Volition
Website: http://themkshrine.angelfire.com
Pairing: M/K
Rating: R for dark themes, a little blood, and sexual suggestiveness.
Keywords: damaged, post-silo Krycek
Spoilers: Piper Maru/Apocrypha
Disclaimers: They’re not mine.
Archive: Yes, to any list it's posted to. Others just ask.
Date of first posting: 11/25/03
Summary: I think of revenge. Not against the alien who took me there. Not against the old men who got me into this. Him. The man who knew where I was and left me there.
My jacket is torn and there’s blood everywhere. I hold my arm and fight against my own lungs, running down the dripping resevoir, stumbling, falling, scrambling back up, and running again.
I lost them, but I keep running. My boots fling dirty, cold water up to wet my jeans. Some even lands on my face. It runs down my forehead with my sweat. All of it goes cold, and when it runs down to my chest, it feels like it’s going to freeze on my body.
I can’t run hard enough or long enough to get warm.
After a while, my legs don’t work underneath me anymore and I fall. This time I don’t run when I get up. My chest hurts. My breath comes in short vapor bursts like clouds of nuclear poison.
I walk over to the drainage pipe, crawl in, huddle, and wait.
***
I had two hundred dollars in my wallet when I got out of the silo. They took it. Took everything. When I left in the middle of the night, they didn’t like it very much, and one of them got a slice of my arm.
I’m still covered with the oil. The residue. My sweat slides through it, making tracks on my skin. I clean up my arm with a fifth of vodka I steal from a liquor store on 5th street. I looked at the newspapers lining the cart on the way out to discover I’m in Fargo now.
I pour the alcohol over my arm, then tie the wound off with my henley. I drink the rest, but I vomit it back up in an alley.
It starts to snow as I walk around downtown looking for a car to steal. The one I find also has about fifty bucks in the glove compartment.
I rev the engine of the Trans Am and start on the long road home. I can still hear it in my head telling me things.
I don’t stop except to piss and eat what I can keep down which isn’t much. I stick mostly to granola bars and 7-Up. I can’t think of much else but getting back.
I find a hard rock station somewhere in Illinois and turn it up as loud as I can stand it. Louder. Just because I know It wouldn’t see the point…wouldn’t let me. I make my ears hurt, my brain pound with a very earthly headache. I grind my teeth. I beat my fist on the steering wheel. I think of revenge. Not against the alien who took me there. Not against the old men who got me into this.
Him. The man who knew where I was and left me there.
His face drives me from state to state, bringing me closer.
Sometimes I’m so angry, I start to cry. It makes me glad I’m alone. Really alone. Moving a hundred miles per hour under my own volition and very, very alone.
I don’t let the tears fall. Not one. And then I’m home. Not home. Just back where I was last. Before Hong Kong, the smell of my own blood on him, living at night in the neon, then It.
I steal a wallet off a guy just west of the city. It’s enough for another fifth of vodka, gas for the car, and a motel room for the night if I want one. I don’t. There’s no point. It would only delay the inevitable. And after I see him… Well. That’ll be it.
When I get there, I don’t bother with anything else. I’m sick with it. I park the car a couple of blocks away, screw the silncer into place, and walk to his building, staying in the shadows. There are tears in my eyes from the cold wind.
He’s not home, so I break in and lock the door behind me, standing in the middle of his living room in the dark. I have the gun in my hand and I wait. When I hear his key in the lock, my lip trembles. My hand doesn’t.
“Ever vomit black oil?”
He jumps back and I see him go to draw his gun. I lift mine further. Not this time. This is my night.
“Come here,” I tell him.
He hesitates, but then walks forward. What had seemed like darkness before now seems to glow with moon-neon blue. He walks past shadows toward me. I let him walk in close, his body almost touching my gun. My teeth are almost chattering. I’m still so cold.
I see his face. His face. Almost blank. It’s just a trace of fear. But I see it.
I lower the gun swiftly and strike out with my left hand, and for the first time I feel my fist impact hard with his jaw. I hear it. SMACK! And I watch Mulder go down. Because of me. I almost can’t see him now. His bent and crumpled body blurs and wavers in the cold blue.
“You left me there,” I grind out.
He lifts his head a little…looks at my boots. He breathes. He’s bleeding. I made him bleed. He looks up at me.
“No…” he says quietly. Too quiet.
“Yes!” I growl, blinking, aiming my gun at his head just like I’d imagined. “YES!” I scream and kick him in the side.
He groans and curls in on himslf. And suddenly it’s not blurry and I realize it’s because the tears I held in all the way from Fargo are finally falling.
I watch him try to get to his hands and knees. Watching him there, over the barrel of my gun, I realize I didn’t need to drive a thousand miles to do what needs to be done. That I can only manage half the deal. I hate that he’s done this to me.
I raise the gun to my own head and aim at my temple.
Mulder turns his head toward me and in the space it takes me to take a breath and start to squeeze, he jumps up and his body collides with mine. The gun goes off politely and I’m on the floor. Mulder’s on top of me, ripping it from my hand and throwing it to the side. Then he’s holding my arms down by the wrists. I turn my face away from him, sure I’m going to throw up at any moment.
“Fuck you, Mulder!” I sob. “Fuck you!!”
