Title: Awakening
Author: Marcia Elena
Feedback Email: marciaelena@hegalplace.com
Author's Website: http://www.hegalplace.com/marciaelena/
Archive at Gossamer: Yes to Gossamer
Status: NEW - Standalone
Size: 16k
Category: Angst, Vignette
Pairings: Mulder/Krycek
Rating: R
Gossamer Category: Vignette ~ Angst ~ Slash
Summary: After the war, Mulder and Krycek meet again.
Part 1
Please see part 0 (template) for story information.
Title: Awakening Author: Marcia Elena Email: marciaelena@hegalplace.
com Keywords: M/K, Post-Colonization, Mulder POV Summary: After the
war, Mulder and Krycek meet again. Written for the 16th Lyric Wheel,
the 'Beginnings Wheel', April 29, 2004. Rating: R Spoilers: Vague
references to 'Tunguska' and 'RatB'. Season 8 never happened in this
timeline. 'Requiem' probably didn't happen either. Disclaimer: Mulder
and Krycek belong only to each other. The only profit is theirs.
Author's Notes: Sorry for being late again. I'd all but
given up writing for this Wheel, because until a few hours ago, I
hadn't had even the glimmer of an idea for a story, despite the
excellent lyrics Waterfall sent me. I sat down one last time to see
if something would come to me, and well, this is the result. I warn
you, it's probably very rough, so my apologies to everyone if it's
worse than my usual, and to Waterfall if it's completely
different than what she'd imagined.
To all the inspiring friends in my life, old and new ones alike --
most especially Verily, Leda, Meixia, Shan, Satina, and my sweet
Logan.
-------------------------
Awakening
by Marcia Elena
Fighting a war isn't easy.
That's something I've known for as long as I can remember. It seems to
me that I've always been fighting something, numerous private wars
throughout the years. They have all left their scars on me, some more
visible than others, but I've survived. Maybe I've even grown
stronger. Maybe wiser.
Maybe.
It's a hard thing, though, to realize that winning a war can be just
as hard as fighting it. Killing off an entire species, even one that
tried to kill and enslave ours, is a heavy burden to bear. We're all
guilty, the whole sorry human race. Or at least what's left of it. A
planet full of murderers.
We had no choice.
Among all the horrors the aliens have inflicted on us, that may be the
most abominable one.
Once colonization happened and armed combat began in earnest, the
high-horse I'd used to ride in my FBI days quickly became a casualty
of war, another carcass among many, left to rot in the battlefield.
Each time I reflected on it, on the things we were doing in our
desperate struggle to survive, the urge to apologize to Krycek was an
urgent thing inside me, demanding to be spoken. But Krycek was never
there to hear it, and it was only in my heart that I told
him, 'I understand now. I know.'
The day we received the official word about our victory, there was no
euphoria. Even the ripple of relief that ran through my unit was a
humble one. We all knew it could've been us instead of them. The
unit's leader -- an ex-military man, and the most superstitious person
I'd ever met -- told us that despite all our bravery and heroic
efforts, in the end what really allowed us to win was luck. Just that:
dumb luck. No one disagreed with him.
He looked straight at me when he said that. I nodded at him, and he
nodded back. The respect he had for me was mutual: he'd been retired
out of the Marine Corps for rubbing his superiors the wrong way with
his irrational beliefs. A fitting person to lead me in a war against
aliens, some would've said. He seemed to have a superstition about
everything; I didn't ask him if there were any about leaving without
saying goodbye.
Less than one hour after his announcement, I was on the road, carrying
a battered backpack with all the belongings I had left, off to look
for... something. Somewhere I could settle down, perhaps. Friends that
might've survived. A reason to go on.
I walked for miles, hitchhiked, walked again. I lived off the kindness
of strangers. Nearly everyone I met seemed to be shell shocked; no one
really laughed anymore, but they shared whatever food and water they
had with me. Many people were missing limbs, and more than once I
thought one of the men walking ahead of me must be Krycek. But drawing
closer, I'd see it wasn't him. It was never him, and the words inside
me went on unsaid.
The days and weeks passed in a blur of unknown faces and desolate,
burnt-out places, until I lost count of them. The weather patterns had
shifted and become erratic during the war -- one of the many
aftereffects of the weapons either we or the aliens had used -- and I
couldn't even guess what month it was, never mind what season it was
supposed to be.
When I came upon a lone flower growing by the side of the road, I
chose to believe that it was spring. A season of rebirth. A time of
new beginnings.
It was, I decided, the first flower of spring. It was certainly the
first flower I'd seen in years.
I didn't pick it. I just stood there looking at it, a fragile looking
daisy. Thinking that it probably wouldn't survive the next strong wind
or rain shower. Remembering that daisies meant loyal love and
innocence. Wondering briefly if I'd ever see either one of those
again.
