by Xanthe
Finally, Skinner dug out Josef Crozier's will, and pored over it for
the umpteenth time. He was missing something. Something obvious.
There had to be a clue here somewhere. So, Josef Crozier had an
illegitimate son called Nicolas Remarque? Skinner wasn't stupid, and
his experienced lawyer's eye had picked up slight inconsistencies
that most other people would have missed. This will was clearly, to
his eyes at least, a forgery. Nicolas Remarque had to be the missing
Dominik Crozier, but that made no difference because Nicolas was as
invisible and elusive as Dominik. There was a birth certificate for
him, which had to be a forgery, but no death certificate.
Damnit, how the hell was he supposed to track down Crozier where the
Consortium had failed? Everything led to a dead end. Whoever had
hidden Crozier had taken great pains to ensure that he wouldn't be
found. Skinner rubbed his eyes wearily. It was late, and he was
tired. He dreaded that Krycek would lose patience, and give him
another dose of nanocyte induced pain, but he was honestly doing his
best. The phone went, and he picked it up, absently.
"Do you have anything for me yet?" Krycek's cold voice asked.
"No. Maybe you'll have to kill me after all, Krycek. I don't seem to
be doing a very good job."
"You don't get off the hook that easily. Keep looking." The line
went dead, and Skinner slung the phone down. He was damned if he was
going to dance to Krycek's tune, and obey his every order. It was
late, and he was tired—he wouldn't find out anything else tonight.
Skinner got up, and grabbed his coat. He didn't even know where he
was going until he got there. He'd been in this place before, just
to look, but tonight he wanted to do more than look. He wanted to
touch, and taste, and feel. He wanted to lose himself in sex, the
way he could lose himself in music, or in his work—as a way to
forget that he was Walter Sergei Skinner, with all the problems
associated with that identity.
"Can I buy you a drink?" A slender, blond man asked. Skinner gazed
at him for a long time, and then nodded. "I'm Steve." The man held
out his hand, and Skinner took it.
"I'm...John," he replied, after a pause. Steve smiled, and ordered
Skinner another whisky. Skinner downed it in one gulp, and then
looked down, to see that Steve had covered his hand with his own,
and was fingering his palm, gently.
"Want to dance?" Steve gestured with his head in the direction of
the dance floor. It was late, and it was a Tuesday—there weren't
many people dancing.
"I'm not dressed..." Skinner looked down at his work suit. What the
hell was he doing here? Christ, what the hell was all this about?
Hadn't he tried this once before, and woken up next to a corpse?
Casual sex had never exactly been something he excelled at.
"You look pretty good to me." Steve smiled, and gently coaxed him
out onto the dance floor. Skinner went, reluctantly, feeling stupid,
but wanting to lose himself in this, wanting to be John for just a
short while, and to enjoy just not being Walter. He allowed Steve to
hustle him out of his coat, and jacket, and slung them onto a chair,
and then Steve was loosening his tie, and unbuttoning his collar,
and Skinner felt hot, and horny, and drunk. Steve's hands were
everywhere, cupping his ass, stroking his back, and his mouth felt
good against Skinner's cheek, stealing kisses. They couldn't talk -
it was too noisy—and that was a relief to be honest. Skinner ran
his hands along Steve's back, and lost himself in his growing
arousal, and the music, and the moment.
In a dark corner of the bar, Dominik Crozier took a sip of his
water, and watched.
I know Max thinks I should kill Skinner, and he's probably right,
but he also knows why I can't, and he won't ask me to. I've lost too
many people I've loved—I won't be the one who sends another to his
grave. I followed Skinner tonight. He's not having much luck
searching for me, but then again Max hid me very well, so that
doesn't surprise me. Maybe Skinner won't find me, but if he doesn't
then I'm worried about what will happen to him. If he does find
me...well then I suppose I should be worried about what will happen to
me. I won't write Skinner off though. He's a formidable opponent,
and that's another reason why I fell in love with him. He's bright,
and he's sharp, and he's so damn attractive. I love watching him
dance. He's like some big, stupid horse, lumbering around, but even
drunk, and reeling under the pressure Krycek's putting on him, he's
still got a strange sort of grace. I fight down a wave of jealousy
as I sip my water. I want to go up to that stupid, simpering queen
who has his arms around my man, and take him out. A garrotte would
be a good choice of weapon. I don't want to hear him scream; I just
want him to disappear. Then I'll take Skinner into a corner of this
bar and fuck his brains out. He wouldn't even look at another man
after he's tasted me. Of course it's just a fantasy. I don't even
move as I watch them. I just sip my water, and keep silent in the
shadows. I was following Skinner because I was concerned that he
might do something stupid. There might come a point when he decides
he'd rather kill himself than keep answering to Alex Fucking Krycek
of all people. I'd understand that. I know he thinks about it—but
he's a survivor. He can't help himself. He wants death but he's
cheated it too many times to feel comfortable about suicide. It just
isn't his style. Poor bastard. So, instead of killing himself, he's
clearly decided to let go in a different way. Good for him. Sex can
be a good way of forgetting your troubles, and giving you an
illusion of power, even if only for a short time. I, of all people,
know that. Skinner isn't comfortable with sex though...no, that's not
quite true. Skinner isn't comfortable with his sexuality, so this
might not be the release for him that it would be for me.
It's hard watching the man you love fall apart and not being able to
do a damn thing about it. A lesser man than Skinner would have
crumpled under the strain by now, but then he always was good at
taking pressure. I try to imagine what a man like Mulder, would do
in these circumstances. He's more volatile, much less restrained.
He'd have blown up the world before he accepted the kind of
straitjacket Skinner is living in right now. Skinner's shirt is
soaked with sweat, and it's clinging to his back. I can't help
looking at the shape of that body underneath. The powerful lines of
his muscles, and the way he moves in that tightly controlled way. I
want to make him lose that control. I want him to scream for me, to
scream my name out loud with pleasure when I cover his body with my
own, and push my tongue, and my cock inside him. I'm an idiot. I've
only been in love with two men in my life, and I couldn't have the
first, and I sure as hell can't have the second.
Neil was staring at me, blinking almost convulsively. It would be
funny if it weren't so damn sad. I was seventeen years old and had
nursed this secret for so long it had eaten me away inside. I chose
this night, the night of my 17th birthday, to finally share with
Neil what I had kept hidden for so long.
"You're what?" He asked.
"In love. With you. Hell, Neil, you went to Stowe. Don't tell me you
never got off in the showers with some boy or other." He flushed,
right to the tip of his adorable pink ears, and I knew I'd hit close
to the mark.
"That was different. I'm older now," he hissed. "I've had women,
Nicky. I'm not a fucking queer." He was angry, and I couldn't
understand that anger. At 21 he was more handsome than ever. He'd
filled out, and after being in training with the Organisation for
two years, followed by a third in the field, he held himself so
dangerously, full of power and passion. He had been on a couple of
missions, and, from what Max had said, he was shaping up to be a
good agent. Neil saw the expression in my eyes and his own features
softened. "Nicky, I'm sorry. I'm very flattered, but that was just a
phase. It is for you too. Haven't you ever wondered what it would be
like, with a girl? I'll bet Max could fix you up with..."
"No." I cut him off brusquely. The truth was that I'd had sex with a
girl, and liked it. She was one of the girls who had stayed briefly
in the House last year. I was young, and wanted to experience
everything, and she had been willing, and we'd both been
enthusiastic, but it wasn't love. Love was what I felt for Neil, and
it was him I wanted. I was sure he was wrong though. This wasn't a
phase.
I stared at him, and saw something in his eyes that made me angry.
It was rejection. He didn't want me, and that hurt. It hurt so much
that I did the only thing I could in the circumstances; I hit him.
He went down, his eyes glazed, and surprised, and I threw myself on
him, and pummelled him over and over again, and before long I'd made
him angry enough to fight back. He threw me off, and straddled me,
held my hands above my head, and looked down on me. There was blood
streaming out of his nose and it dripped onto my face.
"Nicky, listen to me," he said banging my wrists back onto the
floor.
"Let me go," I snapped sullenly.
"No, listen to me. I'm going undercover," he said urgently. "They're
sending me to infiltrate the Project."
"What?" All the fight went out of me, and I went limp underneath
him. I knew things weren't going well. That was obvious from the
strained, pale looks on the faces of the operatives in The House as
they scurried to and fro between the East and West Wings, but I was
lost in the dramas of my own life like most young people, and barely
took any notice. "No, you're too young. They can't send you." I
stared at him hopelessly. Nobody they'd ever sent undercover ever
lasted long. The Project was too good, or maybe our agents weren't
good enough. Either way, there was only one way our agents came back
from those missions—with a hole in their heads. Some lasted longer
than others. Our most successful had stayed 2 years and almost
wormed his way into a position of trust before they uncovered him.
That had been a long time ago though. I once asked Max why they
never sent him to the Project as an undercover agent, and he laughed
and said that he was too well known. Every Project operative has a
picture of Max engraved in his memory—and they're under orders to
shoot him on sight. The missions Max went on were of the breaking
into and stealing things variety, but he did a good deal of behind
the scenes strategy work as well. Max always did have a head for
details.
"Neil, you can't go. You mustn't," I told him wretchedly. "You'll
die." It wasn't, perhaps, the most sensitive thing to say to him on
the eve of such an important mission. Max's blunt manner might have
rubbed off on me.
"Someone has to go. We're getting desperate. They have something
going down, but we don't know what. We've had no good information
for 3 years."
"So what?" I cried desperately, looking up into his familiar,
beloved face, and knowing this was the only time I'd ever get to be
held by him, even if I was being held down, rather than being held
close. "It's not your battle, Neil. Walk away from it. Come with me.
Run away with me." It was an insane suggestion, but it just came
into my mind. It was the answer for both of us, the solution to
everything. The look in his eyes quashed my hopes before they'd even
begun to soar, and sent them crash landing to earth with a bump.
"Nicky, listen to me, for once in your life. Listen!" He growled,
his expression angry. "I want to go. I don't want to stay here. This
is my chance to get revenge on the people who killed my parents. You
can go your own way. You can carry on living the same old selfish
life you've always lived, but that isn't my way. I don't love you,
Nicky. Not as anything other than a friend, anyway."
"Fuck you." It was as if he'd punched me in the gut. I pushed him
off, and got to my feet. "Damn you, Neil, because if you go then the
only way you'll be coming back is in a body bag." And I walked out
on him. I didn't see him again. No—I refused to see him again. Max
told me I'd regret it. He told me to swallow my pride and at least
say goodbye, but I was young, and stubborn, and, more than anything
else, I was scared. Max saw through the fear. He knew I wouldn't say
goodbye because I'd already said goodbye too many times in my young
life, and I wouldn't, couldn't, do it again, but all the same, even
though he understood, he still knew I'd regret it, and I did.
Neil lasted 11 months, and then he turned up on the doorstep of our
Vienna base, with half his face shot away. When Max told me, I felt
as if my heart had frozen over, and would never be warm again. I
sometimes wonder whether our argument preyed on his mind, whether he
was thinking about me, when he should have been concentrating on
maintaining the identity he had assumed, and convincing the Project
that he was one of them. I hope not. It was a few weeks after his
death, just before my 18th birthday, that Max brought home a small,
blonde, 16 year old girl, with a sad, pale, pinched face, and
introduced her to me.
"Nicky, this is Maddie," he said, looking at me over her head, his
dark eyes full of meaning. "And she's just lost her parents."
Skinner felt an urgency thrumming thought his veins, as he swayed,
listlessly, in time to the music. It felt good being here. He wanted
to stay here forever...no, he wanted something else. He wanted...he
wanted to possess this man he was holding. He wanted to undress him,
to overpower, and devour him. He pressed his tongue, urgently, into
Steve's mouth, and kissed him hard. His hands slipped down the back
of the other man's jeans and he caressed his buttocks urgently,
sliding his fingers into his crease.
"Whoa...I think someone's going too fast," Steve murmured, pushing him
back, an amused look in his eyes.
"Want you," Skinner said, incoherently. He knew he was drunk, but he
needed this.
"You can have me, stud," Steve winked. "Your place or mine?"
"Don't care," Skinner muttered. "Jus' make me...make me forget."
"Oh, I can do that. Who was he?" Steve asked, throwing one arm
around Skinner, and grabbing the big man's coat and jacket as they
staggered towards the door.
"Wha?" Skinner looked down on the little man, bemused. "Oh. Yes.
He...his name is Alex Kry...Alex Kryzak, and he killed me," he said,
zigzagging drunkenly towards a taxi.
"Heartbreaker huh?" Steve said, valiantly trying to hold Skinner up.
"Yeah...no...bastard," Skinner amended.
They got back to Skinner's apartment, and Steve fished in Skinner's
pant pockets for the keys.
"Wha' you lookin' for?" Skinner belched, grinning, and placing his
hand over Steve's guiding it towards his crotch.
"Later, stud. Let's get you inside first," Steve grinned back,
opening the door. They were only just inside when Skinner pounced.
He tore Steve's shirt off, and crushed the other man against the
wall, kissing him hard.
"Okay, okay. Hold on," Steve remonstrated, trying to undo Skinner's
jeans.
"Christ...want you," Skinner growled, swatting Steve's hands aside,
and making another assault on the smaller man's body, his lips and
fingers never still.
"And I want you, but there are some practicalities to take care of
first," Steve said, pushing Skinner back again, and divesting
himself of his own clothes, pausing only to grab some condoms and
lube from his pocket. "C'mon then, lover," he said, as Skinner
grabbed him again, and they both landed on the floor, legs wide
open, and tangled up. Skinner's cock was half hard, and he reached,
urgently, to fasten his hand around Steve's cock. Steve grinned, and
pressed himself against Skinner's body, and Skinner began to thrust
his own groin into the smaller man's thigh, in a wild, frenzied
passion. He could smell the unfamiliar scent of the carpet, and
could feel it rubbing on his bare legs. He remembered another time
when he'd lost himself in sex, and woken up to find a woman dead in
the bed beside him. Christ, what the fuck was he doing? He looked
down at the man beneath him, a man he didn't know. A man who was
groaning, and panting and sweating in his arms, and he felt a wave
of revulsion as reality kicked back in and he found himself sobering
up—fast. His erection disappeared, and he pulled back.
"Hey, what's the matter, stud?" Steve whispered, reaching up to
caress him.
