Superstitious
Fandom: The X-Files
Category/Rated: PG13 I think. Somewhat M/K slashy. Don't read if you don't like that.
Year/Length: 08/2003/~4050 words
Pairing: Mulder/Krycek
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit, only having fun.
Author's Notes: Written for the Lyric Wheel Wheel of Fortune, August 2003. Song from Kashmir, with much thanks. If you feel as if you've read this all before, you probably have. Sorry, I'm not very inventive these days.
Beta: Not beta'd yet. All errors mercilessly displayed.
It was cold out. The late winter sun was pale and feeble; clouds danced briskly through wind scoured skies, and after months of Tunisian hospitality, alternately roasting and freezing, Alex Krycek pulled the cashmere overcoat around himself gratefully and followed his blonde minder up the steps of the Watergate.
After all he'd been through, he was nervy, part intensity of concentration, and part waiting for the next axe from heaven to fall on him. He eyed the steps warily, and then the large, marble flags of the hallway.
*Step on a crack and you'll marry a black and a spider will come to your wedding.* He could hear his Mama's sing-song voice as they'd skipped along the sidewalk on their way to the store, a very long time ago. Sighing, he wondered why he'd ever worried about his wedding. It was completely impossible to imagine that he would ever marry, although in this very building lurked the old spider in his web.
*Kill a spider, kill a friend.* More of his mother's homespun philosophy, and so not true. Gritting his teeth, he followed the blonde into the elevator and stood, seemingly at ease, while inside his mind howled and shrieked that it wasn't fair, that he was tired, that he was done with all of this.
He met Marita's eyes for the first time as they stood outside the door, and then she knocked. His stomach felt heavy and uneasy. He'd been half starved for months, and had only just begun to eat regularly once more. The lunch he'd had, light as it had been, threatened to come back up as the door opened, and a woman in nurse's clothing opened the door.
Showtime.
"Hi," she said, unsmiling as she admitted them. "He's anxious to see you." Crossing the room in front of them, she seized the handles of a wheelchair and turned it to face them.
The oily, acid taste of fear filled Krycek's mouth. Spider indeed, this creature was no longer human, if indeed he'd ever been so. Clenching his hands in the pockets of his fine, woolen overcoat, Alex Krycek consciously prevented himself from making the sign that would ward off the evil eye and attempted to conceal his horror behind his game face.
Spender was grey, all color gone from cheeks, from hair, from skin that sagged on the elderly frame. The eyes in the raddled face glowed with hectic malevolence, and even Marita made a little, involuntary gasp as she attempted to compose herself. He had obviously undergone a laryngectomy. The dry voice he'd known for the last seven years was silent at last, and the artificial larynx gave Cancerman a buzzing, insectoid sound. He smiled, dreadfully, revealing oxygen starved tissues that were tinged blue. "I was worried about you, Alex."
For the first time since approaching the Watergate, Alex found anger, and with it, the will to resist the apparently supernatural creature that was his tormentor. The old fuck had pulled the strings that led him here to this place, but he wouldn't do it any more. From now on, he would be in control.
Alex Krycek took a deep breath and began to fight back. "Cut the crap, old man," he growled.
"I heard about your incarceration," said his nemesis, malice oozing from every pore.
"You had me thrown in that hellhole," said Alex, his anger a living flame that he was fanning, hoping would build until he could burn all before it.
"For trying to sell something that was mine, was it not?" The glib words caused his fury to swell. He had indeed attempted to dispose of the alien tissue, but it had never belonged to creature he was facing. It had been futile, his attempts to take it back with him to Russia, and had earned him a stint in the North African jail, where his survival had been dependent on his ability to do what was necessary. He owed this old fuck, and he would see that he paid back every due. Spender was still speaking, his words half-heard as Alex mused on his vengeance to come. "I hope we can all move forward... Put the past behind us. We have a... singular opportunity now."
"A singular opportunity?" he said, feeling stupid as he wondered what nugget of information he'd missed. *Save the soliloquizing for later, Alex. You can't afford to miss a word.*
The sudden excitement that Spender allowed him to see made his dark, subtle mind race. There might well be some recompense in this. He raised his brows politely and waited for the other to speak.
