowth and on a new trail. He reaches back and, to my surprise, takes my hand in his, leading me now at a fast walk.
When we've gone about a hundred yards, he turns his head back every other step to tell me, “they're headed into a thicket.” Then he adds, “This opens up on a clearing in about a mile. Can you make it?” His eyebrows are up.
I nod and swallow, squeezing his hand. “Yeah. Keep moving. I'll follow.”
He nods and then lets my hand go, moving stealthily down the narrow trail.
I fight the exhaustion of my body, relying on adrenaline to keep me pushing forward. Adrenaline and the sight of Krycek’s body ahead of me, cutting the way through the wilderness.
Suddenly, he stops. “Hear that?” he whispers.
I’m quiet, listening. And then I do hear it. A dull roar, like a waterfall, or ocean waves crashing into a cliff face. Or airplanes. Jets. And kind of not like any of those things. He frowns at me, but a smile is spreading over my face.
“How far’s the clearing?” I ask excitedly.
“Half a mile,” he answers.
“Go,” I tell him. “Run!”
He frowns, but I nod, and he turns, taking off down the path. I’m on his heels, breathing hard, my heart jumping in my chest as the noise gets louder and louder. I almost want to push past him, to take the lead. I feel utterly exhilarated. Any exhaustion just vanishes with each running step I take.
“Faster, Alex,” I yell.
He obliges with a concerned look back in my direction. I just smile and up my pace, matching his speed until we break through the pines into a gold field with grass up to our knees. It’s blowing as if by a tornadic wind, and I immediately turn my gaze up to the sky to see…
“Oh God,” Krycek rumbles next to me, stopped dead in his tracks.
My eyes take them in, three of them filling the sky and then more out of sight on the horizon. Impossibly large, looming ships. they're slowly moving in over the other, smaller ones the colonists have had hanging in the sky for months. And whereas the colonists’ ships are a dull grey, these ships are…irridescent. Pulsing…fluctuating from purple to pink to green and then blue, then back to purple. Not flashing. Just…thrumming. Like a heart. Flooding the sky with warm, diffused light. I blink in disbelief.
It’s true.
It really was true.
And I realize how much I'd been acting purely on…faith.
Krycek mutters something in Russian beside me. I look over, already smiling. “Alex,” I say, not knowing what else there is. He looks at me, dumbfounded, and then we both walk forward, out into the clearing, mouths agape, eyes lifted skyward as the ships settle over the others, coming to a halt.
And then there’s silence. We watch for a moment more, then Krycek and I look at each other. It hasn't been this quiet since…
“No explosions,” I tell him. Then, “How far is the city from here?”
He swallows, squinting. “Two miles?”
I nod. “Let’s go.”
We arrive in just under an hour, coming out atop a hill to the east. I can tell already that everything is different. We haven't heard one explosion the entire time, and now that we're looking out over the war-torn town, it is to find the fires banked, the smoke being swept away on a brisk wind.
I look at Krycek, and then we wordlessly descend.
As we walk through the outskirts of the town, we start seeing them. Replicants. Lying dead in the streets. There’s no trauma to their bodies. they've just fallen into useless heaps of metal bones under their all-too-human skin.
“What do you think it did to them?” Krycek asks, deep voice soft with awe.
“I dunno,” I reply, looking around myself.
The town’s people seem shocked, telling Krycek in quick Russian how the replicants just fell where they stood and the fires seemed to put themselves out.
As we talk to a woman near the middle of town, suddenly there’s an harmonic hum from the sky. We look up to see all three ships pulsing a dark blue, almost indigo. And as we watch, the colonist’s ships start moving. They haven't budged in the sky for seemingly endless weeks. And now they're moving slowly, uniformly, away and then finally out of sight.
Tentative crowds have gathered by now in the streets to watch the retreat. And when they're no longer even dots in the sky, cries of joy ring out through the town.
I feel a deep warmth in my chest. I look down, the celebratory sounds of the people around me quieting in my own head.
“Mulder?”
