Russian Roulette
By: Extra Onions
Warnings: Language, violence, sexual situations, disturbing imagery
Notes: This was written as a pinch-hit for apocalyptothon on LJ, to soundingsea's prompt: Mulder/Krycek ('shippy if you can manage it), post-colonization of the world by alien overlords (definitely post-"The Red and the Black". ) No need to go AU before "Terma"; I like Krycek damaged; but please ignore seasons 7-9. The ending is a bit ambiguous, make of it what you will. I hope you enjoy!
Five years ago, give or take an alien invasion or two, Alex Krycek leaves Fox Mulder with a stolen kiss and a reason to believe. He hasn't seen the man since, caught up in the ugly business of survival in a world gone insane. Oh, Krycek has kept his ear to the ground. Mulder did follow up on his lead to the alien rebel, but he'd fallen off the radar shortly thereafter. The aliens invade; conquer, and between one blink and the next Krycek finds himself running a resistance cell in the Russian tundra. He never expects to see Mulder again, though he's a warm memory for Krycek during the long and lonely Siberian winters, shivering in whatever rat hole or bunker he and his men have commandeered for the night.
They're raiding an alien research facility at the foot of the Dzhugdzhur Mountains. The intel Krycek's people intercepted indicates the facility is small, with only a token security force. Krycek leads the strike team, and they sweep through the security measures like clockwork, taking out a couple of the alien bastards in the process. Beautiful. He's already set the backup team on salvage—they make a habit of scavenging whatever useful supplies and bits of tech they can from these raids—while the strike team moves briskly through the compound. They take out a few more aliens along the way, and Krycek's feeling downright cheerful until they make it into the actual labs.
The labs are cold, sterile, and well lit. There's nothing to disguise the kinds of experiments that have taken place here… as his team passes through each room, they make note of the operating tables, the equipment laid out neatly in sharp gleaming rows, and the racks of chemicals. Holding tanks line the corridors, suspended glass capsules filled with some kind of pale blue fluid. Most are mercifully empty, but others show the proof of the aliens' intentions—some with human remains, desiccated corpses that stare out at Krycek with haunted, empty eyes. Still others contain pristine-seeming body parts and organs… arms and legs, a heart. A stomach. Other things Krycek doesn't know how to name. Worst of all are the smaller tanks, with frail human embryos preserved in varying stages of development.
A hush beyond normal caution has fallen on the team, but Krycek grimly keeps them moving forward.
Oksana wordlessly collects data disks while Yakov scoops up everything else that looks useful in her wake. Krycek's scientists will want to examine everything, though there's still so much of the aliens' strangely-rendered language they can't decipher that it's almost pointless. Mikhail and Zoja set charges with practiced ease. Krycek wants to blow this place sky high.
They've reached the center of the labs, a larger area with incomprehensible equipment and monitors lining the walls. Krycek kills the lone alien in the room before anyone else on the team can get off a shot. Dispassionately, he stares down at the strange but familiar looking corpse as its blood pools out on the floor, peripherally aware of the rest of his team spreading out and doing their jobs.
"Alexei? You should probably see this," Oksana calls, and Krycek follows the sound of her voice. An atavistic chill of apprehension races down his spine, raising hair along his good arm and the nape of his neck. Somehow Krycek knows he's not going to like what he finds.
It's Mulder.
Krycek stares at Mulder's face and the long clean lines of his naked body through the glass and the pale blue fluid he's submersed in for several long moments. Mulder's body is well-preserved; looks little changed from the last time Krycek saw him. He thinks wildly about embalming fluid; about high school biology class, worlds and years away, with the pale fetal pigs in mason jars that they had to dissect and diagram. Little punk he'd been, he'd thought it was cool.
There's a noise stuck in the back of his throat. Krycek thinks it might be a scream, or a sob. Something of his anguish must have telegraphed itself to the others, because they've drifted towards Krycek, wary.
"Boss?" It's Yakov; concern a clear note in his light tenor. "You OK?" Krycek's not alright, may never be alright again.
"I'm… I know him." There's a sharp hiss of collective indrawn breath behind him. Krycek feels their sympathetic eyes on his back, senses but does not see the shared looks between them.
Then he steps a little away from the suspended capsule, away from his team who are grim-faced and silent around him, and is quietly and efficiently sick. Grimacing, he wipes at his mouth with the edge of his right sleeve. He accepts the flask that Mikhail offers him with a small nod, taking a sip of the rotgut that his men are calling vodka these days. He swishes it around in his mouth to get rid of the foul taste of bile for a moment before spitting. He feels light-headed, distant. Shock, he thinks. If he turns around, Mulder is….
