Title: Gabriel's Feather (Part 1 of 3)
Author: FatCat (rah1231@yahoo.com)
Rating: G
Category: MSR, CHILDFIC, MYTHARCH
Spoilers: Well, DUH!
Summary: Mulder has been missing for almost 4 years and
somebody is pissed.
Disclaimer: Thanks
to CC, FOX, 1013, GA, DD, RP and all those others who actually own the show and
produce the wonderful characterizations. The people out here who actually support the show would have more fun if
some of the fanfic authors were allowed to write some scripts. (IMOPO!)
Archive: I would be honored, but not counting
on it. Just let me know where.
(See author's notes at the end)
Gabriel's
Feather
Alex Krycek was sweating
bullets. He had been summoned to the
meeting place. He was standing in the
middle of the desert clearing as instructed. The pick up time was only minutes away. He was afraid he would hurl. He
began the same litany of self-talk he used to psyche himself up with each time
they brought him to the ship.
"Any show of
rebellion will lead to your downfall. Any display of doubt or disgust will be deadly. They only use you for your strength. Any show of weakness will destroy your usefulness. You don't want to wind up like him."
The light was sudden and blinding. The familiar feeling of vertigo swept over him. He kept repeating the last sentence of his
talisman over and over as he was transported to the main cargo area of the ship.
Krycek forced his rubber-band legs to support him. He held his head high, shoulders back. His only outward concession to the physical
trauma of the transport was his closed eyes. The smell of the place hit him like a brick wall.
He didn't think he could ever get used to the smell. It was a smell that could not be defined by
earthly words. The first time it had
been repugnant and alluring at the same time. Now the otherworldly odor repelled him—it took everything he had in him
not to puke his guts out each time he was forced to meet with them.
Once again a silent trio of escorts met him. He had never tried to make small talk with
these things. Hell, they all looked the
same to him, he doubted he would know it if he saw the same one twice.
The walk through the ship was endless. 'You would think a species that can travel
through space and has harnessed invisibility could find a way to incorporate
elevators into their mode of transportation.' He thought as they walked. He
had asked once why they didn't just teleport themselves from room to room and
had received a scathing reply that included a lecture on physical fitness and
energy conservation.
As they came closer to the meeting room the lights grew
brighter; it was a small concession to him. This made it easier for him to see more details in the ship and the
features of the alien guides. He
thought he did recognize one of the guides. He was pretty sure that the one in the lead was the one in charge of
Mulder.
'Oh, shit! Now
what? Have they finally killed that
poor son of a bitch?' He thought
wildly. 'They probably want me to
dispose of the body. God! Please don't let them tell me to bring them
the boy.' He realized immediately that
he had to quit thinking about the boy. He wasn't sure they could read his mind unless he had been given the
"treatment," but he didn't want to have a lingering thought about the
boy to be exploited.
He was surprised when they walked by the area where they
usually met with him. They continued
down the hall and turned right. The bad
feeling he had had about this meeting was growing into a wave of fear.
He suddenly found himself praying as his Russian Grandmother
had taught him to so many years and lifetimes ago. Buried prayers kept screaming through his mind:
'Dear God, please protect this sinner! Jesus, hear my plea! Don't let me be next!'
They stopped in front of a doorway of sorts and turned,
waiting for him to enter. Swallowing
hard, he stepped into the room. The
light in here was almost non-existent. His eyes adjusted slowly and he realized that it was not a lack of light
in the room that caused his diminished ability to see. It was the wavelength of the light that made
it near impossible for the human eye to discern details. This was the lighting they used.
His ears strained to hear the small noise coming from the
center of the room that told him he was not alone. He needed to put a mental picture with the noise before the rats
of fear that were threatening to eat his mind won the battle and he fled in
terror. Fled to his death.
He was left waiting. He didn't know if this was a test or just their way. Each time he had been summoned he was made
to wait. Sometimes he thought they did
it to see how long he could last before his imagination and memory caused him
to break the silence they seemed to demand.
Once again he thought of his grandmother. He stepped into a comfortable spread-legged
position and let his arm fall loosely to his side. He closed his eyes and withdrew into his mind. It was a technique that had saved his life
many times in the past.
He quickly tumbled back through the years to his first
memories of his Grandmother.