"I'm sorry. Look, I think...you'd better go."
"It's okay. I know you'd had a bit to drink. I was surprised you
managed to get it up as much as you did to be honest," Steve said
kindly. "I thought I'd just put you to bed, and leave. I wasn't
expecting the he man routine!"
It was more than he deserved, Skinner thought, getting up, and
dressing in silence. The other man's kindness humbled him, and made
him feel even more guilty than he already did.
"Sorry," he muttered again, seeing no reason to disabuse Steve of
the notion that it was alcohol that was the problem, and not his own
frozen emotions. He, also, could be kind.
"Another time, huh?" Steve finished dressing, and pressed a kiss to
Skinner's cheek. "Here's my card."
"What? Yeah." Skinner took the card between nerveless fingers, and
opened the door. Steve slipped out, and Skinner closed the door
again without a backward glance. He screwed up the card and threw it
in the trash. What the hell had that been about? He walked into the
bathroom, and got in the shower, fully clothed, and turned it on at
full blast. He was going crazy. Slowly, but surely, he was going
insane. The cold water sobered him up even more, and cleared his
head. He wasn't going to get any more sleep tonight, so there was
only one thing left to do.
Skinner stepped out of the shower, and stripped off his sodden
clothes, leaving them in a heap on the floor. He pulled on his
bathrobe, and walked wearily to the kitchen, and made himself a cup
of coffee, and then he went into his den, and turned on his
computer, pulling up the files he had been working on earlier.
Dominik Crozier—where the fuck are you? he mused, as he drank the
black coffee, welcoming his return to some kind of rational thought.
He thought of that wild tangle of limbs on the carpet with a
shudder. Could he have been that desperate? Christ, Sharon would be
turning in her grave. He had never made love to her with such need,
because he had never admitted to either her, or himself, that he
wasn't interested in her sexually, and never had been. Never could
be. That call girl...she had been his one, last ditch attempt to
pretend that he was straight, that what had gone wrong between him
and Sharon hadn't been his fault, and as events had turned out, it
had proved nothing. The pain of being asked to sign those divorce
papers still made him ache. Damn, why had he ever got married in the
first place? Marriage...An idea struck Skinner, and he dialled into
the FBI database, and pulled up a file. It took him a little while
to get the information he was requesting. Nicolas Remarque was not,
after all, an American citizen, but when it came, it was worth the
wait. He had almost missed it, and was surprised he hadn't thought
to look before, but it was there, in black and white; a marriage
certificate, for one Nicolas Remarque, and a Madeline Owen. It was
his first real breakthrough.
Maddie was my sanity in the aftermath of Neil's death. She was fey,
and frail, but full of the most amazing zest for life, and she clung
to me because I knew what she was going through, and I clung to her,
because she reminded me both of myself, and my dead mother. She was
petite, as Mama had been, and she had the same blue eyes, and
rosebud lips, and she smelled good, and felt soft, and, most of all,
she understood me. We each knew, instinctively, when the other was
down, and needed to just walk for hours on end, without speaking. I
would walk beside her, as she strode out, lost in her own misery,
and just be with her, neither of us saying a word, and she would do
the same for me, during the first agony of my self recrimination
over Neil. It was love, but a deeper, stronger love than I'd ever
known for anyone before, except Mama. I left school, and won a
scholarship to Yale, and I looked forward to going home every
vacation because Maddie would be there. It was the most natural
thing in the world that we would make love, and we did when she was
17 years old, and it felt just...right, as if it had always been my
destiny. Maddie was the second of the three great loves of my life.
After university, I did a post-graduate degree at the Sorbonne to
round off a truly comprehensive, and cosmopolitan education, and
then returned to The House, having made up my mind about my future.
"Max, I want to go home," I told him.
"Home?" He raised an eyebrow. I can still remember him sitting
there, in his dressing gown, his chin covered in stubble.
"Vienna," I said softly, and he nodded, and poured himself a glass
of brandy, even though it was only half past nine in the morning.
"Nicky, you're all grown up. You must do what you feel is right," he
said, downing the glass in one gulp. I don't think I ever realised
how hard it must have been for him to see me finally leaving the
nest, and the security that he had built for me so carefully when I
was 9 years old.
"I want to become Nicolas Remarque. I want to claim my inheritance.
They won't still be looking for me after all this time, if they ever
were," I told him.
"No. I agree. I'll see that you have all the right paperwork,
Nicky," he said with a nod.
"Another thing. I'm going to be married," I said, and he put his
glass down with a thump, and ran his hand over his stubbled chin.
"Right, so you're telling me that you're fucking straight now are
you? Christ, Nicky, how the hell am I supposed to keep up?" He
joked. "Who's the lucky lady?"
"Maddie," I said softly, and he looked surprised.
"I thought you two were just friends. I mean, I know you're close
but...Nicky..." He gave me that serious look that I usually got when I
was in trouble, and I wondered what the hell was coming next.
"Maddie's been through a lot. Don't put her through any more, and
don't mistake having one thing in common for love."
"I do love her," I snapped, outraged that he'd question me, or
accuse me of not loving her enough.
"I know, but are you in love with her?" He asked, and, looking back,
I know exactly what he meant, and he was right, as always. I wasn't
in love with Maddie. I loved her, but I wasn't in love with her. We
were just two lost souls who had found someone to cling to; someone
who understood.
"Of course I fucking well love her!" I raged at Max and he shrugged,
and spread his hands.
"I'm just saying don't hurt her, Nicky. She's been hurt enough," he
said softly. "If you don't think you can stay with her, or be what
she needs you to be, then don't do this. Better to hurt her now than
after your wedding."
"What the fuck do you know about love anyway?" I snarled at Max, as
defensive as ever when I knew he was hitting too close to a truth
that I would have preferred to deny. "You've never been with a woman
for more than a few months at a time. You know nothing about love,
so don't damn well lecture me about it." I regret that outburst so
much now, but he responded to in typical Max fashion. He just
deflected my anger with a tilt of his head and a wry smile.
"You're probably right Nicky. Maybe I don't know anything about
love," he said, and his eyes were sad. He did though. He knew more
about love than I did. Hadn't he, after all, plucked a 9-year-old
boy from a scene of carnage, and devoted himself to him for years? I
had never done one unselfish thing in my life, but Max had. His love
life might be littered with the corpses of affairs that couldn't
survive his hard drinking, womanising eye, but he had a big heart.
I went away full of self-righteous indignation. I think Max
seriously doubted that I could be bisexual, and thought that my true
nature would win out before long, but he was wrong about that much
at least. Maddie and I had a very satisfying sex life. It's true
that I still lusted after other men, but I never did a thing about
it during our short lived marriage. I never so much as looked at
another woman though. I think Maddie understood that about me. She
accepted that she was the only woman who would ever hold a place in
my heart, but she also knew that I was still attracted to men. It
was a compromise we could both live with. We needed each other too
much not to. It was a strange need, and I'm not sure I can explain
it to anyone who hasn't lived through what we'd both been through.
Maddie didn't have any other family. She was the daughter of two
field agents who had been killed in action, and what we fell in love
with, in each other, was the reflection of ourselves, and the need
for comfort. We accepted each other, unquestioningly. She took on my
moods, my passions, my jealousies, and my savage brooding sadness
about the past, and I took on her tears, and her confusion, and her
'lost' moments, when she would disappear into her own thoughts,
oblivious to the outside world. We were soul mates, Maddie and I.
We were married in Vienna the following year. As it turned out, I
couldn't face going back to live in my parents' house. We went there
to visit, me grasping onto Maddie's hand so tight that she had
bruises the next day, but I could never have lived there. There were
too many memories. We took an apartment in town instead, and, much
to my horror, that was when Maddie told me she was going to work in
the Vienna base of the Organisation.
"Why?" I demanded, thinking of Neil. I took it as a personal affront
to my decision not to have anything to do with the Organisation. I
was angry, but only because I felt guilty because there was
undoubtedly a small part of me, deeply buried, that felt that I,
also, should join them.
"Don't be angry, Nicky," she pleaded, putting her arms around my
waist, and looking up at me, with those beautiful blue eyes. "I just
need to do it. I want to give something back to them. They took such
good care of me."
"If it hadn't been for them your parents wouldn't have been killed
in the first place," I snapped at her, watching her face crumple as
I had known it would, but she was stronger than I had ever given her
credit for. Underneath the fragile exterior was a will of pure iron.
"You know that isn't true, Nicky," she said reproachfully.
"I don't understand. I can't believe you'd risk what we've got. We
have a chance to make a life here!" I yelled at her. True, I could
never quite decide what job to do, and I'd already worked in a bank,
a lawyer's office, and done a stint in a publishing house. I
couldn't make up my mind. In my heart I yearned to be an actor, but
I wasn't sure I had the talent for that. Nicolas Remarque had enough
money that was no real pressure to stay in work either, so I
frequently gave up my jobs as soon as they bored me.
"I'm not going to do anything dangerous," she said, looking scared
by my outburst. "Just work at the base on the communications
systems. I'm not going to become an agent or anything. Why shouldn't
I work for them, Nicky? They're my family."
"I'm your family," I corrected her bitterly.
"Please don't try and stop me from doing this, Nicky," she
whispered. "You don't understand—you never take any interest in
the Organisation, but they're struggling. They're losing, Nicky -
don't you realise that? Haven't you see how pale and drawn Max is
looking lately? Did you never stop to ask why they sent Neil out so
young, and virtually untested? They're desperate, Nicky. They need
all the help they can get. Nicky, the Project are winning. Don't you
care what will happen to all of us if Colonisation goes ahead? What
kind of a life do you think we could have then, if we even survived
it?"
"It might never happen," I yelled at her furiously, and she bit on
her lip, and left the room.
It started to rain, and I found her a few hours later, standing in
the street, in one of her "lost" phases. She was just standing
there, staring listlessly into space, completely gone. Her dress was
sticking to her skin, plastered over her small breasts, and bony
hips, and she was utterly, eerily still, gazing at nothing. A small
crowd had started to gather, pointing at her. I went out into the
rain, and touched her arm, gently, and she looked at me, startled.
"There you are, Nicky," she said. "I was looking for you."
"Yes, I know. Come on, Maddie, it's okay. Come with me." I took hold
of her hand, and led her quietly back into the house, took off her
clothes, and wrapped her in blankets in front of the fire. Then I
towel dried her hair, talking to her all the time, until she came
back to reality. This kind of episode happened frequently. I
understood. She was my wife; I knew how to take care of her.
"Are you still angry with me, Nicky?" She asked.
"No, Maddie. I couldn't be angry with you for long," I told her,
kissing her cold lips.
So she had her way. She went to work at the Vienna base, while I
wasted my life on a succession of meaningless jobs, but I couldn't
settle. I was restless, and didn't know why. I didn't find out until
a few months after my wedding, when there was an explosion at the
base. They said, on the news, that it was a gas explosion, but it
wasn't. It was a bomb, courtesy of the Project, and it was the first
time that they'd been successful in attacking any of our bases. I
went down there, and in the chaos and confusion they thought at
first that she was all right. I prayed for her to be all right. Max
arrived a few hours later, and all our people were taken to special,
exclusive clinics. They said Maddie had concussion, and maybe minor
brain damage, but the truth was that her already fragile psyche was
sent over the edge by the injuries she suffered, and she never truly
came back to us. She was always lost, as she had been that day out
in the rain. Only that time she had come back to me, and this time
she didn't. I sat by her bed day and night, and accompanied her back
to The House when she grew stronger, but although she regained some
of her strength, physically, she never did mentally. I visit her
every time I go back to The House, but to this day, she had no idea
who I am. Our marriage had lasted for just five months.
It took me some time to accept that I'd lost her for good, but I
couldn't feel sorry for her. Looking into those hazy, faraway blue
eyes, I had the feeling that she was somewhere she preferred to
stay. Almost as if it was a conscious choice—she could stay there,
where she felt safe, or she could come back to reality. Small wonder
she chose not to return.
It was only then, finally, that I made my choice, and embraced the
destiny that had been waiting for me since I was nine years old. I
went to Max just before my 24th birthday, and told him that I wanted
to join the Organisation. More than that, I wanted to be an agent,
just like Neil, and Max himself.
"Are you sure, Nicky?" He asked, his eyes dark, and unreadable. "I'm
not saying that we don't need people, but you know how dangerous it
is, and what you stand to lose."
"Max, I've lost everyone I ever loved except you," I told him,
bitterly. "And I lost each and every one of them to those bastards.
Maybe I've finally grown up, but I want my revenge, Max." I think
that was my true birthright. Not the house, or the money my father
left me, not the charm, looks, and easy manner that was my mother's
legacy to me, but my revenge. It was all that I had left to live
for.
Skinner took a plane to Vienna the following day. Whatever he was
looking for, he knew that he wouldn't find it in DC. He made a phone
call to Krycek just before he left.
"I've found something," he said.
"What?" Krycek sounded as bored and cold as usual.
"A marriage certificate. It isn't much, but it's the first real lead
I've had. I'll call you." And he'd rung off.
Vienna was cold. It was mid-winter, and there was a light smattering
of snow on the streets. Skinner went to the address listed on the
marriage certificate and did some digging. He didn't come up with
anything about Nicolas Remarque, but Madeline Owen was a different
matter. Whoever she was, she hadn't been subject to the same amount
of protection as Dominik Crozier. He discovered her date of birth,
an address for where her family had lived, and finally, in his
biggest breakthrough, a medical record authorising her release into
the care of a psychiatrist in Geneva.
"Voila," Skinner murmured, noting the address of the clinic. "Now,
we are finally starting to roll." He couldn't help but be excited by
his discovery. He had always loved working in the field, sifting his
way through endless amounts of information, and making connections
that other people, without his sharp eye for detail, so often
missed. He took the next plane to Geneva, and found that the clinic
was part of a much wider foundation of companies and businesses.
Once he started looking, he found that the same organisation seemed
to own half of Geneva, including the clinic to which Madeline
Remarque had been referred. Finally, after a week of dogged
research, and cross-referencing, Skinner found the address to which
all the other records led back. The question was—what should he do
next? He was loath to give this information to Krycek without first
finding out more, so he set off to visit the address in question.
He found a pair of huge, ornate gates, and a long driveway leading
into some woods, in the countryside just outside Geneva. There was
nothing else he could see. The area was completely fenced off, with
a massive electronic security system, and armed guards who regularly
patrolled the perimeter. Whatever this place was, it was important.