Shuddering, Krycek takes another swig of the vodka. It burns like napalm all the way down—what the hell is Shurik making it out of these days—and blames it for the burning tightness at the corners of his eyes. He takes a deep breath, then another.
"Get him out," he orders, aware his voice sounds close to breaking.
"Alexei." It's Mikhail, sounding unhappy. "We can't—we don't have much time here. The charges— we blow this place up, yeah? It'll do."
"Let me make this clear to you, friend," Krycek growls, rounding on Mikhail. He's furious, so furious, and he feels himself spinning out of control. He's always hoped to find Mulder again, secretly imagined him in a hundred rebel cells across the world; same stubborn son of a bitch that Krycek had alternately despaired of and admired. He's never in his worst nightmares imagined finding him like this, guinea pig in those alien bastards' sick experiments. Christ.
"This man, he's important. To me. We are not going to leave his body in this place for one more fucking second."
His glare encompasses the whole team, daring them to argue.
"It's Mulder. I'm going to goddamn well bury him if I have to dig through six fucking feet of frozen rock, you understand? Now get him out of that thing before I break the fucking glass."
His team is already moving, a well-oiled machine. Oksana is peering at the control panel below the capsule, studying the blinking lights and alien glyphs intently. Yakov hovers over her protectively, keeping a wary eye on the entrance. The others are finishing up, setting charges and gathering tech and data. Krycek himself is the only one who's useless. He stares at Mulder, right hand unconsciously gripping the prosthetic left arm that hangs limply at his side.
Useless.
Finally, Oksana hits the right combination of controls. There's a low humming sound before the glass recedes sending a flood of sticky fluid onto the floor at Krycek's booted feet. He hurriedly steps up in time to catch Mulder's limp body as it pitches forward, struggling to stay balanced when Mulder slumps heavily against his prosthetic. Krycek sinks to his knees on the tiled floor with him, right hand smoothing back hair from Mulder's face, mindless of the cold blue gel that coats his fingers.
Krycek's muttering softly to Mulder, to himself. "Mulder, God. Sorry…" He maneuvers Mulder's limp form to the side, trying to gather him up enough to stand.
Incredibly, Mulder's body seizes before being racked by coughs, sputtering and spitting up more of the vile blue fluid from his lungs. Krycek finds himself yelling, knows his team is responding to his frantic cursing as he scrambles to position Mulder so he won't choke.
Mulder's eyes fly open, darting wildly about as he trembles, but there's a long moment before Krycek thinks he's aware enough to take in his surroundings. Mulder's gaze sharpens then, coming to rest on Krycek.
"A-alex?" he croaks out weakly, eyes fever-bright and still confused. His eyes roll back as his body jackknifes again from the force of his coughing.
Mulder's limbs spasm once more before falling eerily still, a thin line of blue trailing from his lips. Terrified, Krycek presses fingers to the man's throat. There are tears streaming down Krycek's face, he's covered in some kind of goddamn alien goo, and he's so happy he thinks he could die of it. He feels a pulse.
Mulder is alive.
Mulder recovers quickly, or as quickly as one might hope given the situation, at least physically. He is withdrawn, moody, and more silent than Krycek remembers. Startles easily, and initially regards everyone except Krycek with varying degrees of fear and suspicion.
Krycek is patient, more patient than he ever thought to be.
It is necessity more than desire that first sees them sharing a bedroll. It's the dead of winter, too damn cold to sleep alone. Krycek attempts to be a gentleman, and if his hands wander a bit, Mulder doesn't complain.
There has always been a spark between them, though given their past together it's no wonder it was most often expressed in terms of violence.
Over the days that stretch out to weeks, Krycek pieces together as much of Mulder's story as the man haltingly shares. Going to the airbase. The attacks on D.C. and Mulder's subsequent capture. What he knows of the aliens. Some of the... experiments (torture) he was subjected to during his stay in the labs. There are holes, great gaping ones in his memory, but what he does recall is enough to incite Krycek to a number of acts of violence.
Quite a few alien outposts take extreme damage that month, with Krycek pushing himself and his men hard. They don't complain, running high on adrenaline and a sweet sense of achievement, as if the rescue of one man has becomes a symbol of all they have fought for.
Necessity eventually gives way to passion. It should be awkward; difficult. Past history aside, Krycek's half-crippled by the loss of his left arm, and the prosthetic doesn't exactly lend itself to sexual prowess. But they manage, drawing pleasure and comfort from each others' bodies.
