New: Atrocities Done by Brighid (2/2) SEQUEL
Brighid
Author: Brighid
Spoilers: None, really.
Rating: R for language and graphic imagery
Category: SA
Keywords: Sequel to Tonight I Was and To The Bone
Summary: Life, such that it is, must go on. Mulder deals with his new world,
and the sins of the old one.
Warning: Violent, bloody, and someone gets staked.
Archive: Gossamer, yes; otherwise keep my name & let me know.
Constructive feedback greatly appreciated. Please. Please. Please.
Disclaimer: All things X-files belong to Chris Carter, 1013, and Fox. This
is not for profit, but for love.
Author's note: This is becoming a series. Which means I need a series name.
I'm thinking "Hiding Backwards" from "the becoming" by Trent Reznor. This
has some of the Mulder-processing that I promised. The title is from NIN's
"Heresy". It worked for me.
Atrocities Done
"his perfect kingdom of killing, suffering and pain
demands devotion atrocities done in his name"
- Trent Reznor, "Heresy"
by Brighid
The bastard's living in the suburbs. His neighbours have goddamned garden
gnomes. He has those bright plastic windmills in his front garden. The
incongruity of it all is beyond reason. If Scully turning to dust before my
eyes hadn't strained my credulity to the breaking point already, this would
have done it. The man has wind chimes, for chrissakes.
Mulder's eyes are alight with unholy amusement. "The stuff in the back
garden is reason enough alone to stake him. He's got bunny sculptures, sir."
I groan and flop back against the headrest at the very thought. This whole
night is descending into bathos. "Obscene, isn't it?" Mulder asks, his voice
shading between glee and disgust. "Here he is, living in their midst, like a
cancer hidden in the guts." Disgust wins out, and silence descends again as
he parks the car up the block and around the corner.
We separate, Mulder slipping off into the shadows of the alley as I walk
down the lighted street, straight to his front door. I ring the doorbell,
glancing around and spotting the small camera concealed in the fixture that
supports the wind chimes. Ah. Protective colouring, then, as opposed to some
sort of bizarre Mr. Rogers' complex. I hear movement after a few minutes,
and then the door opens. He stands there a moment, the hall light turning
the ever-present wreath of smoke into a wavery halo about his craggy face.
"Mr. Skinner," he says at last in that dry, measured voice of his. "You just
happened to be in the neighbourhood?" He permits himself a small, desiccated
smile.
The smell of him curls up into my nostrils, makes me want to sneeze in
reflex. Behind him I see a shadow move, and so allow myself the sneeze to
further the distraction. Even as I open my watering eyes, he is pulled back,
body arching and jerking in surprise. I follow him in, and shut the door
behind us, locking it very carefully.
By the time I reach the living room, Mulder has him pinned to a
straight-backed chair. I shrug off my knapsack, reach inside and pull free a
set of handcuffs. He catches them neatly, then sets about securing our
prisoner.
"This is starting to become a habit with the two of you," he observes
blandly; pale, watery eyes flicker over both of us, revealing nothing.
"Though there is some novelty in the fact that you've come together this
time. What is it you want now?" There is nothing in his voice to suggest
that he is anything but in control of the situation.
"Everything," Mulder says simply, and smiles at our mutual nemesis. The
older man's face pales slightly, finally.
"I see," he says, and there is only the faintest tremor in his voice. "So
that's why you resigned, then." His voice is musing, curiosity satisfied.
"You've seen this before?" I ask, interposing my bulk between the smoking
man and Mulder's hunger.
He nods. "Once, a long time ago. We tried to turn it to our advantage, but
the experiment was a failure. We had thought it might be a way to deal with
out rather insistent partners, but it was, forgive the pun, just another
dead end." His mouth curls in a sepia smile at his own witticism.
"Apparently you two have found a use for it, however."
I step back, let Mulder come closer. "We have," he says. "I'd offer to let
you tell me on your own, but we both know that's not going to happen, so
let's just cut to the chase." His voice shifts down, becomes a rasping growl
as he moves in, takes the old man's face in a cruel grip. He tips his head
high, exposing a wrinkled throat and the pounding artery along the side of
it.
"Yes, let's then," he answers. "But please remember, Mulder, that some of
the answers you get might not be the ones you wanted to hear. The truth
rarely is." His eyes are bright and malicious even as Mulder's head bends
down, even when his body jerks in reaction to its violation.
