Title: Propulsion Author: RosesDecay E-Mail address: RosesDecay@aol.com Rating: PG Category: SA Spoilers: Terma Keywords: Pendrell/Krycek Summary: The world blurs when fear propels. Author's Note: This story is set in the same universe as "The Care And Feeding Of Young Dragons." It's not really necessary to read the other three stories, but hey, it helps. Post Terma, from Krycek's POV. Previous stories at: http://members.xoom.com/rosesdecay/ Distribution: Anywhere, as long as my name and e-mail address remain attatched. Disclaimer: The X-Files and all characters related to the show do not belong to me. I don't claim any right to them. No infringement intended. ~ Propulsion ~ I'm nothing more than a smear of gray, I'm moving so fast. //Fast, faster, faster!// It's my voice, childish and small. Strange how different my voice sounded as a child - so light and high and - Well, better not to think about it. Because it's not easy to think and run. //Fast, faster, faster!// is hard, hard to maintain with any degree of certainty. I'm just a speck in the air, an ant in a crowd, a single flickering light running up and down the jagged peaks of the skyline. Going in lopsided circles, like a fool. I'm nothing more than a smear of gray and the world is nothing more than a darkened, hazy rainbow. Grays and blues and blacks streak by and by, never solidifying, never retreating to the humid brown warmth of that one building, that one door. //Circles, circles, lopsided circles.// Sooner or later I'm going to fall, and the child with the sing-song voice knows it. I know it. //Fast, faster, faster!// and lopsided circles don't mix either. Each progressive circle only gets smaller, until I'm running, running and running and I find myself still in the same place. //Faster - // One place. I need to be in one place, just one, before I can stop running. Grays and blues and blacks, but never that doorway with the solid brown door, the dented mailbox to one side. Never that cold black square that appears when it opens, never the red and cream blur that would emerge from the darkness and catch me, catch me - //Faster, faster, *faster*!// The cement is cracked here. I can feel each crevice by instinct alone, feel each ever-widening crack that threatens to catch me instead. And I feel myself turning, hideously, without thinking. //Circles, circles, lopsided *circles*!/// //Weighted.// I feel it, too late. The crack in the ground, the lip of grainy concrete that refuses to move in my wake. //Weighted//, and the world is tumbling over itself in a tangle of lights and blacks and blues and grays - //Weighted//, and there is no pain. My head throbs and my knees wail, the skin scraped and tattered. The sidewalk is cold against my back. It is not pain, these empty, hollow sensations. It is nothing. Never again can there really be true pain. The sky isn't clear. The child-voice is silent in my mind, stunned. The sky is filled with the haze of pollution-soaked clouds, the stars shining waspishly through. Blurs. An involuntary moan weaves through my lips, and I stand up. //Weighted.// I'm close. I stand, and everything refocuses itself back into place. My head clears, the nerves in my knees subside. There are buildings here, ones I recognize. Close. Close to heaven, to brown and red and cream and safety. //Circles.// And it hits, really hits. *Pain,* the gasping wrenching tear of pain. The hazy sky, blurry stars. *Pain.* //Circles.// The fat white moon, a round, gray-flecked plate in the sky. Stars that glistened in the far off regions of space. The black-blue of a sky that never knew the corruptions of gasoline and oil. Tree tops of dirty green, and the copper-tongued flicker of the fire. *Pain,* with each agonizing, raspy pull of the knife. //Faster!// And the child-voice is awake and screaming, screaming so loud that the pain is gone and it's nothing but a blur. Grays and blacks and blues and lights in one smooth unmarred rainbow. //Faster!//, and damn everything back into the past, back, where it belongs. And the hollow not-pain is rushing through me, through my sprinting legs, through my abused chest. And I feel myself slowing, ignoring the howls of the child-voice, ignoring the gleam of that implausibly bright moon lurking in the corners of my memory. Brown. It is as I remember it, this building. Old and sagging at the seams, cracked at the joints. The faded, weather-worn door that barely stands on its hinges, and the promise lurking in its dim and distant hallways. Somewhere within it, the door. Brown and black and red and cream - Somewhere in the recesses of my memory flesh begins to melt away on the hot steel blade of a knife, and the scream that rips itself out of my mouth is more terrifying than anything I've ever heard in my life. And there's no time for thought, no time to heed the sobbing child in my head whispering his desperate words. The door dissolves under my fingertips and slams against the wall. And my footsteps on the wooden stairs, insanely loud with each step, //faster and faster and *faster*!!