X-Files ficlet, Mulder/Krycek
Wow, this is my neurosis. I'm supposed to be doing english homework, and yet I procrastinate. The following fic is short and post-colonization. I like it, because there's a sense of hope in the end.
Avalanche
Mulder/Krycek
PG-13
Notes: This is my therapy, because I am certain that I’m certifiably insane. Soundtrack provided by Matthew Good’s solo album.
Avalanche
We line up on the far field, under a glowering sky filled with gray and heavy clouds, the rain within them ready to burst with the smallest roll of thunder. The grass is dewy from earlier showers and the hills of detritus and debris pile and spread before us, gray like the sky. The old Hoover building is charred and black in the distance, no longer recognizable for the federal building it once was. The diner down the street where we used to sit and eat lunch is now home to rodents, collapsing in on itself.
Everything else is flat, razed to the ground, bombed and eroded until even the carcasses of buildings are gone.
It’s too late now. I feel it in my bones. We can’t save those places, our places of salvation where we scurried to for comfort, our homes of familiarity. We can’t rebuild. It’s too late now; it’s been that way for a while. Time has a way of ripping you from your reality and speeding you through the years to a future you thought you’d never live to see. But here it is. In front of your eyes.
Big, bold, and unforgiving. We line up on the field and breathe in tandem. Our hearts beat as one giant, calculating machine. We’re cutting our ties from the past, and we’re stepping into the future, fighting it. Fighting the future we helped to create.
Slowly, like heavy, dusky clouds rolling in from the north, we see the giant ship approach. It looms above our heads, and everything is hushed except for the low hum of the craft. Hypnotizing in it’s terrifying splendor, but comforting to know that we’re facing it at last, that our enemy is something tangible.
Fear grips our hearts, but I know it is not the only thing. This is our chance to win. This is our chance to finish it, this is our chance…this is our chance…
And the raucous that suddenly erupts when the lights from the ship start flashing is deafening. Screaming. The men screaming. Mulder, screaming. Beside me, clutching his firearm, screaming and bending to his knees, folding in on himself. I bend to help him, but whatever they’re all feeling, I’m suddenly feeling too. A sharp, bright pain that flairs inside my ribcage as if eating me alive from the inside out.
It’s the light; it’s effectively cooking us alive.
I scream with him, unable to drop my gun as I grab his arm with my flesh-colored plastic claw. The lights flash brighter, almost pulsating in their origin, and I feel it slicing down and through me, cutting, fragmenting my insides. It feels painfully exquisite, and at once, a dull roaring builds in my ears.
I clutch at Mulder, crouching down until I’m sure he can see me. I nudge him with the knuckles of my right hand, bringing his face around, gun still firmly gripped in hand and brushing along his cheek. I stare into his fever-bright eyes and pretend it’s not the end of our lives.
He nods, understanding. And together, we’re uncoiling, struggling to stand as straight as possible. Our lungs fight to breathe through the fire eating us alive. Mulder raises his gun, pointing up at the ship, and turns to the men lined up beside us. A handful of men, but they’re the bravest souls I’ve ever known.
A moment of hesitation, and then the sudden firing of rifles, guns, and three missile launchers drowns out the roaring in our ears. We watch as sections of the low-riding ship catches on fire, but it is not enough to bring it down. A second volley of firing, and still, not enough.
Mulder turns to me and mouths something that I can’t make out. My ears are useless now, I can’t hear a thing. I shake my head and he mouths it again.
‘Once more, Alex. One more time.’
And I nod, and gesture to the men, and when they fire, I can feel the rumbling and crackling in the air. But it is completely, deathly quiet, as if I am watching a silent war film.
A good portion of the alien spacecraft is on fire now, but it’s making no move to counterattack or retreat.
I turn to Mulder, grabbing the front of his shirt. He stares at me, a frantic look in his eyes, desperate in a way that breaks my hurt to see it. I can feel the rumble in the ground as the men start firing at will.
The lights from above keep flashing, and I don’t want to look at them. The pain is slightly better now, although I know it’s only because I’ve gotten used to it, to the slowly ripping of my insides. The pain is one of the farthest things from my mind right now.