"There's been a crash in Oregon. An alien ship has collided with a military aircraft. Recovery is all-important. It's Roswell and Corona all over again-- 50 years later. It's our chance to rebuild the project."
The sheer scale of Spender's delusions made him smile inwardly. Rebuild the project? The project was dead and gone, and he would hammer the last nails into its coffin, and Spender's too. He was about to say something further when the nurse stepped forward to hand Spender a cigarette, and Krycek watched with revulsion as he held it to the stoma in his neck.
"How do you know someone hasn't already recovered it?" Covarrubias' question took him by surprise, and his eyes flicked to her face. She was impeccably groomed, her bright hair rolled neatly into a French pleat, and her finely boned face carefully made up as if she were attempting to erase the memory of herself as she pled for Krycek's help back at purity control.
"It's never quite so easy," murmured Spender, his voice clicking and hissing like roaches. Very soon, Krycek found himself wishing he were elsewhere, and, shortly thereafter, he received his orders.
He knew, all of a sudden, how he could pay Spender back.
Bellefleur was a small place. The only motel already had Mulder and Scully booked in, and Alex had opted not to risk being seen by either as he skulked outside in his rental car, watching Mulder through the ill fitting drapes. He wouldn't stay in the motel that night, because he knew that he would not have been able to sleep, knowing that Fox Mulder was sleeping just a few yards from him, remembering the things that they had meant to each other. Too bad that nothing remained but vengeance. The shrilling of his cell broke the quiet of the night, and he cursed as he thumbed the pick-up. He knew who it would be, but a shudder of distaste still caused him to shift in his seat. The dry voice confirmed that Spender was checking up on his progress, and he prepared to deliver his information with an inward frisson of enjoyment. *No news is good news, so this is going to be great.*
"In spite of a great deal of effort no one seems to be able to find this UFO of yours," he said, mentally cheering as he delivered the unwelcome news. Spender paused briefly but continued, apparently undaunted.
"Of course they can't."
"You know why?" he said, his voice scathing. "'Cause it's not here."
"It's there, Alex. I'm certain of it." Spender's certainty gladdened Alex's heart. *Dream on, old man. Hope and pray and wish. If it does turn out to be there, you'll never see it.* "Hidden in plain sight," said the unpleasant voice at the other end of the phone.
"You listen to me. If you're going to play games, the two of them, Mulder and Scully, they're going to beat me to it." "And that would never do, would it?* he thought, viciously.
"Are you saying that Mulder and Scully are there looking for the UFO?" The surprise in Spender's voice was a palpable being, and Alex mentally hugged that realization to him. He was beginning to enjoy himself.
"They're looking for a missing deputy," he said, cryptically.
"Well, they're looking for the right thing but in the wrong place." The way Spender said it made Alex's fury boil again. The fucker had someone else in place, and Alex might not be able to fuck things up for him adequately. That wasn't good. Perhaps he'd have to think of something more structured than merely stopping Spender from getting access to the ship. He'd think on it. Meanwhile, he would express his annoyance now, to register it.
"You sent me looking for a ship," he gritted, exasperated with the old man and his games.
"Find the deputy. Find the ship," was the reply, and Krycek felt a little cheered at the faint desperation he was gathering from the voice. *I'll make it my most devoted concern,* he thought. *And when I find it, guess who won't be coming to dinner?*
Hanging up, he concentrated on finding out what Mulder was going to do next.
Marita Covarrubias watched Spender, her face set in icy distaste as the old man inhaled a cigarette through his stoma and the blue smoke curled up around his face.
"Why the trouble? To bring Krycek here and then toy with him?" There was no passion in the voice, nothing to reveal how she herself felt, and yet she radiated tension as though she were tightly coiled and liable to break without notice.
"Do you trust Alex, Marita?" he asked her, as though he were humoring a child. She bridled a little at that.
"Then why bring him here at all?" she snapped, impatient with the games that were a fact of life around Spender.
"You misunderstand," said the Smoker, his voice placating. "I've great faith that Alex will find the ship. But if I told him how, he'd be..." There was a pause, and she wondered what he would say. "He'd be tempted to sell the information."