// There it is. The silence seems unreal. Brown, as wood usually is. The door, its modern silver numbers gleaming dully under the glow of lamps along the hall. Him. Him, God. //Faster//, the child-voice whispers, and begins to weep with such hollow bitterness that I can barely keep standing. I knock on the door, and the feel of my knuckles on wood is pain, the dullest squeak of steel through unyielding bone. Silence. And my knees, still smarting with that peculiar not-pain, collapse underneath me. The door smashes against me, brown and warm. Darkness is chewing away at my line of sight, the darkness of panic and terror and everything inbetween. It is *his* darkness, my own specially made phobia that only he can trigger. Panic and terror and silence, crushing and soft - The door dissolves under my fingertips. I'm falling. And he catches me, as I knew he would. I open my eyes and it's everything I ever wanted, red and cream and darkest black. //Weighted.// Something rasps in his throat, and it's horrible, deadly with fear and panic and rage. And his eyes are blue, more blue than I've ever seen them, and the word echoes in them with frightening intensity. //Weighted.// //Faster//, weeps the child-voice, but all I can manage is some useless sound between a whisper and a moan. His arms are around my waist and he's tugging me inside, kicking the door shut. The light dissolves and the darkness engulfs us both, safe and hazy and warm. And he's being so careful, moving me up against him inch by inch, his back against the wall. And soon enough I'm sitting up again, shaky, his chilled arms tight around my stomach, his head curled tightly into my shoulder. Whispers float soundlessly past my ears and I reach for them, blindly. "You're okay," he seems to say, and his arms clutch tighter and tighter as though I would pop. "Alex, you're okay. God, Alex, Alex - " and his lips pressing against my skin, all around my ear, as though through sheer force of will he would make the words come true. //Weighted//, ringing through those fearful, crystalline eyes - "Brian." And I can feel the scream rising in my throat again, the horrible blood-rich scream that had escaped from me outside. My voice is so small, so high and childish and small. His lips press against my cheek, and I can feel the realization shuddering through him. He *knows,* and he's scared, more scared than I had ever known he could be. "Alex," he whispers back, and it pours into my skin as though it were a sieve. Fear, unparalled fear. Helpless rage. And far, far into the depths, a child-voice of his own, one that knows the laws of the world and screamed as yet another was ripped shrieking out of the stone. //Circles, lopsided *circles*!// The pale moon, the golden red flicker of fire. And the shear of knife through skin, through bone, and the agonizing white-hot realization that it wasn't ending, wasn't ending and it *never would.* The pale moon, staring so placidly back at me, when I sat up into the cold stillness of the night and realized that the pain, the horrible pain that threaded its way through a million intricate pathways of blood vessels and veins, wasn't there. That my arm, with its frantically groping fingers *wasn't there.* //*Faster*!// screams the child-voice, and I can feel myself tensing, as if ready to run. But I can't run any longer. The darkness hasn't cleared. His arms are warm against me, thin fingers tracing soothing pathways from my collarbone to my shoulder. I can feel his lips around my eyes, the slippery trails of tears down his cheeks. Every pulsing breath in his chest slams against me in an arch, every silent, indignant wail soaks into me like water. This. I was running for this, for every shuddering tear in him. "Alex," he whispers, and it's too much, all too much. I'm spinning, madly, insanely, searching for the faintest sight of him in the non- existent light. And he's there, the dull red-brown of his hair and the tear-stained cream of his skin, and it takes everything in me not to kill him completely as I shove forward, crushing into him, trying to hold on somehow when I'm so off-balance, //weighted// - He enfolds me like the darkness, perfect and warm. Arms so careful, so cautious. I can feel the tears on his face with my own eyes, balancing on the fringe of his eyelashes. I can feel his lips with mine, dropping trembling kisses like raindrops. And words form, desperate and small, so childishly small. "It'll be okay, Alex. It will." A lie. A lie of love, of fear, of rage, of need. It will never be okay, now that the stakes have been planted so high. It will never be okay, never again. "Yes," I agree in a whisper, and he tightens against me, safe and warm and secure. It will never be okay, but I need this. I need this and him more than anything in the world. The moon dips outside his window and for a moment I can see his eyes. Moonlit blue, crystalline blue, and so scared. The child-voice moans, curling into a ball, pale and abandoned. His lips shudder and I say it for him, the word that rips into me deeper than any knife or blade. "Circles," I whisper, and I think Brian understands when I begin to cry as bitterly as any child. ~ "And there's so much at stake I can't afford to wait I've never needed anybody like this before." - "Temptation Waits," Garbage ~