Muldio Who really gave a damn if Krycek starved to death, anyway?
Certainly not himself, Mulder thought sullenly as he scuffed the tip
of his shoe on a stray bit of cement for emphasis and watched with
guarded satisfaction as it hurtled into one of the nearby trucks. It
was rather too small to make a dent, but the thrill of impact was
better than nothing.
It was a shame that he couldn't repeat the experiment with
Krycek, but he did have his morals to consider, after all. Someone
would discover Krycek eventually, setting him loose in the world
again like some sort of rabid dog with the peculiar talent of
charming his jailers, and when they encountered each other next, he
could pull the trigger and have no qualms about claiming that he'd
acted in self-defense. Given a choice, he would have preferred a
session in one of those extraterrestrial torture chambers with Krycek
as the hapless victim of his failed experiments for at least as long
as Scully had been missing during her abduction experience;
circumstances, however, seemed intent upon limiting his options to
only the most humane. Circumstances always sucked.
This was the price you paid when you started fucking an
internationally wanted, equivocating, backstabbing criminal who was
hell-bent on carrying out plans which were the exact opposite of your
goals. He had finally begun to realize this during the past few
months, as he tried to convince himself that fucking had been the
true extent of their relationship.
Thoroughly bored to tears with his job and his fruitless search
for Samantha, as well as having had more than his share of scornful
ridicule from the high-and-mighty of the FBI, he had eagerly
acquiesced when his lover—former lover, he corrected—had waved a
pair of gleaming plane tickets in front of his weary, bloodshot eyes
and suggested that they elope under certain assumed names that he had
artfully appropriated from his employers. People never bestowed
enough attention on underlings; it was the same mistake, repeated
time and time again—although Mulder didn't mind at all in this
particular instance. The only person he might have missed was his
partner, and, at any rate, he could always send her letters or give
her an anonymous phone call every once in a while after they found a
secure line in Australia.
That was three months ago. Krycek had snatched one last romp
in the bedroom for himself and then promised that he would return in
two days with a suitcase and all affairs shuffled into perfect order.
Accordingly, Mulder waited. And waited. And waited. After a month
or so, his constant state of anticipation was substituted with a
boiling vat of fury and rage; now, having caught up with the man who
had jilted him so unexpectedly and found him lacking in explanations
for his wanton cruelty, the teeming vat had bubbled over and flooded
him with near-mindless animosity.
He would relish the opportunity to reveal Krycek's true nature
at the trial, Mulder thought with no small amount of glee as he
approached the perimeter of the lot and headed for the airport
itself. The shots rang out when he was still quite a ways away from
the crowd of people that thronged around the revolving doors,
effectively suffocating themselves and making it supremely easy for
thieves to steal their luggage. Idiots.
Not a single doubt lingered in his mind—Krycek was involved,
and somehow they'd been followed. He turned on a dime and limped
back in the direction of his rental car at as fast a pace as he could
muster and with several muted groans, because he had -literally-
turned on a dime that someone had left on the ground, tripped, and
twisted his ankle in the process. Gasping in agony by the time he
reached the right vehicle, he took in, with ever increasing
trepidation, the open door on the driver's side and the long,
denim-clad leg which dangled from it motionlessly. Tempted to give
the posterior attached to it a solid kick but refraining due to the
possible demise of its owner or perhaps himself if the situation was
a trap, he peered cautiously over the door handle after canvassing
the area with his gun and scuttling to the side of the car.
Krycek lay on the seat, curled into a fetal position with the
exception of his leg. His shirt was torn ragged in the front to
reveal a gaping bullet wound from which liquid gushed in a steady
stream, oozing onto the upholstery and staining the complimentary
map of D.C. that the rental company always tucked just under the
seat. The windshield had been lightly spattered with the force of
the shot. A phlegmy cough alerted him to the fact that Krycek was
still alive, glassy eyes rolling up in his head, chest rising and
falling marginally with each shallow, rapid breath that escaped his
lips. The amount of air he captured each time his mouth opened was
slowly but surely diminishing.
There were no words to be uttered; Mulder was locked in
solitude with remorse and waves of sorrow that rocked him to the core
of his being. There was a twinge of something else—he couldn't
determine what it was—and it vanished from thought and feeling as
he knelt on the rough pavement beside his lover and checked his
vital signs, which were about as far from promising as Mulder was
from a hospital.
Nostrils flared in recognition as Mulder's hand crept up to
caress the other man's cheek; there was a feeble lifting of fingers
that then fell limp against the fabric of the seat, defeated. The
familiar mouth worked silently, tongue darting out to lick the lips
clean, and—not liking the metallic taste—Krycek almost gagged.
Only his flagging strength prevented him from coughing up the drops
of swallowed blood.
Mulder's eyes were boring into him, wide and haunted, his
meager medical skills useless in the face of the obviously mortal
wound. Where was Scully when you really needed her..
"Mulder." Krycek was half-choking, his head shifting back and
forth. He would have been writhing if he had that much range of
movement, and the way his tongue kept lolling out must have made it
difficult for him to speak at all, much less murmur Mulder's name.
"Yeah." He couldn't force anything else out of his own mouth,
even inflection, and he knew that the result was a grating whisper.
A blind passerby might have thought them both to be injured.
Krycek's lips parted again, soundlessly at first, but then
there was a croaking attempt at sentience. "Lo—" was what issued
forth from the abused larynx, the rest of the word heartlessly
thwarted by the light that had dimmed and twinkled out of existence
in the now glazed eyes. Flopping uselessly to the side, the head
twisted the neck at an unnatural angle, and the punctured lungs drew
one last, shuddering breath before they ceased to function entirely.
Overcome by the desire to hold Krycek close, Mulder gathered
the other man into his arms and wept over the broken body, now
devoid of the vibrancy that he should have cherished while it still
burned brightly within him. Tears soon mingled with the blood and
effectively soaked his clothing, matting his hair into clumps,
clotting and caking on his cheeks. He couldn't have cared less.
It wasn't long at all before he wrenched his hands away from
the stiffening corpse, his head tilting up at the sky; he gazed at
the stars with the solemn, desperate ineptitude of someone who has
the ability to recognize a poignant moment but is unable to find the
words to express the vitality of it or the courage to act.
When he did glance down, it was to situate himself beside
Krycek within the vehicle, dragging the other man's taut legs inside
and setting the locking mechanism. His mercurial eyes flickered once
at the still face of his lover, classic even in death. Then the gun
was gingerly slipped out of its holster, delicately, carefully aimed,
and then allowed to rip through the confines of his skull.
Graveyard I
by Meri Lomelindi
Alex Krycek—or whatever his name was, the rat bastard—was
banging frantically on the car window. Obscenities were hurled in
rapid succession, all aimed at Mulder as he stalked through the
airport parking lot; by the time they made it through the thick
glass, all Mulder could make out was a low, faint rumbling. He
elected to ignore it.