A hand closes around my biceps. I take a deep breath and look at him. “I've gotta get back to your house,” I say, feeling the need very distinctly now that I’ve spoken it.
He frowns, but he nods.
“I can walk,” I tell him. At that he scowls more, but I look deeply into his eyes, seeking his understanding.
He nods again, and we start back out of town.
“What is it?” he asks me.
“I’m not sure,” I reply. “I think maybe…they want to talk to me.”
We both check the sky compulsively during the long walk back to his house. The beautiful ships linger, fading back to a soft pink now that the other ships are gone.
Krycek starts to enable the alarms once we're inside, and I stop him.
“No. We're not in any danger.” I look at him pointedly. “From anyone.” I take his arm in my hand. “Do you trust me?”
His finger drops from the console, albeit hesitantly. I smile.
“I need to sit,” I tell him, and he leads me over into the living room.
“No,” I say. “Your room. The one with the record player.”
I can tell he’s trying not to be creeped out by me. I feel an overwhelming tide of warmth when I look at him struggling with this. I’m not sure what to say to make it easier. Maybe it’s not supposed to be easy for him. All I know is that I wasn't lying when I said I forgave him. I can feel it, a completed process. No resentment. No pain.
I follow him up the stairs, feeling my pulse quicken. Because I know I can fully trust my own intuition now, and it’s telling me something miraculous is happening.
I stop him with a hand on his arm. “Alex.”
He turns to me, that perplexed expression haunting his face. It’s all anathema to his existence up till now. No alarms, no hate. And he just has to keep trusting me. Because he’s not the one getting the visions, the feelings. I am. He has only one feeling he has to keep acting on, and I know how hard it is because I almost can't believe he feels it. I almost can't comprehend that I do.
My eyes drop to his lips.
“Ever kiss a man, Alex?”
His breath leaves him in a stunned exhale.
"On the lips, I mean," I add, smirking. I step in. His breathing becomes fast and short, shallow with uncertainty. I tilt my head, ignoring his fear, ignoring my own, and press my lips to his open mouth.
He’s wet and soft. I open my own mouth and draw his bottom lip inside, tasting him with my tongue. I close my eyes, letting myself press up against his body as I taste deeper, slipping my tongue into his mouth now. I hadn't meant to. I hadn't meant to start dipping it in this deep. To pick up a rhythm. hadn't meant to feel his back under my hand and push him into me, sealing the fronts of our bodies tightly together.
I hadn't meant to get an erection. I hadn't meant to check for an answering one. His soft mouth lets forth a groan when I find it with my leg. He rips out of the kiss, lips sex-red, still parted.
I let him go, trying to dampen the yearning I feel to make this all about something physical. It’s not. It’s more. It was always supposed to be. Even if having him under my hands, my mouth, pulled tight against my body feels like a healing we might never effect with our words. I have to do more. He has to know it’s more.
“They want to take me,” I tell him simply.
He backs away as if I’ve struck him.
“Just for a little while,” I explain. My heart burns with truth, telling him this. I step back in.
“It'll happen while we're asleep,” I explain.
This gets a look. Even more suspicious, if he can manage it.
I swallow. “they're saying they'll return me by the next night.”
“Why take you?” he demands.
“Turn the music on,” I say. “Please?”
He sighs, but he walks over to the player and turns it on.
“Play that Ella Fitzgerald,” I request.
It starts on ‘Someone to Watch Over Me.’ I walk over to the bed and sit on the edge.
“Sit with me?”
He hesitates but then lowers down by my side. And I explain it to him as best I know how. Because I’m not getting language but images. Wonderful images of them teaching me…others…how they work, how we can make things better for ourselves.
I tell him how they're here because we chose peace. I leave out that when they send an image of Alex it’s accompanied by a swell of unconditional love and pride. I don’t think he could take that right now.
I tell him that they're not here to take control. They won’t even stay. But for those of us that are ready, they'll come to us telepathically, while we sleep, while we meditate, and they'll start to teach us what they know, what they've learned.
