Belyore More (M/K) By Janus (janus@unbounded.com) 5/99 RATING: PG-13 for slash overtones DISCLAIMER: Chris Carter and 1013 Productions own Fox Mulder, Dana Scully and the Well-Manicured Man. They may think they own Alex Krycek, but I suspect they're in for a nasty surprise. Not for profit; no copyright infringement intended. SPOILERS: The Movie (if you haven't seen it, this won't make much sense). Tunguska/Terma, TRATB, The End. ARCHIVE: A.S.S. only SUMMARY: Krycek rescues Mulder and Scully from a really cold place. AUTHOR'S NOTE: This was partially inspired by the movie "Gods and Monsters" and by CC's obvious fascination with Frankenstein. "Belyore More" is the White Sea on the northwestern coast of Russia. * * * The sea is white. Frozen waves ripple across its expanse like an eternity of uprooted cement. Here and there something liquid and gray moves within these ice caps, but it looks nothing like the sea I love. The sea I love is blue-green and vibrant. It tosses amber nodules to the shore, offerings fashioned into sun-discs by ancients who cherished its weak rays. The sea I love is the Baltic, where my family vacationed each year when I was a boy. My Busha would tease me and say, "Aleksei, you have captured the summer sea in your eyes. It looks only at you. What are we going to do with all the girls when you grow up?" But the girls would never be the problem. This lifeless place resembles the sea I loath. It may be Antarctica, but it reminds me of the Belyore More, far to the north. The White Sea on the shores of Arkhangelsk -- Archangel -- the city where we lived before it all went to hell. Most of my life has gone to hell. Mulder would enjoy the irony, the fact that I come from a place named Archangel. After my father left for the U.S., even Archangel became too dangerous. Grandfather Arntzen sent me east, to a Nenetsi reindeer collective, to let my teenage rage hibernate. The Nenetsi are a handsome, ancient people with black hair, almond eyes and a language unlike any other. Communism was just a shrug in time to them. I learned these things from their old shaman -- to speak my story as it unfolds, to change my consciousness at will, to know the seven layers of the sky. I've known them all -- intimately. I've no tent and no listeners now, but I will tell my story to this sea of white. I'm not what I was, and they wouldn't recognize me. Mulder will not recognize me either. I've become a darker thing. Archangel is a world away from Antarctica, despite their harsh white similarities. My hands... my hand...grips the wheel of the Sno-cat. I hate being reminded of it, but right now I don't give a fuck. I need only keep a straight course to south 83 latitude, east 63 longitude, and I can do that one-handed. I've gone from the North Pole to the South Pole to save Mulder's sorry ass. I've chased him across five continents, and I'd do it a million times over. The tractor rips easily over the hardened breakers. It's a state-of-the-art design from the British Antarctic Research Station. I commandeered it with nothing more than a fake Cambridge accent and a sealed letter from His Lordship, the Well-Manicured guy. How the English love their royalty, almost as much as the Americans love their . . . democracy. Now there's a joke. The Brit arranged for me to rescue Mulder and Scully from this frozen desert. He had this perverse fondness for dispatching me to icy hells, but for once I'm grateful. If he ever suspected my double allegiance, he never let on. Anyway, our goals are identical. I'm his Consortium heir apparent, the guardian angel of his mission and his grandchildren. The irony isn't lost on me, either. The cabin is warm. I should be sleepy, but... If I arrive too late, I can kiss the planet good-bye. The Brit made it all so easy, and he was so fucking...composed. After banishing me to this bad memory, he pocketed the vaccine, opened his cell phone and summoned another driver. Poor fucking bastard. Then he turned to calmly repeat, "You know how to survive in that climate. You must save them at any cost, Alex. They are the key to the rebellion. Follow Mr. Mulder as soon as I give him the vaccine. Go...Now." I wanted to say something, but my throat suddenly went dry. I met the Brit's eyes for the last time, and nodded. He knew that I needed no encouragement to follow Mulder. I hid in the alley with the rot and stench. The Brit's last words to me were his last words to Mulder, with the added emphasis of a pointed gun. Go...Now. A rat skittered across my feet and I watched the old guy's car blow. Then I silently tracked Mulder through the shadows of its flames. * * * Frankenstein opens in Archangel. You can read it over and over, but the story's always different story. The movies don't capture