Start Again
Fandom: X-Files
Category/Rated: Slightly slashy PG13
Year/Length: 2009/ ~2838 words
Pairing: Mulder/Krycek
Disclaimer: Don't own, so please don't shoot me.
Author's Notes:This was written for the X-Files Lyric Wheel. Thanks to Logan for the lyrics, and for the song, which was great.
"Fox Mulder is a broken reed." The Englishman was, as usual, dogmatic, his voice dry and dispassionate as he crushed my suggestion, and with it, my hope. "You will leave Fox Mulder to his fate. There is no longer anything to be gained from playing him."
Empty, I turned away, wondering how we'd all come to this. The beast was coming - was here already, and the only thing I could do was watch it stalk, crouch and finally pounce to rend us all. The Englishman must have realized the tenor of my thoughts, because he called after me.
"Under no circumstances are you to go near Fox Mulder. Do you understand me?"
I didn't answer as I left his presence, but I felt the cold hand of fear grip my bowels, and started to say goodbye to the world at that moment.
There would be no further time allowed me if I was to do what I intended. I would only be permitted one shot, and then it would be lights out, goodnight, Alex, and no warm hand to tuck me in. My goodnight kiss, when it was delivered, would be from a bullet.
So be it.
I left the fancy house from which the Englishman span his webs, webs that covered the world. Don't look behind, I told myself, as I headed to the garage. Just pretend that everything is normal, even though you know that nothing will ever be normal again.
The late afternoon was bright and merciless. The sun above sent shards of brightness to impale my eyes, fracturing my senses even as I moved the car into the driveway. Reaching for my sunglasses, I wondered when exactly I'd become a creature of the shadows. I knew then that I had no chance of surviving the coming storm. It was too late for me, but before the darkness claimed me forever, I'd have one last shot at changing the world.
Hegal Place is the ass-end of the universe. It's where aliens come to die. I park in one of the visitors' spots, and head in out of the light. I can feel the sun burning on the back of my neck, a brand to warn me that I am watched; wherever I go, they will know. Whatever comes, I'm a dead man walking; I just haven't felt it at a cellular level yet.
Beside the front door to the apartment block, I could see a sad little sapling, and as I watched, an old grey cat slunk by, paused to strop claws like needles on it, before ghosting away to leave it drooping, a little closer to death than it had been, in a world where nobody would ever notice. The brick that surrounded the front entrance to the apartments was water stained, and I guessed that same grey cat had marked it as his own, for I detected the unmistakable scent that he'd left behind him.
Perhaps, I mused, perhaps it was Mulder, and I'm maligning the mouser; he's always been keen on marking out his territory. Silently, I bade the day farewell. I wouldn't see another, but that was fine. I could do this. What did I have left to live for anyway? Slipping the lock with the special key I carried, I headed into the dingy foyer. For some reason, all apartment rentals come with a foyer that's carpeted in shit brown shag, and this one seemed to be no different. There was a sagging sofa in the area beside the elevator, the springs long since destroyed. It was an indeterminate color of brown, and I couldn't ever imagine anyone wanting to sit on it. Fitting, I thought as I passed on toward the elevator.
As the door closed behind me, I took a deep breath. There were smells in this enclosed space, and I sampled them. Love them or not, I wouldn't be getting the chance to experience them again. This was it, and I appreciated them all. As the elderly conveyance creaked up to the fourth floor, I felt my resolution started to slip, and I began to reflect on what I was trying to do, and why as a way of trying to bolster it once more.
Mulder had lost his faith. He'd become a poor, sad, empty symbol for everything in which he'd once believed, and I was the only one that could - or would - give him back his truth. The Englishman believed that it was too late, that it couldn't be done, and I would have concurred, save for one thing; I knew Mulder as well as I knew myself. I knew which buttons to press; I knew the fears that haunted him, and I knew, too, how to use them, play on them, until he could do nothing else but follow the path I'd chosen.
The elevator arrived, wheezing, at the fourth floor, and I emerged into the sour smelling corridor, to head for number forty-two. Of course, Mulder lived at number forty two, if only for the whimsy of it. I always thought he probably had fantasies that one day he'd return home to find Zaphod Beeblebrox ready to take him voyaging around the galaxy in the Heart of Gold. Right at that moment, of course, he was probably wishing that he was Indiana Jones or something unrelated to space aliens, but he was definitely going to be searching for that Heart of Gold again once I got through with him.
For the entrance into the pan-dimensional space in which Fox Mulder had built his home, it was scarily easy to break in. My key worked perfectly well, and I slipped through the door, entering the gloom in which the strange being that was Fox Mulder made his home.
