Rat and Fox

Mulder unexpectedly comes across an old enemy. Follows “Paper Clip.” (Illustrated)

10/95

Disclaimer: The X-Files belong to Chris Carter and 1013. No infringement intended.

Fox Mulder paused outside the door of the bar. Going to a bar wasn’t really what he wanted to do, but it seemed to be the only place around here that was open this time of night. It was a small, quiet town, with no all-night diners or night clubs handy. Just this one dimly-lit, listless tavern.

He really shouldn’t be out wandering around anyway. He should be back at the hotel getting a good night’s sleep, like Scully was doing. Wake up refreshed and ready to get to work on their case in the morning. But, as usual, he couldn’t sleep. He’d thought a little walk might help settle his mind. But the deserted streets, full of mists and shadows and lights reflected from the mirrors of the damp, rain-washed sidewalks, jangled his nerves and pricked his overactive imagination. He wasn’t ready to go back to the hotel, but he wanted to get indoors. Sit for a while in the company of strangers, drink a cup of coffee, and try not to think.

The tavern was as good a place as any. He stepped inside.

One man sat at the bar, talking quietly to the bartender, who was wearily wiping a glass with a dishtowel. A man and woman sat at a table, heads leaning together, talking intently. In the far booth, a man in a leather jacket sat with his head in his hands, a bottle of whiskey on the table in front of him. Mulder walked up to the bartender.

“Coffee?” he requested.

The bartender nodded, too weary to speak. Mulder felt he’d fallen into some strange slow-motion dream, where sound was muffled and limbs moved as if under water. The man sitting at the bar looked up at him and nodded. He was middle-aged, with a leathery, care-lined face. Mulder returned the nod, then put a dollar on the bar and picked up his coffee, and turned to survey the interior of the tavern.

The man in the booth dropped his hands from his face. His eyes met Mulder’s. The shock of recognition hit them both at the same time.

Alex Krycek.

Mulder’s hand tightened around his coffee cup. Adrenaline exploded in him, shattering the lazy, dreamlike quality of the night. He was aware of the gun holstered under his coat. Was Krycek armed? Mulder stood between Krycek and the door. What should he do? What would Krycek do?

His first impulse, swiftly checked, was to simply pull out his gun and shoot. His second, to drag the man outside and beat him senseless. Third, to arrest Krycek and take him at once to jail. He rejected them all. He was an officer of the law, he couldn’t just shoot a man down in cold blood, no matter how angry or justified he felt. He’d already beaten Krycek once, and it gave him no lasting comfort. Seeing the man locked up in jail for the rest of his miserable life was the only real satisfaction that he might hope to achieve, as thin as that would be after the pain Krycek had caused both him and Scully. But even that satisfaction was unlikely. The treacherous agent had covered his tracks well; there was no evidence against him that would stand up in court. The most that might be proved against him was the assault and battery against Assistant Director Skinner. But a trial on that matter would also bring the whole business of the Defense Department secret documents out into the open, and it was part of their agreement with Krycek’s employer that those documents did not exist.

So what could he do? What he should do, he knew, was just walk out of this bar and forget he’d ever seen his one-time partner and current enemy here; to leave Krycek to whatever fate his double-dealing and violence would eventually bring to him. But he knew he wouldn’t do that. If nothing else, he would tell Alex Krycek exactly what he thought of him.

Mulder walked toward the booth, then stopped again a few feet away. Krycek had made no apparent move to escape or defend himself, although Mulder was willing to bet that the hand under the table held a gun pointed at his gut. Krycek’s face had been an inscrutable mask from the moment his eyes had met Mulder’s. But now, Mulder saw that tears tracked the man’s face; a face red and swollen from an extended crying jag. Krycek rubbed at his nose with the knuckles of one hand—the other hand still steady under the table. But he made no attempt to wipe the tears or hide them from Mulder’s sight.

Does he have a conscience? Mulder wondered. He didn’t know whether that thought pleased him or not. A cold-blooded, heartless killer who did evil because he didn’t care—or a man who knew he was doing wrong, and suffered for it, but did it anyway? But who knew what Krycek was crying about? Maybe he didn’t like the whiskey.

Mulder slid into the booth across from Krycek, setting his coffee cup on the table and folding his hands on the tabletop. Krycek stared at him, the animal cunning in his eyes not entirely obliterated by the whiskey and tears.

“Hello, Alex,” Mulder said conversationally. His knuckles whitened as he gripped his hands together.

“Mulder.” Krycek’s voice was quiet and slightly husky. “Come to kill me? He tried, but he couldn’t do it. I don’t think I’ll let you do it, either.”