Skinner knew, instinctively, that this was where he would find his
answer, maybe he would even find the elusive Dominik Crozier
himself. He ruled out making any kind of attempt to break into a
place this heavily guarded, and, after some consideration, he
decided to take his life in his hands, and make the most obvious
approach; he rang on the doorbell.
The guards at the gate eyed him curiously, and one of them
approached him and asked him his name, and his business.
"I'm Walter Skinner," he said, "and I'm looking for a man called
Dominik Crozier."
The guard stared at him for a moment, and then made a phone call. A
few minutes later, and much to his own surprise, the gate was
unlocked, and he was ushered into the grounds. He was shown into a
car at gunpoint, and driven up the driveway, through the woods, and,
fifteen minutes later, he arrived at a massive mansion. It was so
big, and so completely obscured by trees, and hills, that it took
his breath away. He could feel the sweat pricking on the palms of
his hands. Maybe this was the last journey he'd ever make.
Curiously, that thought didn't upset him. If he had to die, he'd
prefer to do it out here, with a bullet in his brain, than slowly in
DC, with Mulder and Scully watching as the nanocytes turned him into
something only marginally less horrific than Frankenstein's monster.
He was taken into the house, and shown into a large drawing room,
with a blazing fire burning in the grate. A man was sitting in a
wheelchair, smoking a cigarette, and he looked up, and smiled as
Skinner entered.
Skinner studied the man for a moment. He had clearly once been a
large, vital person, with big, raw bones, but now he looked as if he
had shrunk in on himself. His thick hair was white, streaked through
with yellow nicotine stains, and a blanket covered his legs. He was
clearly ill.
"You're not...Dominik Crozier?" No, the man was far too old.
Disorientated, Skinner took another step forward. The old man
laughed.
"No, I'm not," he said, in perfect, unaccented English. "My name is
Max. Please, take a seat. It's good to see you. I've heard a lot
about you, Mr. Skinner."
"You have?" Skinner looked surprised. Someone appeared behind him,
and helped him remove his coat, and he walked towards the fire, and
warmed his hands on it. He didn't seem to be in any immediate danger
at least.
"Yes, I have. Dominik has told me all about you. I believe you're
looking for him?" Max asked. Skinner frowned.
"Crozier knows that I'm searching for him?" He asked.
"Of course. Dominik makes it his business to know when he's in
danger, and I think he is in danger from you, Mr. Skinner. Yes?" Max
asked.
"Not necessarily." Skinner took the offered seat, and a few seconds
later a maid entered, carrying a tray containing two cups of dark,
bitter Swiss coffee, and a plate of intricate little sugar-coated
cookies.
"Explain what you mean by that comment, Mr. Skinner," Max requested.
"I'd rather be taken to Crozier," Skinner parried.
"He isn't here, and besides, you're in no position to make demands."
Max's voice had a hint of steel, and his eyes were hard, and
unwavering. Skinner felt a shiver run down his spine. This man was
ruthless. He was suddenly aware that it was very likely that he
wouldn't be walking out of this place alive.
"It's true that I'm looking for Crozier, but only because I want to
find out who he is, and what his involvement is with a group of
people that I loathe," Skinner said, choosing his words carefully.
"They're the ones who sent me."
"And if you find him you'll sell the secret of his identity to them,
in return for your own life," Max said, inclining his head.
Skinner's eyes widened in surprise.
"It would seem that you know a great deal more about me than I know
about you," he commented.
"Yes, we do. You have no idea who you're dealing with here," Max
told him.
"It's safe to say that's the truth," Skinner observed, with an
ironic sigh. "I'm out of my depth here, Mr..."
"Max. Just Max," the other man said.
"Well, Max, I don't know what the hell is going on. I guess that's
the story of my life. I just know that I was sent to do a job, but
the more I've found out, the less I feel sure that I'll be able to
do it."
"I see. Well then, perhaps I can help you make up your mind," Max's
dark eyes never left Skinner's face, and Skinner had the
uncomfortable feeling that he was being scrutinised, examined, and
judged, but for what purpose, he didn't know. "Dominik Crozier is
our best agent, Mr. Skinner. He's been working undercover with the
people you know as the Consortium for several years. He's fed us
information that has been invaluable in our fight against them."
"You're fighting those bastards?" Skinner leaned forward in his
chair. This was the first good news he'd heard in a long time.
"Oh yes, Mr. Skinner. We've been fighting them for a very long time,
and for a very long time we were losing—until Dominik joined us.
About a year ago, Dominik pulled off a considerable coup for us. He
managed to assemble many of the key players of the Consortium in one
location, and our people, and those helping us, were able to destroy
them. You might remember the occasion—you were there in its
immediate aftermath. I believe that you took two of your agents to
the scene of the destruction."
"That was your people?" Skinner asked, stunned. "Your people were
behind the burning at the El Rico Airforce base?"
"Yes—we arranged it, working on information given to us by
Dominik. It was his greatest victory—and ours. It was also a body
blow from which the Consortium, or the Project as we call them,
never fully recovered. The only person they really have left is the
man called Spender."
"I know him." Skinner stiffened.
"Yes, you've fought your own battles against him, for which I
commend you." Max inclined his head. "However, Spender is neither a
man to forgive, nor forget. He knew they'd been betrayed, and that
it had to have been by someone on the inside. He's been busy
rebuilding what is left of his beloved Project, and he's been
searching for the person who betrayed them. For a long time he
didn't have anything to go on, but recently one of our
shape-shifters was captured, and revealed, under torture, that the
man they were looking for, the man who had betrayed them, is Dominik
Crozier. What the shape-shifter could not tell them, because he did
not know, is who Crozier is, and he didn't know because nobody knows
except Crozier himself, and me."
"And you're not about to just give that information to me, are you?"
Skinner smiled a grim smile. If Max didn't kill him, then it was
clear Krycek would, because he sure as hell wasn't going to be
leaving this place alive if he discovered Crozier's identity, and if
he didn't discover Crozier's identity then the Consortium would kill
him anyway. He was a dead man.
"No. I'm not." Max inclined his head. "I should kill you, but
Dominik has forbidden me to do that, so I thought that I'd take
coffee with you instead." He picked up his cup, and took a sip,
smiling at Skinner over the rim.
"Why the hell should Crozier care whether I live or not?" Skinner
asked.
"Maybe he wants to kill you himself," Max suggested.
"I hate the Consortium. I'd rather die at his hands than Krycek's,"
Skinner said softly.
"Well, maybe you'll get that opportunity," Max said, with a shrug.
"Either way, I think we both know that you're reaching the end of
this particular road, Mr. Skinner."
"Yes." Skinner settled back in his chair, and savoured his coffee;
it was remarkably good.
"You know Dominik's history?" Max asked, conversationally.
"I know his parents were shot by Consortium operatives, yes. I know
he witnessed the murders and someone, I'm presuming it was you, hid
him in case they decided to come back and finish the job."
"That's correct." Max nodded. "I can see you've done your homework,
Mr. Skinner. Dominik said you were thorough. He thought you might
find him, in the end, which is why I advised him to kill you."
"I think you overstate my importance in the grand scheme of things,"
Skinner remarked, wryly. Max studied him carefully over his cup.
"No, I don't think so," he murmured, and Skinner had an eerie
sensation, as if Max was talking about something else, something
entirely different.
"Mr. Skinner, when I found Dominik he was lying at the bottom of a
flight of stairs with blood running down his face. He had witnessed
his parents being slaughtered, but what you probably don't know is
how hard that nine year old boy tried to save them."
Skinner sat silently, and completely still. There was a power and
urgency in the old man's voice, as if it were important that Skinner
knew this. He didn't know why it should be important though.
"He heard his father being threatened by Spender, and he watched
from the top of the stairs as those men shot his beloved Papa. His
mother was lying on the floor, but she was still alive. Desperate to
save her, he crept out onto the roof, and broke into the garage to
alert the bodyguard we had provided for the family. Then, disobeying
my orders, and not for the last time either," Max paused, and
smiled, "he went back into the house to try and save his mother
himself. They shot her before he could reach her, and then Spender
turned his gun on that little boy. I hope he rots in hell for that,
and his many other crimes."
"You and me both," Skinner said in a heartfelt tone.
"So, Mr. Skinner, do you still feel inclined to sell Dominik to his
enemies?"
"I couldn't even if I wanted to." Skinner spread his hands in a
gesture of futility. "I don't know who he is."
"No, but you know what he is. I regard that boy as my son. I'd kill
any man who harmed him," Max said, and despite the other man's age,
and illness, Skinner knew he meant it, and that he both could, and
would, carry out his threat. "He's a good man, Mr. Skinner. He was a
good boy; brave, and bright, and he turned into a good man too. A
man that any father would be proud to call son—and that's what I
call him." Max's eyes were burning with a fierce devotion.
"I believe you, sir." Skinner inclined his head in deference to the
other man's strong emotions.
"Come then." Max beckoned him over, and Skinner got up. "Push me,"
Max commanded, and Skinner did as he was told, without hesitation.
Somehow, Max was a man you instinctively wanted to obey. He pushed
the old man out of the door, and into the grand, marble hallway.
"You're wondering what happened to Maddie. She's how you found us
after all," Max said, guessing his thoughts.
"Yes." Skinner had ceased to be surprised by how much they knew
about him, and his investigation.
"Well, she's still alive. Come. I'll show you. And in case you're
wondering, although we go to some pains to keep this place secret,
the Project have known our whereabouts for a very long time, so
there's no question that you can sell them that information in
exchange for your life."
"I wasn't even considering it," Skinner replied, honestly.
"Good. Our security is too tight for them to attack us here, just as
theirs is too good for us to launch any serious assault on them in
their heartland either. Through those doors." Max pointed, and
Skinner pushed the wheelchair through the doors, and down a ramp.
They stopped outside a large, airy room, and Skinner opened the door
and pushed Max inside. Two women were sitting in there. One got up
and left, with a smile, as they entered.
"She's Maddie's nurse. Maddie needs round the clock care," Max said,
gesturing that Skinner should park the wheelchair beside the small,
frail, blonde haired woman sitting on the couch, rocking herself to
and fro, humming to herself, lost in a world of her own. Skinner
crouched down in front of her, and gently touched her hand.
"Maddie?" She didn't even look at him. She just kept staring into
space, her eyes hazy, and distant.
"She doesn't talk. We're not entirely sure she can understand what
we say, although she can certainly hear us," Max commented. He
smiled at the woman, and brushed her hair away from her face.
"What happened to her?" Skinner asked, rocking back on his haunches
and surveying the sad figure in front of them.
"She was like Dominik—an orphan, but she wasn't strong like him.
She never really recovered from her parents' death. She was involved
in an attack on one of our bases, and suffered brain damage as a
result." Max put his arm around Maddie's shoulder and kissed her
cheek, and she ignored him, and carried on staring into space, but
Skinner noticed that a faint smile was hovering around her lips.
"She loves being cuddled. I told Dominik that he shouldn't marry
her. It was more a marriage of need than one of love, and somehow
that just didn't seem right to me, but he was adamant. Dominik
always was the most obstinate boy in the world when he made up his
mind about something, and at his most defensive and fiery when he
knew he was doing the wrong thing. And he did know, deep inside.
Maybe it was for the best that she ended up like this. At least she
seems happy. I don't think she'd have been happy with Dominik—not
in the long term. He was too restless, and he needed something else,
something Maddie could never have given him."
Skinner looked at Max, expecting an explanation, but none was
forthcoming.
"Mr. Skinner, Dominik's lost everything," Max said softly. "I won't
kill you because I gave him my word, and because...well, because I
understand his reasons why. However, I do ask you not to continue
with this investigation. Don't keep looking for him, because if you
do, I'm very much afraid that you might find him."
"You're letting me go?" Skinner stood up, surprised.
"Yes, I am. Against my better judgement, but I'm the boy's father.
What else can I do?" Max shrugged. "What will you do, Mr. Skinner?"
"I'm not sure." Skinner thought about it for a moment. "One thing,
Max. If you speak to Dominik, and I'm sure you will, you might like
to pass a message onto him, from me."
"Very well."
"Tell him that he should be wary of ghosts. I might not be the only
one looking for him, and the ghost of a dead woman could be his
downfall."
"Very cryptic," Max commented. "Dominik will enjoy deciphering that
I'm sure. He always was too clever for his own good."
"The photographs in the house? I'm presuming you took them, in order
to protect his identity?" Skinner asked.
"That's right. I think Dominik resents me for that occasionally. I
think he wishes he could remember what they looked like, and it's
hard, after all this time."
Skinner nodded, as the final pieces of the mystery slotted into
place. Poor Dominik Crozier. He could no more sell this man than he
could have sold his own flesh and blood, but that didn't mean he was
going to stop looking for him. Maybe he could offer him his
services, although he wasn't sure what use he'd be with the threat
of Alex fucking Krycek, and his nanocytes hanging over him.
"Goodbye, Max." He shook the old man's hand at the door, and walked
out to the car, still expecting to hear a shot ring out behind him.
He was too dangerous to be allowed to walk free, and he knew too
much. What the hell was Crozier thinking?
Max tells me that he's received a visit from Walter. I'm not
surprised. He's also passed on a message from him, which makes me
laugh. I love this about Walter. I love that he's full of surprises
for a man who seems so straightforward. His complexity is one of his
attractions of course. I'd be bored if he was anything less than
this. Max would thump from here to kingdom come if he knew what I'm
about to do next. It's stupid, and it's foolhardy, and it will
probably get me killed, but I can't resist it all the same. Walter
has laid down the gauntlet; he wants to meet me, and I'm tired of
running. If he doesn't kill me, then at least I can fly back to see
Max. I miss the old man. Trust Walter to be the one to find me,
after all these years. I love that it's him, in a way. I love that
of all the people who looked for me, only he was clever enough to
find me, and I love that he seems to understand me well enough to
know that only a cryptic clue like this could draw me to him, like a
moth to a flame.
I take the first flight out to Vienna, and arrive in the middle of
the night, which suits me fine. It's about 3 am when I walk up the
driveway to my parents' house. Unlike Walter, I don't need to break
in. I have a key after all. I unlock the door, hardly breathing. I
have a gun, of course, but I don't think I'll use it. Not on him. I
as good as killed Neil; I won't have Walter on my conscience. The
house is in darkness, which is wrong. There should always be one
light burning, somewhere in the house; I left specific instructions.
That makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. He's here.
I thought he would be, and he is. I walk up the stairs. I don't need
the lights; I remember every single inch of this place. It's
engraved on my eyelids, in my bones, and in the very core of my
soul. I glance into my parents' room. The door to my mother's
dressing room is ajar. It shouldn't be. I closed it the last time I
was here. I wander across the landing to my old bedroom, push the
door open, and I know that he's in here before I even take a step. I
walk into the room, softly, silently, and reach for the light
switch, and that's when I feel his gun pressed against the back of
my head, and I freeze.
"Dominik Crozier, I presume," he says, in a low, tense voice.
"You knew it would be," I reply, and he flicks on the light, and I
take a slow, unthreatening step forward, and turn, the barrel of his
gun still in my face.
"Oh Christ, Krycek, no," is all he says.
"I think," Krycek said thoughtfully, "that in my own home, I would
prefer you to use my real name, Walter. Dominik. Here, I was only
ever Dominik Crozier. I won't be that bastard Alex Krycek here. I
won't bring him here. My parents' house has already been defiled
enough."
Skinner stood, staring at Krycek—Crozier?— for a long time, and
the other man stood quite still, gazing back.
"Did you set me up?" Skinner managed to croak at last. "How? Was it
all a lie? Max, that place, that woman—Maddie. Was it all a set
up? And why? For what?"
"No, none of that was a set up, Walter," Crozier replied, calmly.
"Are you going to use that gun, or can I move?"
"Stand still," Skinner said desperately, his gun hand wavering as he
faced the other man down. Crozier put his hands back in the air.
"All right. It's okay," he said soothingly.
"No it isn't. None of it is fucking okay!" Skinner growled,
tightening his grip on the gun. "How did you get here? How did you
know that I'd be here? I didn't tell anyone."
"You gave me a clue, remember," Crozier said softly. "You warned me
about a dead woman's ghost. You were right to warn me, Walter. Thank
you. It was a stupid slip-up on my part, and could have ended in me
being caught a long time ago. I just...this is just one thing I can't
help. Sometimes I need to come back."
"Ghosts..." Skinner murmured, glancing around the room, taking in the
child's belongings; his skates, his clothing, his shoes, his
posters.
"That's right. Ghosts." Crozier nodded.
"But not the ghost of Marguerite Crozier."
"No, the ghost of her son, Dominik." Crozier inclined his head.
"Crozier couldn't keep away." Skinner's voice was barely audible.
"He was drawn back to this place, over and over again. Not often -
maybe a couple of times a year, but when he came back, he'd go to
her dressing room, sit at her dressing table, and spray her perfume
into the air, so that he could smell her scent. The housekeeper
thought it was ghosts, but of course it wasn't."
"No, it was just a nine-year-old boy, trying to recapture the scent
of his mother. If he closed his eyes, and sat very still, he could
remember the way she looked, and the way she spoke. Smell is a
powerful memory stimulator," Crozier said softly.
"Max burned all the photographs so they wouldn't be able to identify
you," Skinner said, looking at the empty silver frame beside the
child's bed.
"That's right. I found that the only way I could remember how she
looked was to come here, and spray her perfume into the air. It was
all I had left of her. I didn't realise that the housekeeper thought
the house was haunted. How amusing. Mulder would laugh, I think.
What will you do, now that you know, Walter?"
"I don't know," he hissed, still holding the gun pressed against the
other man's forehead. "I don't fucking know, Krycek."
Skinner gazed at the other man, still unable to take it in. Crozier
looked so very familiar, and yet unfamiliar. He carried himself
differently, and he dressed differently. The trademark leather
jacket, black jeans, and white tee shirt were gone, to be replaced
by dark navy chinos, and a plain dark shirt, covered by a tailored
jacket. There was a solid gold ring on the middle finger of his
right hand. Those green eyes, that he had once thought so cold, and
evil, were sharp and intelligent, yes, but now they were also warm,
and friendly. Hell, even his voice was different. He still had a
flawless American accent, but Skinner could detect a slight change
in the vowel sounds—and the faintest trace of English intonation,
combined with just the merest hint of German.
"Are you really him?" Skinner asked, his voice breaking, and his
world tumbling down. If Krycek was Crozier then he really had
reached the end of the road. He couldn't win this game. When he came
here, it had been to see for himself what kind of a man Crozier was,
prior to deciding whether to throw him to Krycek, or to offer the
man his help. Now it all had become too complicated for him to
understand, and he couldn't see a way out of this. His options had
been abruptly curtailed. "Are you really Crozier, or is this just
another trap, Krycek?"
"No, it isn't a trap," Crozier said, his green eyes dark, and
insistent. He ignored the gun, and took a step away, and then
another, daring Skinner to fire, and he found that he couldn't.
Crozier walked over to the closet, and fingered the magnetic letters
arranged to form words on the large, metallic card stuck to the
surface. "It was a game between us. She used to tiptoe in here when
I was asleep, and I woke up to a different message each morning. I'd
reply to it, and she'd read it when she put me to bed. We'd both
laugh."
Skinner closed his eyes. He had a mental image of a green- eyed
little boy, laughing out loud, his dark hair falling into his eyes,
as he played this word game with his beloved mother. Crozier moved
away, over to the window, twitched the curtain aside, and glanced
out. "It's started to snow again," he observed. "You know, when I
was a child, I wanted to be an actor. Ironic really, isn't it,
considering the role I ended up playing?"
"You're going to have to explain it to me, Kry...Dominik," Skinner
said, spreading his hands, "because I don't understand it. Why send
me looking for you?"
"You do understand really, Walter, you just don't want to," Crozier
replied. "I've been Alex Krycek for seven years. I know him, and I
hate him." The vehemence of those words made Skinner look up,
sharply. "You don't believe that's possible? Well, it is," Crozier
said. "I've done a good job, though, Walter. I kept my silence, and
my cover, through even the most difficult moments. I kept it when
they sawed off my arm, and I kept it when I took you to the brink of
death and then brought you back to life just to show you that the
Project owned you. I kept it for seven long years following the
orders of man who had killed my mother and father, and destroyed my
life, when all I wanted to do was to place my hands around his
scrawny throat and choke him until he died. You ask me why I sent
you looking for myself, knowing what you might find, but of course I
had to. The man you call Cancerman, Spender, gave me an order, and
that was to use you to track Crozier down. What choice did I have?
If I didn't follow the order then he would surely have wondered why,
so I did what I'm good at; I stayed in character, and bought myself
time that way. There was always a chance that you might fail, and if
you did find me...well, then I'd deal with that eventuality when it
happened. Seeing as you were reporting to me, you were less of a
threat than you might otherwise have been."
"But you were such a bastard. Did you have to pursue this mission
with quite such zeal?" Skinner asked in despair. "I mean, Christ,
what was that little object lesson with the nanocytes a few weeks
ago all about?"
"That was about Alex Krycek doing his job properly. You weren't
getting any results. You weren't even trying." Crozier shrugged.
"You couldn't expect a man like Krycek to let you get away with
that, so I made sure that he didn't. Anything less and Cancerman
would have been breathing down my neck."
"This doesn't change anything." Skinner raised his gun again.
"You're still a bastard, Dominik."
"Yes, I am." Crozier turned back from the window, and stared at the
gun impassively. "And please, do feel free to ask me any questions
you like. If, when you're through, you want to kill me, then that's
fine. I'll allow you to do so."
"You'll allow me?" Skinner grunted. "That's big of you, considering
that I'm the one with the gun."
"I didn't come here unarmed, Walter," Crozier chided mildly. "And,
like Krycek, I am very skilled at my job."
"I'll bet you are. Tell me one thing, Dominik—did you arrange that
car accident that killed my wife?" Skinner asked urgently. He
watched the other man's reactions closely, but Crozier didn't miss a
beat.
"No, Walter. I had nothing to do with that. I didn't even know about
it. That was someone else."
"And Melissa Scully—did you kill her?" Skinner demanded.
"No, I didn't. Luis Cardinal killed her. If I could have stopped him
then I would have done so, but it all happened too fast." Crozier
shrugged. "I try my best to avoid murdering innocent people where
possible, but I'll admit, it hasn't always been possible." A shadow
passed across his face, and Skinner saw something he had never once
seen in Krycek's eyes: remorse.
"And Bill Mulder? Did you kill Mulder's father?" Skinner demanded.
Crozier hesitated for just a fraction of a second, and then inclined
his head, in a graceful nod.
"Yes, I did. William Mulder was part of the Project, albeit the only
part of it with a conscience, but I was ordered to kill him, so I
did. I didn't shed any tears for him. He had a considerable amount
of blood on his hands." Crozier shrugged.
"You being Crozier doesn't change anything then," Skinner said
softly, taking aim at Crozier's head. "You're still a cold blooded
killer."
"Max once said that he wasn't sure whether the ends justified the
means, but he hoped so," Crozier said, unblinking in the face of the
gun. "During the past seven years I've come to understand what he
meant by that. You see, Walter, I knew, when Max first asked me to
go undercover as Alex Krycek, and infiltrate the Project, that it
wouldn't be enough to pretend to be Krycek. I had to really be him.
I had to do everything he would do, and that would include killing,
and hurting people. It wasn't an easy decision, and it wasn't one I
took lightly. Max and I talked it through for weeks. He was worried
that it would destroy me, but he was also worried that if I didn't
go, we would be destroyed. Oh, not just our Organisation, but all of
us, all humanity. There was too much resting on my shoulders for me
to have the luxury of a conscience, Walter. I had a choice, and I
took it. Please make sure you kill me for the right reasons. Kill me
for being the kind of lying bastard that can pretend to be another
man for seven years while working to his own agenda. Kill me for
being a man who can deceive and dissemble so easily that he can kill
in the name of a Project he doesn't believe in, while secretly
working for their bitterest enemies. Kill me because I can betray
and double cross those people who think I'm their friend without a
second thought. Kill me for what I am, Walter. Don't kill me for
being Alex Krycek. Kill me for being Dominik Crozier."
"Where does the one begin, and the other end?" Skinner asked,
drowning. He felt broken, and lost.
Crozier crossed the room swiftly, and brushed Skinner's gun aside.
"Let me show you," he said. He picked up Skinner's hand, and pressed
it against his head. Skinner stared at him, puzzled. "Here," Crozier
said, pushing aside his thick, dark hair, and placing Skinner's
fingers on his scalp. Skinner felt an indentation, and frowned,
bemused. "This is where it begins, Walter. You were right. Spender's
bullet did ricochet. It hit the banisters, then glanced off my head,
and was embedded in the wall. Come, let me show you." He led Skinner
out onto the landing. "This is where I crouched, Walter, while I
watched them murder my parents. My father was standing there—right
under the chandelier, and Spender was facing him. Papa died trying
to save my mother—did you know that? The mission was bungled from
the beginning. Mama was expendable, but my father was not—he was
the one they wanted. When he threw himself in front of the bullet
meant for her, it was all over. I ran down the stairs when they shot
her. I got to about here." Crozier paused, half way down the stairs,
"and that's when Spender saw me. I was cast in shadow, so he didn't
get a clear shot, and they already knew that Max was on his way, so
it wasn't wise to linger. He shot me as he was running for the door,
and I fell, down these steps, down to the bottom of the stairs. I
could feel the blood in my eyes, and I thought I was dead. I should
have been dead. I lay here for maybe ten, fifteen minutes, while my
parents lay dead just feet away. Sometimes I opened my eyes and
stared into my father's dead face. Spender kicked him you know. He
rolled him over with his boot, so that he was facing up. Fifteen
minutes—Max says that's all the time that passed before he came in
here, and rescued me, but that wasn't how long it was for me. For me
it was a lifetime, and I'm still living it," Crozier said, staring
up at Skinner from the bottom of the stairs, where he stood, his
body suffused with the kind of tense, nervous energy he had never
seen in Krycek, and his green eyes were glowing with a different
kind of emotion now. If Skinner hadn't known that this man in front
of him was also Alex Krycek, he might not even have recognised him.
He didn't walk, talk, or sound like Krycek.
"Why..." Skinner said, and his mouth was so dry he could barely speak.
"Why did you come here, Dominik? Why didn't you have Max kill me
when I found the house in Geneva? Why let me live?"
"Why?" Crozier gave a little laugh, and shrugged, but Skinner noted
that the other man couldn't meet his eyes. "Why? Who knows, Walter?
Maybe because I couldn't bring myself to kill someone I like and
respect in order to protect a bastard like Alex Krycek. I've been
successful, Walter. I've used Krycek to bring the Project to its
knees. We're nearing the end, and maybe I'm taking more risks than I
did in the early days, when we were losing, and so much more rested
on me." He shrugged again, and spread his arms out wide. "Well,
Walter, will you kill me? It would be a fitting end, to die here,
where I should have died 25 years ago, at the bottom of these
stairs. If you're going to kill me, now's your chance." Skinner
moistened his lips with his tongue, and lifted his gun again. He
began to walk, slowly, down the stairs towards his old enemy.
"You poisoned me. You killed me," he said, as he descended.
"That's right, Walter. I did." Crozier nodded.
"You killed Mulder's father, and god knows how many other people."
"Yes, Walter. I've killed a great many people during my years as
Alex Krycek." Crozier nodded again.
"You've committed countless other atrocities." Skinner reached the
bottom of the stairs, and raised his gun again. Crozier nodded, his
green eyes dark with memories.
"Oh yes, Walter. I've done things that would give me nightmares, if
my head wasn't already crammed full with enough material to furnish
me with demons for the rest of my life."
"You were in my bedroom. You stood over me, and activated those
fucking buttons on that fucking palm pilot, and watched me become
sick," Skinner said, the sweat standing out on his forehead at the
memory. "You watched, and then you just turned, and left. What kind
of a monster could do that?"
"That wasn't...easy." Crozier swallowed hard, and for the first time
since he had arrived, Skinner saw a vulnerability in the other man.
