Sparks Fly Upward by Vehemently (R)

[wendelah1]

Fandom: THE X-FILES
Pairing: Mulder/Krycek, Mulder/Scully, Krycek/Scully
Length: 91K
Author on LJ: veefic
Author Website: Vehemently's Fan Fiction
Why this must be read:

Mulder/Krycek, Mulder/Scully, Krycek/Scully?

Seriously, there is a very interesting plot here that sets up the very interesting relationship drama that unfolds. What would happen if Mulder decided to go to the dark side and join the Syndicate? This is tightly written, and Vehemently just keeps rolling out the surprises. This story grabbed me and wouldn't let go.

Summer waxed hot and strong, with mist rising off the
river at dawn. The afternoon that he made the decision,
consultants and lobbyists were playing softball on the National
Mall, sweating well into dusk and braining unwary tourists. He
stepped out of the building into the humid evening, listening to
the paltry taxi traffic, and walked past the games while he
tried to think. Players called to each other, a small distant
sound like migratory geese on the wing confirming each other's
presence. The decision having been made, he finally realized
that thinking would do him no good. Mulder got onto the Metro
and went home to plan.

He came in to work the next day and cheerfully discarded
tact when talking with others. Scully staged a fight with him in
the middle of Accounting, and spent all of the next day leaving
impatient messages for him in offices where she knew he wouldn't
be and where the gossip traveled fastest. Counseling Services
called him up and he got in as many cheap shots as he could
before the shrink hung up on him. The crowning achievement came
the following week, when Skinner was so kind as to offer up his
jaw for a fistfight in the hall. The men who pulled them apart
watched Mulder out of the corners of their eyes, shaking their
heads. And so it was arranged, quickly, as in banal genre
movies, and with the inevitability of a landslide. He was out of
the FBI before he could tell himself that it was so.

There were a few sad consolations, from acquaintances.
Those who knew him better were ferocious in their avowals of
investigation, redress, revenge. Mulder had to listen to a
drunken telephone diatribe from Langly, about how The Man always
got you in the end, while Scully rolled her eyes at him from
across the room. She herself offered no condolences and promised
no promises.

A month was a good interval, a month in which Mulder could
start drawing on his inheritance -- he had just about swallowed
his tongue in shock and mortification when Scully told him how
much he was really worth -- and build a few cover stories. A
month, in which Scully struggled alone with the unwieldy X-Files
folders and gave the basement office a scrubbing it hadn't
gotten since the Reagan administration. She didn't let him know
when she was going out of town and she didn't call him when she
got back.

They let the month go by, and in the high, fine days of
June the conspirators met in a coffee shop in Bethesda, dressed
as tourists. Three iced teas sweated into cheap napkins and grew
tepid while they talked.

"Realistically," asked Skinner with a frown, "how much
access will you get? You can only trade so far on the family
name."

"They'll want me to implicate myself," said Mulder, saying
it out loud for the first time. "They'll ask me to commit
crimes." Scully straightened in her chair, but said nothing.

Skinner was not so circumspect in his disapproval. "You're
officially out. I can't necessarily offer you the kind of
protection the Bureau affords to undercover agents." He looked
down at his accusatory finger, hid it in a fist.

A long silence. Scully clenched her teeth visibly. Mulder
saw her fold her hands in her lap so as not to touch the back of
her neck. He stared at her the mass of what wasn't spoken, dense
like lead. Reaching out to touch her pink knuckles, he watched
her purse her lips as if to object, and then subside as with a
great weight pulling her down. She did not take his hand, but
neither did she shake him off.

At last he relaxed into a slouch and shrugged. "I
understand. I'll just take things as they come along."

"Do what you have to," said Scully, looking at the table.
She raised her head and burned her gaze into him. "Do what you
have to."

He nodded tightly and ended the conference.

*

After that it was a straightforward affair. The right kind
of phone call, a few old chits of his father's, and he was
sitting in the lobby of a high-toned office building in New
York, feeling underdressed in jeans. They made him wait, and the
surveillance cameras crawled over him and through him and found
nothing of note. After twenty minutes of reading the security
guard's Herald upside down and backwards, he was ushered by a man
in a thousand dollar suit into a silent elevator to the top floor.

There was only one man in the dark wood room to which he
was led. The man nodded his white head and said, "Mister Mulder.
I am very sorry to see it has come to this."

"You aren't going to tell me it's my destiny?" Mulder
asked, and sat without being invited to do so.

"That would be melodramatic, wouldn't it?" The old man
smiled past his clipped, Continental consonants. "What has
caused this new turn of events?"

Mulder gazed at him, at the long poker face and the
impeccable suit and the fingers tap tap tapping on any surface
that could support them. "I'm going where the truth is."

"I see." The man took a seat opposite his prospective
employee. They faced each other in dark leather wing chairs.
"And your partner?"

"She wouldn't countenance your methods. Things were tense
between us, since the immolations in March. We fought." Mulder
was amazed to find himself telling large chunks of truth. He
headed off the old man's tight-lipped appraisal, volunteering,
"I will not be her enemy. I want her to be safe, and well. I
wish I could have told her where I am this morning."

"And you came to me because?"

"Because somebody in your organization tackled me in my
own living room to make sure I knew about a certain Air Force
Base."

"You are risking a great deal on the supposition that I am
the specific source of your information."

Mulder felt the tight control over all his muscles. He
allowed the specter of a smile to cross his features. "But I'm
not wrong, am I?"

The old man stood and Mulder stood with him. "You will be
useful," he said. "My associate in the front office will assign
you to an appropriate forum for your training."

They did not shake hands. Mulder left him alone in his
enormous paneled room.

Sparks Fly Upward