Disclaimer: CC is the happy guy who owns the boys. But I'm the one who really
cares for them!

Ratings: R for violence. m/m affection

Pairings: M/K 

Spoilers: Terma; little spoilers for season 1 - 4

Thanks to Jessie for beta-reading

Plot Summary: Escape from the gulag; strange dreams

Moment of deep emotion Part IV: Pain and Fear
by Ratwoman
ratwoman02@yahoo.de 


   >>You dropped me, at high speed. Some skin tore off, 
     then grew again. I climbed out of that trough.
     Yet still I thought, how beautiful you were....<<
       From John Wain; You dropped me, at high speed


    Mulder is able to destroy the best  plans. 
    A few hours before Mulder started to freak out,  knocked me down and 
drove away with me dumped on the load area like a hunter's prey, I had a 
very long, exhausting conversation with the men in charge. I can be very 
convincing; at the end they all agreed in letting me free and they were even 
willing to think about whether they could let Mulder go with me, too. They 
even believed the lie that Mulder was my informant in the US, selling me
important secrets. 
    A few more hours, Mulder, and they would have let us go. 
    Too bad that I didn't have the opportunity to reach the superiors 
before the mad scientist had had the chance to use Mulder as a test subject. 
No wonder that Mulder felt betrayed by me. He's always quick with putting all
the blame on me.
    When I woke up on that load area, Mulder had already gotten rid of all 
the guards who had been following us at first, but nevertheless the truck 
was speeding up. Sensing that something was wrong, I crawled towards the 
cabin and peered through the grating. Mulder was trying to slow down the 
truck, but the brakes were defective. I couldn't help him; all I could do was
save myself.
    I landed hard on my right arm when I rolled down the truck onto the road,
but at least nothing worse had happened to me.
    The truck vanished behind a curve. I ran after it, hoping Mulder wouldn't
get hurt in case of a crash.

    It's certainly better for Krycek that he jumped off the truck before I 
drove it into a ditch, or else, without any shelter on the load area, he 
might have got hurt seriously. But at least I'd know now whether he's still 
alive.
    I got hurt, a cut on the forehead, but it wasn't so grave  that I 
couldn't climb out that truck and run into the woods. I walked aimlessly 
through the forest, and once I had to hide from the guards in a pile of 
leaves. As they walked by, I didn't even dare to breathe, thinking that my 
heartbeat was so loud that they could hear it. Fortunately they didn't find 
me. I peeked out after them, but no sign of Krycek. How I wished to know what 
had happened to him.

    I soon found the place where the truck had crushed. I climbed down the 
ditch and examined the vehicle. There was blood on the windscreen, but no 
sign of Mulder.
    Damn! Mulder would never find the way out of the woods without me, 
especially when he was injured. Full of sorrow I ran into the forest, hoping 
that I would find him before the guards did.
    I was still searching desperately for him, when a group of men 
surrounded me. They were certainly not the guards of the gulag, but ragged 
figures, all of them lacking their left arm. It was no difficulty to assume 
that they weren't friends with the gulag people, although I couldn't quite 
figure out why they were all one-armed. So I told them that I'd fled from 
the gulag, that I was  American and that they'd falsely assumed that I was a 
spy. To make it more believeable I strew in some English words and stammered 
around helplessly, looking confused, trying to give the impression of a 
harmless tourist who got lost. I'm good at looking harmless; they believed 
me and promised to protect me.
    Wish they 'd have told me how their "protection" would look like.

    At some time the driver of the truck I'd stolen, found me, shouting 
something in Russian, and dragged me to his home. Certainly working for the 
gulag didn't make him a rich man because his house was dilapidated, his and 
his wife's clothes shabby. 
    She was sitting at the table as he went in, pushing me inside. They were 
quarreling in Russian while the woman was fetching hot water to attend my 
wound. Finally the truck driver left, angrily slamming the door behind him. 
   Fortunately the woman spoke English. She told me that her husband was 
making deliveries for the guards at the gulag  and thus made sure that he 
and his family were allowed to live on. Now that I'd damaged the truck, he 
was afraid.
    Strangely enough, even though they told me they were safe from the tests,
their son didn't seem to be, for he had no left arm. "No arm, no test" the 
woman tried to explain to me. 
    I had no time to ask why the boy wasn't safe although his father made 
deliveries for the gulag, because the door opened and the driver came in. He 
had a large knife in his hand and wanted to do me a favour so I could avoid 
tests, too. 
    Well, that was a favour I gladly refused. Not wanting to bring them - 
and me - in further danger, I left them during the same hour.
    Although the driver and his family may have appeared to be rude people, 
they were really trying to help me, giving me a map so that I could find 
St. Petersburg. They also gave me supplies for a couple of days, even though 
they had hardly enough food for themselves. They just seemed to be very 
afraid of the people from the gulag. 
    I spent the night in a well hidden cabin they showed me. It probably 
once was a home for the miners of  a now abandoned mine.
    Soon I fell asleep from fatigue, but of course nightmares were disturbing
my sleep. In my dream I was running through the woods, searching for 
something I'd lost. I couldn't remember what it was, but I knew it was 
something dear, something I loved.

    I had become  careless. Stupid. How could I only fall asleep with a 
group of strange, probably insane men around me, all of them lacking one arm 
for some reason I didn't even dare to ask.
    But I fell asleep until I was ungently woken by the men's pinning me to 
the ground. As their leader took a hot knife and started to saw through my 
flesh and bones, the world exploded in pain.

