Something Wicked This Way Comes
In fact, I can't think of anything I wanted to be less—except dead.
Maybe.
Yes, I wanted an exciting life, but one that ended quietly, in peace, full
of respect, power, and wealth.
Instead, here I am at thirty-two, with nothing but the clothes on my back,
hunted, tired, dirty, and alone—not to mention missing my left arm.
It's raining now, grey, dismal drops running under the collar of my leather
jacket, soaking my already filthy white t-shirt, chilling me more than I had
ever thought possible.
Ducking into a nearby doorway, I watch the rain fall, harder now, reflecting
orange light from the neon glow of the city, and splashing into ever-growing
puddles at my feet.
I can't stay sheltered here for long—despite my solitude, I have
obligations—but at least I can stay out of the worst of the storm.
My immune system has already been compromised by fatugue, stress, and lack
of decent nutrition, but perhaps if I watch out, I can stay alive a little
longer.
Leaning against the doorframe, I feel myself sliding into oblivion, into the
darkness of unconciousness, which eventually transforms itself into a
restless sleep.
I awaken sometime later.
The rain has stopped, and the neon glare of the city gleams wetly on the
pavement, and in the scattered pools of rainwater.
My neck is sore, and the ache in my back speaks eloquently of cold and
stress.
I straighten, and step back out onto the street, pulling my collar up in
defense against the rain, heading towards the one place where I know I will
find peace—but whether it will be the peace of refuge or the peace of
death, I do not know.
One way or another, however, this ends tonight.
There will—must—be an end to the hostility between us—and if my death
is the price I must pay, so be it.
It takes—or seems to take—less time than I'd thought it would to travel
thirty-seven blocks in this dark, sleeping city, and his apartment building
looms in front of me before I am prepared.
Not that I will ever be prepared for this.
I let myself into the building, and walk up the stairs to his door.
I avoid enclosed spaces whenever possible—a phobia carried over from my
time in the silo.
Outside his door, I pause. The number gleams mockingly at me, and every
instinct in my body screams at me to turn and run, to get as far as possible
from this man, and from the effect he has on me, to flee the violence that
will undoubtedly erupt from our meeting—because we are truly opposites.
Each of us is represented in the other—the light of his spirit is the gaps
of my darkness, and I am the absence of light in his soul.
Trust no-one.
I want to believe.
Two opposing—and yet similar—statements that sum us up with a shocking
accuracy, and as conflicting as they are, as conflicting as we seem—I
trust no-one, while he wants to believe, and yet when I crave belief, he
refuses to trust—as conflicting as we seem, we are somehow, shatteringly
the same, connected, as are light and darkness—one is not, can not, exist
without the other.
But what wisdom is there in bringing us together? And what foolishness lies
in keeping us apart?
I fear that the simplest answer is none, that only in our absence from one
another lies the key to sanity. Because the violence caused by our combined
presence, by his swift, vicious reaction to me, and my submissive response
to his rage, could be enough to destroy us both.
And yet—it must be done.
With luck, he'll hear me out, listen to me, and perhaps let himself be
convinced.
Because so much—literally the world—depends on what use is made of my
information.
Whether or not I survive is, at this point, of little importance—although
my fragile ego doesn't like to admit it. My life could end, and no-one would
care at all—although sometimes, I dream of something different—of
fighting by his side, of mutual respect and need, of forgiveness and
acceptance, and of shared desire.
Pulling my mind away from these thoughts, I realize that I have been
standing here for over five minutes, and that the door will not open unless
I do something to make it do so.
With a sense of surreality, of reaching out and changing my fate forever, I
raise my hand, and knock at the door of Fox Mulder's apartment.
He was almost asleep when he heard it—a loud tapping at his door. He tried
to ignore it, but whoever it was knocked again, more insistently than
before.
With a groan, he pulled himself to his feet, and went over to the door.
He opened it—and barely had time to recognize Alex Krycek as the man who
stood on his threshold before the world erupted into action.
He heard the faint decompression of a silenced gun, saw Krycek's face twist
into a mask of controlled pain, and then the door burst inward as the other
man threw himself inwards, knocking them both off their feet.
The brunt of the impact knocked the breath out of Mulder's body, and he lay
stunned on the floor, with Krycek on top of him. He felt the tension in the
other man's muscles, the intense heat that radiated from his body—and then
Krycek rolled off of him, rising to his feet in a barely balanced series of
motions that revealed the anguish his movements caused him.
"Get up, Mulder." The other man's voice was low, ragged with the edges of
physical pain.
He felt a grip of iron close around his arm, and he was hauled abruptly to
his feet. The bone crushing grip released, and abruptly, Krycek had a gun in
his hand, and was pushing him towards the fire escape.
"I can only hope they didn't think to cover this exit. Damn it, I thought I
was in time!"
Krycek followed close behind him, his gait uneven. A quick glance backwards
showed Mulder a liquid trail of black that would be crimson in a brighter
light.
"What the hell?" he gasped.