Krycek ignores the sidelong glances and half-hidden smirks from Zoja and the rest. He looks well fucked, and knows it.
Mulder does amazing, sinful things with his tongue.
Most of Krycek's people—a motley crew comprised in equal measure of scientists, farmers, mercenaries, and former KGB or military types—are kind to Mulder, though a few regard him with understandable suspicion. He picks up enough of the Russian argot to get by, though his accent is terrible and Krycek tells him so, teasingly and often.
Mulder refuses to go on any raids. Instead he haunts their base, currently a long-since abandoned underground nuclear command center left over from the Cold War. It's a good place; secure; with lots of supplies laid into the bunkers beneath.
Part of Krycek wishes he would, remembering what a good team they made during his short stint with the FBI. But mostly he's relieved. Before finding Mulder, Krycek had little to care or worry about beyond simple survival, taking care of his people as best he could, and revenge. The stakes are higher now.
In any case, Mulder is far more useful working intel ops. He takes shifts monitoring surveillance feeds, and delves into the heaps of scientific data they've amassed with as much passion as ever he dedicated to one of his investigations.
During his imprisonment, Mulder learned enough of the alien's language to begin the difficult process of decrypting and translating the captured data disks that have thus far eluded Krycek's best and brightest. His scientists practically weep for joy when Mulder completes the first, babbling at them about solar-powered weapon plans in a messy jumble of pidgin Russian, French, and English.
"Things are looking up," Krycek tells Mulder, and is both startled and gratified by the rare smile that steals over Mulder's face, making him appear years younger.
"You gonna sucker punch me now?" asks Mulder, a glint in his eyes.
Krycek cocks his head to the side. "What?" Then he remembers the note he'd written about Fort Wiekamp, and laughs. "No. I can think of things I'd rather do to you," he says, archly.
"Hmm. I can live with that," Mulder replies, and pulls him in for a searing kiss.
Krycek dreams of before… mostly ordinary, small things; everyday memories and images from the past. He dreams about reading the paper Sunday mornings over a cup of coffee. His days at Quantico. That deli on 12th and Sutton with a pastrami on rye to die for. Baseball games. Pay-per-view porn. Traffic lights. Sights and smells and colors that seem brighter than this new existence. He misses it, the life he took for granted, the life that all of them took for granted before the Colonization.
Mulder dreams. He dreams of Samantha. Dreams of his abduction and imprisonment—a litany of "please" and "no" intermingled with a string of incomprehensible words in the harsher, guttural language of the aliens. Sometimes he wakes with Scully's name on his lips, or Skinner's. They don't talk about it, but Mulder lets Krycek hold him until the shaking stops and the tears he won't shed during daylight alternately freeze or dry in streaks down his face. It's enough.
Of course everything goes to hell.
It's only little things at first. A string of bad luck that is easy enough to write off as coincidence. Bad weather, machine failure, accidents, spoiled food… an outbreak of dysentery that leaves three dead and another dozen wishing they were. Everyone looses weight—Mulder doesn't have any to spare in the first place—and tempers run short.
Then it's the big things. Raids go badly. Losses mount up. Twice Krycek orders them to abandon a base because the alien enforcers are closing in too quickly and too accurately on their location.
It comes to a head with the deaths of Yakov's strike team; messy and violent. There's no longer any question about it being a matter of bad luck—it's an ambush, clear and simple. The aliens knew they were coming. Mikhail leads the few survivors home, but there's not enough left of poor Yakov's team to scrape up for burial.
Krycek hears his people muttering, in the mess, in the labs, during recon. Mikhail stalks around like an angry bear, by turns eerily silent or else snarling at the least provocation. Shurik's latest batch of vodka, if possible, tastes even worse than normal.
Mulder develops dark circles under his eyes, skipping meals he can't afford to miss and logging too many hours on the surveillance feeds, never stopping until Krycek goes in and drags his sorry ass to bed.
There's a leak, a turncoat. Krycek's going to find him, and he's going to kill him with his bare hands.
It is only a matter of time.
Krycek's just returning from a post-mission debriefing—a successful raid, for a pleasant change—intent on dragging Mulder away from the makeshift office where he's been pouring over those damn data disks like a man obsessed for the last few weeks.