"And you're certain it's there?" she said, changing the subject. She had observed Alex carefully, before his departure to Bellefleur, and she was not at all sure that Krycek intended to bring back the information even if he found the ship.
"Oh, yes." The assent was completely positive. "But it won't be there forever. It's rebuilding itself."
"If he finds the ship, then what?" she inquired, seeking a handle on the old man's apparent obsession - anything which she could turn to her own advantage.
"To possess it," explained the old man, patiently. "Is to possess the answer to all things. Every possible imaginable question."
"To God?" she asked, voice innocent as she goaded the old man, long, veiling lashes lowered over the intense, ice blue eyes, and her fall of hair gleaming yellow and cream and silver in the lamplight.
"There's no God, Marita," he explained, patient as he discoursed on his favorite topic. "What we call God is only alien-- an intelligence much greater than us."
"They're coming here, aren't they?" she said, her voice steady, no quirk of mockery around the long, flexible mouth.
She had thought she was prepared for his response, but when it came, she felt a frisson of fear travel the length of her spine, and for the first time, hoped that Alex would be successful in his task. "They're only coming back," he said, with all the conviction in the world.
It was close to dawn when Krycek found what he was looking for and stood beside the circle in the woods outside of Bellefleur, waiting.
He almost missed the alien, when he arrived, and had to move very swiftly indeed to halt its progress into the ship.
"What do you want?" asked the creature, who, had Krycek known it, was wearing the face of Deputy Ray Hoese.
"It's not about what I want; it's about what you want, and what you need to move forward." Alex felt happier as the creature morphed into the familiar, big boned, heavy faced persona he'd seen before.
"And what is that?"
"Freedom from the Consortium, and the gift of Fox Mulder," he said, smiling gently. "You need Mulder's genes, don't you? He's the key to everything. If I deliver him to you, and make sure that Spender is out of the way, you'll be back on track, won't you?"
"Explain." The alien drone was hooked, Alex could tell. *Nothing like a little intergalactic bribery to make things interesting,* he thought as he began to lay out the way that they could achieve what he was promising.
Krycek's nerves were stretched to the max as he followed his tame stooge down through the maze of the Hoover to the door of the X-Files. It hadn't been difficult to persuade the Assistant Director to do as he was told. A few tweaks of the Palm Pilot he carried made Skinner compliant, and he'd headed downstairs with Krycek and Marita in tow without too much argument. Now, he could hear the muffled conversation between Skinner and Mulder as he drank in the familiar surroundings. Here was where he'd aspired to be, way back seven years before, when he'd first met Mulder.
He'd never been particularly superstitious until he'd met Mulder, and everything had started to go wrong. He'd been at Mulder's, shaving prior to heading off to work the morning before Mulder had borrowed his car keys, and their amorous play had shattered the looking glass he'd been using, leaving him in line for seven years of bad luck. Seven years... it had been seven years since then, and he was hoping that his slate could be wiped clean. He couldn't deal with any further malice from the gods. Resisting the urge to cross his fingers and spit, he stepped closer, and Mulder's familiar voice rose, as he addressed Skinner.
"Well, we didn't bring home a flying saucer or an alien."
"Yeah so I've been told," said Skinner, beckoning him forward. With Marita in tow, he stepped through the doorway of the X-Files, and into the view of the man he'd betrayed, and who still meant more to him than anything else in his life. There was a pause. Alex stood, unsmiling under the eyes of his exquisite enemy, waiting for the verdict, and Marita, like an attendant satellite, hovered behind him.
Mulder's eyes widened, and then he burst into action, leaping from his chair with an expression of barely suppressed violence. As Skinner caught him by the arms, holding him back, forcibly, he struggled to get at Alex.
"Agent Mulder! I think you should listen to him," was all Skinner said, and Alex swallowed. He had seconds to hook Mulder, make him listen, and his hormones weren't helping as he watched the man struggle in Skinner's arms. Mulder's very presence was a physical anguish that would never dim. He opened his mouth, picking his words with care. He had to forget Mulder the friend, Mulder the lover, and concentrate on Mulder the ally, now. His involvement with the X-Files, his connections to the world of conspiracy theorists were what would help now, and his own, sad longings had to be suppressed.