I want him to scream back at me and hit me. It’s what I know. If he won’t let me out, I want to at least have something normal. Something I can count on.
I sob beneath him, face turned, body spasming with pain.
“Fffffff,” I start. It turns into nothing, just more tears running down my face.
Then he’s laying himself down. On me. I feel his face fit into my neck, his hand releasing me and moving lightly over my hair. His other hand loosens on my wrist and moves slowly up to my hand, clasping it. His fingers are warm and soft.
“Fuck you,” I cry. And then I melt into his floor, his heavy, tender weight anchoring me down and feeling like the safest place I could be. It’s horrible.
“Alex,” he whispers.
I lick the salt from my lips, feeling his moving on my skin.
“I didn’t know,” he says. “I thought…they would get you… I didn’t know. I’m sorry.” His hand sifts through my hair and I shiver. “I’m sorry, Alex.”
I want to tighten my fingers around his. Hold his hand like he’s holding mine. Just to keep him here. Just to keep myself from flying into ten thousand broken pieces, from melting away and dripping down his floor like…
It’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone. A mental litany that hasn’t really caught on as reality for me. It was so much better, almost, to have it in me. I can hate it like I can’t hate him, whether or not he’s telling me the truth.
“Shhhhh,” he hushes and I realize I’ve been muttering to myself, maybe to him. There’s an ache that goes with having someone with me, not alone, someone who can tell me that yes, it’s gone. It’s really gone. I’m safe. From it if not from myself. Mulder, keep me safe from myself. Keep me.
But he’s getting up. Cold. He’s leaving me cold.
“Nuh-“ I object weakly, though I’m afraid I might start screaming.
He holds his hand out. “Get up.”
I look at it, at him. “C’mon,” he urges gently. His eyes are moist and colorless in the low light.
I take his hand warily and he helps me stand. He doesn’t let go as he pulls me after him. Out of his living room. Into his bedroom.
“Mulder,” I begin in protest. I don’t know what I’m protesting. I don’t know what’s real.
“Quiet,” he tells me, demands of me.
He turns to me and begins to slip my ruined jacket down my shoulders. Maybe I should just let it all go and let Fox Mulder create my reality for me. I swallow, looking at his lips because I can’t meet his eyes. But once my jacket falls to the floor, I do, too. I slide to my knees in front of him, knowing I should do this like I know I should take his punches and never ever again lay an unkind hand on him. He may not have let me out of that silo, but he’s my savior.
I reach, breathless, for his fly.
His hand strokes my cheek and he gasps once.
“No,” he murmurs, face tilted down to me, a small, sad smile gracing his full lips.
I frown and drop my eyes. His thumb slides across my bottom lip.
“Not tonight,” he says, and it sounds like a correction, like clarification. He cups the back of my head and guides me up.
Slowly, he takes my clothes off. Until I’m just in my briefs. He looks me over, as if only now seeing what a wreck I am, bloody, sweaty, and slicked with the residue from that thing. He frowns slightly more at the long, ugly cut on my arm. Then he tells me to follow him and leads me to his bathroom where he runs the water in the shower, determining its temperature for me.
He steps aside and I self-consciously take my underwear off and avoid his gaze, stepping under the water and repressing a sigh of ecstasy as I feel it slicing through the grime and finally getting rid of the last, vile traces of It. I wash myself well, watching in disgust as all the shit that’s been covering me, been a part of me for I don’t know how long, circles the drain and vanishes, leaving at least my skin and hair clean.
When I step out, Mulder is there, handing me a towel. He’s turned half away from me. I can still feel the touch of his hand on my cheek as I knelt in front of him. I take the towel and dry myself. He waits while I put my briefs back on. I’m unsure if this is what he wants. Unsure of anything at all. But he doesn’t stop me and is careful not to look at me.
I follow him back into the bedroom. He turns to me, but his eyes drop quickly from my face to my arm once more. He frowns again. Then, without a word, he leaves the room. I hear him in the bathroom once more. Then he’s back and I haven’t moved. I would have thought I’d have moved.
He cleans the wound with antisceptic. Gentle as a mother.
“How’d you get this?” he asks.
I whisper, “Getting away.”
He nods. Then he swallows. “How long?”
My voice chokes. “I don’t know.”
He takes a breath. “Later. Not now,” he says. I’m not sure what he means.
Then he wraps my arm, secure and healing. I let him. My bicep flexes once, hard, as his fingers accidentally brush the cut. He winces but says nothing.
I think about how much I screamed in that silo, how hard I fought that captivity. I can’t fight this. I should have known. Even when he hits me, it’s the kindest punishment I’ve ever known.
I watch then, nervous as a virgin, as he begins to undress himself…goes down to his dark boxer-briefs. Then he walks to the bed, turns the covers down, crawls in.
He looks at me. “You look tired, Alex.”
A small, quiet laugh escapes me. He smiles. Crooked and, once again, sad.
I crawl into bed with him.
He turns me on my side away from him…draws the covers back up. He wraps me up in his body. His dick is half-hard low against my back. Mine would be but I’m already falling asleep. Every part of me…falling. Safe and heavy, tucked into Mulder like a favorite pillow.
“Go to sleep,” he tells me unnecessarily. Then much quieter, “Let me do this.”
I think I sigh. And then I let go.
End
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