I also remembered that finding the first flower of spring was said to
be an omen, depending on which day of the week it was: Monday meant
good fortune, Tuesday great attempts that would be successful.
Wednesday meant marriage. Thursday warned of small profits, Friday
meant wealth, Saturday misfortune and Sunday excellent luck for weeks.
Assuming that it was neither Wednesday or Saturday, then, I was safe.
It wasn't long after that that I reached the edge of the world.
Literally.
I'd been slowly and steadily heading east, making my way back home,
wanting to see if my apartment building was still standing, more for
sentimental reasons than anything else.
The building wasn't there anymore. Neither was the street. Nor the
city.
The whole state seemed to be gone.
Where Virginia was supposed to be, there was a hole. A crater. Black
and empty, so big it boggled the mind, stretching out in every
direction. Grotesque.
I stared at it, numbly, unable to process what I was seeing at first,
and then unwilling to accept the reality of it. We'd heard of such
things whenever news had trickled in -- it was said that half of China
and Eastern Europe were gone, that a big part of Canada had been
buried under a barrage of alien fire, that Hawaii was nothing more
than barren rock now. I'd seen more than enough evidence of
destruction on my way back from Oregon, where I'd spent most of the
war. But this... I couldn't understand how we hadn't heard about it.
How no one had told me about it on my long trek here.
I fell to my knees there, still staring. I didn't pray; I didn't cry.
I just looked, like I'd recently looked at the flower. But where the
flower had been the hope of life, a gentle reminder of beauty, this
was the certainty of death, brutal, obscene.
I was here, I thought. Once, I was here.
Dumb luck. Just that.
Had Scully been there when it happened? Skinner? Langly, Frohike,
Byers. Had they been there? All the people I'd known, the few ones I'd
loved. Were they gone? All the millions I'd never laid eyes on. Dead.
Another hard realization hit me at that moment: I would most likely
never know. I wouldn't be able to know if anyone I knew had survived
unless I happened to find them. And there was no way to look. Where to
start? There was no evidence left to sift through, no trail to chase
after. Skinner and the Gunmen had no out of state relatives that I
knew of, and Scully's brothers and their families had gathered at
Margaret Scully's house at the beginning of the war so that the
whole clan could be together.
Alive or dead, then, they were all somewhere I couldn't follow.
I don't know how long I stayed on my knees looking at nothing. All I
know is that eventually exhaustion and grief caught up with me, and I
curled on the ground and slept.
It was early morning when I woke up, my stomach growling. I sat up,
still facing that abyss, and rummaged through my backpack to find
something to eat. My hands trembled as my fingers brushed against the
framed photograph of Scully, the signed first edition of Contact that
had been a birthday present from Byers, my wallet. Of all things, I
still had my stupid wallet. It held only my FBI badge, a quarter, and
the note Krycek had left for me all those years before, directing me
to Wiekamp. I wanted to laugh, but what rose out of me was a sob, loud
and broken, piercing the stillness of that place so acutely
it made my heart lurch in my chest. My hands trembled harder, my whole
body shook; absently I noticed that in my state of agitation, some of
my things had fallen out of my backpack, among them my fork. To
drop a fork means a man is coming to visit, my trivia-filled
memory supplied. For a dizzy second I wondered which of the ghosts I
carried with me it would be.
I did laugh then, a sound somehow worse than my sob had been. I
started shoving my scattered belongings into my backpack again, and
was startled when a voice spoke behind me.
"You didn't know," it said, the words sounding uncertain, almost like
a question.
I froze. That voice... It was him. Not just any ghost, but my favorite
one. The one person that had always haunted me.
I drew in a deep breath and turned around to face him. He looked well
for a ghost, I thought. Somewhat thinner than I'd last seen him, but
otherwise looking healthier. Tanned skin, a few more lines on his
face, hair as dark as I remembered yet beginning to gray at the
fringes. He was wearing faded blue jeans and army boots, a tee shirt
that looked as if it'd seen better days. I couldn't tell what color it
was; I guessed it was either red or green. He stepped nearer, his eyes
shining, locked on mine. His clean shaven face made me
raise a hand to my own face, the stubble growth of days scratchy under
my fingers. Shaving was a luxury I couldn't afford as often as I
would've liked in those days, and I wondered how I looked to him.
As he crouched down beside me, I wanted to reach out and touch him. I
wanted to finally tell him all the things that had been waiting
inside me for a chance to be said. To tell him I'd missed him. To ask
if he was really here, or if I'd conjured him somehow.
But he was the one to touch me first, his one hand coming to rest
tentatively on my cheek for a too brief caress. I could still feel the
tingle of his fingers on my skin after he'd pulled his hand away. No
one had touched me in so long, and that simple contact had suddenly
reminded my body that despite the horror lying only a few feet away
from us, both of us still seemed to be very much alive.