He listens intently, frowning, but quiet. Letting me tell him all that I will. I feel from him impatience, a few walls coming up as I tell him that I trust them. But then a flood of emotion, of trust, from him directed at me. I smile softly.
“I want to go,” I say. “I want to do this.”
He frowns and looks down.
“I'll come back.” I touch his cheek, and he looks back up. “I promise.”
He swallows. “What do you want from me, Mulder?” he asks, voice thick.
I flush and look down. I take a steadying breath. “Will you hold me for a while?” I ask. It’s so hard to do. God, it’s so hard. I know he wants to. I knew when I first arrived here and we wrestled on his floor. I’ve known for even longer than that. So it’s not that I think he'll refuse. Maybe it’s not fear I’m feeling. Maybe it’s just…the walls falling.
I settle back in the bed, making room for him. He frowns at me, then cuts his eyes to his prosthetic.
“You can take it off…if you want,” I tell him, because I just received a wave of distress from him about it being there.
I watch as he stands…hesitates…and then strips is shirt off over his head, letting it fall to the floor at his feet before working the arm off and laying it by the bed.
He turns the light off before crawling in with me. A surge of tenderness floods my chest as we face each other. I curl into his body and tuck my head into the crook of his neck, and soon, I feel his arm envelope me like a wing, closing me up in damp heat.
Sometime in the middle of the night, he left my arm empty.
The record is finished. The room is too quiet. He’s gone.
I sit up, trying to quell the panic that threatens to over-ride my fragile trust. I knew this was going to happen, I tell myself, sitting up in the bed and leaning back against the headboard. I close my eyes before I look down at where he laid.
Mulder. In my arm.
It felt so good to be close to someone. To have a need met for once. To be quiet with him pressed against my body.
We didn't even have sex. Even though I’m reasonably sure we both wanted to. I could feel his stiff erection prodding my thigh until he finally went to sleep. But all we did was…hold one another. Closer than close. Mulder shed his shirt so we could feel it more, and I wrapped my arm around him as far as it could go and then rolled back with him until he was laying across my chest.
The feel of that second heartbeat answering my own was…
I swallow thickly and get out of bed. He won’t be back until tonight. I have to spend the day trusting that.
It feels inordinately odd to fix myself breakfast, but I do. It certainly hasn't sunk in yet that my life’s work the past several months, no years, has been rendered utterly useless.
I peer out the window, letting my coffee get cold, and see that the ships are still glowing all across the sky. Is that where he is? Or is he farther away? How can this be happening? So fast, so out of my control.
I can't stay in this house. Not all day just wondering if this is the time he’s going to be wrong.
I decide there’s really only one place to go. I shower and dress and grab up my jacket, feeling a little guilty pang as I lock the alarms down behind me. I hope they'll allow me this short-coming. What if they don’t return Mulder based on this doubt I’ve displayed? Are they even watching? Or is it just Mulder they care about? They haven't been talking to me.
I don’t think.
I decide to risk it, leaving the alarm set. If they're that fickle, they deserve for me to blow them out of the sky.
I get in my car and drive into the little town.
“Alexei!” Joseph calls as I enter. I smile at him. “Have you heard, Alexei? They are gone!” He claps his hands together once, ignoring their shake. “Like that, eh?”
I bring my hand from behind my back, brandishing the large bottle of expensive vodka, and his eyes shine with youthful mischief.
………
As evening fades into night, I leave Joseph, rocking in his chair, smoking a fragrant pipe, and listening to old Russian folk songs over a third drink.
“Dobrey den’, Alexei,” he bids me.
I smile at him, answering the same, and I leave.
On the walk to the car, I see the old man on the stoop. He looks up at me. “Just got back,” he tells me.
"Back?" I ask.
Then he gestures with his head up to the sky.
I start, frowning down at him. “You…”
“Da,” he answers. Then he smiles up at me. “You burn now, eh? Yes.” He looks back out at the street as always. “You shine. Go home and shine.”
I can't get back to my car fast enough.
When I pull up to the drive, I notice the light is on in the bedroom upstairs, and there’s one on in the living room, burning a warm gold, welcoming me.
