Title: Bricks in the Wall: New Orleans Author: Tosca Feedback Email: toscas_kiss@yahoo.com Author's Website: http://www.angelfire/grrl/toscaskiss Category: Drama, Story, Relationship, UST, Pre-slash, Angst, Hurt/Comfort Pairings: Mulder/Krycek Rating: R Archive at Gossamer: Yes Gossamer Category: Story Gossamer Sub-category: Angst Gossamer Keywords: Slash Summary: It's 2005 and re-instated FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder tracks Alex Krycek down in New Orleans. Bricks in the Wall: New Orleans by Tosca Part 1 Please see part 0 (template) for warnings and summary. Spoilers: Pretty much everything. Disclaimers: No point. Ain't worth the pixels they're typed with, and anyway my bank balance is full of little red dancing figures and VISA has first lien on my bodyparts. Series/Sequel: Yes. Part 1 of 2. Note: *thoughts* **dreams** Thanks: Very much to Dr.Ruthless, my excellent beta. Dedication: For Ursula. I hope you can hear the music. Bricks in the Wall Prologue: Carpark, FBI Hoover Building, Washington: I stare down at the corpse at my feet, trying to distance myself from any remembrance of the man it used to be. That sly, abandoned vibrant man. Now just a sack of meat on the floor. Abruptly pain assaults me, mapping itself in red throughout my body like the veins of a maple leaf. A small choke of pain escapes before I crumple to the ground. Part of my consciousness screams at the betrayal, then everything fuses into incoherent agony. Dimly through the black river rushing over my mind and sight I hear the sounds of a vehicle stopping, doors opening. Footsteps surround and pass me, clothing rustling, a grunt, slower, laden footsteps returning, thud of something heavy on a metal surface, doors slamming, an engine gunning and leaving. The pain dissolves, my sight slowly clears and I'm lying on the concrete of the FBI carpark, sweating, angry, tremors shuddering through my frame, humiliated once more. And Alex Krycek's corpse is gone. =================================== Part 1: New Orleans =================================== I don't need no walls around me. And I don't need no drugs to calm me. I have seen the writing on the wall. Don't think I need any thing at all. No. Don't think I need anything at all. All in all it was all just the bricks in the wall. All in all it was all just the bricks in the wall. - "The Wall" Pink Floyd The Welcome Inn, Red Light District, New Orleans: The night radiates heat. It's too hot for sleep, too hot for sex, possibly even too hot for breathing. I'm on top of the sheets because the poly-cotton rubs my skin raw in the humidity. The lights are off because the glare hurts my eyes, and the stark ugliness of the roach-hotel I'm currently holed up in makes me think too much of my own life - stripped of anything that isn't a necessity, empty of history. The room is dark and I have nothing to do but lie here sweating, listening to the radio and repelling nightmares. Yesterday was the worst one so far. My nightmares come in black and white. Last night was black. Black is choking and drowning in splintered-glass depths. Abandonment and fear. Black is helplessness. Black is despair. White is bare rooms and sharp voices screaming at me. Subjugation and pain. White is betrayal. White is hatred. And the cold - I'm cold all the time in those dreams. So cold my bones ache just thinking about it. That's why I headed south - to the warmth. Get the cold out of my bones, out of my head. ========================== ** You know they discarded you here in the darkness to disappear forever. The demon relinquished possession of you hours ago in spasms of oil and acid, but should it return, how could you protect yourself anyway? You're a snared animal in a concrete oubliette, imprisoned and defenceless. You scream your dehydrated throat raw with cries for help, punch at the locked and barred steel door, and shred your hands clawing the walls in the heavy blackness. But you've been abandoned, and the door's too thick, too solid to break down. There's no getting through it, and you're trapped, the heavy weight of the earth pressing down on you, the walls closing over, enfolding, slowly suffocating you in dim shadow. ** ========================== Jesus, Krycek, this shithole was the best you could afford? Thought you would have stashed away a tidy nest-egg for yourself after the Old Men went Crispy Critters. This isn't exactly how I figured you'd be spending your 'retirement'. The sleazebag behind the front desk is orbiting so far out I'm amazed I don't have to realign a satellite to communicate with him. And people think I'm spacey? At least the only times I do the hard drugs are involuntarily. Reality screws you in the head enough already - why you'd want to add self-inflicted chemical damage to that is beyond me. No matter how banal and pointless your life is. Getting the room number out of him is only difficult in the sense he can't concentrate enough to understand the question. Eventually he says, "Oh, yeah, Green Eyes. Think it's his night off. It's Monday right?" "No. Thursday. What room?" "Coulda sworn it was...fuck, I musta missed the playoffs..." It's not even football season. "Room number?" Some of the annoyance in my voice sinks through the haze. "Chill, man. It's his usual." I suddenly empathize with my ex-partners' frequently evinced desire to pull their weapons and shoot the object of their frustration. "Wan' me ta set you up?" He fumbles for the phone. "Er, yeah." Clumsy fingers stab