    In my nightmare, while I was running through the woods, suddenly I heard 
screams. Ear-deafening cries of agony, and I thought I knew the voice, but I 
couldn't quite figure out to whom it belonged.
    It frightened me. Not just because I was afraid that something might 
happen to me. I feared more that I couldn't help the one who was screaming. 
I couldn't figure out the direction which the screams were coming from, so I 
ran aimlessly, helplessly through the forest, trying to reach the one in 
danger, trying to save him, but I failed. As I always do. 
    The cries faded and I reached a huge clearing. The trunks of the trees 
reminded me of the columns of an old temple, the tree-tops were like the 
ceiling. And there were the statues. 
    Marble statues, as true-to-life- as the antique greek ones. I could even 
see the veins on their hands. But they weren't sculptures of goddesses, myth 
heroes or warlords. A statue of Sam was there, sitting on a pedestal between 
her toys, like I will never see her again. Cancerman, smoking a cigarette.  
My father lying on a broad pedestal, with a blank look on his face and a 
hole in his head. Shot from the ambush. Scully, in a curled position, a gag 
in her mouth and her eyes wide in horror, just as I had seen her on the 
video-tape of the police car, when Duane Barry had tied her in the trunk of 
his car. My mother, looking reserved. Scully's sister, in a meditation 
position, with tarot cards in her hands. Skinner, huge and impressive. 
Phoebe with that arrogant, hurting smile on her face. The others at Quantico,
laughing at me, calling me Spooky. Frohike, Langley and Byers, discussing 
something. My enemies, my allies, my failures.
    And finally, Alex.
    He was beautiful. Crouched down, naked as he'd been in the prison cell, 
beautiful although his face was pain-racked. I wondered why he was the only 
statue which was broken. As many antique statues lacked one or more limbs, 
he only had one perfectly shaped arm, the other one ended aprubtly underneath
his shoulder. I was still contemplating about that, when I saw the blood 
dropping down the broken shoulder, gathering in a pool on the pedestal.
    I tumbled back, gasping in nausea. At the same moment I awoke, bathed in 
sweat.

    People say, you see life passing by your inner eye like a movie when 
death is near. I don't know  if I could say it was the same way with me, 
because before I passed out, all I could perceive was a pain I couldn't 
describe even if I wanted to. But when I fortunately lost consciousness, all 
the memories came back.
    Even in chronological order.
    Pictures of my childhood. The images of Russia were blurred, hazy, it 
was just too long ago. Much better I remembered the land of infinite 
opportunities, where my parents had wanted to start a new life, flourishing 
capitalism instead of restricting communism, dreaming the American dream of 
a small house, a money earning father returning each evening to his happy 
harmonic family. One evening he didn't return. Never again.
    Uniforms of policemen, my mom breaking out in tears. My father's funeral 
was the first time I saw her drink. It wasn't the last time.
    Years on Quantico. Stapels of paperwork and an old man smoking 
cigarettes, who made me an offer I'd better have refused.
    Mulder, and my life went to hell. Mulder in his speedos. Scully's 
abduction, me slowing down the tram, exactly following my orders. I shot 
Mulder's father, surprised about the pain when I saw the hurt and the hatred 
in Mulder's eyes. Cancerman tried to kill me with a car bomb, but I survived.
Days and nights on the run followed, several times killers almost hunted me 
down, breaking into the shabby apartments I used to live in or trying to 
shoot me in the streets. I was possessed by an oilien until I vomited blood 
and oil, shut in that damn silo for God knows how long. Freezing on Skinner's
balcony. Mulder all the time beating the shit out of me. Whenever I thought 
it couldn't become worse anymore, fate showed me that I was wrong.
    And now Tunguska. Mulder's and my escape. Before, the most wonderful 
night in my life. Then the most horrible night in my life.

    I have been shivering since I awoke from my nightmare covered with sweat.
I didn't know where I was at first, with a racing heart listening to the 
silence. Then I remembered that I was  in a hiding place the truck driver 
showed me. I was safe there; but what about Alex?
    Now I' m pacing the cabin, trying to calm down, but I can't stop 
thinking about the nightmare. About Alex. Had this been a kind of sign, a 
premonition? There have been cases of telepathy, when one knew whether 
something happened to a beloved person. A beloved person? Is it that I don't 
even try to deny anymore that I love him? After all he has done? In spite of 
all he has done?
    It's cold out there. Where is he? Is he safe? The blood.... his 
pain-racked features. 
    What would Scully say? Why the nightmare? Casually? Because I'm in sorrow 
for Alex's safety my subconscious tortures my dreams with horrible pictures?
Yes, I guess she's right. It had nothing to do with reality, Krycek is 
probably safe and warm with his friends of the gulag. My nightmares were 
just a product of my fantasies, of my fears. No reason to worry, really.
    I should try to sleep a few more hours. It will be a long way to go 
tomorrow.
    I wonder how Alex is.

    Am I still alive? Probably, because I wouldn't feel the pain if I were 
dead, or would I? Or is this hell? 
     It's cold, it hurts, I'm too weak to move, to weak to speak, and....
     I wonder how Mulder is.
   

  >>I surfaced from those depths wherein I dived.
    The green fields came again. I had survived.
    Even though I knew how beautiful you were. ....<<
    From John Wain; You dropped me at high speed


The End