"I still hate you," Skinner said, holding the gun to Crozier's head
once again. Their eyes met, and they stared at each other for a long
time, and then Skinner moved. He drew back his arm, and crashed the
butt of his gun hard into Crozier's jaw. The other man reeled back
and smashed against the wall, blood seeping from the bruise that was
already rising on his face. Skinner sat down on the stairs with a
thud, placed the gun on the ground, and then sent it flying with his
foot in Crozier's direction. "I can't kill you, Dominik," he said,
in a hard, bitter voice. "I can't kill that 9 year old boy. God help
me, but I can't."
He looks broken, and I wish that I could go to him, and put my arms
around his shoulders, and hold him tight, but of course I can't. I
think he might really find the strength to kill me if I were to do
that. So I just lie here, at the bottom of the stairs, as I did all
those years ago, the blood running down my face, just as it did
then. My jaw aches—I wonder if he's broken it? I massage it
gingerly with my fingers but it's just badly bruised. It hurts, but
I've suffered worse; being sat upon by sturdy Russian peasants while
they chopped off my arm with a carving knife comes to mind. I sit
up, and pick up his gun. I'm not sure that I'm grateful for my
reprieve. He should have killed me. He, of all people, has the most
right. If only he knew that the night I crept into his bedroom to
leave that note, I crouched beside the bed and watched him for over
an hour. One of his arms was lying outside the covers, and I bent my
head, and kissed it; just a light brush of my lips on his fingers.
Not enough to wake him. Then I stood up, opened my palm pilot, and
pumped three days of agony into his veins. He doesn't know that
though, and I won't tell him.
He's sitting, with his head in his arms, and now that he's made his
decision, I must make mine.
"Walter, we have to think about what to do next. I have a
suggestion." He raises his head to look at me, and I can see the
disgust in his eyes. Before, I could always take his contempt,
because I always had the comfort of knowing that it was aimed at
Krycek, and not me, but I don't have that luxury any more, and I
flinch from his gaze—visibly. He looks surprised; he has no idea
of the effect he has on me, but then he doesn't know what he means
to me. "I have something for you." I slip my good hand into my
pocket, and bring out the palm pilot. His eyes widen, and he looks
from it, to me, and back again.
"What now? You want to use that thing on me again?" He asks, with an
expression of total horror in those bleak, dark eyes.
"No, of course not. Please, Walter, you must understand. I'm not
Krycek. I have a different agenda. I'm giving this to you. Take it.
You have control of your own destiny again, Walter." I hand him the
palm pilot but he's too stupefied to take it, and just carries on
staring at me. I close his fingers around the palm pilot, and make
him take it. "I want you to deposit $500,000 in this account." I
hand him a piece of paper.
"That's a lot of money. It'll wipe me out," he says.
"That doesn't matter. We'll take care of you. Just transfer the
money. That way it'll look as if I sold you the palm pilot. I'm
getting out, Walter. Alex Krycek is jumping ship. Cancerman will
understand if I sell you this, but he'd never understand that I gave
it to you, and while he'll allow Krycek to betray him for cash, if
he knows that I'm Crozier nothing will stop him from tracking me
down and killing me."
"Then what? What happens to you?" He asks, and I think he almost
cares. That warms my heart in a way I never thought possible.
"I'm going back to Spender. I have a report to make. I'll tell him
that you failed, that you couldn't find Crozier, and then I'll
disappear. He'll figure out that I've sold you your freedom, but he
expects Alex Krycek to do that kind of thing. He won't think I'm
Crozier, and that means I get to keep my options open."
"It's a dangerous game. You've taken away his bargaining chip,"
Walter says. He's good at this. I love the way his mind works. He
still understands so little of what all this is about, but he's
smart enough to figure out the important points.
"Yes, I know. He won't be happy. I'll expect a minor retribution." I
shrug. "Just do it, Walter. I can take care of myself," I tell him
softly. "I've been doing that for a long time."
"Yes," he agrees, and he puts the palm pilot in his pocket. "What
then, Dominik? What happens next?"
"Next, Walter, we do something else I've been doing for a very long
time; we wait. Everything plays out in its own time. I've discovered
that there's little I can to do to hurry it along."
"And me? What do you want me to do?"
"Do whatever you like." I shrug. "I told you, Walter, you're a free
man. Go, and live."
He gets up, but he's frowning, as if he can't believe that this is
it, that this is where it ends. He walks slowly to the door, and
then stops, and turns back.
"I can't do this, Dominik," he says. "I can't walk away from this,
and what happened here." He glances at the spot where my parents
died, and then looks back at me, and I wish I could kiss him for
being the kind of man who would say that, or who would care about
the murders of two people he has never even met, who died a very
long time ago.
"When I met you in that bar, and you told me that you'd been here, I
wanted to kill you," I say to him, and he's surprised by how much I
am Dominik, and not the man he spoke to in the bar that night. He
doesn't know Dominik though—how could he? He knows only Krycek. "I
wanted to place my knife in your heart and twist it for breaking
into this house," I tell him, and he nods. He can understand that.
"Then when you said those words, when you asked me if Dominik didn't
deserve some happiness after what the Project butchers did to his
parents..." I break off, because that moment affected me deeply. "At
the time it was all I could do to be Krycek, and not give myself
away," I murmur. "I had to distract both you and myself with the
threat of the palm pilot, or you'd have seen what was in my eyes.
What you said meant a great deal to me, Walter."
"Was that why you couldn't kill me?" He asks, and I shake my head,
ruefully, because I can't answer that question for him. I cannot
kill him because I love him, but I don't think he'd thank me for
that revelation after the night we've both just been through.
"Are you saying that you want to join us?" I ask him, changing the
subject. "Is that what you're saying, Walter?"
"Yes." He nods. "Tell me what you want me to do."
"Nothing—for now. Just go back to Washington. I'll be in touch." I
move towards the door. "And, Walter..."
"Hmm?"
I stop beside him, and he looks at me, and we're so close that we're
almost touching. His eyes are a warm, chocolate brown behind his
glasses, and he smells of sweat and that aftershave he's been using
ever since I first met him. I think I'd know him by his scent alone,
just like Mama. "Leave a light on," I tell him, handing him a key.
"I make sure that there's always one light burning in the house at
night. Dominik was afraid of the dark."
And I disappear into the snowy dawn, leaving him behind to lock up.
Skinner returned to Washington DC in a daze. His mind restlessly
went over every single one of his dealings with Alex Krycek, from
the moment the green young so-called agent had turned up in his
office, eager, bright-eyed, and ultimately treacherous, to that last
meeting with him in a bar in Washington DC. He looked for some clue,
any clue, that would link Krycek to Crozier. The man was a
consummate actor, but now that he thought about it, there had been
times when the mask had slipped, just a little. He remembered
slugging the younger man in the gut, and enjoying it, remembered the
look on Krycek's face as he had hauled him out onto his balcony and
handcuffed him there. "Just think warm thoughts," he'd hissed in
Krycek's ear, and the other man had snarled and yanked on the
handcuff in a futile gesture...and yet, when Skinner had returned to
the balcony after Mulder had gone, he had glanced out, and, for a
second, found himself looking into a pair of green eyes that were
neither baleful, nor angry, but which reflected some other emotion
instead, an emotion he hadn't been able to identify. He had been
about to go back outside, and beat the shit out of the man on his
balcony, but the expression in those eyes that had stopped him, and,
to this day, he wasn't sure why. Instead of going to sink his fist
into Krycek's flesh, he had, instead, pulled the drapes shut across
the window, blocking the other man from sight. He hadn't gone back
to look at him again. He couldn't think of any other time when
Crozier's mask had slipped though; the man played his role like the
consummate professional he clearly was. Skinner couldn't begin to
imagine what kind of life Crozier had lived. He didn't think he
would have been capable of living a lie so completely, and for so
long...and then he remembered the sham of his marriage, and his
refusal to address the issues of his sexuality. At least Crozier had
never deceived himself. He was honest about what he was; Skinner was
not.
Skinner took the palm pilot to the doctors that had treated him in
the initial aftermath of his first infection with the nanocytes, and
stayed with them while they examined the data it contained. He
refused to let the small device out of his sight. After all, it
contained the power of life and death, and he wasn't about to
relinquish that power to anyone, ever again. They managed to
ascertain that while they couldn't use the device to remove the
nanites from Skinner's blood, they could neutralise their signatures
so they became dormant, and no longer able to respond to external
commands. It was as close as he was going to get to a cure, and
Skinner took it, gratefully. With the cure vanished the last vestige
of his doubts about Crozier. The man had kept his word about this,
at least. Maybe he would prove trustworthy in a way Alex Krycek was
not. He still didn't like the green-eyed bastard, but he no longer
hated him either.
Weeks passed, and he heard no word from the other man, and he began
to wonder whether Crozier had been wrong, and Cancerman had finally
uncovered the traitor in his camp, but then one day, out of the
blue, Dominik Crozier strode into his office—and he wasn't alone.
As it turned out, Spender was more than a little pissed off that I'd
sold our one method of blackmail over our tame Assistant Director,
rendering him tame no more. Spender hates Skinner—ever since the
object of my affection saw him for the man he is, and went eyeball
to eyeball with him over that DAT tape I eventually managed to
steal, and copy, before passing on. I think that's another reason
why I first fell in love with Skinner; he saw through Spender, and
he did so damn quickly. He could have just kept his head down, and
done as he was ordered, but he didn't, and that's testament to the
kind of man he is. Maybe I was attracted to him, also, because he
believes so much in justice, and with the amoral life I've led for
the past few years, it surprised me that there was anyone like him
left in the world. He seemed almost old-fashioned, an anachronism,
and that fascinated me.
The price for my betrayal is a spell in a Tunisian prison, courtesy
of the man who murdered my parents, so I guess you can say he's
pretty angry with me, but the very fact I'm here, and not lying dead
on Max's doorstep, is testament to the fact that he still hasn't
figured it all out. To be honest, I think Spender's grip on reality
is fading. He's ill; he's finally allowed himself to be subject to
the same experimentation that he's been inflicting on those around
him for so long, and whatever it is he's done, it's killing him. I
hope he doesn't die before I get out of this prison—I want to kill
him myself. I think, after all these years, that the end is drawing
close. He's still too well protected for me to take my revenge just
yet, but I have a feeling that the rats are deserting the sinking
ship, as he grows physically weaker. You see, that's the thing about
Spender—he had this kind of power, an aura of ruthless, physical
invincibility that was the first thing I noticed about him, and it
scared me shitless then, and I know it scared the rest of his
lackeys as well, but that's faded, and now he just looks like an old
man. It's ironic, in a way. Both he and Max are bowing out, and I
intend to be with both of them when they die, but for very different
reasons.
Prison is about the best fun I've had since Tunguska, if you'll
excuse the sarcasm. There are no women around, and I'm too pretty,
and too foreign to fit in. The first rape attempt happens within 3
hours of my arrival. I think they imagine me to be an easy target,
because of my looks, and the fact that I only have one arm, but I
soon put them straight on that. The first man to make an attempt on
my ass gets his neck broken, courtesy of my remaining hand. It's a
technique that I've perfected over the past two years, and it takes
about 5 seconds to despatch him into eternity, and kick his dead
body back into the crowd. The other men are wary of me after that. A
couple of them try—and there's one concerted effort by a gang of
three, but I dispose of them all in the same way, and that's the
last time anyone tries to touch me. The guards seem to neither
notice nor care about the body count. In fact, they almost seem to
expect it when they come to open the gates to throw us our food in
the morning. Suffice it to say that I don't get a lot of sleep
during my imprisonment. I do, however, have plenty of available
waking hours to sift through old memories. Seeing myself through
Skinner's eyes has had a profound effect on me. It's the first time
that I've spoken to anyone other than Max who knows just what I've
done during my time as Alex Krycek. Max knows of course. I sent him
reports whenever I could, and I know he read them, committed them to
memory, and then destroyed them. He knows every last atrocity I've
committed, and he understands why. I've never seen any reproach for
me in his eyes, although I've seen plenty towards himself, taking
the blame for what I've become, what I've had to do, and the
numerous beatings and bullets, and the one mutilation I suffered.
Max trained me himself. He pushed me harder than he'd ever done
before, and there was a time when the bond between us was sorely
tested, as I endured day after day of hard physical training, and
complex briefings. I stormed out on more than one occasion, but I
always went back. We constructed Alex Krycek together, he and I—we
figured everything out, from where my alter ego was born, to how old
he was, even his star sign, and what he liked to eat. I had to know
my part inside out to play it. It was Max who came up with the idea
of building in a number of character flaws, and, looking back, it
was a brainwave that has kept me alive.
"If you go in there, looking like the perfect Project agent, then
that's too obvious. If we make you untrustworthy, sly, capable of
biting the hand that feeds you...they'll be suspicious of you, but for
the wrong reasons," he said, as we sat on the terrace one afternoon,
me still dressed in sweats after a vigorous workout, and he clad in
his normal shambolic attire of unwashed jeans, and faded flannel
shirt, the ever present cigarette dangling from between his fingers.
Thus we created Alex Krycek, from his walk, to the clothes he liked
to wear, to the way he talked, and laughed, and ate. We built Krycek
from scratch, and I lived and breathed him for months before Max
would allow me to leave. Often, over dinner, he'd fire questions at
me, testing me, and it was only when he was satisfied that I had
become the man we had constructed that he allowed me to go to the
US, to be recruited into the Project.
I'll never forget the day I first met that bastard who murdered my
parents face to face, as an adult. Here was the monster who had
featured in so many of my nightmares since childhood, sitting in an
armchair, a cloud of smoke clouding around his head. The resemblance
to Max began and ended with the nicotine though. Spender was leaner,
taller, and far more smartly dressed for a start—he was also as
different a man in temperament and personality as you could imagine.
Max had prepared me for this meeting. We had gone over and over it
in a bid to stop me doing anything stupid, but, all the same, the
sound of his voice, and the smell of him was enough to tip me back
16 years to a stairway in Vienna. Here was the man who had killed
everyone I loved, who had tried to kill me, standing, shaking my
hand, and I was smiling, and answering his questions, and it was in
that moment I knew that I could succeed where Neil and countless
others had failed. It was a baptism of fire, but Alex Krycek was my
strength, and my weapon, and I would wield him ruthlessly to bring
this man and his Project down. Spender oversaw my training himself.
I think he saw in me an ideal protégé. I was young, and hungry, and
he could mould me to his will, and create me in his own image, but
Alex Krycek was too strong a personality for that.