Krycek took his hand off of Mulder's shoulder, raised his gun, and fired.
The window exploded outwards in a spray of glass, which fell downwards in a
shimmering spiral of sharp edges.
A sharp shove on his shoulder called him back to himself, and he felt
himself shoved upwards and outwards, onto the fire escape, and into the
night beyond his window.
Down the fire escape and out into the night he went, Alex Krycek pushing him
from behind every step of the way.
The man's gun was flat against his back, and if Krycek had to push him with
his gun hand... his mind shied away from the implications of those thoughts,
and from the memories they evoked within him.
Instead, he concentrated on running, on the actual physical feel of the
pavement beneath his feet, the air burning in his lungs, the sting of the
rain, lashing his face, and Krycek's hand spurring him ever onwards, further
from home with every step. He was so intently focused on the physical
sensations that he missed the other man's words the first time they were
spoken, and had to gaspingly ask for a repetition.
"I said," Krycek snapped, barely out of breath, "turn left!"
Despite the ease of his speech, Mulder could hear the repressed pain in his
words. He felt the pressure on his back increase suddenly, shoving him left
in a sharp turn, with Krycek right behind him like a shadow.
They turned into an alleyway, and he might well have kept running in a
mixture of adrenalin and confusion, but Krycek's hand stopped him, pushed
him against a wall, and held him there.
The hand shifted to cover his mouth, the grip of the pistol pressing into
his cheek, while Krycek's body pressed against his, pinning him where he
stood.
For a brief instant, Mulder considered biting the other man's hand—hard—
but dismissed it as a petty trick, not to mention slightly ridiculous.
Especially since Krycek was barely winded from the run, despite whatever
injury was putting that sharp edge of pain in his voice, and the hint of
tightness at the corners of his eyes.
Instead, he reached up, and flung Krycek 's hand away from his face with an
angry gesture.
"What the hell!?!" he snapped, rage pitching his voice more loudly than was
wise—and Krycek's hand slammed back over his mouth with a force that
stung, and a persistence that irritated him.
He reached up once more, to shove Krycek away, but froze as he heard the
soft sound of footfalls in the street beyond the alley.
They were not the steps of a late-wandering law abiding citizen, or even a
harmless drunk. He could almost sense the purpose in those footsteps, and
the menace that those muffled noises communicated returned him to utter
stillness and total silence.
His eyes locked on Krycek's face, on the familiar, upturned nose, the
tightly compressed lips, the new, faint lines of worry on his forehead, the
lines of pain around mouth and eyes.
Eyes.
Those jade-green, endlessly deep eyes.
He felt himself drowning in them, sliding deeper and deeper into a sea of
emerald... and then—a brief glare of illumination broke the neon-lit
darkness of their refuge.
Then, Krycek's hand was off his mouth and moving, not outwards, as he had
expected, but sideways, along the side of his face, and those jade green
eyes were liquid pools in the shadowed night, and then—and then Krycek's
lips were on his, pressing them open with insistence, with strength and
warmth, and Mulder was too shocked to fight back, too shocked to do anything
but react to the kiss with his lips, with his tongue, with both hands,
running his fingers through the other man's short, rain-soaked hair,
wrapping the other hand around the back of his neck.
Krycek's mouth tasted of spice, and of something without a name, like fire,
only darker and more intense, and despite the danger, despite the
incongruity of being in an alleyway kissing Alex Krycek in the middle of
the night, while would-be assassins hunted them—despite all of that, he
found himself lost in the sensations of tongue on tongue, lips on lips, and
of Krycek's hand, still holding the gun, pressed against the side of his
face.
When Krycek broke the contact—the kiss—stepping back as though nothing
had happened, he almost whimpered, taking a step forward before he came to
himself again. Shock and—he refused to call it longing—were replaced by
anger, and paralysis by the swift, violent movement of his fist towards the
other man's face, stopped only by the animal-like reflexes of Krycek's
trained body.
Mulder felt his back hit the wall again, and Krycek's face was suddenly only
inches away again, the intensity from those shadowed eyes slamming into him
like thunderbolts.
"Don't ever touch me again," Krycek hissed.
Those five words, repeated as they had been once, in a Russian gulag, sent
rage shooting through him like fire, and he would have lashed out again,
except that Krycek's hand had somehow shifted position, and was pressing
something on his neck that sent pain through him, and held him perfectly
still.
"Sorry to violate you, Mulder," his sarcasm cut like a knife, "but it was
the only way to convince them to move on."
Krycek's voice was bitter, anger and pain dripped from every loaded
syllable. But only for an instant. The next moment he was again out of arm's
reach, cool and collected, his voice as cold as the rain that still fell
endlessly from the sky.
"Now—I know somewhere safe we can stay for the night. I'll try" sarcasm
again "to explain in the morning, but for now..." He stopped talking, and
moved away, out of the alley, leaving Mulder with no choice but to follow.
Lost I
by Broken Angel
"But I dream things that never were, and I say 'Why not?'"
—George Bernard Shaw
I never wanted to be a hero.