She was an oddity. She had caught the Czar's eye and had been plucked from her poor family
and plopped into the middle of court life at a very early age. He could remember the pictures of her that
had been taken at Czar Nicholas II Court. She had been acquired as a playmate/servant for Anastasia. She was nothing more than a very beautiful,
very lucky, very smart peasant girl. She was so smart in fact that she had seen how things were progressing
and had had the good sense to be visiting her parents when the entire royal
family had been destroyed.
She hid in plain sight. Her luck held long enough for her to find a position with an English
family as a governess and quickly took the opportunity to outsmart the
assassins that were searching to tie up all the loose ends to the coup. Her passage from Russia had not stopped in
England. She had used her years there
to live quietly and frugally. When the
time was right she had disappeared and fled to America.
She was a contradiction. For all her brains and beauty she was still, at heart, a peasant. Her superstitious nature had enraged
her. She began, quietly and privately
studying religion. She was trying to
blot out any hold on her mind by any organized religion—a weakness in her
book. He remembered how she laughed
when she told him her secret. She had
tried to prove the sham of religion so fervently but had failed.
She became a Christian. She believed with all her heart and soul in the Lord and His son,
Jesus. She never aligned with an
organized religion. Her fear of
belonging to an organized and therefore identifiable group never left her. She worshiped the Lord in her heart, in her
mind, and in a constant rotation of churches of various sects in New York
City. A practice her American husband
had found amusing.
She had married an American businessman. She did not love her husband, but he
worshipped her and the security she felt was enough. She had only one child late in life, his father, as he had been
his father's only child. Alex believed
with all his heart that the man who eventually married his mother—his poor,
weak, pathetic mother, had orchestrated his father's death. Beautiful to a fault and vain, she had
chosen to fall into the offered marriage and stability it offered without
trying to make a life for them. It was
clear to his Grandmother that there were dark intentions behind the bland
smiling face of his stepfather. Two
more children followed in quick session, but he never felt connected to
them. He only felt connected to his
Grandmother.
She had prayed for his salvation until her dying day. He had been her favorite. She saw herself in him. He was smart, beautiful—even as a child—and
lucky. His luck had run out, though
when his mother allowed his stepfather his way and he had been sold like a dumb
animal to the organization that he now worked for under the guise of a good
boarding school education. Sometimes he
felt like they had bought his soul as well as his body from his stepfather.
The time wore on and his thoughts drifted from the his past
back to his grandmother. He wondered
why she weighed so heavily on his mind today. Their many discussions about God and forgiveness had been constantly on
his mind lately. He mentally
grunted. Maybe he was tired. Maybe he was tired of living. Maybe he was trying to rationalize a way to
let himself die—holding on to the thought of salvation like a life preserver in
a tidal wave. Maybe he was too close to
the devil for comfort.
The lights in the room changed. The low lights revealed a sight that had haunted Krycek's dreams
for almost three years now. The tank in
the middle of the room containing Fox Mulder or what was left of him became
visible. From the far side of the room
a number of the aliens entered and flanked the tank by the controls.
The tank began to drain and Mulder to stir. Dear God, how could this man still be alive.
His body was impaled at his wrists and
ankles in a chair-like apparatus that obviously, though not visibly, was
attached to his bodily functions thru other orifices. There were glowing green tubes implanted directly into his brain.
The liquid that was draining was a nutritional
preservation-based substance that was obviously doing its job. While he was entombed in the liquid it
provided all the oxygen and nutrition his body required, even keeping his
muscular structure at a functioning level. To increase his body's adaptation to its original state, the silent
watchers tuned various instruments as the level receded.
Krycek's stomach roiled and he was able to control it only
by sheer strength of will. Swallowing
convulsively he maintained the calm exterior that marked him as one of
them. Inside he felt a part of him
changing—or was that dying. He had to
hold on to his cool until he was off the ship. He had to stop thinking.
As they completed the removal of the tank and lifelines,
Mulder began to regain consciousness. His reaction to the pain of the various procedures was minimal until it
came to the removal of the tubes to his brain.
The howls of agony and pain that came from him were beyond
human. He finally dropped back into
unconsciousness and they quickly completed the removal of all the remaining
implements. Krycek was amazed to watch
them reseal his skull leaving almost no evidence of tampering. They were capable of doing this amazing
healing, yet they openly ignored the wounds on his ankles and wrists. Soon Mulder was sitting in a pool of
blood. If someone didn't do something
soon, he would slowly bleed out.
