Nemesis
Fandom: The X-Files
Category/Rated: PG13
Year/Length: ~1013 words
Pairing: Mulder/Krycek
Disclaimer: Nobody paid me, and I did make them happy.
Summary: Sad musings on how the X-Files should have ended, written for the Cube's Exit challenge.
Too many deaths; there have been too many deaths.
I left my heart in a parking garage down under the FBI. Would you believe I just walked away and left it there with the body of the man I loved
.hated
.loved.
It's all been for nothing. My life, my search for the truth. All for nothing.
It's not as if I didn't try I did. I tried everything; I really wanted to make things work.
I gave myself to the struggle and didn't realize that there was nothing left of me until I was all gone - blown away - a tumbleweed, arid and useless.
I feel bad about Scully. She believed in me; she trusted that I would be her rock, and I failed her. What was the point? Why did I even try? When I ran, I hurt her; I know I did, but I'd have hurt her far more if I'd stayed.
So I ran.
I ran as though the hounds of hell were after me. Perhaps they were. I've seen things that nobody should ever see. Anyway, I ended up here, in this little village on the left coast just over the border into Canada and thought that would be it.
I was wrong.
Now, as a Mulder, I can honestly say that I am not used to being wrong. I am right a stupendous amount of the time. So when the dreams came, I paid heed to them, knowing that there would be something along presently to confirm my fears. The T-1000 featured in them all, and as it plodded heavily, inexorably towards me, murmuring "Dollars to donuts," I would awaken, screaming.
For a couple of weeks it was just bad dreams that haunted me, but then, one night as I was returning from the bar, I began to feel eyes watching me.
Don't get me wrong. I'm an old hand at surveillance. I've been watched by the very best, and I'm sensitized to it; I always get that tingling, itching at the back of my neck. This time, I could feel it like a lover's caress. Someone was observing me. Someone was following me, taking in my every move.
Fuck me, it almost felt like home.
Looking around me furtively, I hurried home to the small room I'd rented and bolted the door. Stay away from the windows, Mulder. Stay away from anything that might know who you are and what you're trying to avoid.
Better get a tinfoil helmet while you're at it, Mulder, I thought to myself. You're getting paranoid.
The couch in this place was shot - one of those items of furniture that was almost an X-File in itself. It was stained, with springs that were well and truly sprung; sitting on the thing made one sink down until one's ass was two inches from the floor, and rising again became problematic to say the least.
I chose the bed.
The bed wasn't much better, but if you'd seen the floor you'd know why that wasn't my first choice.
The TV was showing some stupid paid program, and I watched for a while, learning how to make my abs tighter and flatter without any effort. I hadn't thought that sleep would be an option, but I think that I must have dozed, because when suddenly I jerked into wakefulness I wasn't alone.
No light from the fish tank here, and only the grey-white flicker from the TV, backlighting the presence in the room let me see a silhouette; I knew who it was.
"What do you want? You're dead, aren't you?"
"You'd like to think that, wouldn't you, brother?" The voice was soft as velvet, intimate as a kiss. My heart had ceased to maintain a rhythm, and was now performing some ancient tribal ceremony involving tom-toms.
"I saw you die."
"You saw something, Mulder," He sat down on the edge of the bed, and now I could see the gleam of his eyes in the half-light, the flash of white as he smiled. "but I'm here all the same."
"How?"
"Still looking for the truth, poor man?" Nothing had changed. Krycek still possessed the power to infuriate me. I don't think anything could convince me more that this was in fact the actual rat bastard.
"Krycek, no more riddles. Just tell me how you got here, then kill me if you're going to and get it over with. I'm tired."
There was a long pause, but I could see the bastard's teeth. He was smiling; he didn't stop. I found myself bemoaning the fact that, despite my constant search, I always seemed to be the last one to find out the truth.
"It's simple enough, Mulder." That honeyed whisper fell on my ears like silk dragged over a wound, and I shivered at the thought that he was so close to me at last. I put out a hand to touch him. He was real enough. The leather of his jacket was as soft as butter, and when his hand caught mine, his skin was cool against me. "I staged my death to get myself out of the running. I was tired too. I lost as much as you did, but I wasn't anyone's darling. Skinner was willing to go along with it in return for a certain device I was holding, and it seemed like a good idea at the time."
I can't recall when I'd been angrier. "You fuck. You let me believe that you were dead." My voice was undeniably whiny, and I think I heard him chuckle.
"You cared? Who knew?"
Suddenly, it was too much. I gripped his shoulders, pulled him to me, fixed my lips against the sneering mouth.
This was the truth at last -- his lips and mine, hands clutching and holding, and the warm, hard press of bodies.
"Mulder?" he whispered against my lips, and I drank his sigh, folded him against me.
The truth in here, in me, in us.
There will never be anything more true than this.
Exit
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