Afraid by Mona Ramsey I was afraid you'd hit me if I'd spoken up I was afraid of your physical strength I was afraid you'd hit below the belt I was afraid of your sucker punch I was afraid of your reducing me I was afraid of your alcohol breath "You must be losing it, Mulder. I could beat you with one hand." I'm supposed to kill him, you know. Every time he shows up here, I'm supposed to kill him—the fucker that killed my father, tried to kill Scully, will probably one day end up killing me. And every single time I see him, he says something, or does something, and I let him walk away. I am tired of letting him walk away. I think he's tired of coming back, time after time—I think he wants me to kill him, to kiss him, to do something to put us out of our misery. To kiss him? Ah, yes. Freudian slip. Inextricable relationships. Alex Krycek. They're all one and the same, you know. None of this is meant to be understood. It just happens—alien ships fly overhead and people disappear from pickup trucks, my partners disappear, one returns with a chip in her neck, one without an arm. My sister never comes back. Bees appear in a school yard. My father—my father lies dying on a bathroom floor without telling me anything, just giving me more questions. My mother has a stroke and comes back from the dead. Everyone gives me questions—for each of the days of Hanukkah, for Christmas, for my birthday, for New Years'. More questions, wrapped in red ribbons streaming with Scully's blood and my mother's tears and Alex's spittle, warm against my cheek. And this is supposed to be enough for me. Well, it isn't. Not anymore. I want more. I was afraid of your complete disregard for me I was afraid of your temper I was afraid of handles being flown off of I was afraid of holes being punched into walls I was afraid of your testosterone "Isn't that how you like to beat yourself?" I swear to god I thought one or both of us was going to bust out laughing and then that would be the end of it. It was a cheap shot, I admit it— as clean a chance as I'm ever going to get with him. It never has anything to do with guns or my fists or his lips—his lips, it's all coming back to his lips on my cheek, his breath breathing against my skin as if he's real, as if he's a person, a real living breathing person and not Alex Krycek, Ratboy Supreme. Sounds like a pizza. I'll have a Ratboy Supreme, extra cheese, hold the anchovies. But, you see, if he's a person—if he's a person in my life— if he's in my life, and he's a person, and I know he's real—then I can't kill him. And yes, I could have and I should have and I still— somewhere deep inside me, or maybe really close to the surface—think I'm going to kill him, but I'm not. Or I can't. Or I won't. I'm not quite sure which. I'm not even sure that they're different. What does he have to do, give me a written invitation? Well, he did that tonight, and I still didn't do it. I think I need him tied up— handcuffed freezing on my boss' balcony, maybe, or one arm gone bleeding and beaten that someone else has done and delivered to me with a fresh gun with bullets with his name on them and then I'll do it. Alone in a cell in Russia, with nothing but him and me and rats and deep-breathing cells all around us and guards who wouldn't come fast enough if I held my hand over his mouth to cut off his screams I could do it with my bare hands. Believe me? Me, neither. Somehow it all comes down to sex, doesn't it? When you get to the point where two hands on your flesh aren't real because they're your own and because you've watched the same skin flick over a thousand times and even your mind can't get aroused, never mind your flesh, and you start to believe that you'll never feel it again, not even first thing in the morning when it is always there, and then you get used to it, to not feeling, and it's comforting somehow. It's easier, so much easier than not trying, not being able to try, the perfect excuse. And then, then you have two lips, two lips on your cheek, like a schoolgirl or your mother but not, because they're from this guy and the last time a guy kissed you it was your uncle on your thirteenth birthday, and suddenly these lips are real and you're real again, and it is real and you start to wonder why. And then you realize. Sex. It didn't go away. I didn't go away. It's still there. All I needed for it to come back, full force, was him. I have as much rage as you have I have as much pain as you do I've lived as much hell as you have And I've kept mine bubbling under for you "I'm here to help you." No, see—if he was here to help me, he'd have given me the goddamn gun without the spiel, without the explanation, without the freaking "tovarish"—as if I'm the only person in the world who hasn't seen "Man from U.N.C.L.E."—at the end of it all and without the kiss and let me kill him. No questions, no answers, no nothing. Just him and me and a gun and a bullet— maybe two, if I wanted him to suffer the way that I have, thinking about him and wondering where he is and if he's alive and wondering when I'll see him again, if I'll see him again. Driving me crazy in the middle of the night, lying on the couch, blue-light screen blinking at me, Alex Krycek in my thoughts in my dreams so I can't even get away from him in sleep. Eventually, you stop wondering. If you asked me today, right here, right now, if I ever thought that I would get my sister back—you know, I could say 'no' and mean it. Really. Not because I think my chances have lessened over the past five years—they haven't. They haven't bettered, either. I'm learning things, sure, but I'm not learning a single thing that I want to. I'm learning all sorts of things that are leading me down a hundred different garden paths, not one of which is actually leading me to my real sister. Everything is changing—Scully is becoming a believer, she thinks because of me, even though it is everything but me that is changing her mind. My mother is afraid of me, afraid that I'll find out something that will make me hate her, except I can't, you see, no matter what it is, hate her any more than I can make her stop hating herself. My father is dead, with no clear conscience, with no answers to any of his questions, either. Skinner - well, I've never understood him and I don't think I ever will, but it's starting to matter to him, for some reason. So, what it comes down to is the fact that Alex is the only constant in my life. He is the only