The air smelled dusty. There were videotapes littering the floor around the television, and they didn't have labels. How very Mulder. The Babel Fish swam in their tank, looking pale and dispirited, as if they expected to die alongside me. I crossed to them and dropped a pinch of food into the water, then watched, amused, as their lassitude changed to frenzy. Guess that was another couple of lives I could add to the tally of those I'd saved.
Fishes saved from their immediate demise by starvation, I considered how best to keep Mulder listening long enough to ensure that he caught the drift of my presentation. There was no doubt about it, he was unlikely to sit down sensibly and take notes, just because I asked him to. No indeed. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and I looked around for something on which I could write.
Isolating a piece of paper from the stacks of stuff on Mulder's desk, I wrote the name of the air force base on one side and then took a moment or two to think of something arresting - something that might hold Mulder's attention long enough for me to get in under his guard. Finally, I opted for something cryptic, knowing that Mulder would be a sucker for the puzzle, and that I'd get a couple of minutes grace to put my thoughts together and figure out how to get through to the bone headed bastard.
What would put him off guard? I thought hard, and came up blank. Finally, I decided upon a complete non-sequitur. Writing on Mulder's paper, with Mulder's very own pen, I chuckled and wrote, "THINGS ARE LOOKING UP,' in the large, friendly letters beloved of the Hitchhiker's guide, and laid it carefully down on the doormat, where any would-be traveller through the space-time continuum would be likely to spot it and ponder.
Then I did what I do best of all. I waited.
Waiting for Mulder should have been the name of a play. The stars would have been a small redhead and a one armed man who bore the scars of times best not forgotten. As I lounged in the darkest corner of the room, I wrote it out, mentally. The two protagonists would each occupy a half of the stage, and we would watch them as they eternally attended a presence that never came. They'd mirror each other, of course, as they always had, but they would never meet, never interact, and never, ever choose to go off together to discover how their missing lives could have been.
That would never do, because when one waited for Mulder, one did so inside a vacuum, a wormhole in time and space that Zaphod never dreamed existed.
Really, lurking here in the gloom as I awaited Mulder's coming and the subsequent end of my own life, I finally understood that I'd been living inside the theatre of the absurd for most of my adult life. I wondered what the hell I would say to him, and why I'd thought this whole thing was a good idea. Any pretence at a life I'd ever had in the past had been stripped from me as I lay in handcuffs in the hold of the ship that I'd dreamed would bring me to freedom and power.
I rehearsed lines, trying them out, and seeing Mulder convulse with laughter each time, before he drew his gun and shot me in the head. This was not good. "Mulder, you're better than you think - something I hold on to..." Laughing face again, and the contempt peeling flesh from my supplicant bones. That wouldn't do. Let me see.
"Mulder, I'm better, too, holding on to you..." Gun again, and unholy glee as the catch came off. Shit, I thought; I should just leave. I tried again. "Mulder, save yourself don't save me." No, that wouldn't work. Let me see. "Save the one you may be; let it be the best that it can be."
This was doing me no good at all. I was going to leave. The Brit was right, and I was wrong, and Mulder and I and all the human race were dead, dead, dead. Best to accept it and make my peace with God, and to hope that when I got that far, that God didn't smoke Morleys. I stooped to retrieve my idiot attempt at holding the Mulder interest, and as I reach for it, I heard the key in the lock like the death rattle that would come to me soon enough.
Showtime.
I drew back into the shadows and watched him come. He was still, after everything, all I'd ever wanted. The rangy body was silhouetted against the light from the door, and he bent, exactly as I'd guessed he would, and retrieved my pathetic attempt at holding his interest. He frowned, and I heard him articulate the words I'd written, just before my body took over from my brain and I jumped him.
Regaining my senses to find myself sitting on the supine Mulder, his own gun pointed at his head, I suddenly realized that I had a vague chance of achieving my self set mission. Swallowing frantically in an attempt to get some moisture back into my mouth, I concentrated on appearing menacing.
"You must be losing it, Mulder. I could beat you with one hand," I said, snarkily.
He never did give a sucker an even break, and his response to my words reveals only contempt. "Isn't that how you like to beat yourself?" he asks, and as the words sink in, I cocked the gun, ready to shoot the bastard right this minute. "If those are my last words I can do better," he said, still flouting my undeniable force majeur. I sighed. So be it, Mulder, you fucker. If you want to ignore the fact that I'm sitting on you, with a gun stuck up your nose, be my guest, I thought. Let's just get this show on the road and have done. What to say? I wracked my brains.
"I'm not here to kill you, Mulder. I'm here to help you."