Archangel's winter monotony, but Mary Shelley did. She wrote something like...how slowly the time passes here, encompassed by the chronic frost and snow. But the following line I remember perfectly, as if the black letters were tattooed inside my eyelids: "I shall find no friend on the wide ocean, or even here in Archangel..." I read Frankenstein in English one spring on the tundra, between catching fish and herding reindeer, the big pastimes. I still don't know what strings Grandfather pulled to hide me with the collective. But he smuggled books to me so I could practice my English. After the first year he stopped, and I was left with Frankenstein. My father had just infiltrated the Consortium's U.S. laboratories. Grandfather came for me two years later, right after I turned sixteen. My father had disappeared, he said. It was time for me to follow the family tradition. I knew what that meant. They had prepared me for this since childhood. I already spoke five languages (including the alien Nenetsi tongue). I'd had time to master waiting, weapons, and camouflage. I would do well in America, the land of my birth. The land of the free. One day, after I had dragged that black-lung bastard back to his pathetic cronies, he lit up a cigarette and said casually, "Shame about your father, Alex, torn to pieces by one of those alien monsters he hatched. You do well to stay out of the -- research -- side of things. Thuggery suits you." Like I needed another reason to kill him. I would succeed where my father failed. I would take out each old bastard bare-handed if necessary. Only now do I understand my father's reasons for exiling me. He knew my rage, knew how it would ignite me, knew how the cold and loneliness would harden me. Mulder completed my metamorphosis. I have destroyed everything that I have hated and loved to know him, my creator. I have seen things that even he would not believe. I have done things that he could never forgive. My understanding has not changed my original intent; it has transformed me into something double-edged and dangerous. Mulder will never know how perfectly he has formed me, for I have traveled farther down his path than he could ever imagine. The Sno-cat lurches and bounces across the ice. I grip the wheel harder and squint. Then I spot them, two fly specks against the unrelenting whiteness. The horizon drops starkly beyond them into a shadowy two-dimensional world, like an ancient map declaring "Here Be Dragons". * I know Mulder's on the edge of that world. I can't make the tractor go any faster, and I can't tell if I'm a few minutes away, or a few hours. I try to lose myself in the illusion of time, like I the old shaman taught me. But I can only remember the old guy's stench and Mary Shelley's words, "I shall find no friend on the wide ocean . . ." * * * ". . . then he meets his creation on the Sea of Ice. It follows him there, begging him for sympathy. But he calls his monster evil, and he curses it with death. He thinks that by destroying it, he can bring back the loved ones his creature has killed. But he knew that by his act of creation, he, too, had caused their deaths. He tried to strike his creature, but it was quicker and stronger. When he realised that he cannot master his creation, he told it to leave his sight. The monster placed a hand over its creator's eyes." I haltingly recited Frankenstein's story to the Nenetsi one night, in their own tongue. Afterward, we drank vodka in the smoky silence. Firelight burnished the walls of the hide tent. The vodka was courtesy of the government, an attempt to keep the collective happy and oblivious. The old shaman just nodded and said, "It is true. We all wish to be saved by the darkness we create." * * * Those black specks become two bodies, and I lurch to a stop. I'm sure they're still alive. Scully's hair spills onto the ice like a patch of orange poppies, the only colour for miles. Her arm rests protectively on Mulder's back. I jump out of the cab and rush to them. The glacier crunches beneath my boots for an eternity. They've collapsed at the edge of a crater that must be a thousand times the size of a football field, and so deep it's like staring into the darkness of space. Fuck, it is the darkness of space. Mulder wearily lifts his head and says, "You." "Who else, Mulder?" I reply. "Why? Haven't you hurt her enough?" He nods at his partner. And his words hurt me. I glance at Scully, unconscious at his side. Then I'm down on my knees, turning her over and tugging at the oversized parka. Mulder's parka, I realise, noting the thin jacket he wears. I unzip it and stroke her flat, pale belly. "Fuck, Mulder. The vaccine worked. Do you know what this means?" I place a fervent kiss on her stomach before bundling