the 2. The 1. The 4. I'm amazed they stretch to the luxury of room phones in this dump. Then again, I have a fairly good idea of most of the tenants' "profession". The phone gives three indistinct bursts before it's picked up. I can't hear the words but I hear the murmur that answers, too briefly for recognition. "Hey dude, gotta client here. Send him up?" There's a brief answer and the phone disconnects. "Sorry man, he says not tonight." "Thanks anyway." I mutter ironically as I head towards the stairs and the second floor. ========================== It's too hot here now and I'm edgy from more than just heat. I may not know much, but I know enough to see the writing on the wall and it's reading, "time to get the hell outta Dodge". Maybe I'll head off to 'Frisco. There's a guy gave me his card last month, said he'd give me a job as a houseboy if I wanted. Of course he meant he wanted a round-the-clock fucktoy, but hell, why not? He was nice. Stupid enough to hit on me, but smart enough to know not to hit me, not like that fucker back in Chesterfield. It'll take me a couple of days to sort things out here, but yeah, San Francisco sounds good. Some little knot of stress I didn't realise was there relaxes. Sleep is still evasive however, so I get up, remove the bottle of cheap vodka from the water-filled sink, pour some into a tumbler on the bedside table and lie back down again, nursing the drink. The radio is playing 'The Wall'. I remember that film. Rebellion and rage spewing forth in a vitriolic blaze of flames and violence, reds and blacks. "Music to burn down schools to." That's what someone called it. Someone I knew, someone I thought was more a 'Dark Side of the Moon' kinda guy. Don't remember why that thought makes me smile though. But then I don't remember much these days. The phone beside me rings. ========================== ** Be quick, be obedient, be silent. Don't say a word. Noise is punished, insubordination is punished, slowness is...terminated. Existence is a web of anonymous corridors and inhospitable rooms, ivory walls drained of colour, sterile by neglect as well as design. No, don't think of sterility - the labs wait for those not swift enough. Cold rebounds off battered pale Formica and steel furniture, a breeze fingering through all the silent children in the morning classroom. The windows are open - "to toughen you up" he said, but with quick sideways glances you watch the birds. Watch them fly beyond the compound walls, away from this uncaring blandness and into the wide free sky. Learn how to fake obedience. Learn how to react fast. Learn how to keep secrets. Learn how to lie. Learn how to kill. Learn to survive. ** ========================== Staring at the numerals on the door, I'm suddenly paralysed with indecision. I doubt he'll be happy to see me. Should I knock? Kick the door in? Run screaming down the corridor? I knock gently. After a couple of seconds a low voice calls, "Yeah?" It's him. I'd know that breathy tenor anywhere. My stomach tightens in anticipation, whether of violence or other things I'm not sure. "It's me, Krycek. Open the door before I kick it in." Oh smooth, Mulder. Way to go. I listen carefully for the sounds of ratboy attempting to leave via the window. I hear the creak of bedsprings and a whisper of footsteps - moving towards the door, not away. The lock clicks, the door opens. He's standing behind it and I can't see much of him in the darkness of the room. "Look asshole, I said I wasn't working tonight. Piss off." What? "Krycek?" "What's a cry-check? Or is that a who?" I can see the glint of his eyes, but the husky voice gives me no clue as to why the hell he's giving me the dumb routine. I push the door open and move into the room. "Look buddy, I don...SHIT!" He flinches and covers his eyes as I flick on the light. He's standing there in boxer shorts and a glare. "Sorry." He opens his mouth, but I leap in before he can say anything, "Look Krycek, I just want to talk, OK?" Hands up and open, "Nothing else, just talk." Krycek gives me an odd look, turns his back to me and goes and sits on the bed, propping himself up against the pillows. I'm surprised he'd leave himself vulnerable like that. I could have pulled a gun and blown him away. OK, maybe not. "Shut the door then." I shut the door before I realise I'm obeying him. I turn, expecting to see that infuriating smirk but he's just looking at me with a warily measuring expression on his face, as though he's scrutinizing an unanticipated conundrum. He looks good. I wasn't expecting that, especially considering the last time I saw him he had a 9mm bullet hole in the middle of his forehead. But he does look good - his hair is longer than I've seen it in years, dark and glossy as an otter's pelt. His skin is tanned and healthy and his eyes have the colour and clarity of Brazilian emeralds. His frame is well muscled and tanned, and his... holy shit! He has an arm again! No hand, but there's no mistaking the arm that ends in a stub is actually real, not plastic. "What happened to your arm?" I demand. "Car crash." He answers. OK, rewind. That wasn't what I was asking but I know how he lost it and 'car crash' wasn't even in the ballpark. Something here is very wrong. ========================== This guy knows me. He doesn't like me much, but he knows me. So how were we acquainted? Friends? Workmates? Lovers? Too much anger for the first. Too much concern for the second. The last, well, there's attraction there, no matter how much