Mulder could certainly use the break; he's been looking altogether too fragile and unsettled lately. Krycek's pretty sure the ones he's translating now strike a little too close to home—the aliens' experiments on Mulder himself. Krycek can't blame the man for wanting to know… hell, he'd like to know himself. Like half-healed scabs, these wounds are too recent, and Mulder can't seem to stop picking at them.
Krycek's thinking about Mulder—Mulder's filthy mouth and gorgeous cock and the way his hands grip Krycek's hips when he takes him in—and celebrating with the fifth of single malt scotch (the good stuff) he's got stashed away in his quarters. Then he hears a crash and muffled shouting from Mulder's office. He races the last few steps to the door and flings it open, gun in hand.
The room looks like a disaster zone; tables flipped over and Mulder's painstaking notes and alien data disks scattered everywhere. Of more immediate interest to Krycek are the occupants of the room—it's Mikhail, beating the shit out of a shell-shocked looking Mulder, who is huddled into a corner with his arms flung protectively over his head.
"What the fuck are you doing, Mikhail?" Krycek shouts, grabbing the other man and flinging him away from Mulder. "Mulder, you OK?"
Eyes wide, spittle flecking the corners of his mouth, Mikhail snarls, "He's not your Mulder, Alexei!"
Krycek freezes. Jesus Christ. He frantically runs through the possibilities, fucking shape-shifter, morph, some kind of goddamn alien mole—he's been sleeping with—fuck. For one crazy moment, he considers the possibility. Has he seen Mulder bleed? He can't remember. Automatically, his gun jerks up to cover Mulder, who is still wedged into the corner, quietly watching. Then common sense reasserts itself. There's no fucking way it's not Mulder. Krycek knows Mulder. He lowers the gun.
"You wanna run that by me again?" he says, keeping his voice cool, even.
Mikhail struggles to his feet, wiping at the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. "Ask your goddamn alien catamite, friend," he spits. "He's not human!" Krycek looks to Mulder, uncertain.
Mulder sinks his head down to his knees. "Clones," he mumbles, voice muffled. Krycek frowns and kneels down next to him, a cold knot of dread gathering in the pit of his stomach. "What?" He squeezes Mulder's shoulder. "Hey, c'mon. Talk to me." Mulder shakes his head, a sharp, abortive gesture of denial.
Mikhail shifts his weight, the telltale motion so slight Krycek barely catches it before he hears the hammer of Mikhail's gun being cocked. Krycek doesn't even think about it. He doesn't have to. Mikhail is dead long before his antique revolver slips from slack fingers and clatters to the floor near Mulder's feet, a perfect shot through his forehead.
The noise will have attracted attention. Krycek holsters his gun, then grasps Mulder's chin in a firm grip, turning the other man's disturbingly blank gaze towards him. "Say nothing. I'll handle this." He frowns when Mulder doesn't reply; slaps his cheek gently but urgently. "Mulder?"
A hesitant nod is as much confirmation as he gets, but it will have to do.
Krycek stands and turns to the door, where half a dozen of his men have gathered, alerted by the gunshot. Krycek weighs his options; speaks. "Mikhail Andreyev was a traitor to humanity. I have judged him and executed him for his crimes." Krycek has done worse things than denounce a man, innocent or not; would do much worse. For himself. For Mulder. Still….
Krycek kneels down next to Mikhail's body, gently palming his eyelids shut. "He was also a friend. Treat his body with respect."
Oksana's face is pale but composed. "I understand." She orders two of the men into the room with a tilt of her chin and they make short work of removing the corpse.
"Please leave us alone," Krycek says, not looking at Mulder.
Krycek shuts the door after everyone is dispersed and locks it. "You want to tell me what the hell that was about?" he asks, leaning against the door wearily.
No response. Uneasy, Krycek turns back towards Mulder, who has retrieved Mikhail's revolver from the floor. He's looking at it like he's never seen a gun before, turning it over gently in his hands before bringing the barrel up to rest at the base of his throat. His eyes meet Krycek's.
"No!" Krycek's already moving, skidding desperately across the floor, fear hammering at him as he wonders just how everything has slipped so thoroughly beyond his control.
"Mulder." Krycek's voice sounds a lot calmer than it has any right to, all things considered. "Mulder, put down the gun."
"Can't." Mulder whispers. "Not safe."
Krycek shakes his head, makes an abortive motion toward the gun, but freezes when Mulder presses it even harder into his throat. His adam's apple jerks as he swallows.
"OK," Krycek says. "Explain it to me. What's not safe?"
"It's all right there," Mulder mutters, waving the gun haphazardly at the papers and data disks scattered around them. Krycek resists the urge to try to wrestle the gun away from him.
