Glory Beyond Our Reach by Te 10/98 Disclaimers: Not mine, and I sincerely hope I don't get sued. Spoilers: Not a one. Summary: Getting what we want. Ratings Note: R. Author's Note: A possible ending to the Dead Things universe. Call it two or three months after the ending of "Time." In this story, "Taedium Vitae" never happened. Acknowledgments: With thanks to Dawn Sharon for giving me an image I just couldn't shake, despite my best efforts to do so. For my sweetness and dark, my Sister Blue, because I love her. Thanks also go to Rye for marvelous beta. All remaining mistakes are, of course, my own. Feedback: PLEASE. Always. Always more. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Glory Beyond Our Reach by Te Daddy793@aol.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Alex stood at the window, watching the snow fall. Large, wet flakes of the sort that settled on the bare trees with the slow heft of freeze. Of the sort that coated the land with a thick, silent weight. That last didn't feel quite right, and he closed his eyes to listen. Quiet and quiet and... there. Perhaps fifteen miles to the rough Northeast a crunch, muffled and rumbling. Some winter-dead thing surrendering to the weight of water and chill. Sometimes he wondered at his own morbidity. Looked at his pale and mute companion and wondered if there was some quality of *Mulder* that was catching. Months since the last time they had talked, really talked. And then... Then it was only for him to yell, and accuse. For Mulder to subside and agree to try. For Alex. Alex felt his lips curl back into a smirk. Caught the ghost of his reflection in the buttery glare of lamp on window. He wasn't so different than he'd always been, really. Same face, same not-quite-right hair. Same easy blankness. Once he had thought of it as the birth of possibility. A walking corpse need fear nothing but discovery by the living. He would look at himself and see the perfection of a true obscenity. Simple and clean. Unfettered by the heat and dirt of mortality. And when he longed for the time Before, he would find a woman. Lush and simple with a pretty smile, a guileless laugh. He would kill her as messily as he could, and bathe in her blood until his laughter would cause the stick and tack to crack with each convulsion of giggles... And call Mulder to bathe him clean again. Once he'd thought it was all he needed. No one had ever paid Alex to think. Days like today, evenings of endless February, watching Mulder sway with slow grace as he stared at their darkened fireplace, he would see the truth. Hours and hours in search of a death that ran from them like a frightened virgin. That lurked within the grace of their shadows. Sometimes Alex thought of the hyena, and longed to stalk the savanna with hunched laughter at his heels. Sometimes Alex thought of Anatoly and wondered if things might have been different if he hadn't fucked things up so royally in his flight. Alex couldn't lie to himself about that... He'd left because he'd watched his humanity slip away on leather wings and the taste of iron. He'd left because to stay would be to admit the truth of the vision. He could be angry -- he'd never asked for this. But it wasn't in him to deny the end of the paths he'd trod, and to deny his complicity in this last re-invention of himself would be a disservice to everything he'd once claimed to believe about himself. No. This, too, was his fate. Chosen as neatly as the curl of a finger around a trigger. As the brush of his lips against a feverish man. Mulder and fire. So cliched, but there were reasons such things were said so many times, in so many ways. And when Alex had touched him that night, long ago, it was as much to slake his thirst for gifts forsaken as to taste the man he'd loved for as long as he could remember. I love you, I love you, I love you. The words had burned themselves on his soul when Mulder had shivered within the circle of his arm. Alex had wanted love and life; Mulder cold ash and the final betrayal. They had both gotten their wishes and were quite neatly stuck with them. Stuck here with nothing but each other and the deepening shroud of a late winter. So much waste... but Alex had one choice left. "Mulder." Only a slight pause before the other man turned to face him, dusty and thin. Bleak and lovely as a turn of bone. "Yes?" "It's time." Brief flash of confusion before Mulder's eyes widened. Joy and a knife-twist of gratitude. When all was said and done the gratitude was far more painful than the immediate curl of suspicion. "How... why, Alex?" He couldn't look at those eyes anymore. There were so many things he had wanted... "Because I want to. Because it's time." From the corner of his eye Alex could see a brief nod, a squaring of relief-loosened shoulders. "Then how?" Alex turned away from his lover and made his way to the door. "Walk with me, beloved. We're going to greet the dawn." ****** Once he'd thought he'd never tire of this, of his beautiful and strange beloved at his side. The wash of unfamiliar emotion flowing over him, cool water and complexity whenever Mulder let his guard down. About that, at least, he had been correct. Nothing made Alex happier than this. A rare and treasured moment of kinship as they made their way through the night. After a time they came to the tree he'd heard snap earlier. The break was ragged, sap flowing in sluggish rivulets before freezing to an amber stop amid the evergreen. //You only thought you were dead before, brother... It's all right. You will be, soon enough.// "Here?" Alex shook himself out of his reverie and smiled at Mulder. Ran his thumb over one too-pronounced cheekbone, drank in the brief nuzzle into his touch. Some things demand greed. "Yes. Yes, I think so." Without another word, Mulder laid himself out on the blanket of snow and shut his eyes, a casual sprawl that couldn't have been more inviting had it been planned. Alex curled up with him, one leg and his arm staking shameless possession, and let his own eyes slip closed at the feel of a gentle hand shaping itself to his skull. //I love you.// ****** An itch that had grown familiar announced the coming dawn. The familiarity was its own quiet shock, and Alex wondered just how long he'd been chasing this end himself... but it wasn't the time for self-analysis. "Mulder." The only acknowledgment was a slightly more forceful stroke of Alex's hair. It was enough. Alex brushed a kiss against the other man's thin t-shirt, spoke into his chest. "You know I always loved you." Mulder stiffened almost imperceptibly beneath him and Alex smiled, grateful for the passing of tears. "I know beloved, I know. It only made it worse..." Alex waited another few moments, let the itch insinuate itself in his bones as something resembling pain. He knew Mulder could feel it, too. "I want something." "Yes, Alex?" //So easy, for once... I will not be angry.// "Kiss me, one last time?" Mulder pulled him up by the nape and showed him his own tired, happy smile for just a few more waves of sunlit hurt before pulling him in for a kiss of hunger. Alex buried his fingers in the dusty fall of dark hair and gave in, tasting his love and his life, pressing himself as hard as he could into an answer he could only accept. And when he began to lose the feel of cool skin beneath his own for the flare and wash of the day, the agony was unbearable. But it only lasted for a little while. ~~~~ End. ~~~~ End Note: Even though this is an AU of the AU, this is really, more or less, the way "Time" was supposed to end. Way back when I decided I wanted a hopeful ending instead... but this one wouldn't leave me alone. Again, thanks to Dawn Sharon for an image that dug in its claws and wouldn't let go.