he tries to hide it. But somehow it doesn't fit. There's a sense of latent hostility, a thread of restrained violence, in his attitude. Maybe too much for that as an explanation - I do _not_ enjoy pain. He's standing near the door, looking at me with a shell-shocked expression, so I take the opportunity to check him out. Tall, with a runner's physique, floppy chestnut hair and sharp hazel eyes. Handsome in a geeky kind of way. Expensive suit and tie, though the latter is pretty hideous. Handmade shoes. It all adds up to upper-middle-class white-collar worker, but there's something about him that doesn't strike true for that, something teasingly familiar about him, a feathery light tugging at the edges of my memory. And that makes me tense. I wave him towards a seat. I don't offer him a drink. He collapses onto the furniture in a pile of long limbs, and the rickety chair wobbles drunkenly. For a second I think he'll tip over. I take another sip of vodka and watch him right himself. He looks as off-balance as the chair. Whatever or whoever he was expecting, I'm obviously not it. Curiosity and the urgent desire to _know_ are practically screaming in my brain, but my instincts are telling me go slow, go cautious. In the absence of superior knowledge it makes sense to obey your instincts, but I guess sometimes you just have to lift off and nuke 'em from orbit. "So. Tell me why I should know you." ========================== ** It's past midnight, the deepest darkest hours. In the depths, lights glitter and sparkle distantly, diamonds on black ice. It's freezing, a sharp wind cutting at the shuddering ball you curled into, trying to retain some warmth whilst chained to this steel aerie. You stopped yourself crying a while back, the icicles scraping down your oesophagus more painful than your numbing feet and clenched fists. Your limbs are almost immobilized with cold now and if you fall asleep you think you'll probably freeze to death. But it's just a few hours more you tell yourself. You can survive this, you will survive this. Not all the cold is physical though, and deep inside, one of your few tenuous beliefs in decency has frozen and withered at the idea he could do this to you. That you have so little worth, deserve so little consideration it doesn't matter how he treats you. You rattle the chains again, trying to shake some feeling and warmth into your hands. An outdoor light blossoms beside you, blinding white, but it brings the prospect of more pain, not relief. ** ========================== Oh. Shit. He doesn't remember me. I almost don't believe it; almost think it's one of the manipulative little bastard's mind games. But too much doesn't add up. The total lack of recognition in his eyes. The disregard with which he turned his back on me. The absence of his usual defensive cockiness or paranoia. And like a dulled knife blade, that edge, that darkness which used to vibrate around him, is gone. "What do you remember about the shooting?" Green eyes widen, surprise flits across his face. Oh shit. He doesn't remember the shooting. "You don't remember being shot?" The dark fringe swings across his face as he shakes his head in negation. "You remember what happened before the shooting?" There's a careful blankness to his face now that's familiar and new at the same time. It doesn't take me any great leap of intuition, "You don't remember. Anything." The full lips purse. He hesitates, then shakes his head silently again. I wonder why I believe him, this man who lies as easily as breathing, who's betrayed me and fooled me and twisted me with his untruths for years. But I do. He's a treacherous lying fuck, but I believe him. "You do remember who you are?" It's really a futile plea, rather than a question, and I'm instantly ashamed of the begging note in my voice. He ignores me, leaning over to refill his glass from the vodka bottle. Well, I guess that's one thing that doesn't change. I groan and bury my head in my hands. Christ, Krycek, only you. God, where to begin? I raise my head. "OK, let's start at the beginning. Your name is Alex Krycek. My name is Fox Mulder and I'm a Special Agent with the FBI..." ========================== I can't believe I'm actually saying this. "So I'm really this treacherous backstabbing assassin called Alec Krycek wh.." "Alex Krycek." *Likes to correct me, doesn't he?* "Sorry, _Alex_ Krycek, who used to be a Fed and now runs around stealing secret government data?" "You don't seem too upset." Accusation creeps into the monotone. I know I'm pretty damn good in a fight, but an assassin? A one-armed assassin at that? I think this guy has been watching "The Fugitive" a bit much. And as things stand, I sure as hell am not a computer hacker. "They're just words. I don't sense any connection to what you say. If I said your father was a psychotic serial killer would you get upset?" The Fibbie flinches a bit, but slowly shakes his head. "No," I continue, "Because the allegation may be unpleasant, but it's also meaningless." He looks pissed. Which considering he's completely nuts, isn't a very comforting thought. Inflation - it'll be the death of this great country. Just look at the type of government employee your tax dollar gets you nowadays. The phrase 'going postal' starts threading through my mind. I wonder if I can get the gun out of the side drawer before he pulls his. And just what I'll have to bribe Vinnie downstairs with to let me use the furnace. ========================== (Continued in part 2)