"Hey, thanks," he said, brightly, with rather more than a soupcon of sarcasm. I held back a growl with great self control, and tried to think nice things about him. I failed.
"You know," I said, somewhat breathlessly, "If it wasn't in my best interests, I would just as soon squeeze this trigger." I was lying, of course. Mulder, I would just as soon squeeze your cock, kiss your lips, ravage your mouth...
"What's stopping you?" Stupid question. You, of course. I took a breath and decided to press on with plan A, whatever the fuck that was, way back when I could think straight and my dick wasn't punching holes in my jeans. Mentally giving my head a shake, I launched into some sort of speech, my heart sinking with every word I uttered.
"Hear this, Agent Mulder," I said, importantly. "Listen very carefully because what I'm telling you is deadly serious. There is a war raging, and unless you pull your head out of the sand, you and I and about five billion other people are going to go the way of the dinosaur. I'm talking planned invasion, - the colonization of this planet by an extraterrestrial race."
Mulder laughed; the bastard laughed. I gritted my teeth, sifted through the words that I might use to conclude my argument and make him see my way, but he was still not done with the ridicule. "I thought you were serious," he said. I'm angry, utterly livid, and the words flowed now effortlessly, some kind of UberAlex taking over from the wreckage of my carefully planned diatribe.
"Kazakhstan," I said. "Skyland Mountain, the site in Pennsylvania, they're all alien lighthouses where the colonization will begin, but where now, a battle's being waged - a struggle for heaven and earth. Where there is one law: fight or die. And one rule: resist or serve."
"Serve who?" Fuck, he thought that we were talking ordinary evil. I'd soon settle that for him.
"No, not who, what?" I said, tersely. He let up then, didn't he? He nodded and joined me in plotting ways of undermining the alien threat. Actually, no, he didn't. He resorted to the tried and tested Krycek abuse that we had come to know and love.
"Krycek, you're a murderer, a liar and a coward. Just because you stick a gun in my chest, I'm supposed to believe you're my friend?" More your friend than you'd ever know, my love, I thought, but didn't say. Instead, I moved.
"Get up," I said, climbing off Mulder and feeling the loss of the warmth against my thighs. He pushed himself up on his elbows as I shifted my weight from his chest, but made no attempt to struggle, merely sitting and looking at me as if he were - wonder of wonders - considering the things I was saying. Drawing a breath I badly needed, I continued, gabbling as fast as I could to get the words out before the moment was lost.
"I was sent by a man," I lied. "A man who knows, as I do, that resistance is in our grasp, and in yours. The mass incinerations were strikes by an alien rebellion to upset plans for occupation. Now, one of these rebels is being held captive. And if he dies, so does the resistance." I wondered if I should carry on, but the look on his face, the sweetness of his proximity, conspire to make me falter. He'd got all the information; he was thinking about what I'd told him, my work here was done. Time to fold your tent now and go to meet your maker.
I gazed at him for a single moment, and then impulsively, I leant over and kissed Mulder on the cheek. Had I a scrap more chutzpah, I'd have made it his lips, what can I say? I was flustered. He puckered for a moment, and I thought that perhaps...
But no. I was done and there was no more reason to stay. Uncocking his gun, I tossed it to him and turned to leave.
"Udacha tebya, tovarisch," I murmured, and went to meet my doom.
Outside the front door, the sun had begun to descend, and the shadows were long, distorted reminders that nothing was as it seemed. I headed towards the car, wondering when the bullet would take me.
He was leaning against it, elegant in his London Fog trenchcoat, a kindly grandfather figure. He sent frozen fingers to grip at my heart as I looked him in the eyes.
"Alex, how did it go? Will Mulder do what we need?" I blinked a little, and he smiled, thin lips quirking in a sinister fashion. "You have time to drive me to the meeting before you go to Weikamp to make sure Mulder carries out his duty," he said, and tapped a long finger on the roof of the car.
Confused, reprieved, and enervated, I drew a breath and prepared for my re-entry into life.
THE END
"Start Again"
Sung by Duncan Sheik
Lyrics and Arrangements by Gerry Leonard and Duncan Sheik
Peace has lost its meaning
now we've hit the ceiling
all is said and all is done
here goes... start again
You're better than you think so
something I hold onto
I'm better too holding on to you
start again
So meet me and we'll drive this car away
we can leave right now what do you say
we'll head out for the wide and open spaces
if we can clear the way
Save yourself don't save me
save the one you may be
let it be the best that it can be
start again
So meet me and we'll drive this car away
we can leave right now what do you say
we'll head out for the wide and open spaces
if we can clear the way
So meet me and we'll drive this car away
we can leave right now what do you say
we'll head out for the wide and open spaces
if we can clear the way
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