Rat and Fox

Another late night telephone conversation. Sixth season.  Sequel to The Grey Havens.

10/99

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

* * *

It was dark, except for a scattering of tiny white lights overhead. The atmosphere was close and smelled of machine oil and damp. He was trying to run, stumbling, crawling, looking for a way out. His knuckles were sore and his throat was raw and he thrashed wildly, but something was holding him down. Something long and bright flashed down toward his left shoulder. Pain lanced through his arm. He tried to scream, but his throat was full of thick oily mud. Panic shot through every nerve ending in his body—

And then he was awake, struggling in sweaty sheets, trying to reach out with an arm that wasn’t there. He snatched his cell phone from the nightstand and began punching out the number—

And stopped, heart pounding so hard his whole body was shaking.

* * *

With a disgusted groan, Krycek tossed the phone back onto the nightstand, yanked the sheet aside, and pushed himself out of bed. In the bathroom, he splashed cold water onto his face, then stood staring at himself in the mirror, watching the drops trickle down his cheeks. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his skin was pale and blotchy. His tee shirt was clammy and stuck to his skin. He plucked at it, and the empty left sleeve flopped loosely at his shoulder.

Sometimes, he thought, waking up was the real nightmare.

* * *

Back in the bedroom, he grimaced at the sight of the rumpled bed, sheets awry, blanket half on the floor. It did not look very inviting. He rubbed at his temple, tight with the beginnings of a headache. Sighing, he bent down to grab at the sheet with his one hand, trying to shake and pull it back into some sort of order. He succeeded only in rearranging the rumples, and tossing the blanket the rest of the way onto the floor. He would be cold without it. He didn’t care. Krycek got back into bed and curled up on his side and tried to will himself back to sleep.

On the nightstand, the cell phone loomed large in his vision.

He’d been about to call Mulder.

* * *

He should his head in denial and disbelief. He’d had half the number punched in before he’d even come fully awake. How in the hell had that happened? It must have been the nightmare, he decided. Had to have been. Somehow, that brief, late-night phone call of a few weeks ago had gotten tangled up in his dream, and his sleep-raddled mind had tried to repeat it before he realized what he was doing. It certainly wasn’t that he had any intention of calling Mulder again. Once was enough. He’d been in one of those moods, those broken-feeling moods, and on a whim he’d called Mulder, more to break up the monotony of the night than anything else. He’d thought they’d spar for a few minutes, exchange insults, and that would be that. But he must have caught Mulder in some sort of mood as well, because Mulder had been—well, not friendly, perhaps, but willing to talk. He’d seemed to understand what Krycek was saying, even to sympathize. The brief conversation had snapped the hold the broken feeling had on him. It had been… nice.

And Mulder had asked him to call again. Probably hoping to trace the call and hunt him down, or to keep tabs on him, but still—maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. If they could actually talk to each other, maybe they could come to some sort of understanding, a truce that would allow them to work together when necessary. They were on the same side, after all, even though he had no hope that Mulder would ever think so, and who could blame him? You couldn’t really say to someone, Yes, I killed your father, but he deserved it, and it wasn’t anything personal, anyway, so you shouldn’t be mad at me. But you could say something like, Look, I know you hate me, but there’s too much at stake to let our personal grudges stand in the way of our fight against a common enemy.

Of course, he’d already tried that once, and look where it had gotten him—handcuffed to Skinner’s balcony, hauled off to a Russian gulag, and— His hand went, unbidden, to his ruined shoulder, and a sharp stab of pain, a mere faint remnant of that other pain, spoke to him of his terrible loss. He hadn’t survived as long as he had by making the same mistakes twice.

So give it up, there was nothing he could do, and no reason to torture himself by trying to break down the wall of hate between him and Mulder, when he had tried and failed so spectacularly already.

But the Mulder of the late-night phone call had been different. He’d been hard, but not hostile. He’d been willing to listen. And Mulder had asked him to call again.

* * *

He shifted over onto his back and reached for his cell phone, punching out Mulder’s number with his thumb. Then he settled back onto his pillow, holding the phone to his ear.

* * *

The answer, again, was low and even, noncommittal. “Mulder.”

“Hi, Mulder.”

There was a pause. “Krycek…” Mulder breathed out slowly, smokily, like a sigh, caressing the name in his mouth. It made Krycek shiver. “I didn’t think you’d really call.”

Krycek closed his eyes. “I didn’t either.”

“Got another classic novel you’d like to discuss?”

A slight smile formed on Krycek’s face. He thought for a moment, then, “How about… Le Morte d’Arthur?”

“The Holy Grail,” Mulder said slowly, contemplatively. “I thought I had it, once. I guess I’m not Galahad.”

Galahad: the only knight pure enough to behold the Grail. Was anyone really that pure? “Mulder, that digital tape would not have helped you get your sister back.”

There was a small gasp at the other end of the line; a long pause in which the only sound was Mulder’s quickened breathing. “What?”

“She’s your Holy Grail, isn’t she? Your sister?”

Another short pause. “What did you mean, the tape wouldn’t have helped?”

“Well, it might have helped you learn what really happened to her, but it wouldn’t have helped you get her back. You know that now, don’t you?”

