From: Amatia Date: Sat, 6 Mar 1999 17:48:04 -0600 (CST) Subject: "Avatar" Series, Part Five: "The Avatar of Revelation" (1/1) by (spoilers/disclaimers/etc in first story) ******** "The trembling finger of a woman Goes down the list of casualties On the evening of the first snow. The house is cold and the list is long. All our names are included." - Charles Simic, "War" "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed on the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned, The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand...." - W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming" ******** "Avatar" Series, Part Five: "The Avatar of Revelation" by Amatia New Desert, Despuesamerican Southwest Territory July, 2008 Black shirt. Black pants. Black leather gloves that fitted snugly over the hands of the black brace that has given me movement once more. The high neck of the shirt hid the neural connector, shoes and socks hid the black metal feet that I stood upon. Not a speck of the brace showed. No one could tell that I had no arms. That I had no legs. Dr. Kirk was standing beside me as I looked at myself in the mirror, a proud smile on her face. "What do you think?" she asked. "Your best work yet," I said, offering her a smile in return. It felt strange on my face. "If it weren't for the cane, I'd look like my old self," I continued, gesturing toward my mirrored reflection with the carved wooden cane that Mulder and Ben Foster had made for me. It had an eagle's head top, and a trail of feathers cascading down the smooth cylinder of wood to a rubber bottom. The eagle's head was obscured by the grip of my metal hand. "Where did you find the gloves?" "Frohike got them for you," she said. "That man finds the most amazing things. I don't know how he does it." I turned away from the mirror, slowly crossed the room, leaning only a little on the cane. "I feel like I've been reborn, Dr. Kirk." She chuckled. "Well, it could be said that you have." There was a knock on the door, and we both turned around. Mulder's eyes peered in through the glass. Kirk went over and unlocked the door, greeting him, but it seemed that he had eyes only for me. "Astounding," he said softly. "When they brought you in we didn't think you'd make it." He continued to stare at me. He'd been to visit a few times since I'd regained consciousness, but I had looked like a monster then, the metal of my limbs shiny and uncovered. Tapping my cane lightly on the ground, I raised an eyebrow, unable to stay quiet. "Do I look any different than I did before Colonization, Mulder?" "If anything, you look even more sinister," he replied. "All you need is a leather jacket." He finally shifted his gaze to Kirk. "I can show him his quarters." She nodded, and went to the cabinet. "Alex," she said, turning back around with a bottle of antibiotics in her hand. "I want you to take one of these, twice a day, for a week. And you be in here a week from now for a checkup." I took the bottle from her hand. "I'll do that." "All set?" Mulder asked. "I think so," I replied. "Thanks, Dr. Kirk." She smiled warmly. "It's my pleasure." I followed Mulder out of the ward. He set a slow pace so that I could keep up. "How're you feeling?" "Like a new man." "The last time you said that to me, you were playing host to an alien," he said with a grin. The last time I'd seen him grin was when we'd been partners. That was almost fifteen years ago now, but it felt like yesterday, I can still remember the butterflies I'd had in my stomach when I'd introduced myself to him. "Lucky for me I was," I said seriously. "Or I'd be dead right now." Mulder didn't reply. My cane clicked on the concrete floor as we continued down the hallway. "I chose a room close to Ward in case you ever had en emegency," he said finally. "I hope that's all right with you." "It's fine." "Your roomate is Bill Rhodes. He's aware of your condition, and he knows to bring you to Ward if anything abnormal happens. I'm sure Jen told you all the stuff that could happen with the brace." "She did." We stopped, and Mulder unlocked the door to a room. "Here you go. And here's your key." He handed me a key on a plastic keyring. "It opens the men's bathrooms and the laundry room as well. The dining room is always open, and there's a rack of books in there. You won't need to go anywhere else. Now, we eat three meals a day here, but only dinner is mandatory, we use it to keep track of how many people there are, and discuss the next day's agenda. Breakfast is served at oh-seven hundred hours, lunch at twelve hundred, and dinner at eighteen hundred hours. Jen sends me a roster every day of who's sick, so we know to count you if you're in Ward or too sick to eat dinner. Got that?" "Got it." "This is no game here, it's life and death. You earn your keep here, it's the only way to keep everybody fed and clothed." Mulder leaned against the wall, his eyes intent on me. "By the way, you're given three sets of clothes. One, you're