This mission is going to fail.
Mulder can see as much in my eyes, and his lips pull closed in a tight line. He’s not ready to give up yet. He’s never ready to give up.
He shakes his head, mouthing, maybe screaming, although I can’t hear it, ‘No!’
I shake him once, then pull him close to me. His breath ghosts along my cheek. All is quiet. The world tilts and shakes around us.
I can’t pretend any longer.
I pull him close and seal his lips in a tight, searing kiss. Hard and fast like the first time, and softening at the end, as if it is our last. His eyes are suddenly wet, and I know he’s going to cry right here.
And then, all of a sudden, the ground stops shaking. The lights stop flashing, and with them go the pain, slowly subsiding like the rolling back of a tidal wave.
‘Is this it?’ Mulder mouths.
I swallow, not answering. If this is it, then I don’t want to know. If this is it, I’m not going to be the one to tell him.
Instead, I pull him to me and crush him in my arms, hugging him with all my strength, knowing he can take it. Hugging him and not ever wanting to let him go. His fingers tangle in my short hair and bring my face to rest in the crook of his neck. I breathe in his sweat-slicked skin, the musk of him and days worth of dirt and soil. It’s perfect, it’s perfect. For this one moment, everything is perfect.
But it is the end. This is it. Yet I can’t bring myself to say it.
It turns out, I won’t have to. Because in the next instant, a different, whiter light shines down on us, and in a split-second, instantaneous reaction, I grab Mulder and wrap my arms around his figure, holding him to my chest. I can feel him solid and warm against my heart, ducking his head below my chin with his breath fanning against my neck. He doesn’t tremble or shake, but I can feel his tears dropping on my skin, mixing there with the dirt and grime.
I whisper into his hair. ‘I love you. I love you. I love you.’
I hold onto him as the light turns blinding, obliterating everything else, obliterating even myself, the first thing to incinerate being my prosthetic. I can still feel him, long after my eyes turn sightless, open to a never-ending white desert of nothing.
I can still feel him.
end.
ps: I promise I'll stop with the angsty stuff. Okay, well. I'll try really really hard to stop.
Avalanche
Mulder/Krycek
PG-13
Notes: This is my therapy, because I am certain that I’m certifiably insane. Soundtrack provided by Matthew Good’s solo album.
Avalanche
We line up on the far field, under a glowering sky filled with gray and heavy clouds, the rain within them ready to burst with the smallest roll of thunder. The grass is dewy from earlier showers and the hills of detritus and debris pile and spread before us, gray like the sky. The old Hoover building is charred and black in the distance, no longer recognizable for the federal building it once was. The diner down the street where we used to sit and eat lunch is now home to rodents, collapsing in on itself.
Everything else is flat, razed to the ground, bombed and eroded until even the carcasses of buildings are gone.
It’s too late now. I feel it in my bones. We can’t save those places, our places of salvation where we scurried to for comfort, our homes of familiarity. We can’t rebuild. It’s too late now; it’s been that way for a while. Time has a way of ripping you from your reality and speeding you through the years to a future you thought you’d never live to see. But here it is. In front of your eyes.
Big, bold, and unforgiving. We line up on the field and breathe in tandem. Our hearts beat as one giant, calculating machine. We’re cutting our ties from the past, and we’re stepping into the future, fighting it. Fighting the future we helped to create.
Slowly, like heavy, dusky clouds rolling in from the north, we see the giant ship approach. It looms above our heads, and everything is hushed except for the low hum of the craft. Hypnotizing in it’s terrifying splendor, but comforting to know that we’re facing it at last, that our enemy is something tangible.
Fear grips our hearts, but I know it is not the only thing. This is our chance to win. This is our chance to finish it, this is our chance…this is our chance…
And the raucous that suddenly erupts when the lights from the ship start flashing is deafening. Screaming. The men screaming. Mulder, screaming. Beside me, clutching his firearm, screaming and bending to his knees, folding in on himself. I bend to help him, but whatever they’re all feeling, I’m suddenly feeling too. A sharp, bright pain that flairs inside my ribcage as if eating me alive from the inside out.
