Elegy

Marita stood, her eyes locked on the gray marble headstone before her. " Alexis Petor Krycek". No other words beside the dates. No "beloved husband", no "honored father", no "loving son". He was none of those things, yet, at the same time, he was all of them. He was a contradiction in many ways. They both were. Marita and Alex were not quite enemies, but they were barely allies. There were too many mutual betrayals, too many dark nights alone in individual hells. But Rita and Sasha...they had been lovers, nearly spouses, nearly parents, and loving children to families that could not appreciate them for what they were. Men and women of the Syndicate; who were willing to trade on the lives of their children to advance their own positions.

"Ms. Covarrubias?"

The deep voice didn't startle her. Marita had been half expecting him since she first heard of Alex's death; of his murder. She had wondered if he would come. "I thought you might show up."

"I almost didn't. I didn't know if it was...right." He paused, stepping closer to the edge of the newly filled in grave. "I didn't know if I'd be welcome here."

"Whether or not I want you here, he probably would have."

They stood in silence, their eyes locked on the fresh wound in the ground before them. When confronted with the glaring wrongness of all that dark raw dirt marring the gently rolling curve of the hillside Marita found herself remembering the ugliness of the damage to Alex's smooth pale forehead. It was terrible to see him laid out on that cold slab, the harsh scarred edges of his maimed arm on display for all to see, the shattered prosthetic laying next to his body. His good arm had also been appallingly injured, the elbow blown to pieces by the FBI issue bullet that sat in a small glass vial on the table. It was now evidence in a murder case that would never see a trial, never see the much-deserved punishment. She'd seen the tape. It was nothing more then murder, as cold as any job Alex himself had ever performed for the Syndicate.

The tape had been delivered, along with the news of Alex's demise by a low-level lackey, a thug, in the Syndicate. To Them, Alex's death was not even worthy of an important messenger to bear the news. The man had been greasy and dark; and the whole time he had stood before her, relaying the news, his eyes had been on the swell of Marita's breasts under the harsh and concealing lines of her navy suit. She had thought, automatically, 'Sasha will kill you for looking at me like that'; before her mind reminded the tiny remnants of Rita that still lived within her aching heart that Sasha; and now Alex were no more. He had seemed disappointed when she didn't weep and throw herself to the carpet, prostrate with grief. But Marita had learned to grieve quietly, alone, in the dark. She would do so for Alex in her own time, and not under the greedy gaze of some hired thug.

Alex had always led a violent life. Together, and separately, the two of them had fought against colonization, against the plans that had been so carefully worked out by their fathers. Both of them knowing that it was hopeless, that there was no fighting the future; but both unwilling to concede defeat without a battle. They had learned to fight together, and, in the end, it might have been the only thing that held them to each other.

In her more angry moments Marita thought that perhaps it was fitting that his end had been so violent and so very unnecessary. But, the rest of the time, she wept for him at night. For the life he didn't have. For the life they didn't get together.

She couldn't get the vision of his broken body out of her mind. He was the same Alex she had always known, but at the same time, he was also different. The time in prison had stripped all of the excess weight from his frame, honing him to a sharpness that she had not expected. Beyond that, when she had shown up to get him in Tunisia, her rage and near hate at his betrayal at Fort Marlene still burning so hotly inside of her...there was no hint of the boy he had once been in the sharp planes of his face. It had startled her for just a moment, that the man she saw bore such little resemblance to the Sasha she had loved. She had examined him all weekend, unable to stop herself, her eyes on the curve of his cheek, the line of his jaw, the new scars on his body. She had silently watched Alex for any hint of Sasha until he had turned to her on the plane to New York and childishly snapped at her to keep her eyes to herself. In that single moment, Alex and Marita fell away, and only Sasha and Rita remained. She stopped seeing the pared down man in front of her, the lines around his eyes disappeared, and he looked, once again, like he had the day he first kissed her in the old rope swing behind her parent's summer house in New Hampshire. Young, nearly beautiful, and happy in a way it was not possible for either of them to be happy anymore.

In many ways, that one childish barb had unified them in a way that they hadn't been since Marita had stolen the boy from him in New York. They both understood for the first time in a long time that they were on the same side with the same goals. She'd watched in awe as his eyes had softened as they looked at her, losing the resentment and rage as well as the thick layer of ice that he'd managed to hold onto over the years. She knew that in that moment he was seeing her with longer hair, nearly to her waist, the yellow braid as thick as her wrist blowing out behind her as he pushed her in the swing.