One of my first jobs was to go through Quantico, and become a faux
FBI agent, for reasons that they didn't explain to me at the time,
and then I was assigned to work with Mulder. I'll admit I wasn't
comfortable meeting him; I knew only that his father was one of the
Project's top men, and I was predisposed to hate him for that reason
alone. It's impossible to hate Fox Mulder for long though. He's not
his father's son, not by a long way. I grew to have a grudging
respect for him, and, if our lives had been different, I like to
think that we might have been friends. It's too late for that now,
of course. Alex Krycek sold Mulder down the river, like so many
others since, and every time he saw me thereafter his anger was
obvious, and almost uncontrollable. I've lost count of the number of
times I've been on the receiving end of Mulder's fists. The one
thing I can say, to my credit, is that I never hit him back. I
empathised with him. He was only doing what I wanted to do to the
man who had murdered my father after all.
If Mulder was a surprise, then my feelings towards my new boss were
a revelation. I never thought I'd care about another man the way I
cared for Neil, and, at first, it's true that what I felt for
Skinner was merely lust, and nothing more. I'd slept around—after
Maddie's accident, I whored myself around the gay district of Vienna
for months, making up for lost time. I knew what Skinner was the
moment I first shook his hand in his office. Maybe I was sensitive
to anyone else living a lie, but I saw the flash of attraction in
his eyes, and saw, equally, how quickly it was quashed, like a fire
doused with water. That was what first intrigued me about him. I did
nothing about it—there was no strategic purpose, and I wasn't
about to play fast and loose with my cover for the sake of sex. The
attraction didn't go away though; I spent an entire night on his
balcony thinking thoughts so warm that they'd have made him blush
from head to toe if he'd known just what was going on in my mind.
I played a complicated game—and sometimes I had to retreat back to
Geneva just to get my head cleared out, to visit Maddie, and to
spend a few days with Max, just hanging out at the House, or walking
in the grounds, and swimming in the lake in the Summer. In later
years that became too dangerous, and I stayed away. Max learned
about the events at Tunguska only via email. I have no idea what it
must have been like for him to read that message, where I
clinically, and bluntly recounted how I had lost my arm. It took a
damned long time to type the thing as well—there were many things
I had to re-learn after Tunguska. I wasn't about to give up though;
I was too close, and had sold too much of my soul to do that.
El Rico was my finest hour. By playing the most perfectly balanced
game, I managed to send almost all the leaders of the Project to
their deaths at the hands of our alien friends. I helped set it up,
and Max took care of the details. Max always was good with details.
It was the culmination of so many years of hard work, but there was
a moment, just before it came to fruition, when I thought I wasn't
going to pull it off. The men running the Project were scared, they
even talked about joining the alien rebels, about joining us. That
thought chilled me to the bone. I would not, could not work with
these bastards. I had a trap nicely set up for them. They had to
walk into it! They had to. I talked at them urgently, trying to
persuade them to continue, right up until Spender ordered me to be
silent, but luckily I'd done enough. In their arrogance, and pride,
they thought their moment had come, and they went to El Rico
airforce base expecting to become the protected darlings of their
alien overlords, and instead, they found the Organisation's allies
waiting for them, torches in hand. It was a good moment. It was my
finest moment.
I can still remember sitting in their completely deserted New York
lair after they'd gone, cherishing the moment, before Jeffrey
Spender arrived, as clueless and hopelessly behind the main events
as ever. He had no idea that the man he talked to that day was not
Alex Krycek, but Dominik Crozier. I didn't even try to pretend. I
think I thought it was over, that I was free to be myself again, but
I was celebrating too soon. Jeffrey's father survived, and within
weeks he was putting the Project back together again, and I had no
choice but to take my place by his side once more. Not that he liked
Krycek; he didn't. He hated him, and had nearly succeeded in killing
me on more than one occasion, but that was a long time in the past.
Spender knew that Krycek would sell his own grandmother if it suited
him, but he also knew where he was with me, and, besides, I knew too
much, and there were too few people left that he could trust.
The sound of wolf whistling and shouting draws my attention from my
morbid recollections of how I came to end up in this Tunisian
hellhole, and, fighting my way through the melee, I can see why my
cellmates are making such a fuss. Marita is slinking through the
prison, swaying her hips, and my sex-starved fellow prisoners are
going crazy. She's looking a damn sight better than the last time I
saw her, and I'm pleased about that, for her sake. She hates my
guts, but then why not? Krycek has used her, as he used so many
others, and she, it must be said, was happy enough to use him as
well, to get what she wanted.
There can only be one reason why she's here; the old man must have a
job for me to do.
Skinner got to his feet, and eyed his guests warily.
"Krycek," he said cautiously, his glance flicking over the
attractive woman at the other man's side. "What the hell are you
doing here?"
"It's all right, Walter, she knows," Crozier said, closing the door
behind them. "I explained it all to her last night, and she's joined
us. Walter, we need your help. I have vital information that I have
to get to Mulder. I think that if I just turned up in his office and
tried to give it to him, that he would very probably kill me. He
sure as hell wouldn't listen to me, so I need you."
"Are you going to tell him who you are?" Skinner asked, his eyes
searching the other man's face. Once again, he was struck by the
difference between Crozier and Krycek. This man was dressed in the
dark, elegant, muted clothes that he guessed were more to Crozier's
taste than Krycek's more casual attire, and there was something very
neat about him, something precise, and uncluttered.
"No, I'm not." Crozier shook his head.
"Why not? Dominik, I'm not comfortable keeping this from Mulder,"
Skinner said. "I think he should know."
"Why? To make us feel better?" Crozier shrugged. "Let him have the
luxury of his ignorance, and his hatred for me, Walter. I won't take
that away from him."
"I don't understand." Skinner frowned, glancing at Marita again. She
held his gaze, her cool eyes assessing him thoughtfully.
"I killed his father, Walter. Let him hate me for that. It's kinder
than revealing that he and I have been working on the same side all
along, and asking him to try to like me," Crozier replied with a
shrug. Skinner gazed at the other man, with a new respect. He was
sure that Mulder had some inkling of his father's involvement with
the Project, but there was a kindness to Crozier's words. He was,
after all, a son who knew what it was like to have a murdered
father.
"What do you want him to do?" Skinner asked.
"There's a space-ship stranded in Oregon. If he gets there fast
enough he might be able to find it. I tried, and failed," Crozier
shrugged, "but Mulder might succeed. You have to get him to listen
to me."
"I can try...but...he has no reason to trust you, Dominik."
"I know, and he has every reason to hate me. All the same—this is
important."
"Will he be in any danger?" Skinner asked. "I won't send him if
he'll be in danger."
Crozier thought about it for a moment, and then sighed. "There's
always danger, Walter, I won't lie about that, but this is what he's
been looking for all his life. I'd like to give him this. I know
that it won't make up for what I've done to him, but it's
something." Crozier shrugged. "Let him make up his own mind, Walter.
All I'm asking is that he be given the choice."
Skinner thought about it for a moment, and then, reluctantly, he
nodded. He led Krycek and Marita down to Mulder's office, and,
predictably, Mulder went ballistic the minute he set eyes on his old
enemy. Skinner stepped between Mulder and Crozier, and had to hold
his subordinate back from beating the crap out of the man he thought
was Alex Krycek. It took him a lot of fast-talking to persuade
Mulder to listen, and, as he watched Crozier speak, Skinner wondered
that Mulder couldn't see that this man wasn't Alex Krycek. It seemed
so obvious to him now that he knew the truth; everything about
Crozier was different. He spoke softly, like Dominik; he even stood
differently, and the content of his speech was entirely different to
anything Alex Krycek would have said. He acknowledged Mulder's
hatred for him, and acceded that the other man had every reason to
want him dead, and, watching him, Skinner felt a strange sense of
approval. Whatever wrongs Alex Krycek had done to Mulder, and they
were many, Dominik Crozier was going some way to make up for them.
"Why me?" Mulder asked. "Why now?"
"I want to damn the soul of that cigarette smoking son of a bitch,"
Crozier replied, and a shiver went down Skinner's spine. He didn't
know what it must have cost Crozier not to have killed Spender the
moment he first set eyes on the man. He didn't know how he could
have worked for Spender all these years and never once been tempted
to finally put a bullet between the other man's eyes. Skinner wasn't
sure that he could have been either so patient, or so duplicitous if
he had been in Crozier's shoes.
It was agreed that Skinner would accompany Mulder to Oregon to look
for the alien ship.
"Aren't you coming too, Dominik?" He asked Crozier, as they stood
alone in his office after the others had left.
"No, Walter. I have an older score to settle," Crozier replied,
flexing his good hand. Skinner raised an eyebrow. "Cancerman is
alone, and friendless," Crozier explained. " I have nothing more to
gain by continuing to serve him. All the long years of waiting are
over, Walter. Dominik Crozier is finally going to take his revenge
on the man who murdered his parents."
Skinner gazed into a pair of determined green eyes, and saw a
destiny in them that had been a long time coming.
I'm not sure what I'm feeling as I go to finally perform the deed
I've waited so long to do. I'm excited, nervous, and apprehensive,
yes—all of those, and sad too. This is the first killing I will do
in my own name, the first time that Dominik Crozier will have blood
on his hands, and, strangely, for such a seasoned killer, that
unsettles me. I know it's what I want though. The world won't miss
this old bastard after all. I've done what I can to make up for
Krycek's actions. I've given Walter back control over his own life,
and I've given Mulder the proof he's always wanted. I've even
arranged for Dana Scully to have something returned that she thought
she'd lost forever. All I've given Marita is the truth, but she
seems content enough with that—she has no love for our erstwhile
boss after the way he experimented on her, and she was willing
enough to join me. I don't trust her quite enough to take her back
to Geneva with me, but I know she wants the old man dead as much as
I do. As for myself, well, this is my gift to Dominik Crozier, in
reparation for those long years of being Alex Krycek.
It might sound ridiculous, but I have a speech prepared. It's been
decades in the making, as I've been writing and re-writing it in my
head since the age of 9. I want him to know who I am when I kill
him. I want him to look into his eyes, and know who had betrayed
him...but when it comes to it, as I face down this sick, wizened old
man in his wheelchair, I find that none of it matters.
My whole life has been leading up to this one moment. It's the end,
and maybe, if I'm lucky, the beginning too. As I stand here, facing
him, the monster of my nightmares fades, to be replaced by the
pathetic vision in front of me, and I change my mind about my
speech. He would love to be killed by Dominik Crozier. It would make
sense to him. He would die with the luxury of knowing who had killed
him, and why, and I don't want to give him that. I find, when it
comes to it, that I don't care about my speech. It doesn't matter
any more. None of it matters now. I've won, and he has lost. It's as
simple as that. Oh, the war hasn't been won, not by a long way, but
his Project's part in it is finished, destroyed—and so is he.
I don't even speak as I push his wheelchair towards the stairs. I
was going to strangle him, because I wanted to hear his last breath
gurgling in his throat, but now I find that I can't bear the thought
of touching him. This will be a fitting end—a fall down the stairs
to end up in the same tangled heap that he made of me on the night
of my 9th birthday, all those years ago. He tries to reason with me,
but he can't, because he doesn't know who I am. He doesn't even
really understand why I'm doing this, and I think that gives me the
most pleasure. He can die not knowing. Knowledge is power, and I
won't give him the power of understanding why I'm taking his life.
It's easy to tip the wheelchair, and it gives me immense
satisfaction to watch him fall. When he's lying at the bottom, dead,
I walk down, slowly, Marita following behind, step over him like the
filth he is, and leave without looking back.
I think, as I walk towards the door, that I can smell my mother's
perfume in the air.
Skinner opened the door to his apartment, and closed it behind him,
with a heartfelt sigh. He felt old, and weary, and desperately sad.
"Hello, Walter," a voice on his couch said, and he jumped.
"Christ, Dominik, can't you knock on the door and wait to be let in
like everyone else? Or have you been Krycek too long to remember how
to do that?" Skinner snapped, turning on the light, and glaring at
his uninvited guest.
"I'm sorry." Dominik looked small, almost crumpled, and Skinner knew
immediately that there was something wrong. He didn't know Crozier
that well, but he had never known the man look less than immaculate.
Now his shirt was pulled out of his pants, his collar was undone,
and he wasn't wearing any shoes. His face was pale, and drawn.
"It's all right," Skinner muttered gruffly. "You just surprised me,
that's all. It's been one hell of a day."
"Yes. I heard about Mulder," Dominik whispered. "Do you blame me?"
There was an uncertainty, almost a fear in those green eyes that
Skinner had never thought he would see.
"No," he sighed. "Mulder went into that one with his eyes open. I
did try to blame you all the way back from Oregon, but I failed." He
loosened his tie, and flung himself down on the couch beside his old
enemy, and new friend.
"It's always easier to blame yourself, isn't it?" Dominik said.
"It's what you do all the time, Walter. I've never seen anyone tie
themselves up in more knots over their real or perceived failings."
Skinner gave a wry grunt, and placed his feet on the coffee table.
Every bone in his body ached, and he just wanted to get drunk, and
sleep forever. He could still hear his own voice calling Mulder's
name, as the alien ship carrying his agent disappeared into the
night sky.
"Why did they take him?" Skinner asked. "Will they hurt him,
Dominik?"
"I don't know. On either count," Dominik replied. "I'm sorry."
That was when Skinner saw the empty bottle of whisky on the table.
"Damn it, Dominik. I was looking forward to drinking that," he said
with a sigh, picking it up, and draining the dregs from the bottle.
"Sorry. I needed it," Dominik said. "I can't remember the last time
I allowed myself to get drunk. It felt good to let go."
"You did it then?" Skinner glanced sideways at his companion.
"Yes. I did it. I killed him. It was...easier than I had thought it
would be."
"Well, you've killed people before," Skinner said with a shrug.
"Not like this. Not for me...not as me," Dominik corrected him, his
voice slightly slurred. In his drunken state his peculiar mixture of
accents was more noticeable. Skinner could see why it wouldn't have
been wise for Alex Krycek to ever get drunk. Dominik Crozier's
accent was pronounced, part English, and part German, under the
American, but even drunk he still spoke softly, with that same
measured, thoughtful style of speech.
"What will you do now?" Skinner asked.
"The first thing I'll do is bury Alex Krycek," Dominik replied. "As
far as I'm concerned, he's already dead. I made a vow to myself
tonight—I won't ever be him again. Don't make me be him again,
Walter," he said wistfully, drunkenly, resting his head on Skinner's
shoulder.