It’s the light; it’s effectively cooking us alive.
I scream with him, unable to drop my gun as I grab his arm with my flesh-colored plastic claw. The lights flash brighter, almost pulsating in their origin, and I feel it slicing down and through me, cutting, fragmenting my insides. It feels painfully exquisite, and at once, a dull roaring builds in my ears.
I clutch at Mulder, crouching down until I’m sure he can see me. I nudge him with the knuckles of my right hand, bringing his face around, gun still firmly gripped in hand and brushing along his cheek. I stare into his fever-bright eyes and pretend it’s not the end of our lives.
He nods, understanding. And together, we’re uncoiling, struggling to stand as straight as possible. Our lungs fight to breathe through the fire eating us alive. Mulder raises his gun, pointing up at the ship, and turns to the men lined up beside us. A handful of men, but they’re the bravest souls I’ve ever known.
A moment of hesitation, and then the sudden firing of rifles, guns, and three missile launchers drowns out the roaring in our ears. We watch as sections of the low-riding ship catches on fire, but it is not enough to bring it down. A second volley of firing, and still, not enough.
Mulder turns to me and mouths something that I can’t make out. My ears are useless now, I can’t hear a thing. I shake my head and he mouths it again.
‘Once more, Alex. One more time.’
And I nod, and gesture to the men, and when they fire, I can feel the rumbling and crackling in the air. But it is completely, deathly quiet, as if I am watching a silent war film.
A good portion of the alien spacecraft is on fire now, but it’s making no move to counterattack or retreat.
I turn to Mulder, grabbing the front of his shirt. He stares at me, a frantic look in his eyes, desperate in a way that breaks my hurt to see it. I can feel the rumble in the ground as the men start firing at will.
The lights from above keep flashing, and I don’t want to look at them. The pain is slightly better now, although I know it’s only because I’ve gotten used to it, to the slowly ripping of my insides. The pain is one of the farthest things from my mind right now.
This mission is going to fail.
Mulder can see as much in my eyes, and his lips pull closed in a tight line. He’s not ready to give up yet. He’s never ready to give up.
He shakes his head, mouthing, maybe screaming, although I can’t hear it, ‘No!’
I shake him once, then pull him close to me. His breath ghosts along my cheek. All is quiet. The world tilts and shakes around us.
I can’t pretend any longer.
I pull him close and seal his lips in a tight, searing kiss. Hard and fast like the first time, and softening at the end, as if it is our last. His eyes are suddenly wet, and I know he’s going to cry right here.
And then, all of a sudden, the ground stops shaking. The lights stop flashing, and with them go the pain, slowly subsiding like the rolling back of a tidal wave.
‘Is this it?’ Mulder mouths.
I swallow, not answering. If this is it, then I don’t want to know. If this is it, I’m not going to be the one to tell him.
Instead, I pull him to me and crush him in my arms, hugging him with all my strength, knowing he can take it. Hugging him and not ever wanting to let him go. His fingers tangle in my short hair and bring my face to rest in the crook of his neck. I breathe in his sweat-slicked skin, the musk of him and days worth of dirt and soil. It’s perfect, it’s perfect. For this one moment, everything is perfect.
But it is the end. This is it. Yet I can’t bring myself to say it.
It turns out, I won’t have to. Because in the next instant, a different, whiter light shines down on us, and in a split-second, instantaneous reaction, I grab Mulder and wrap my arms around his figure, holding him to my chest. I can feel him solid and warm against my heart, ducking his head below my chin with his breath fanning against my neck. He doesn’t tremble or shake, but I can feel his tears dropping on my skin, mixing there with the dirt and grime.
I whisper into his hair. ‘I love you. I love you. I love you.’
I hold onto him as the light turns blinding, obliterating everything else, obliterating even myself, the first thing to incinerate being my prosthetic. I can still feel him, long after my eyes turn sightless, open to a never-ending white desert of nothing.
I can still feel him.
end.
ps: I promise I'll stop with the angsty stuff. Okay, well. I'll try really really hard to stop.