Perhaps that was what they wanted.
One of the aliens that had been working on Mulder broke away
from the group and approached Krycek. The words were not spoken, yet Alex heard them loud and clear.
"We have a mission for you. We have agreed to allow certain factions on your world access to
this specimen's unique abilities. It
has learned how to completely shut us out of its mind. It is of little value to us as it is. We have agreed to their proposal and are
releasing it to their breeding program. We will be able to utilize its offspring as a replacement for it. Either it will cooperate to save them or
they will be used in its stead."
"We will drop you off at these co-ordinates…"
A blinding flash of white light filled the room. A sound not unlike a thousand trumpets rang
throughout. In the quiet that followed
the blast of noise the sound of strong wings beating hung in the air.
All the aliens were blinded by the light. Their superior mental strength stupefied by
the intensity of it—they fell back toward the walls. It looked as if some were dead.
Krycek fell to his knees as his eyes adjusted and he
realized what had appeared before him.
Flanking either side of Mulder were two beings that could
only be described as angels. They were
big, muscular, and tall. They had wings
affixed upon their backs that probably had a span of 15 to 18 feet when opened.
The leader of the aliens raised an implement of some sort
and pointed it at the two angels. A
wave that seemed to wrinkle space flashed forward. As quickly as the wave lashed out, it was not quick enough.
The angel nearest the weapon moved quicker than the eye
could follow and stood between Mulder and the wave. As it reached him it simply dissipated. There was no clap of thunder or rending of reality. The angel then raised his hand and pointed
at the alien leader.
Krycek did not hear one spoken word, but it appeared that
there was a furious exchange going on between the angel and the alien
leader. It was obvious who was the
winner in the exchange as all the living aliens backed out of the room—eyes
glued in what could have been fear on the angels.
The fierce looking angel then turned to him and beckoned him
forward. Alex couldn't move. He jerked as if he were shot when the second
angel spoke his name.
"Alexi," he heard his Grandmother's pet name for
him called.
"This cannot be happening!" his frantic mind was
telling him.
"Alexander Nicholas Krycek! You are being summoned to safety. Join us or die." The
fierce angel spoke loudly.
This jolted Alex back to his feet and he stepped tentatively
forward. When he was within two feet of
the angels and Mulder, he stopped.
The second angel reached out and took his arm, high enough
to be grasping his arm not his prosthetic, pulling him close to his side. He then took Mulder's arm with his other
hand. The fierce angel grasped Mulder's
other arm.
"Cover your eyes Alex." Came the command. With his
eyes closed he realized he could hear the sound of the aliens returning. Their slithery steps sounded in the halls
outside the chamber. It sounded as if
there were hundreds of them returning for battle as they began flowing into the
chamber. His eyes popped open. They were surrounded.
The alien leader stepped to the front staring intently at
them. A mental exchange was again
made—a demand from the alien, met with an ultimatum from the angel. The alien must have signaled for an attach
and all the weapons in the chamber fired in unison.
"Alex!" He
immediately covered his eyes again.
Not two seconds later a blinding light surrounded the
four. Vertigo washed over Alex. He somehow knew they were not on the ship
any longer, but he had no idea where they were when he opened his eyes.
A white haze surrounded him. The only things he could distinguish were the three others. The two angels were holding Mulder between
them.
"Who are you?" Alex managed to croak out.
"We are Michael and Gabriel, angels of the one true
God." The friendlier angel said.
"What's going on?" Alex was still slightly muddled, but a fierce thirst for
knowledge washed over him.
"We have been sent to right a wrong."
"Oh, yeah, Mulder."
"Yes, Mulder, Alex, but also for you." Michael, the fierce-looking angel said.
"Me?"
"You are one of God's children. It saddens him to see you stray so far from
his word. We have been sent to give you
one last message."
Alex Krycek could barely force the words out. "What's the message?"
"Believe and Repent, Alex Krycek. God and His Son, Jesus has a special task
for you, but first you must Believe and Repent."
"I, I do believe. My Grandmother taught me to know the Lord. I just couldn't accept Him after all that happened to me as a
child. Why would God Almighty let
things like that happen to a child? I
prayed for his help everyday, but no help came. The abuse continued, the tests continued, the cruelty continued
until I gave up my dream of salvation by God and became one of them to escape
the pain of being human. Why? Why do so many children suffer?"