"Hell, it isn't up to me, is it?" Skinner replied, staring into
space for a moment. "You know, there was a time when the news of
Krycek's death would have made me a very happy man, but now...well,
now it's just complicated isn't it? He might be dead, but you're
still here, still looking like him, still the person who pulled his
strings, and did all those deeds in his name."
"Yes. I do understand that whenever you look at me, you must only
see him."
That wasn't quite true, Skinner thought to himself. Dominik was
surprisingly unlike Krycek for a man who wore the same face. Seeing
him drunk, and hearing him talk in this accent brought that home
even more; even his mannerisms were different, and this uncertainty,
and the strange sense of wistful yearning he was picking up, were
decidedly different.
"Has something else happened, Dominik?" He asked, looking down on
the man who was resting against him. There was a time when he'd
rather had nestled up to a viper than this man, but now Dominik just
looked like the small, lost child he had once been.
"It's Max. I'm booked on the next flight out but it doesn't leave
until tomorrow. I was waiting for you to come back. I was hoping
you'd get here before I left. I was hoping..." Dominik trailed off,
and then looked up. "That you would come with me?" He ventured
uncertainly.
"With you? Back to Geneva?" Skinner frowned. "Max is dying," he
guessed accurately.
"No. I mean...yes, but he's been dying for months. Now he's about
done, I think." Dominik gave a wry smile. "He only has a couple more
weeks at most, according to his doctors."
Skinner looked down on the man beside him, and gazed at him for a
long time. Dominik stared back. "Will you come?" He whispered.
"Please."
Skinner wanted to say no. He wanted to say no for all the wrongs
that this man had done to him. He wanted to say no for the day he
had spent retching up his guts on his bathroom floor in this
apartment. He wanted to say no for the vicious punches he'd taken in
a hospital stairwell a long time ago, and for the smug, evil smile
this man had flashed him when he had betrayed Mulder on Krycek's
orders. He wanted to say no for all these reasons, and more. Indeed,
he fully intended to say no, but when he opened his mouth, the word
that came out instead was "yes."
Dominik gave a smile of gratitude, and then his entire body relaxed,
and he seemed to almost melt into Skinner's arm, his head lolling
against Skinner's neck. He closed his eyes, and within seconds he
was asleep. Skinner gazed down on the sleeping man for a long time,
and tried to see inside the tormented soul that was Dominik Crozier,
but all he could see was a lonely, orphaned boy who was about to
lose the only person left in the world who loved him. With a sigh,
he moved his arm, and placed it, awkwardly, around Dominik's
shoulders, and the other man leaned into him as if he belonged
there. Skinner rested his chin on Dominik's dark hair, and then he,
too, fell fast asleep.
When they arrived at the House, Dominik went straight to Max's
apartment, and Skinner, unsure what to do, found himself following
on behind. He felt a constant sensation of dislocation as he watched
Dominik in these unfamiliar surroundings, where he was clearly so
much at home. Although, intellectually, he had accepted that Alex
Krycek was really Dominik Crozier, seeing the evidence of the man's
other life still jarred with him.
Max was no longer well enough to sit in his wheelchair. He was
confined instead, to his bed, much to his obvious irritation.
"I expect you're giving your doctors a hard time," Dominik said, as
he crossed the room to sit on the bed beside his oldest friend, and
mentor. He kissed the other man on each cheek, in an easy, familiar
way, and Skinner watched. He didn't know why he should be surprised
by the obvious love between these two, but somehow he was.
"Quacks! I hate the buggers. I mean, I'm dying, Nicky." Max grabbed
Dominik's arm. "Tell them it's unreasonable to keep me in bed. So
what if I snuff it sooner by getting up—what's a few days here or
there?"
"I agree." Dominik nodded.
"You do?" Max narrowed his eyes. He had clearly been expecting a
battle.
"Yes, Max, I do. I'll help you get up." Skinner grinned at the
obvious, and almost child-like delight that spread over the older
man's face.
"I knew I could rely on you, Nicky. Always knew it." He was seized
by a sudden wave of coughing that left him weak and exhausted.
"Maybe later," he mumbled into Dominik's arms as he held him. "Keep
the chair out, Nicky. I'll use it later."
"Yes, Max. Later." Dominik smiled at Skinner over the old man's
head. They all knew it wouldn't happen.
"Talk to me, Nicky. Tell me what's been happening," Max said,
urgently. "Is it all done? All finished?"
"Yes, Max. All done," Dominik replied.
"Thank god for that. I've been holding on you know. Wanted to see it
through to the end. We did it then?" His dark eyes were glazed with
a tired, pained happiness.
"Yes, Max. We did it. The Project has been destroyed."
"Still a long way to go, but still...we did it." Max smiled up at
Skinner who returned the smile. It was impossible not to respond to
the fading charisma in that craggy old face. "You did it, Nicky. You
succeeded where we failed," Max said in a softer tone. Dominik made
no reply. Skinner couldn't see his face, but the younger man's
shoulders were hunched. "I know what you gave up, Nicky. I know what
it cost you, but remember that it was worth it. It was worth all of
it." He reached out, and placed his hand on Dominik's plastic arm.
"Maybe, Max. I can't tell any more. Maybe I'm too close to it."
"You'll come to see, Nicky. It's been hard on you, and I'm sorry for
that. I wish it hadn't had to be you, but I think, in the end, that
you were the only one of us who could do it. I always said you were
too smart for your own good."
"Bullshit, Max. You're the wily coyote of this outfit. I was just
following orders."
"Ah, the Nuremberg defence," Max laughed. "I might have known you'd
try to weasel your way out of it all with that." He succumbed to
another bout of vigorous coughing, and when he looked up his face
was serious, and he stared straight at Skinner. "I'm pleased to see
you again, Mr. Skinner," he said.
"And you, sir." Skinner nodded. He wasn't sure whether he should
stay, or go. He didn't know whether Dominik wanted to be alone with
his dying friend or not. "Can I get you anything?" He asked.
"No, but this boy can. Nicky, go and get me a glass of water."
"You already have one, Max." Dominik pointed at the glass on the
nightstand.
"Well go and get me another one then," Max growled. "For god's sake,
Nicky, don't go getting obtuse in your old age. It's obvious I want
to talk to Mr. Skinner alone. Don't come back until I send for you."
Dominik gave a theatrical sigh, and got up to go. He passed Skinner
on the way to the door, and they exchanged a glance. Skinner raised
a questioning eyebrow, but Dominik just shrugged in reply. He
clearly had no idea what the dying man wanted to talk about.
"Come and sit over here, where I can see you," Max said, pointing at
the bed. Skinner did as ordered, feeling uncomfortable, and
wondering why Dominik had been ordered out of the room. He sat on
the bed, and Max looked at him from rheumy, red-rimmed eyes for what
seemed like a very long time. Skinner felt as if he were being
examined and weighed up, although for what purpose he had no idea.
He didn't move, but faced out Max's scrutiny, despite feeling
seriously unnerved. Finally Max cleared his throat.
"Nicky tells me that you're a good man," he said.
Skinner shifted uncomfortably. "It depends on your definition of
good. I didn't know he thought so highly of me," he replied.
"Well why else did you think he brought you here? Don't you have
eyes, man? The boy's in love with you."
"What?" Skinner choked, aghast at both the unexpected news and the
other man's blunt method of delivering it.
"Look, I don't have time to be all flowery and sensitive about this
and besides, I was never very good at dealing with affairs of the
heart, as Nicky can tell you. He's a good man, Skinner, and he
deserves a break. He's lost everyone he ever loved, one way or
another, and that's the reason he wouldn't let me kill you."
"I had no idea. I mean... he has a wife," Skinner murmured, taken
aback.
"So did you." Max shrugged. "Yes, I know all about you, Skinner. I
read the reports Nicky sent me. I know you're not easy with what you
are, not like he is. Ever since the age of 14 when he just told me,
out of the blue, but that's just him. He always was precocious." He
gave a wry shrug. "Now, I'm not saying I understand him, or what he
is, but I know what he wants, and I know I'd do anything to give it
to him. Just think about it, Skinner."
"I don't... I mean..." Skinner struggled to find the words. He thought
this might very well be the most bizarre conversation he'd ever had
in his life, and he'd had a few with Mulder in his time.
"That's all I'm saying. I don't want a discussion about it. I have
something else I want to talk to you about anyway. Nicky's going to
be left in charge of this place when I go, and he'll think that's
what he wants, and he'll be fine with it—at first, but the boy's
restless, Skinner. Detail bores him. He'll be climbing the walls
before long. He isn't cut out to do the boring, behind the scenes
work, like I am, and he'll piss off the other members of the
Organisation. I love the boy dearly, but he's got a filthy temper
when he's roused, and it won't be long before he starts yelling at
someone. You, on the other hand, are not only a much calmer, more
diplomatic sort of man, but you're also an excellent administrator I
hear?"
"What?" Skinner frowned, still reeling from the first part of the
conversation and utterly dumbfounded by where the second part now
seemed to be heading.
"There are other people around, but Nicky's the best and brightest
of us, and he understands the issues as well, but he'll need help,
and he'll need the help of someone he can trust, someone he can
leave here to take care of the details while he's out getting into
mischief, and doing the glory stuff. Think you can do that?"
"I have a job...a life..." Skinner felt as if he was doing an impression
of a dying fish. His mouth kept opening and closing, and he kept
gasping. He must look ridiculous.
"Up to you. I won't care. I'll be dead. Just telling you what I
think. Don't decide now. Give it some thought." Max surrendered to
another exhausting bout of coughing, and Skinner pressed the glass
of water to the old man's lips.
"Shall I get Dominik for you?" Skinner asked.
"Not yet. One last thing." Max's fingers grabbed his arm like
talons, keeping him there. He had a surprising degree of strength
for a dying man. "The boy's feeling strange now it's all over. It's
not easy leading a double life, Skinner."
"No. I know," Skinner said honestly, and Max grunted, clearly
understanding the allusion.
"He's done a lot of things he didn't think he could do. We talked
about it before I sent him out into the world as Alex Krycek. He
knew what was at stake, and he did the best job he knew how. Don't
mistake him for Krycek, though. He isn't him. I know Alex Krycek, I
helped to create him, but I know Dominik Crozier as well, and I know
which one I'd rather spend time with. They might look the same, but
they aren't. You might have your own quarrel with Krycek, but the
man's dead."
"Surely you don't think it's that simple?" Skinner said in a hard,
angry tone.
"It's as simple or as complicated as you want to make it," Max
snapped back. "All I'm saying is that he's going to have a hard time
dealing with my death and his past, both at the same time. If you're
just going to look at him and see Krycek, and be unable to forgive
him for that, then get the fuck out of here, Skinner. Don't stay. He
doesn't need that. If you can see beyond it, then hang around. You
might find that you like Dominik Crozier. He's hard not to like when
you get to know him. Give him a chance."
"I'll think about it," Skinner said cautiously, overwhelmed by what
he'd heard, and in no fit state to either understand or analyse his
emotions right now.
"Don't think too long," Max grunted. "He'll need someone soon, and
not someone who'll let him down. Decide what to do and do it. Get
out, or stay. If you decide to stay, then be here for him for the
rest of his life, and I've no doubt he'll reward you for it in his
own inimitable way. He's a loyal bastard at heart. Now, go and get
him before he sneaks back in anyway. He always did have a nasty
habit of creeping up on you when you least expect it."
Skinner did as he was bidden, then made his excuses and wandered
down the stairs, still reeling. What the hell was he supposed to
make of this? And, more importantly, how did he feel about it?
Skinner found his way to the drawing room he had sat in before, and
stared, sightlessly out of the window at the lake. Dominik Crozier
had finally stopped hiding; the question was—could Walter Skinner
do the same?
Max hung on for another week, yelling at his doctors and flirting
with any woman within the radius of his bed. When he finally went,
it was with a smile on his face, and a glass of good Scottish whisky
in his hand, which I think is what he wanted. I'm not very good at
funerals—ever since that first one, where I was a watcher at the
window; I feel as if I'm still just watching, never participating.
Skinner stuck around. I don't know why. Maybe out of some misplaced
sense of loyalty because god knows he doesn't owe me anything.
There's a small, private graveyard down beyond the woods, where all
our operatives are buried, and Max takes pride of place. He was
pretty much a legend among us, and I'm not sure that any of us know
how to be without him. I do notice that I'm getting some faintly
awe-struck looks though, so obviously Alex Krycek's notoriety has
gone before me. They're giving me the credit for single-handedly
disposing of the Project, which is crap. I had an incredible amount
of back up, not least from Max himself.
I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of being back for good. My
whole life these past seven years has been my undercover work. I've
forgotten what it's like to just be. Skinner stands beside me as we
lower Max's coffin into the grave—he volunteered to be one of the
pallbearers as well, which touched me for some strange reason. He
barely knew Max after all. I haven't cried. I think I just feel that
same numbness I felt when I was 9. After the funeral I wander out to
the lake, and Skinner comes to, like some kind of shadow.
"Max once told me that happiness is a choice," I say to him. He
reminds me of Maddie, accompanying me on those long, silent walks.
"I'm going to miss him." I stare at the lake, lost in my grief, and
then turn back to face him, with a forced smile. "I hear he left the
Organisation to you. That's pretty good going, Walter, considering
you only knew him for five minutes." I meant it as a joke, but
somehow it comes out almost bitter.
"Don't be an idiot. You're in charge. He just asked me to
provide...back up." He shrugs.
"And you're going to stay?" I ask, in an incredulous tone of voice.
"Do you want me to?" He's looking at me, with this strange
expression in those dark eyes, as if he's waiting for me to do
something, or say something, but I don't know what it is I'm
supposed to do, or say.
"It would be...useful," I mutter, finally.
"Then I will." He shrugs.
"What about the FBI? What about your career? What about Dana
Scully?" I ask, and he thinks about that for a moment, before
replying.
"I told Scully that I'd look for Mulder, and I will. I figure that
your people will have more chance of finding him than I ever would.
My career is dead in the water anyway, courtesy of Spender and his
damn conspiracy. As for Scully—she doesn't need me. She has her
family with her. You don't."
"You think I need you?" I ask, with a hint of challenge in my voice.