It takes a very long time for him to die, and the smell of his bladder
cutting loose is enough to make me wipe my eyes. Mulder clings to him
throughout it all, shoulders heaving and twitching, face white and strained
as he forces himself to drain the bastard totally. I find my mind wandering
in sheer self-defense, begin to wonder about other areas where we could
apply this interrogation technique. It would certainly grease the wheels of
justice. I shake myself, trying to dislodge the bloodstained image that
accompanies that thought.
Mulder rises at last, and though he is flushed with the blood, he is also
greenish-white about the edges. For a moment he wavers, staggers a bit
towards me, and then he is helplessly sick all over cheap beige carpeting
and my black Nikes.
Well, shit.
*****
It's too much it's too much itstoomuch. I can't hold it all in, can't hold
all of him in. I fall to my knees, heaving helplessly, my body rejecting the
bastard's blood even as my brain strives to reject sixty years of memory.
He's like a sickness inside, and my body wants to rid myself of him before
he poisons me utterly.
After a time, I feel Skinner's strong arms lift me out of the spreading
filth, carry me over to the leather couch. I bury my face against his neck,
letting the smell of his sweat and the pounding of his pulse eradicate the
contamination that makes my guts knot and burn like fire. I realize with a
start that I am weeping against him, and once again he offers nothing but
comfort.
I pull back, ashamed by my weakness and terrified by the need that rises up,
even now. "Well, that went well," I manage to say at last, my voice raspy
and thick.
"You owe me a new pair of shoes," he says matter-of-factly, his dark eyes
missing nothing at all. He sees my weakness, he sees my hunger, and he
accepts it for what it is, what it must continue to be. I think, perhaps, I
could kiss him. I might even let him get away with decking me, afterwards. I
owe him that, and the shoes, and probably a hell of a lot more.
But I don't think he's keeping score.
At last, when the silence has stretched out as long as he can stand it, he
sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, rucking up his glasses on his
forehead. "Well?"
"I owe Krycek an apology," I offer at last. "He didn't kill my father. I
did." The old bastard was right, some truths I didn't need to know. I close
my eyes against the memory of my mother, young and sweaty and twisted up in
floral print bed sheets. I had thought I wanted the answer, but the reality
of it turns my stomach, even now.
"How much do you know?" he ventures at last, his voice tentative, both
curious and appalled. "Do you really take in…." He gropes for the words, but
cannot find them. "Shit, Mulder, this is fucking weird."
I shrug. "In Western folklore, vampires consume blood. In Asian folklore,
hungry ghosts consume the spirit. I guess they're both right." I stand up,
reach into the knapsack and pull out one of the pickets. A moment later the
old bastard is nothing but dust and memory. "I remember everything he ever
knew. And he took a lot of pride in knowing, so it makes for a damned good
beginning."
Suddenly, he is there inside me, telling me I didn't kill him at all; you
can't kill the devil himself. His voice begins to tell me all his stories,
even as hers pipes up, chides me for failing her. Its like a goddamned Greek
chorus inside my head, drowning out all rational thought. I know I should
move, should head out into the night to continue what I've begun. If I don't
strike before this is discovered, then they will have a chance to scurry
like rats off a sinking ship, and this will have been pointless. Yet for
some reason, I can't make myself move; I can only stand there, pressing the
dirty stake against my own chest, as his laughter and Scully's tears echo
around inside my head.
*****
Shit. One minute he's on his way to leading a stealth strike against the
whole consortium, and the next he's just standing there, rubbing the pointy
end of the picket along the curve of his breastbone. His face is transfixed,
abstracted, like a picture of the Orthodox saints at my grandmother's church
when I was a boy. He is lost in misery and rapture, both, as the voices
inside his head speak to him, saying God knows what.
I cross over, take his white face between my heavy hands, and shake him hard
enough to snap his neck. "You're carrying him around inside you now, aren't
you?" He nods silently, his eyes silvered and vague upon my face. I take a
deep breath, plunge in where I had vowed not to go. "And she's in there,
too." I don't need to even say her name; silver shades to crimson, and his
eyes spill dark, sticky tears.