"You've got every reason to want to see me dead," he said, softly, and watched Skinner hold Mulder back once more as he renewed his struggle to get at his nemesis. "But you've got to listen to me now. You have the singular opportunity."
"Here, or you want to step outside?" growled Mulder, apparently ignoring Krycek's words completely.
"Agent Mulder." Marita's voice cut, diamond hard, across the residual wash of sound in the room, and suddenly there was silence. "Cancer Man is dying."
As Skinner released Mulder, the beleaguered agent glared, his eyes following him. Marita continued, aware that her words were both soothing Mulder and causing him to listen. "His last wish is to rebuild his project, to have us revive the conspiracy. It all begins in Oregon."
"The ship that collided with that Navy plane," said Alex, swiftly trying to get a word in and have Mulder pay him attention. "It's in those woods."
"There's no ship in those woods." Mulder's tone was derisive.
"Yeah, it's there," whispered Krycek. "Cloaked in an energy field, while he mops up the evidence." *Come on, Mulder. Just for once in your life do something I want.*
"Who?"
Krycek felt relief flood through him, a warm tide that made him almost euphoric. Mulder was taking the bait. He would go for it. Drawing breath, Alex began to pitch. "The Alien Bounty Hunter. Billy Miles. Teresa Hoese, her husband. He's eliminating proof of all the tests. We're asking ourselves, we're asking ourselves, "Where are they?" They're right there. They're right under our noses. I'm giving you the chance to change that, to hold the proof."
"Why me and why now?" Mulder's words were quiet, but Alex knew that violence wasn't far away, and what he said in answer would either confirm their alliance or place it forever beyond his grasp. He started to speak, changed his mind, and then, at last, he allowed Mulder to see the naked, bartered soul of him and wondered if it would be enough.
"I want to damn the soul of that Cigarette Smoking Son-of-a-Bitch." Mulder's eyes gleamed, and Alex knew that he had him.
After that, there was nothing more.
When the others had gone, Skinner with Marita, and Scully alone to brood, Mulder had returned to the office to find Krycek still standing in the center of the room, apparently lost in thought. Slowly raising his eyes to meet those of the man who had been his lover, Alex Krycek waited for what would come, expecting nothing more than a tirade of hatred, or the kiss of fists he'd grown familiar with over the past few years.
"Why?" was all that Mulder said, surprising him.
He didn't pretend not to understand. "I had to," he said in a soft voice that did not carry, forcing Mulder closer if he wished to hear his words. "I had no choice. I was under duress."
"You could have told me," said Mulder, the hurt in his voice as big as the rift between them.
"You believe that?" Alex asked. "You don't think that you might have handed me over right there and then? Had me arrested and dusted your hands together? How would that have benefited me, or anyone else? I'd have been killed, my family would have lost their lives, and they'd have sent someone else in to watch you in my place."
"I loved you." Mulder was still distressed, his voice ragged as he expressed the feelings that had been suppressed so ruthlessly for so long.
"I still do."
The words were said and would never be taken back. Mulder's eyes had widened, his face taken on a faint flush. Alex risked a small smile, barely a lift of the corner of his flexible mouth. He had spoken at last, for good or evil, but despite the feelings he still had for Mulder, he knew that he was going to sell the man out.
"Mulder, you want that ship, don't you?" he asked, hoping that this latest betrayal wouldn't hurt as much as the first one he'd engineered, back when he'd still been the supposedly green agent. "You want to see an alien artifact, meet an alien for real?"
"You'd better believe it, Krycek." For a moment, the years fell away, and Alex saw Mulder as he must have looked in younger years, before disillusionment and frustration had drawn the veil of cynicism over him.
"You're going to get it, Mulder, and I'm going to be the one that gave it to you. I hope that somehow that will make it up to you for the things that have happened between us." He smiled. This was going to work. Mulder would get his heart's desire, and if Alex didn't get his own, well, at least the old fuck in the Watergate wouldn't get his either. "It's my gift to you, Mulder, because I still care." He stepped forward quickly and pressed a kiss to Mulder's face before turning to leave.
"Alex?" Mulder's voice dripped pain and regret. He turned back, warily.