“My hands are on the table,” Mulder replied mildly. But—was it true, had the Smoking Man tried to kill Krycek? Did that mean Krycek was no longer working for him?

Krycek thought about it for a moment, then his hand moved and Mulder saw that he was putting away whatever he held under the table. He brought both hands out and folded them, mimicking Mulder’s position with an ironic smile. “Just a little chat, then.”

“Did he really try to kill you?”

“Car bomb explosion. Truck stop in southern D.C., two hours after I… met up with Skinner at the hospital. I was meant to be in that car when it went up.”

Witnesses had seen a man running from the explosion in the parking lot. A man who fit Krycek’s general description, and was wearing a leather jacket just like the one Krycek wore now. Like the one he’d worn the night Mulder had found him outside his apartment building and nearly killed him.

But there were a lot of leather jackets in the world. And Krycek could read the newspapers, too. “Too bad you weren’t.” If the Smoking Man had blown up his lackey once he’d outlived his usefulness—it was the sort of street justice Mulder wasn’t allowed to indulge in himself, but he could have savored the results if someone else had done it for him.

Krycek just smiled a cold, bitter smile. “I’m sure he thinks so, too. He underestimated me, just like you did. People who underestimate me usually live to regret it.”

“People who trust you live to regret it, too.”

Krycek’s expression darkened, briefly, then smoothed out again to that inscrutable mask. “It was just a job, Mulder. Nothing personal in it.” The tears drying on his face belied his emotionless tone.

“It might not have been personal to you, but it was to me.”

“What do you want me to say, Mulder? That I’m sorry I wasn’t working for the same thing you were? That I didn’t mean to hurt anyone? That I wish we could have been friends? Even if it was true, you wouldn’t believe me, and it wouldn’t change anything anyway.”

“I don’t want you to say anything. It would all be a lie anyway.”

Mulder eyed Krycek’s half-empty whiskey bottle with a touch of envy. Smiling ironically, Krycek pushed it towards him. “Help yourself. Guess I’m not as much of a drinker as I thought I was.”

Mulder hesitated for a moment, then took the bottle and poured some into his coffee cup. He took a sip, wincing at the bitter taste. Burned coffee and blended whiskey. Not his favorite drink. But the bitterness suited his mood. He took a longer drink, feeling the alcohol glow spread from his gut through his body. Krycek had the right idea; they should be numbed with liquor for this meeting.

“Why were you crying?” The question came out suddenly, surprising Mulder as much as the man across the table.

Krycek’s eyes narrowed. There was a slight, sharp intake of breath, and his eyes became shiny with new tears. But then he blinked, and sighed deeply. “I don’t know that that’s any of your business.”

Mulder took the whiskey bottle and refilled Krycek’s glass, then his own. “It isn’t. Tell me anyway.”

Krycek stared at him for a long moment. Finally he said, very quietly, “I have regrets.” He paused, and the time stretched out until Mulder thought that was all he was going to say. But then he continued, “Sometimes you make a choice that leads you up a path you never wanted to take. But by the time you find out, it’s too late to go back. So you live with it, if you can. If you can’t….” He picked up his glass, and with that same bitter smile, drained it with a single swallow.

Alex Krycek living out his days in cheap bars, drowning his regret in whiskey and tears. Yes, Mulder thought with bitter satisfaction, he could take some comfort in leaving Krycek to that fate. It was not as good as dead in a carbomb explosion set by his own back-stabbing master, or finding that pretty face making him the target of every sadistic bully in prison; but if it was all Mulder would get, he might find it sufficient.

Mulder emptied his own cup, and refilled it with straight whiskey. “Some of the people you met on that path didn’t get the chance to live with it.”

Krycek shrugged. “Life’s a bitch.”

Mulder’s grip on his cup tightened. “Some of those people were people I cared about.”

“I’m not going to put on a show for your benefit, Mulder.”

Mulder forced his hand to relax, and nodded. Perhaps he’d like that show later. Perhaps a gun in the face and a fist in the gut would change Krycek’s mind about providing it. For now, he’d drink Krycek’s whiskey and see how his mood took him.

“What are you doing here?”

“Getting drunk.”

Mulder frowned. “In this town?” Mulder didn’t believe in coincidences. The case he was working on had made the national news—Krycek could easily have guessed that Mulder would be here investigating it. Of course, Krycek had no way of knowing that Mulder would decide to take a late-night walk and drop into this tavern. That much he was willing to accept as coincidence. That Krycek just happened to hole up in the same small town as Mulder’s case—that stretched even Mulder’s willingness to believe.