I growl, shake him again. "Mulder, this is not the time to hold a pity
party. We've got work to do. You hear me?" He shudders helplessly,
overwhelmed by the night inside himself. I swear and sigh and pull his
shuddering body against me, pressing his face against the frantically
throbbing pulse of my own carotid. It feels familiar, comfortable even, in a
twisted sort of way. He is cool as marble, cool as a tombstone against my
heated skin, and I feel him nuzzle blindly against my throat, feel his teeth
caress me, feel his tongue stroke along my pulse. A moment later his teeth
break the skin, surprisingly gentle in their violence. I close my eyes and
try to ignore the hot pull of his sucking mouth, ignore the way it turns my
knees to water and makes my breath come in ragged pants. Instead, I focus on
one memory, one remembrance that he can have, one I can give to him; I hold
his cold flesh against me, and offer him a candle against the darkness.
He moans against me, takes his mouth off me, licks the wounds shut. This
time he doesn't pull away, doesn't retreat. He just leans into me, as though
I am the only thing keeping him anchored in this world. Maybe I am. I can
live with that, if he can.
So to speak.
*****
The voices are still inside me, but the taste of Skinner in my mouth, the
roar of his blood in my veins drowns them down, makes them small again. I
can feel his heat leaching into me, can smell him, taste him, feel him, hear
him, see him …I'm goddamned swimming in him, and the beast inside me snarls
and snaps in confusion, because this is a gift willingly given, a sacrifice
freely offered. The hunger only understands taking, and is almost silenced
by the offering.
His pulse slows down, but doesn't quite steady itself, and his smell shifts;
that indefinable scent is a part of him again, and I think, perhaps, that
I'm beginning to understand what it is. But I won't name it until he does.
He's given me more than enough already. I have no right to ask him for this.
Even though I know he isn't keeping score.
I let go of him at last, slide from his bedrock grasp, and pick up the tote
bag I'd carried in. There is enough night ahead of us to make a good
beginning. There is enough time to trap a few rats. And I know that I can do
it, know that I can see the way through this darkness.
I know I can do it because the shadows inside me have been temporarily
scattered, illuminated by a single, pristine memory of an unexpected sunrise
over a steaming Vietnam jungle. I close my eyes and feel the warmth of
remembered sunlight, and hear Scully only faintly, as if from a great
distance. I can't hear the black-lunged bastard at all.
I open my eyes, to find him watching me, and I smile at him, a real smile,
my teeth pulled in. "Well, sir. Let's go stick it to someone else, for a
change."
He winces, and laughs despite himself at the pun. "Jesus, Mulder. An Oxford
degree, and that's what you can come up with?" He retrieves his handcuffs,
picks up the knapsack and zips it shut. "If this is the beginning of a
series of bad jokes, you're on your own, regardless of what's at stake." He
is out the door and into the night before I can react. But I can hear his
soft puff of laughter as my groan wells up. I've obviously created a
monster.
*****
I don't take them often, and as a result, Kimberly is pretty damned stunned
when I tell her I'm taking a long lunch, especially when one considers the
kind of day we've been having. It seems there have been a rash of break-ins
and thefts in government facilities, not to mention several apparent
abductions, over the last few nights. A few of our own higher-ups have
disappeared off the map. But since I know that there aren't going to be any
answers forthcoming, I'm not investing too much effort into it; just enough
to look good to the rest of the world. Appearances must, after all, be kept
up.
It's a long drive. I'm surprised that I remember the way there; that night
has a distinctly blurry quality to it in my memory. Many of my dealings with
Mulder are like that; I think it's an in-built protection system. Too much
weird shit, and the memories just sort of drift off, become like a faded-out
acid trip. It makes them easier to deal with. I make one stop along the way,
spending too much money on a token gesture, but it feels right, so I do it.
I climb the fire escape, and it's just as high and just as long and I'm just
as winded as last time. Obviously more time at the gym, and less time on
stakeouts is required.
Shit. I'm making puns, and he's not even here to hear them. There's not
enough therapy in the world.
I stop about twenty paces short of my destination, my mouth suddenly dry and
my gut knotting and unknotting a few times before I can move forward. I lay
the bouquet of lilies down, but they are not the first flowers there; not
the first flowers by a long shot. I step back to appreciate the handiwork.
A six-by-three foot cross is outlined in white roses, all in various stages
of decay. The outside border is complete, and it is slowly being filled in.
At a guess, I'd say he's been doing it a rose per night. I close my eyes,
the image of the cross bright white behind my eyelids, and not even the
memory of a red-gold sunrise can blot it out. Not quite a crown of thorns,
but close enough.
Close enough.
*****
An end, for now.