That single moment allowed the two of them to go to the Smoking Man, to present a unified front. To not be used against each other. She knew that was what Spender had wanted all along. To turn the childhood sweethearts against each other, to show them that he had all the power. Alex Krycek had one weakness. Marita.

In that single instant, on that plane, she realized that if she was going to stop being used as a pawn to keep him in check she had to tell Alex everything. And so she had. And, if she lived to be a hundred years old, she would never forget the softness of Alex's voice as he spoke to her that day as well as the way he had unconsciously put himself between her and Spender. Between her and the danger in the room.

She was jerked out of her reverie as the man that stood next to her spoke again. "I didn't think you'd be here."

"Why not? He was mine." Her words were very soft, her mind's eye still seeing the way the bright sunshine had glinted in his emerald eyes that day, his head thrown back as their laughter filled the warm air.

"Yours?"

The shock in his voice broke through her sadness and sparked her anger again. The same decades old rage that had been lying dormant since she first heard how Alex had died. Rage at losing him, at losing herself. Of loving him still, no matter how many times they had betrayed and tried to destroy each other.

"Mine." Her eyes blazed with fire as she spun to face him. "Alex was mine long before he knew you even existed. No matter who else he was ever with, for whatever reason...he was always mine where it counted."

"I'd like to think that he loved me a little." The man had his own share of sadness in his voice.

Marita finally realized that he had his own demons about whom and what Alex was as well as how he died. For some reason that only angered her more. He didn't have the right. He only had a few years with Alex. She'd had a lifetime. She wanted to hurt him in that instant. To make him bleed as she felt she was bleeding onto the raw ground. To rip every memory of Alex out of his heart and his mind. To take all of him back for herself.

"Alex Krycek never loved anyone. He wasn't capable of it. You're just fooling yourself if you think he returned what you felt for him."

"But Sasha loved once, didn't he?" There was no reproach in his voice. Instead there was something unidentifiable and sad.

Her anger surged again, the heat climbing further up her spine. "You have no right to call him Sasha! You never knew Sasha, only Alex. Sasha died a very long time ago."

"He died about the same time Rita did, didn't he?" he asked, his voice once again heavy with sadness.

The weight of her own loss hit her again, blowing away the slightly hazy memories of their lives Before. Marita felt her anger draining away with the memories, leaving her belly hollow and empty. She felt older than she ever had. Older even then she felt the day she had left Fort Marlene, a shell of a human being barely able to shuffle along behind the smoking man like a faithful dog. "Rita died the day she felt their baby slip out of her body in a rush of blood. It was that day she came to realize that there could be no happily ever after fairy tale endings in their lives. But Sasha...he was strong even through that. He didn't die until the day that They put a gun in his hands and made him use it to defend her."

The man laid a long fingered graceful hand on her slight shoulder, squeezing gently. "Will you tell me something about him? About Sasha? And, perhaps, a little about Rita and how things began?"

"There's nothing to tell." With a last longing glimpse at the cold bare headstone Marita turned away, barely aware of the man's hand dropping from her shoulder to her elbow.

"Please Marita...I need..." Emotion choked his voice into a sound very much like a sob, and he swallowed painfully before beginning again. "I need to know. I need it so that I can lay him to rest myself. I want to know who he was before everything happened. Please."

"It's not my story to tell." She half turned her head, as if to look back at the freshly filled grave one last time, but stopped herself with a shudder. "It is...was...our story. It shouldn't be left to only one of us."

"That's what he said." Marita looked up in shock, his eyes meeting his. "He said that he couldn't tell me about Sasha without telling me about Rita. And he wouldn't betray you like that."

"He never told you?"

"He once said that Sasha loved Rita more then he ever thought it was possible to love someone. But that Alex and Marita weren't always on the same side."

"We were always on the same side. Always. We just didn't always know it. "

She knew that the man beside her had never been on the same side as Alex. He had spoken of it once, very late at night, at her apartment in New York. Alex had something close to awe in his voice as he spoke of him. 'Marita...he sees something different when he looks at me. It's like he wants me so much...cares so much that he is willing to stop being who he is to be with me.' She had turned his words about the man next to her over and over in her mind...even more often now that Alex was truly gone. She wished she had still been able to love Alex that much. She tilted her head, her eyes resting on the graceful looking hands clasp together in front of the man next to her. Hands that had touched the man she loved. Hands that held him as he slept. Hands that had loved him. Capable hands. Strong hands.