thing that I have that I don't—didn't—ever have to question. And now that's gone, too. So I'm back at the beginning. Friend. Partner. Lover? Just without the haircut. Same thing. Inextricable relationships. Destiny. They're a bitch. You were my best friend You were my lover You were my mentor You were my brother You were my partner You were my teacher You were my very own sympathetic character "You know, if it wasn't in my best interests, I would just as soon squeeze this trigger." No I don't think so. I don't think he would, sooner or later. Because he's had the chance, too—he doesn't need me in this, nobody needs me. People are playing me off of each other, because I believe, but I'm not the only one. Pull up another person, take his sister or his mother or his gerbil away without an explanation, train him to fear and to hurt, give him a hole in the middle of his body, and there you have it. Agent Spender could be it, with a little help. Take his mother away, keep her away, make him believe, and maybe he'll go crazy, too. But not me. They're just getting tired, and sloppy, and maybe they don't have thirty years to spare, that's why. They're using me because I'm here. Because they know, eventually, they'll give me someone else and I'll put another one of those damn 'x's on my window and then I'll be right back in the middle of it. It's why they don't take Scully away. I'm even beginning to think it's why they don't take him away, either. But Alex—he's got no excuse. He could have pulled a trigger anywhere—in front of my face with me watching him, from a book depository with a rifle and two others on the grassy knoll for good measure. He could have killed me anywhere, anyhow. And he doesn't, either. He doesn't, the little shit—he kisses me on the cheek and makes me believe again, just when I'm beginning not to care and not to believe even though everyone else in my life—from Scully to Skinner, for god's sake, Skinner, who has never looked at the word 'extraterrestrial' without that same sour-milk taste on his face—is beginning to, and now I have to, too. Because he kissed me. I was afraid of verbal daggers I was afraid of the calm before the storm I was afraid for my own bones I was afraid of your seduction I was afraid of your coercion I was afraid of your rejection "I thought you were serious." And that was the only thing that he could do to make me believe him, wasn't it? The only thing that he could do to make me believe. I wonder—I wonder how long he's been thinking about it, if he's been planning it, wondering when to use it. I wonder if he saw it all along, from the first moment that I set my eyes on that stupid-ass haircut and the suit that was too grown-up and too big for him and those eyelashes that should be declared a lethal weapon on anyone but an antiquated belle of the old South. Did I know that he was made for a leather jacket and a gun and jeans and dark shadows from the first? Was it just then that the light struck him and I thought he'd disappear like a vampire, burst into flames or dry into ashes? Or maybe I just dreamed him up. Maybe I dreamed all of this—I'm in someone else's dream, or they're in mine. I'm a character in a play, one without a beginning or an end, just endless acts of ever-increasing frustration. Maybe I'm on television. Maybe I'll wake up one night, half-asleep, and see myself, and see him— replay that kiss over and over again, furtively, touch myself with his hands on the end of my arms. Maybe someone will write me a different ending from the one that I think I am destined for. Maybe, in that television-land, I'll get the girl, eventually. Or the guy. I was afraid of your intimidation I was afraid of your punishment I was afraid of your icy silences I was afraid of your volume I was afraid of your manipulation I was afraid of your explosions "Resist or serve." But I can't, you see. I am no longer able to resist, and I refuse to serve. I will serve nobody else's interests anymore, no matter what they think. I will not work for anyone without knowing exactly what the fuck I am doing. I was out. I was out, goddammit. I was out and I had the people who'd built up a cult of lies around me scratching their heads. I was confusing Scully, I wouldn't even believe her—when she's been the only thing in my life for these past five years that I've had to believe—and I wouldn't believe her. She was trying to pull me back in, and she couldn't, even with her screams and her memories and her almost-death that could have split me in half and hollowed the rest of me out, she couldn't do it. Skinner—who never, ever, in that little bit inside of him that is his own, doesn't belong to the Bureau or the Smoking Man or whomever he works for to keep us alive even though he doesn't know why—even he couldn't get me back in. But Alex could. You know, I may never forgive him for this one. I think I have the perfect grounds for murder. I have as much rage as you have I have as much pain as you do I've lived as much hell as you have And I've kept mine bubbling under for you "Tovarish." So I'm sitting here in the dark, when I should be thinking of the perfect way to kill him for doing this to me, and I'm thinking of the fact that he kissed me, the little fucker—kissed me and then left. Just what the fuck was that? He's either the biggest cocktease in the world—to go along with the whole one-armed-Russian-spy-traitor- murderer resume—or he actually had no idea that he was going to do it, either, and he got confused by his boldness and by the fact that I didn't even try to pull away from him, and he just left. In which case, he's probably having this exact same conversation with himself. Cheers, friend— you deserve it. I certainly shouldn't be the only one fucked up by this little encounter. And I have to wonder, in your dark apartment, on your couch that you sleep on alone, are you brushing your fingertips over your lips, over and over and over again, until that kiss is burned into them? You were my keeper You were my anchor You were my family You were my savior And therein lay the issue And therein lay the problem "Mulder? What are you doing sitting here in the dark?" Nothing, Scully. Not a goddamned thing. The End monaram@yahoo.com

If you haven't seen R&B, leave. You won't know what the hell I'm talking about. If you have, you've got a fifty-fifty chance. "Sympathetic Character" by Alanis back to top

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