"I think you need someone or you'll fall apart," he replies, and the
fact that he cares enough to stay makes my eyes hazy with unshed
tears. I hold on for a long time, teetering on the brink, and then
he gently, purposefully, pushes me over the edge, by placing one
hand on the back of my neck, and massaging. "You can cry if you want
to. You've just lost someone you loved, after all. There's no shame
in it," he says, and that's enough to open the floodgates and I sob
like a snot nosed kid for what seems like hours, holding on to the
lapels of his big woollen overcoat. I can still see Max, taking off
his balaclava that first time I met him, holding out his arms to me,
and sheltering me from the storm of my own emotions. Walter's arms
are just as big, and just as comforting. Then, when I'm done, we
walk back to the House in silence. I don't know what I've done to
deserve his compassion, and I feel I have to give him something
back.
"That night, when I broke into your apartment, and left that note..."
I mutter. His forehead is wrinkled up in a giant frown, and I can
see that he really doesn't want to remember what Alex Krycek did to
him right now. "It took me an hour. To press the buttons. I sat and
watched you for an hour before I could bring myself to do it. I just
want you to know that it wasn't easy, or casual. It was hard, and it
hurt."
"Thanks," is all he says, and he gives me a faded, grim smile.
"Look, if you're staying you might as well have Max's apartment. I
don't want it. It wouldn't feel right somehow." I shrug.
"I don't think..." He begins to protest, but I silence him.
"It's no big deal. It's just a couple of rooms," but they're the
best rooms in the whole damn house and he knows that. He smiles, and
nods, clearly not willing to argue with me when my mood is this
volatile. I help him clear out the apartment later on that week. I
thought it would hurt, but it doesn't—actually it helps. It helps
to be sorting through Max's stuff, remembering him, and it really
helps to have Skinner there beside me as I do it. He's looking good,
more relaxed than I've ever seen him, and much younger. I realise
then what a strain these past few years have been on all of us.
"Tell me what it was like," I ask him, tossing some of Max's old
pairs of jeans on the bed. I swear he bought them looking this old;
either that or he never got a new pair in over 20 years.
"What was what like?" He looks up from where he's crouched by a
bookcase, sorting some books into boxes. He's wearing a red flannel
shirt, and stone coloured chinos. I want to kiss him.
"Living with the nanocytes in your blood. Living with that death
sentence hanging over you."
"Christ, Dominik, let it drop. What good will it do you to know?" he
asks.
"I'm not sure. Just that you're the only one who knows what I did to
people. You're the only one of Krycek's victims I can talk to about
it."
"It won't solve anything," he says stubbornly, his jaw clenching.
"Humour me." I spread my arms wide, and he sighs.
"All right, Dominik. I hated it. I've always been a loner.
Independent. I make my own choices, and stand and fall by them as
well. I felt like an animal caught in one of those rope traps you
see in films, hauled up off the ground, tied, and helpless, and that
was the worst feeling in the world."
"And you hated me?" I prompted, because I need to know all of it.
"Yes, I hated you. Is that what you wanted to hear? You know I hated
you. I dreamed about killing you, Dominik. I fantasised about it. I
imagined what it would be like to snap your spine in two with my
bare hands, and to hear you scream. Is that what you wanted to
know?"
"Yes." I dig my nails into the palms of my hands. "Yes. I wanted
your honesty. Thank you."
And we finish the job in silence. It's strange, but while I was
living as Krycek, I could somehow justify everything I did, but now
that it's over...somehow it's harder.
I dream that I'm nine years old, and standing on that staircase
again. It's an old, familiar dream, and I settle into it, knowing
how it'll end. Only this time it's different. There's someone
threatening my father. I can hear voices, as I stare through the
banisters, only I can't see the face of the man below. Every time I
try to get a look at him, he shifts away from me. There's a
commotion, and I can see my father falling, over and over again, in
slow motion, and then my father's murderer turns his gun on my
mother, and I'm running down those stairs, but I'm too late this
time, as I'm always too late, and my parents' murderer turns to face
me, and now I can see him. He's coming into focus, as he raises that
gun, points it at my head, and pulls the trigger, and the one thing
I know, clearly, as I start to fall down the rest of those stairs,
is that the man who killed my parents, and who tried to kill me, is
myself. He's wearing my face, and he's smiling a deadly, vicious
smile, and I know that this is how Alex Krycek appeared to all his
victims, and that's when I start to scream.
I wake up, still screaming, to find someone holding my shoulders,
shaking me.
"Dominik! It's okay. You were sleep-walking. It was a nightmare." I
gaze around, blearily, to find that I'm in Max's bedroom, now
Walter's bedroom. I'm standing in the doorway, screaming my head
off, and shaking like a leaf. There's sweat running down my face,
and I stink of my own terror.
"Wha...?" I mutter, and he guides me over to the bed, sits me down,
and presses a glass of water into my hand. "Sorry." My teeth are
chattering from cold. I'm only wearing boxer shorts, and I feel like
an idiot. "Always...used...to...come here...kid..." I try to explain when my
teeth let me get a word in edgeways.
"It's all right. Christ, you're freezing." He's not even wearing
shorts. He's completely naked. I wish I hadn't noticed that. I can
see that he can't help looking at my stump. It's natural; people
always do. I'm not ashamed of it. It's no less than Alex Krycek
deserved. It's my penance, I think.
"Get in the bed," he says, and I crawl in, as ordered, beyond
arguing. He slips in beside me, and pulls me over to lie on his
chest, and I start to feel warm again.
"What was the nightmare?" he asks.
"The usual." I make a face. "With the added twist that this time it
was me pulling the trigger on myself."
He gives a sigh, and I look up to find his dark eyes closer than I
had expected. He isn't wearing his glasses, and that makes him look
different.
"Dominik, you have to forgive yourself," he says.
"The way you have, you mean?" I point out gently. "For marrying a
woman you knew you could never really love."
He looks down, sharply, and I rest my head on his chest again. "It's
all right. I know. It's easier to recognise that someone else is
leading a double life when you're living one yourself. I followed
you around Washington after her death. I went into some of the bars
you went into. I watched you."
"Shit," he says succinctly.
"You never did anything though. You nearly did, with that blond kid
you picked up that night you got drunk—after I'd called you to
pile on the pressure."
"You saw that?"
"Yes. I followed you. You were a bit of an obsession with me, to be
honest."
"I was never unfaithful to Sharon before we separated," he tells me
but I already know that. "Not physically at least. Mentally..." he
shrugs. "I was never really there in the marriage. She deserved a
lot better than I gave her."
"She didn't have to stay," I point out.
"We were best friends. She didn't want to leave. Not until it went
too far. We didn't make love for years. She tried to ask me what was
wrong but there was nothing I could say. I was too deeply in
denial."
"It's nothing to be ashamed of." I put my arm around his body, and
hold on tight. He feels so solid, so good. "You don't have to be
alone any more," I whisper into his chest. "Neither of us do." I
raise my head to look into his eyes, dreading what I'll find there.
Can he ever really forget Alex Krycek? Could he ever make love to
me, wearing, as I do, the face of a man he hated so much. He's
looking down into my eyes, and he's stroking my hair, and I don't
see the contempt I fear so much. Instead I see something very
different, and I raise my head to meet his, and our lips touch. It
feels good. It feels real, and warm, and it tastes like love. I open
my mouth and then his tongue is inside me, and I wriggle up so that
I can hold him even tighter, and fully explore him. His hands move
down, caressing my body, and he feels so hard, and solid, and just
so damned good.
"Would now be a good time to tell you that I'm in love with you, and
have been for years?" I murmur, and then stiffen, because that's a
lot to lay on someone after just one kiss. He surprises me by
laughing out loud.
"Max already told me," he says, by way of explanation.
"Shit, that old bastard," I growl, but Walter just wraps his arms
around me and pulls me close.
"Dominik, it's been in my head since I was a boy, but I was too
ashamed to...I've never done anything." He looks a little helpless.
"No problem." Quite the reverse as a matter of fact. I've longed to
take hold of him and drive him insane with pleasure for a very long
time. I rise up under the sheets, and quickly dispose of my boxers.
My cock is already half hard. Just being this close to his naked
body is such a turn on. I lie on top of him, face to face, our hard
cocks almost touching, and hold his head with my hand, running my
fingers over his bare scalp. Damn but he feels good. I look into his
eyes and then drop another kiss onto his lips, and move down to his
neck, and suck long, and noisily there. His hands are cupping my
butt cheeks, and I move one of them, gently, to my stump, and make
him caress it. He needs to do this. He needs to explore it, and then
it isn't important any more, and I move on again, down his chest, to
his nipples, and suck on them as well, until he's arching up under
my wet caress. I can feel a beat in my head, insistent, like a drum,
and I'm drinking in the scent of him, and entering some primeval
world of my own, where there is just flesh, and heartbeats, and
sensation.
I cover him with my love. As single mindedly as I could be Alex
Krycek, I can also be Dominik Crozier. I make love to him with a
skill I know he's never experienced in his life before and he
responds, hesitantly at first, and then growing bolder; a shy man
finding his way at last. Soon he's opened up, and abandons himself
to me totally, body and soul, and there's no part of him that I
haven't touched, and kissed and trailed with my wet, devouring lips,
and skilled, expert fingertips, and he's almost screaming with need
by the time I explore his ass with my finger. I reach over, and
fumble in the nightstand for the condoms and many different
varieties and flavours of lube that Max kept always to hand, and
which made me both laugh, and feel inexplicably melancholy when I
discovered them a few days ago.
"Strawberry, orange or chocolate," I tease holding up the various
tubes.
"Depends where it's going," he growls, taking a fistful of my hair,
and kissing my forehead.
"Inside you. Along with me," I inform him, and he breathes deeply,
unsure about this. "Trust me, Walter." I take hold of his face, and
look into his eyes. I wonder if he can bring himself to trust me, of
all people, but he just nods, and I smile, and kiss him hard, and
passionately on the mouth. I once said that I wanted to bury my cock
and my tongue in him at the same time, and I want to make that
particular fantasy come true. I sink back down the bed, and smooth a
generous amount of chocolate flavoured lube onto my fingers, and
then insert it into his body. He wants to stiffen up against me, but
I'm covering his body with my face, licking, and teasing him, and
flicking my tongue at his cock, and he just can't resist, and soon
I'm fingering deep inside him, and he's writhing about so much that
I think he's almost about to come. I don't want that—not yet, so I
stop tormenting the man, and pull back, positioning myself between
his long, tanned legs. I unwrap a condom, and slide it onto my cock,
and then cover it with more lube, and then I take his buttocks in my
hand, and look at him, and he's gone quite still, and I know he's
going to let me do this. I enter slowly, surely, gasping out loud as
the heat of him engulfs me, and swallows me deep inside his body,
which is where I've always wanted to be, and then I'm fully sheathed
in that tight, welcoming ass. It feels too good to move, and I lower
myself, gently onto his chest, and capture his lips with my own,
tasting the essence that is Walter Skinner, my lover. I savour the
moment. My cock inside his ass, my tongue inside his mouth, and it
seems to turn him on as well, because his hard cock is still between
us, hardening even more. I take it in my hand and slide it between
my lubed fingers, and then I slide my own cock out of his ass, and
straight back in again, in a steady rhythm. He's grabbing the
bedclothes, and bellowing something that sound suspiciously like
pleasure, and I remember that I always wanted to make him scream my
name out loud.
"Say it," I urge, sliding back into him, over and over again, and
his cock is ready to explode, but I don't want that yet. I come with
a shuddering gasp, and he blinks, as if he was so lost in the moment
that he'd forgotten it would have a climax and resolution. I sink
down on top of him, and lie there in a pool of our own sweat, still
buried deep inside him, and then slowly, I come back to reality. "I
haven't finished with you yet," I murmur into his ear, and his cock
hardens again, expectantly, against my stomach. I ease myself out of
his body, and then smear lube on his fingers, and impale myself on
them. He grins up at me, a look of affection on those broad, blunt
features, and I unwrap a condom, and slide it onto his thick, eager
cock. I position myself over his erect penis, still looking down on
him, and he's saying something that sounds like a term of
endearment, but I can hardly hear him because my ears are filled
with the sound of my own blood sizzling with pleasure, as I slide
that large cock deep into the crease between my buttocks. It slides
in easily, as if it were made to go there, and I sit on top of him,
his cock pressed deep into my body, and look down into those warm,
chocolate brown eyes. "Say my name when you come," I tell him, and
his eyes widen and he nods, enjoying the command. I ride him up and
down, and I don't think he's ever had such a good time in his life
because he's wild, and uninhibited, and sensual, and everything I
knew he could be, and I'm glad that he's finally had the courage to
find that out for himself. He's so close that it doesn't take much
to make him come, and after a few hard squeezes of my internal
muscles he's crying out, and then he climaxes with a shudder,
holding tight to my hips, his fingers pressed deep into my flesh.
"Say it," I command, pressing my knees into the side of his chest,
and he smiles, and pushes up inside me one last time as his cock
spasms.
"Dominik!" He pants, sliding his hands up and down my chest, gazing
up at me. I smile, and we stay there for a long moment, connected,
and as one. Then I climb off him, and sink down, exhausted, to lie
on top of him again.
"Nicky," I murmur into his chest.
"Hmm?" He strokes my hair idly away from my face.
"People generally tend to only call me Dominik when they're angry
with me. Otherwise they call me Nicky." I look up, and see him
studying me, thoughtfully. We're silent for a long time, and then I
ask the question I need answered. "Are you still angry with me,
Walter?" He thinks about it for a moment, and then he smiles, and my
heart starts beating again after too long frozen in time.
"No, Nicky, I'm not," is all he says, and his arms tighten around
me, convincing me that's the truth.
Outside it's growing light, and somewhere, far, far away, I can hear
the sound of my mother's laugh fading into the distance as a new day
dawns.
The End
kinner went through the information he had gathered, over and over
again, sure that he had missed something. He had contacted the
housekeeper of Crozier's childhood home in Vienna, and asked her a
number of searching questions. All he had been able to elicit from
her was that she was paid by an agency. She didn't know who owned
the house, or who her employer was. The agency took care of
everything. Skinner contacted the agency, who were equally
unforthcoming; Mr. Remarque was a very private man. They had no
address for him. He paid them from a private Swiss bank account, and
all correspondence was conducted via his lawyer in Geneva.