"Then help me now Marita. Help me find out who he was before they got their claws into him. Help me know Sasha." His voice was impassioned, hoarse with emotion. "Help me to finish what he started. What you both started all those years ago."

Her blond head barely moved in acknowledgement. "I'll help you. If only because someone should know their story. Someone should know how much they loved, how much they meant to each other. How they deserved to be together forever." Her green eyes were anguished as she looked up. "But not here. Not in this place of the dead. I'm so tired of being cold...let' s go someplace warm."

He let go of Marita's elbow as she walked though the grass to a dark blue sedan. "Get in." She commanded softly, climbing in behind the wheel.

They drove off, both of them silently watching Alex's grave growing smaller and smaller in their mirrors. At the gate to the cemetery Marita brought the car to a slow halt. She didn't speak, just laid her head down the steering wheel.

"Is there something wrong?"

Marita had to choke back a sick laugh at his words. He was worried about her? Now? After she had berated him for coming to his lover's grave? "I lied."

"About what?"

"Alex did love you, John. He told me so." When she finally raised her and risked a look towards the passenger seat John Doggett sat perfectly still, his head leaning back against the seat, eyes tightly closed, hands clenched into fists resting on his thighs. Marita couldn't tell if it was anger or sadness. "He once said that when he met you...after...well, he said that sometimes you made him stop regretting that he wasn't Sasha anymore. He said that when he was with you it was okay to just be Alex."

Without another word she put the car back in gear and pulled through the wrought iron gates of the cemetery. Several blocks later John finally spoke, his voice rough, as if he were fighting tears. "Thank you."

She simply nodded, acknowledging to the both of them that the information should have been his to begin with. It was childish to withhold it out of some sense of anger or fear. Sasha was hers. Alex was hers. The two-man and boy; killer and lover, in the same person. He always had been hers, and he always would be.

Marita was shocked to find her hands turning the wheel towards her apartment. She hadn't thought it out; bringing someone whom should be an enemy to her to homeplace. But it had been unconscious up to now, maybe because some part of her knew that at this moment, on this day, John Doggett was not a FBI Agent. Not a former cop and Marine. He was simply J.D.; as Alex had once called him in an unguarded moment; a man who had lost his lover.

For this day they were partners in their grief for a single man who had led two lives. Marita lost her Sasha, the only man she had ever loved, the only one she had ever let call her Rita; and John had lost a man whom he loved so much that he was willing to subvert his job, his code of honor for. She remembered Alex's words when he showed up, beaten and bruised, one night at her apartment. He had seemed almost jovial. That seemed strange on it's own, and more so when Alex had said that John Doggett was the one who had inflicted the damage. Alex had seemed happy as he relayed the story of the parking garage at the hospital. He had given the vaccine to Mulder anyway-they needed him alive; but Doggett and Skinner both thought he had not. And Doggett was willing to go against Alex; to take what he needed from him. Somehow, to Alex, the fact that John was willing to still do what needed to be done, even if he had to take down his lover to do it, made what the two of them had seem more real. More normal. More honest. It meant that he hadn't changed Doggett completely; meant that he hadn't made the man into what he was. A traitor.

The two of them, Marita and John Doggett, were the most unlikely of allies...perhaps secondary only to the individual alliances that Alex had held with both of them at once. And, suddenly, Marita knew that bringing this man into her life, into her home, into her past, into her Before Life as Rita, and into Sasha's past was not only the right thing to do. It was the only thing.

As she pulled into the parking garage for her building Marita Covarrubias smiled slightly, knowing that she would soon be able to share her memories about her Sasha with someone else. Someone who loved him as much as she did. After all, Sasha and Alex were the same at the foundation, weren't they? And, if that were true; if John had gotten a few small glimpses of Sasha in Alex, then perhaps Rita wasn't completely gone either. Perhaps there was still a way to get her back.

Maybe she could be Sasha's Rita again someday. She remembered Sasha's words to her after she lost the baby. 'Of course it's going to be tough. Survival is not mandatory Rita. You have to want it.'

She finally wanted it.

Author's Note: As someone who once shed her name like a snake sheds its skin, I understand the significance, the impact, and the amazing power inherent in the naming of something. For me, taking a new name was the chance to make a fresh start, to leave the past behind. For this Marita taking back her "before name" is a chance to reclaim a part of her life that was lost to her. And the person who helped make her who she is.