her up again. She is our new Eve, the mother of the DNA that may save us all. I awkwardly heft her over my shoulder and carry her to the Sno-cat. Her eyes flutter open as I tuck her among the blankets. She regards my snow camouflage with wonder, and caresses my cheek. "Are you my angel?" she asks. If I'd been wearing black leather, she would've never made that mistake. Her blue eyes close again. I feel her carotid artery. Her pulse is weak, but steady. I pull the blankets around her chin with a strange stab of tenderness. She has lost so much, and I've been to blame. I want her to be the one to save us all. Mulder is standing unsteadily when I return...staring into the abyss, of course. He takes a half-hearted swing at me. "You don't touch her that way, Krycek." I easily catch his fist. "We can play some other time, okay? Scully's going to be fine. You can thank me later. Come on, let's move." He turns a dazed look on me. "The Brit. The vaccine. My father. You're the key to it all, aren't you? You betray us, you save us, you play us for fools. But you're always around. The only one who sees the truth. Why? Whose side are you on? Who are you, Krycek?" Your creature, Mulder, I want to say. But he's babbling. I grab his arm and pull him from the crater. He keeps spewing nonsense. "Krycek, did you see the ship?" He clutches my lapels. "Did you? It was so beautiful. And then you came." I decide to leave that last part alone. "I really don't need to see it, Mulder. Been there, done that, glad I missed the party, considering what an ungrateful alien host I was the last time." Mulder looks at me like I'm sane. Scary. "Let's go, " I say. "It's over." "It's not over. You kissed me, too. You wanted me to find the rebel." "And your point is. . .?" "Why, Krycek?" "Why did I hand you your precious truth or why did I kiss you? What the fuck does it matter?" We're freezing our asses off just short of the South Pole and Mulder finally wants to fucking communicate? I think I hear my patience cracking. Then he's on me like a dervish. I try to duck, but he holds on to my neck and fastens his lips to mine. At first I think he's trying to strangle me and I don't care, it feels so good. Then his mouth opens slightly... And I remember that sucking up in sub-zero weather is not smart. I pull him in and gently cover his lips with my mouth, protecting them from the surrounding harshness. They're painfully rough, and taste of blood and bliss. His tongue weaves languidly across and under mine, and something quickens inside my chest that has been frozen for decades. I imitate his rhythm. Across and under, around and around, and I feel myself becoming warm and weightless. I almost forget the infernal cold and the fact that I need to get us out of there. I cautiously disengage and feel him wince as our frozen lips bleed apart. For an Oxford grad, you're a bit dense," I point out. "Why do you think the Eskimos rub noses?" I sigh. If I accept that this is the Mulder I know, then I must accept that this passing psychosis means nothing. "You're not really a monster, are you?" he whispers. Maybe not. I throw my arm around his waist and hold him until I realise that the cracking sound is the glacier giving way beneath us. "Come on. Your chariot awaits." I give him my good shoulder for support and run like hell for the Sno-cat. We tumble into the front seat just as the crater swallows the ledge where we'd been kissing. "Did the earth move for you, Krycek?" he asks, watching the avalanche with awe. "Just like in my fantasies, Mulder." Damn. Back to normal so fast. I throw him into the rear with a frozen bottle of Stoli. Climbing into the cab, I risk a look. He's leaning into Scully, stroking her hair, but grinning wildly at me. I grin back. Then I remember, with relief, that none of Mulder's psychoses are temporary. I stare at the ice, the crater, the two people huddled behind me. We've defied death, and found something more. I hold out my hand to Mulder, palm up. His hazel eyes turn clear and serious, then he grasps my hand and touches it to his nose. I hold my breath as he unfolds my fingers and places a fervent kiss upon my palm, imitating my action on Scully's stomach. I understand perfectly. If she is the new Eve, perhaps I am the new Adam? Only our DNA will tell. Mulder's other hand continues to caress Scully's forehead. Her eyes flutter open once more, and she flashes me that beatific smile. And we three become everything in that one moment, suspended beyond time. There will still be accusations and explanations, but perhaps they finally know where I stand. Our monsters are frighteningly real. They spew green blood and they have nothing to do with each other. But we've left them behind on this sea of white. For now.