"Great, that's great. But you know I only like to read while I'm taking a dump, Mulder, so why don't you give me the Reader's Digest version, huh?"
That startles Mulder into a laugh, and he lowers the gun. He doesn't meet Krycek's eyes.
But the gun is now in held loosely in Mulder's lap, and he's talking, so Krycek counts it as an improvement. Krycek is right; Mulder has been working on the data disks that detail his ordeal at the hands of the aliens. It doesn't take a genius to know that Mulder was being experimented on for a reason, but Krycek has never given much thought to why. Why Mulder? Why that facility? How did he end up in Russia?
Turns out the aliens cloned Mulder alongside their other experiments. Mulder explains that the data disks indicate the aliens created five viable clones from the host human's cells. They've stepped up their biotech, made it harder to tell the clone apart from the original. The new clone hybrids bleed red, like a real human. Virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.
Cloning shouldn't be a surprise, given the aliens' previous interest in Mulder's sister, but he is anyway. Still doesn't explain Mulder's Kurt Cobain impression.
"OK, I can see where you'd be a little upset. Five mini-Mulders running amuck unsupervised. But… how is you dying going to fix it?"
"The aliens can control the clones, Alex. They can… it's in the data. They're conditioned to obey. To serve." Mulder's voice is dead.
"So?" Krycek knows he's missing something, something important, something just out of his grasp.
"Alex." Mulder sounds pained. "I could be a clone. It doesn't… it doesn't say. Which one. If I'm really Mulder, or… something else…."
Krycek reels back, mind racing. If it's true—if Mulder is a clone—then the accidents, the ambush.… No. Krycek shuts down that line of thought. He refuses to believe it. But Mulder's still talking, and Krycek forces himself to focus.
"…so. You can't trust me. It's best to end it." Mulder sounds so broken, and so goddamn nobler-than-thou, just sitting there and something in Krycek breaks. Goddamn it! He lunges violently forward, ignoring Mulder's instinctive flinch.
Krycek fists the front of Mulder's jacket, pulling their foreheads close together. "You sonuvabitch, don't. Don't. I don't care if you're a fucking sheep named Dolly, you hear me?"
Mulder laughs a little, lost-sounding. "What if Mikhail was right?"
"Have you betrayed us? Have you betrayed me?" Krycek demands. He doesn't know what he'll do if Mulder says yes.
"No! No. I don't know," says Mulder, pressing the heel of his hand against his temple. "I don't think so, Alex, but I don't… I don't know." His voices twists higher on the last word, and when he looks at Krycek his face is uncertain. "How would I even know?" He raises the gun again, and Krycek's breath catches in his throat.
"I can't take the chance. Alex…. One in six," he reminds Krycek. Mulder's hands tighten on the revolver. "Six of me, but only one's real."
"Shut up! Just—just stop. That's crap. You're here. You're alive. That's enough for me," Krycek insists.
"I'm not really me," Mulder's voice is breaking, but Krycek can tell he's listening, wanting to hold on to something.
"You don't know that you're not. There's no proof. Now you give me a fucking chance here!" Krycek stares Mulder down and reaches for the gun. Mulder's frowning, but he lets go of it easily enough. "You really wanna kill yourself? One in six chance? You can have that."
Krycek's hand is shaking, and he knows this is going to kill him if he fucks it up. Goddamn, stubborn Mulder. Surely can't clone that much stubbornness. He curses as he struggles to empty the chamber, methodically stripping bullets from the antique until there's only one left.
"You're in Mother Russia, Mulder. Do it this way." Krycek shows the chamber with its single bullet to Mulder. "If you live, we will speak no more of this. You won't try this again. Promise me." His voice is sharp, demanding.
Mulder lets out a soft huff of breath, leans his head back against the wall. Finally, he nods. "I promise. But, Alex. If…. I want you to find the others. The rest of them. Will you do that for me?"
"I will. We will. We'll do it together," Krycek promises.
Bracing the gun against his knee, he spins the chamber right-handed and locks it into place. Pressing the gun back into Mulder's waiting hands, Krycek leans forward and kisses Mulder on the right cheek; ghost echo of that first kiss so long ago. Krycek feels the weight of it, some kind of inextricable destiny pressing down upon them both, and bitterly repeats his words from that time.
"Good luck to you, my friend."
Mulder cocks the hammer.
Krycek closes his eyes, and prays.
Disclaimer: The X-Files belongs to Chris Carter and others (but not me). No infringement or disrespect intended.