"My turn," Alex, said Mulder, and leant forward to offer a kiss of his own.
They'd eaten together in symbolism that was, in its way, as crude as the alliance they'd formed. The company around Skinner's conference table was an odd but predictable association. The FBI contingent of Mulder, Skinner, and a very pale faced, uncomfortable Scully were ranged alongside Marita and the three members of the Lone Gunmen, all watching him warily as he and Mulder led the discussion.
"What's amazing is that even the military satellites don't see it," crowed Frohike, his geeky heart gladdened by a mystery that was his to solve.
"But J.P.L.'S Topex Poseidon shows it only as waveform data," was Langly's cryptic response. *I'll see your military satellites and raise you a Topex Poseidon whatsit,* thought Krycek, in wry amusement. *No doubt they know what they're talking about, but why don't they cut to the chase?*
"And here it appears simply as a microburst of transmission error on the European Space Agency's ERS-2," said Byers, upping the ante yet again, as Skinner sighed out his impatience.
"In other words?" The bespectacled AD had had enough, and wanted them to cut to the chase, that was apparent. The rest of the assembly seemed to be in accord with that, and the geeks began to disclose what they knew.
"In other words," said Frohike. "You'd never know it's a UFO."
"If you didn't know what you were looking at or looking for," added Byers.
"No wonder we couldn't see them," chimed in Langly.
"Listen." Alex's patience was at an end. "It's not going to be there forever."
"As we all stand here talking it's rebuilding itself." Marita added her own mite, and a ripple went through the room. Scully had said nothing, but now she suddenly pushed her way out of the room and Mulder followed. The meeting was at an end, at least for that moment.
Later, as they put the finishing touches to the plan that Mulder believed would locate the ship and bring it back for study, Alex felt a pang. He knew, as nobody else did, exactly how erroneous those beliefs were. It was a measure of the loathing he had for the Smoker, that he was about to allow the only man he had ever loved to go blindly to his fate.
*No such thing as superstition,* he thought, fingers curling around the lucky penny he had in his pocket. *When you believe in things you don't understand, the rest follows.*
Later, much later, Marita and Krycek went back to see the old spider in his lair. They found him looking out of the window, for once not smoking as he sat, dejected. He turned to face them, and something in Alex's eyes made him realize he was out of time.
"We've failed, then," he said. "Perhaps you never meant to succeed. Anyway... the hour is at hand, I presume."
*Oh, yes. The hour's at hand.* Alex moved quickly, gloved hands seizing the handles of the wheelchair as he began to push the old man out of the room. *Stand by, Hell. Devil's on his way.*
"What are you doing?" Marita had hold of the nurse now, and was holding her back, her face still impassive.
"Sending the Devil back to Hell," growled Alex.
"As you do to Mulder and to me... you do to all of mankind, Alex," said Spender, still calm enough that Alex wanted to hurt him, beat him, just to see him lose the facade of urbanity. For a second, he was tempted to tip the old bastard out of his chair and beat him systematically until he begged for mercy, but the moment passed. All of a sudden, he just wanted to end it, finish the seven years of bad luck, have done with the superstitions and everything connected with the alien invasion.
He gathered his strength, and then, his face creased in a mask of hatred, he pushed, sending the wheelchair and its frail burden out into the air, to rattle down the stairs and deposit its crumpled occupant at the foot.
He didn't even pause as he and Marita left to see if the old man was dead. He felt free at last.
"Superstition" by Stevie Wonder
Very superstitious
Writing on the wall
Very superstitious
Ladder's 'bout to fall
Thirteen month old baby
Broke that looking glass
Seven years of bad luck
Good things in the past
When you believe in things that you don't understand
Then you suffer
Superstition ain't the way
Very superstitious
Wash your face and hands
Rid me of the problem
Get all that you can
Keep me in a daydream
Keep me going strong
You don't want to save me
Sad is my song
When you believe in things that you don't understand
Then you suffer
Superstition ain't the way
Very superstitious
Nothing more to say
Very superstitious
Devil's on his way
Thirteen month old baby
Broke that looking glass
Seven years of bad luck
Good things in the past
When you believe in things that you don't understand
You will suffer
Superstition ain't the way
The End
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