"You didn't know," Krycek said again, and this time his tone was
surer. I looked away from him for a second to glance at the flagrant
absence to my right, and when my eyes met his again I saw that the
gleam in his gaze was one of unshed tears. I did touch him then,
stroking his cheek as he'd stroked mine, but allowing my hand to
linger. He felt so warm.
"It's not radioactive," he whispered, his voice sounding rougher than
usual, scraping against my insides and making me shiver. I gaped at
him, showing him that that particular possibility hadn't even crossed
my mind. He shivered as well, as if in response, and brought his hand
to my cheek again, traced my jaw with his fingers, slid them shakily
through my hair. "Mulder..."
I swallowed. "What- what are you doing here?" I rasped, shaking with
him. Inwardly kicking myself for not greeting him with better words.
He didn't seem to mind. "I came looking for you," he told me. "When I
heard about this, I thought-" He shook his head. "I knew there'd be
nothing here, but I wanted to see. And I thought that if you were
still alive, this was the only place where I might find you." He
exhaled sharply, lowered his hand and his eyes, an expression of
wonder and sorrow settling over his features. "It's unbelievable that
I did. You could've been anywhere, you could've been-"
"But I'm not," I said, cutting him off. "I'm here, Alex. I'm really
here."
He shivered visibly again when I said his name, but didn't immediately
raise his eyes to mine. Instead he reached for my knife lying on the
ground beside us and handed it to me, only then looking at me. I took
it from him, our fingers brushing, electricity sparking my heart and
my brain. I put the knife away and reached for my wallet, taking out
the quarter I had and giving it to him. Heads up, just to be sure.
He smiled as he looked at it. There were more tears in his eyes now,
and my own vision blurred as I smiled back at him.
"Wanna flip it?" he asked me, getting back to his feet, helping me
stand up as well. "You're packed, we could leave, head... somewhere,"
he shrugged. "Anywhere. We can drive for a day, and then we'll take a
look at the map."
"Drive?" I asked. He laughed as I looked around and spotted an old
pickup idly parked some distance from us. I hadn't heard the engine
when he'd arrived. I shouldered my backpack and looked back at him. "I
think we're going to need new maps," I told him, avoiding looking at
the crater beside us only with an effort. I didn't want to see it
again.
His expression softened, and he nodded at me. We made our way to his
truck in unspoken agreement and left. We both knew that wherever we
went now, whatever wars we happened to fight, it would be together.
The day was waning when we passed by the place where I'd seen the
flower. I made him stop, and we both got out to look. The daisy was
gone, but in its place there were two new buds. Krycek wrapped his
arms around me, the real and the fake one, and kissed me. I could feel
his heart racing against mine as I moaned into his mouth.
"Is it spring?" I murmured against his lips.
"Nearly fall," he informed me, not pulling away. Kissing me again.
I smiled. "If we catch a falling leaf on the first day of autumn we
won't catch a cold all winter."
His only answer was to kiss me harder. It was morning again when we
finally drove away.
We learned how to live again, and in time I did tell him all the
things I wanted to. We found out we still knew how to love, and I
discovered there were many other words inside me that had always been
waiting for him.
We didn't remember about the first day of autumn until it was much
later in the season. But it didn't matter.
Through all the days that came and went after that, we were both as
warm as we could be.
-------------------------
Further Author's Notes: Just in case these are too obscure
superstitions, I thought I'd add an explanation here:
About the knife - If a friend gives you a knife, you should give him a
coin, or your friendship will soon be broken.
About the coin - It's bad luck to pick up a coin if it's tails side
up. Good luck comes if it's heads up.
-------------------------
Heads Carolina, Tails California
(Tim Nichols / Mark D Sanders)
(recorded by Jo Dee Messina)
Baby, what do you say we just get lost?
Leave this one horse town like two rebels without a cause.
I got people in Boston
Ain't your daddy still in Des Moines?
We can pack up tomorrow, tonight, let's flip a coin.
Heads Carolina, Tails California
Somewhere greener, somewhere warmer
Up in the mountains, down by the ocean
Where? It don't matter as long as we're going
Somewhere together. I've got a quarter
Heads Carolina, Tails California
We can load what we own in the back of a U-haul van
Couple modern day Moses', searching for the promised land
We can go four hundred miles before we stop for gas
We can drive for a day, and then we'll take a look at the map.
Heads Carolina, Tails California
Somewhere greener, somewhere warmer
Up in the mountains, down by the ocean
Where? It don't matter as long as we're going
Somewhere together. I've got a quarter
Heads Carolina, Tails California
We're gonna get outta here if we gotta ride a Greyhound bus
Boy, we're bound to outrun the bad luck that's tailin' us
Heads Carolina, Tails California
Somewhere greener, somewhere warmer
Up in the mountains, down by the ocean
Where? It don't matter as long as we're going
Somewhere together. I've got a quarter
Heads Carolina, Tails California.
### The End ###