The Syndicate had been destroyed by rebel forces, incinerated in their own private holocaust. Only a few of the quickest and most resourceful—like Krycek himself—had escaped. But the alien collaboration had been broken, the rebels now held the alien fetus that had been used to develop the hybrids, and gold only knew what would become of the aliens’ hostages now. “I suppose,” Mulder grudgingly agreed. “You know, you’re the only one who’s mentioned my sister to me since all of this happened. Even Scully said to me, ‘You’ve won—what else is there to do?’ ”

Krycek felt a slow flush creep over his face, as he lay on his back on his bed, cell phone held against his ear. There had been a time when it would have meant everything to him to hear Mulder suggest that Krycek might be in any way superior to Scully. Even now, there was a reluctant kind of pleasure in it, at the same time that he rejected it as meaningless. He shrugged. “You’ve been searching for your sister all your life, ever since she disappeared. She’s the reason you went into the X-Files in the first place. I thought everybody knew that.”

Mulder’s chuckle was short and bitter. “I wonder if my father did. He knew all along what happened to her, right from the start. He never told me anything, not even a hint. Even when the clone came to us, pretending to be Samantha—he knew it wasn’t really her, but he let me and my mother believe it was. He even came all the way down to D.C. just to tell me how hurt my mother was when I traded the clone for Scully, and lost her. And he knew it wasn’t Samantha.”

Again, there was a brief pause, in which there was only the quiet sound of Mulder’s breathing. When he spoke, his voice was slow and careful, as if weighing each word, and tasting its bitterness before letting it fall from his mouth. “As much as I hate you, I think I hate him more.”

* * *

Now it was Krycek’s turn to fall silent. What could he say? In his opinion, Mulder had every reason to hate his father. Krycek had barely known Bill Mulder, and he hated him. The man was a coward, who had dithered helplessly until events overtook him and forced his hand. He’d refused to stand with the Syndicate, but he hadn’t had the guts to stand against them, either. He’d taken the path of least resistance and given up one of his children. Then he’d retreated to lick his wounds, leaving what was left of his family to suffer alone.

And yet, if there was one thing Krycek had learned in the past five years, it was that nothing was as simple as it seemed. The world was full of people with human weaknesses, who made the wrong decisions for the right reasons, who found themselves wanting when tested by events beyond their imagining. And it would certainly do no good to tell Mulder that his father was a cruel and cowardly bastard who’d deserved what he’d gotten.

But there must be something he could say that would help. He was not going to try to convince Mulder that his father had been a noble man, a brave soldier—not because it would make his own involvement in Bill Mulder’s death seem worse, but because it wasn’t true, and Mulder knew it as well as he did. Still, there were thing she could tell him that might make a difference. He supposed he owed Mulder that much.

* * *

“Mulder, there’s something I’ve always wondered about,” he began, carefully. “Back in those days, I wasn’t told everything, so I don’t know the whole story, but it has always seemed strange to me the way it was set up. How did they know your father would ask you to come up to the Vineyard that night? Or that he would conveniently come into the bathroom to take his pills while you were there? It was a complicated scenario to pull off without his knowledge, yet it all went without a hitch.”

“What are you suggesting?” Mulder’s voice was dangerously quiet. “That he conspired in his own murder?”

“No….” Krycek paused. He could see the scene now as clearly as if he were still standing there: He opened the shower curtain while Bill Mulder stood with his back to the shower, opening the medicine cabinet. But as Mulder’s father closed the medicine cabinet door, he suddenly glimpsed Krycek in the mirror. Krycek froze for an instant, cursing his luck. If the man called out, raised an alarm, Mulder might be able to rush in before Krycek could make his escape.

But Bill Mulder didn’t call for help. He didn’t even blink. In fact, he seemed entirely unsurprised to find an assassin standing in his bathtub pointing a large automatic weapon at him. And entirely without fear.

“I don’t know. He’d been in touch with the Syndicate, I know that. I’m not suggesting he helped set up the whole thing, but it seems to me that he had to have been aware of what was going on, and known that he was in danger. If he’d really intended to tell you everything, and do it safely, he would have asked you to meet him somewhere else. Or arranged for you to find a packet of documents, or sent you everything in email, or something. Why call you to his home, where he must have known he was being watched, and then leave you alone to take some pills before he’d told you anything?”

It was the eyes that chilled his heart: Bill Mulder’s eyes were dull and flat and gray as wet cement. Empty and lifeless, as if he were already dead, waiting only for the bullet that would finally let him rest. And as Krycek raised the gun, Bill Mulder also raised his arms—not in self-defense, but in welcome, as if to embrace the coming death.

“And why would he let them kill him?” Mulder asked, his voice a soft hiss.

Krycek drew a deep breath. “Mulder, I don’t know. But if your father knew he was in danger, then he also knew that you were in danger. He had to know that there were at least two ways they could make sure he never told you what he knew: kill him, or….”

“You think he deliberately allowed himself to be killed, in order to ensure that I wouldn’t be?” Incredulous, and angry—but there was also something almost light in Mulder’s voice now, almost hopeful.

“I think it’s possible. I don’t think anyone will ever really know, but it’s possible. I think—I believe he could have saved himself, if he wanted to.”

Krycek’s finger squeezed the trigger, and the gun bucked in his hand. As the bullet entered Bill Mulder’s temple, Krycek could have sworn he saw the man smile.

“I don’t know why I should believe anything you say,” Mulder insisted.

Krycek shook his head ruefully. He didn’t really mind the accusation, though. It was just reflex. “You don’t have to believe me, Mulder. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Make up your own mind what it means.”

“Even if it’s true, it doesn’t let you off the hook.”

“No,” Krycek sighed. “Of course not.”

There was a brief silence. “I’m going to go now. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay.” He heard the click of Mulder’s phone hanging up. “I’ll talk to you later,” he said to the empty connection. And smiled.

* * *

Afterwards, he put the phone back on the nightstand, then got up to get the blanket from the floor at the foot of the bed. He straightened the sheet, put the blanket over it, then got back into bed, lying as usual on his side with one of the pillows against his back.

Then he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

end.