I punch in the code that gets me inside the gate.
Nothing happens.
“Goddamnit,” I curse, hitting the keys harder.
“That’s not going to help,” comes Mulder’s amused voice over the intercom.
I sigh in relief. He’s back. Thank God, he’s back.
“Open the gate, Mulder,” I growl, trying to sound threatening.
“Ah, but what’s the magic word?” he replies.
I sigh again, this time in frustration. Fuck, I just wanna get in there and rip his clothes off. Just get him on the foyer floor and show him where he belongs.
“Fuck, Mulder, I don’t know,” I answer. And then I just honk the horn for good measure.
“Calm down, it’s easy,” he says. “It’s a four-letter word, beginning with L and ending in E.” He pauses and then adds, “And there’s a V in it.”
I draw a deep, shaky breath.
“You don’t have to say it, Alex, just type it in,” he says.
I watch as the front door opens, and I see his silhouette, leaned up against the frame, waiting for me.
I punch in the letters. The gate starts to open.
I hear him smile. “Good,” he tells me. Then, “Come on home.”
END
Feedback taken to heart at shannon@hegalplace.com !
Woke Up This Morning
by Alabama 3
[And after three days of drinking with Larry Love, I jes get an inkling to go on home. So I'm walking down Coldharbour Lane, head hung low, three or four in the morning, the sun’s coming up and the birds are out singing; I let mahself into mah pad, wend my way up that spiral staircase and stretch out nice on the chesterfield. Pithecanthropus Erectus already on the CD player, and I just push that remote button to Sublimity, and I listen to the sweet sculptural rhythms of Charles Mingus, and JR Monterose and Jackie McLean duet on those saxophones and the sound makes its way out the window, mingling with the traffic noises outside, y'know, and all of a sudden I’m overcome by a feeling of brief mortality. 'Cos I’m getting on in the world, coming up on forty-one years, forty-one stony grey steps towards the grave, y'know: the box awaits its grisly load, and I’m gonna be food for worms. And just like Charles Mingus wrote that beautiful piece of music, ‘Epitaph’, for Eric Dolphy, I say ‘So long, Eric; so long, John Coltrane and Charles Mingus; so long, Duke Ellington and Lester Young; so long, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald; so long, Jimmy Reed; so long, Muddy Waters; and so long, Howlin' Wolf.’]
Woke up this morning
Got yourself a gun
Your Mama always said you'd be
The Chosen One.
She said, ‘You're one in a million
You've got to burn to shine,’
But you were born under a bad sign
With a blue moon in your eyes.
You woke up this morning
All that love had gone.
Your Papa never told you
About right and wrong.
But you're looking good, baby,
I believe that you're feeling fine—
Shame about it—
Born under a bad sign
With a blue moon in your eyes.
You woke up this morning,
The world turned upside down—
Lord above—
Thing's ain't been the same
Since the Blues walked into town.
But you're one in a million
'Cos you've got that shotgun shine—
Shame about it—
Born under a bad sign
With a blue moon in your eyes.
You woke up this morning
Got a blue moon in your eyes
Woke up this morning
Got a blue moon in your eyes
So sorry. Goddamn—
Goddamn shame about it
When you woke up this morning, everything was gone. By half past ten your head was going ding-dong ringing like a bell from your head down to your toes, like some voice trying to tell you there was something you should know. Last night you was flying but today you're so low Ain't it times like these that make you wonder if you'll ever know the meaning of things as they appear to the others; wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers. Don't you wish you didn't function, wish you didn't think beyond the next paycheck and the next little drink? Well you do, so make up your mind to go on 'cos when you woke up this morning everything you had was gone.
When you woke up this morning (Woke up this morning)
Woke up this morning (Woke up this morning)
Woke up this morning
You wanna be the Chosen One.
Yes, you know it. You just can't help yourself.
When you woke up this morning (Woke up this morning)
Woke up this morning (Woke up this morning)
Woke up this morning
You got yourself a gun.