wearing, and the other two are in your locker in your room. Bill will show you where everything is. Come see me tomorrow and we'll set you up with some sort of job. Don't fuck around, Krycek, or you'll be sorry. You pull any double agent crap, and you'll be dead. I make the laws here, and I don't take any crap from anyone. The punishment for treason is death. Got that?" "Got it," I replied, moving my cane to the other hand. "Follow the rules, and we'll get along just fine." He smiled, a feral smile, his lips pulling back from his teeth. Then his face relaxed. "Jen says that you said you killed the Cigarette-Smoking Man." I shifted my weight uncomfortably, but he didn't notice. I sighed inaudibly. "Look, Mulder, I'll be glad to tell you about it, but maybe we could sit down first?" "Oh, sorry." He pushed the door open. The room was sparse, a set of bunk beds, a plain desk with a lamp, a wastepaper can, and four wall lockers. Two were labeled "Rhodes". A rectangular throw rug attempted to brighten the dull gray concrete floor. There were no windows, not ten feet underground. Light came from an overhead florescent, and the desk lamp. We sat down on the bottom bunk, Mulder leaning against one of the metal posts, and me leaning back against the wall with my legs propped up on the bed. "Standing for an extended period of time is rather painful," I explained. "You should have said something right away, and I would have let you sit down," he replied. I bit my lip to keep a nasty comment from arising. "You said you wanted to hear about the Smoking Man." "Yeah." "Well, what do you want to know?" "Did you kill him?" "Yes," I replied, rubbing my thigh with a wince. "Why'd you kill him before they could put him on trial?" "Isn't it obvious?" I asked, incredulous. "I killed him so that he couldn't expose any more of our anti-Colonization plans." Mulder rolled his eyes. "You plan was ruined when they caught Diana Fowley." "Your ex-wife knew nothing," I snapped. I could tell he was surprised that I knew about Fowley's relationship with him, but he didn't reply out loud. His fingers tightened on his knee, and the line of his mouth hardened. After a moment, he said, "I told you not to fuck around." "You didn't think anyone knew, did you? You never told your precious partner - " The sound of his hand hitting my face made a loud crack in the concrete room, and the stinging pain came a second later. "Don't you ever, ever talk about Scully! Unless you know where she is, you're not allowed to speak her name!" "Dammit, Mulder!" I refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing me rub my face. I'd have a hell of a bruise tomorrow, Mulder still could hit as hard as he could when we'd been trapped together at Tunguska. "You speak of her as if she was some kind of saint!" He stared at me. "Scully won over death more times than I could count!" "So have a lot of other people. Or do you have eyes only for her?" I sneered. "You. Don't. Know." Each word precise, accented. His eyes were narrow slits, the hard line of his mouth had become a frown. "You don't know what it's like to lose your best friend." "You could have stayed at your Institute, you would have been able to keep in touch with her," I replied calmly. "And worked for Them? They wanted me to help Them catch resistance fighters! They wanted me to profile what I became. I couldn't do that. I couldn't kill my friends." "You would have helped them catch me. Not incentive enough?" I could tell he wanted to hit me again. "If I wanted you dead, I'd have told Jen to let you die, you bastard. You fucking bastard." I wasn't swayed, I'd been called much worse things. "We're going to have that kind of a fight now? I expect more of you, Agent Mulder! Everyone expects more! Don't you get it? I told you years ago that you were the one who could stop it, but you didn't believe me. Don't you get it? You're the saint!" I could tell he couldn't stand listening to me say that. He stood up from the bed, began to pace the tiny room. His voice was low and raw. "If you know where Scully is, tell me now." "All I know is that she escaped from the Institute for Anatomy and Pathology, and no one working for the Colonists has seen her since. I haven't seen her since...damn. Since before I lost my arm." "That doesn't help me very much, does it?" he snarled. "I can't tell you what I don't know." He spun around to face me. "You were out there for eight years!" "You don't know what it's like out there, Mulder! You don't know what it's like to work for the Colonists one day, and for the resistance the next. To have to worry about not only yourself, but the people you've got hidden away." He missed my point entirely. "You're right. I don't know, and I don't want to know. Have a nice day." He left the room, banging the door shut behind himself. "Damn it all," I muttered. "I never met a bigger bastard than you, Mulder. And I must be damned for wanting to help you." violinst@pitnet.net Site X - http://personal.pitnet.net/london