"God only knows the reasoning of the universe. But, Alex Krycek, know this. God Almighty has protected you your entire
life. How many others did not survive
the cruelty you were subjected to? How
many others killed themselves as adults? How many others have never questioned the right of their actions? God protected you physically by helping you
live through the pain, both mental and physical and keeping you strong. He protected the kernel of good that
survived in your heart and kept it from the sight of others that would have
killed you out-of-hand if they had an inkling of your inner conflict. You had to have had help to survive. What did not kill you, made you
strong." Gabriel spoke.
"With all you know, with all you have seen, do you
still reject the path of God? Think
before speaking. Much rests on your
decision."
Alex closed his eyes and forced his mind to consider the
question. Reject God? Impossible. Even before he had seen the angels, he knew God existed. His Grandmother's words had been branded
into his heart. He had just chosen to
not listen to them as he grew up. Some
people claimed that there was no God. He always knew that God was real. He had, after all been in the company of evil, Satan if you would, and
he knew Satan believed in God and feared Him.
He was tired of evil. Even before this moment, he had wanted to change. His heart was tortured by the evil he had
become. He believed and accepted God
and His son Jesus but had feared he had done too much to ever be forgiven by
them.
As he was thinking this last thought a feeling of warmth and
peace flowed through his being.
"As Jesus forgave the thief on the cross next to him, he
can and has forgiven you. All you need
to do is ask, sincerely, and He and His Son will welcome you with open
arms."
Once again Alex fell to his knees. He bowed his head and asked the Lord into his heart. Tears of gratitude washed down his
face. He felt at peace.
"Alex. Please
rise. Our time here is coming to an
end. We have much to tell you before we
part." Gabriel said.
"Your path is still not going to be an easy one. You are one of God's warriors now and must
be strong. You will be returned to the
spot you were picked up. You must gird
yourself with the word of the Lord. You
have knowledge of the enemy that will be of great assistance in the coming war. Mulder will need your assistance in the
future. You are to be at his left hand
in the war to come."
"Mulder? He
looks like he's dying, how can he fight the war?" Alec said sadly.
"He is stronger than he looks. The Lord had provided for him and will
continue to make him strong. He has
given him what he needs in this life to survive and succeed in the coming
days." Michael said.
"Even if, when, he does recover, he won't let me help
him. I have hurt and betrayed him
several times in the past. He and
Scully will never believe that I am truly changed." Alex again spoke the words in his heart.
"You must put your trust and faith in the strength of
the Lord—not in past worldly happenings. All has been arranged. Mulder
will accept your assistance. All
surrounding him will accept your help. A sign has been arranged. You
will need this." Gabriel said.
Alex watched with wide eyes as Gabriel reached behind him
and plucked a long white feather from his wing and held it out to him.
"You will know what to do when the time arrives. For now, go, learn, and grow in the
Lord. You must put on the Whole Armor
of God, Alex Krycek, and you will find many out there who will help you fashion
this armor. Listen to them; seek the
council of God and his Son Jesus; pray as you have never prayed before. When the time is right, all will be
revealed."
Alex reached out to accept the feather. "Thank you, both." was all he
could say. As he grasped the feather,
he felt vertigo flush over him again. He closed his eyes and tried find his sense of balance.
When he opened his eyes, he was once again standing in the
clearing. He wondered if he had dreamed
the entire sequence of events. His eyes
rose to the heavens to search for some sign of what had or had not happened.
His eyes widened at the sight of the alien ship falling out
of the sky. It was angled for a crash
landing; there was no doubt in Alex's mind. The cloaking devise was no longer hiding the huge ship and it was
tumbling towards the earth out of control.
Even though the ship did not fall from a great height, the
impact was heard and felt for hundreds of miles.
Alex once again fell to his knees. He realized that his very life had depended on how he had
answered the calling of the Lord. He
bowed his head, closing his eyes and began to clasp his fingers in clumsy
prayer of thanks.
His eyes popped open as he realized what he still grasped in
his hand.
Gabriel's feather.
Author's notes: This
is the second of a three-part story of the future. I am aware that there are many X Files fanfic fans that are not Christian—but
Scully is and so am I. I figure that I
have as much right to write what my heart would like to read as anyone else who
chooses to write Slash or Torture stories. If you did not enjoy it, please don't read the next two stories. If you did, I hope you let me know.