Krycek just shrugged. “It’s as good a place as any. What are you doing here?”

“The Black River murders, as if you didn’t know.”

Krycek shrugged again. “I haven’t been reading the paper lately.”

Mulder felt himself beginning to fume again. “I don’t even know why I’m sitting here. Every word out of your mouth is a lie.”

“I don’t know either, Mulder. Why are you sitting here?”

“Because I can’t kill you. I can’t arrest you. But I can’t just walk away and leave you here without doing anything, after everything you’ve done.”

“You could kill me,” Krycek said calmly.

Mulder stared.

Krycek took another swallow of whiskey, then continued in a flat, emotionless voice. “You could get up and leave now. Tell me you’re sick of looking at me. Then go outside and wait behind a doorway until I leave. Follow me until I come up to some convenient alley. I’m drunk, I might not be alert enough to notice you behind me. Hit me in the back of the head with your gun and drag me into the alley. Then take my gun—do you have gloves with you? No? Then you’ll have to wipe the gun after you use it. Shoot me with my gun. It’s unregistered, no one will ever connect it with you or anyone else. Wipe your prints off it, leave it by the body, then go back to your hotel.

“Of course, people in here saw you talking to me. Although these guys are all half-asleep and drunk themselves, they might not remember. And a lot of people know how much you hate me. It’s not completely foolproof, but you might get away with it.”

Mulder stared in astonishment. Then he shook his head. “You know damn well I’d never do anything like that. It’s not fear of getting caught that stops me from shooting you, it’s a little thing called morals. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“You’d be surprised what I know.”

Mulder was suddenly tired of the game. The coffee and whiskey were making his stomach ache. And he’d get nothing from Krycek. He’d known that all along, of course, but he’d had to torture himself with the man’s presence anyway. He abruptly stood up. “I’m leaving now. I’m sick of looking at you.”

He smiled at the sudden glint of fear in Krycek’s eye. Let the man wonder. Let him watch his back all the way home, let him tense up every time he passed an alley. Mulder lifted his cup and gestured in an ironic toast, then drained it. “Thanks for the whiskey.” As he replaced the cup on the table, he mused that he might get some small satisfaction from this encounter after all. Then he turned to leave.

“Mulder.”

He turned back and waited.

Fresh tears were dripping slowly from Krycek’s eyes. His expression was now one of such misery that Mulder could not help the sympathetic pain that tugged at him in response.

“I have the tape.”

Mulder’s heart lurched. But the feeling was quickly put down. Even if somehow he got the tape from Krycek, he could not use it. They’d promised the Smoking Man they would not use the information on the tape, in exchange for their lives and their jobs. But still he wanted it. Just to know what it said. Just to have it, as proof, if only for himself. “Where?”

“Somewhere safe. It’s my insurance that he won’t try to kill me again.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Some day, Mulder.” Krycek brushed the hair from his face, and finally began to wipe the tears from his cheeks. “Some day…. Things change every day. People with power lose it. Friends become enemies. Things that are hidden come out into the light. Some day, you’ll need that tape again. And you’ll know that I have it.”

Was he offering it to Mulder? Or simply taunting him with the information? Mulder couldn’t tell. Nor would he trust his conclusions, even if he thought he could tell. And was this what Krycek had come here to tell him? That he was waiting, that he knew how to find Mulder when he wanted to, that he would be there if the situation was right?

But what possible situation could make him want Krycek back in his life? Still, if he really did have the tape…. It wouldn’t make up for past pain, but he’d be willing to make some sort of deal for the tape some day, if the time came.

Mulder nodded. “And you’ll know this. If I ever have the opportunity legally to make you pay for everything you’ve done, I’ll do it. And no tape or anything else will stop me from locking you up and throwing away the key.”

Krycek sipped his whiskey and nodded, mouth a tight line. “Understood.”

Mulder nodded again, and walked out of the tavern.

* * *

He stood outside, breathing deeply. The sidewalk still gleamed from the earlier rain; shadows and mists still swirled. Mulder’s stomach still roiled from the strong coffee and stronger liquor he’d drunk. His knuckles ached from the desire form fists and strike. Far from settling his uneasy mind, the night’s activities had left him jumpy and wound up. He would not sleep tonight. He began to walk at random, hoping for nothing more than to work off a little of his nervous energy and to pass the hours until morning.

* * *

Inside the tavern, the man in the leather jacket poured himself another glass of whiskey. Then he buried his face in his hands.

end.