"The Place of Dead Roads"
by Spike
9/99

It was Scully who took him down and that was strangely right.  Scully in
her ghost gray skirt, cream silk blouse untucked and little drops of
blood like rubies or maybe garnets down the front.  Scully, her face
damp from running, eyes silvered with tears.  Clouds of steam from her
breath, his breath, mist across his vision.

"Krycek, *stop*!"

Scully.  Something endearing about the little red-headed pitbull bitch.
The way she'd hunted him down after he'd killed the thing that used to
be Fox Mulder.  He almost wanted to cheer her on.  Slap her on the
back.  Good job, Special Agent Scully.  Or... just 'Scully' now.
Christ, she deserved *something* for it.

And so he'd stopped, stumble-stopped in the brief moonlit flash of
clearing.  Stopped and turned to find her, Dana Scully, two-fisted
stance -- the barrel of the gun aimed right at him -- as big as her eye,
as big as the moon.  Opened his mouth to say something.

And...

He saw her finger jerk on the trigger, saw her mouth fall open, *saw*
the bullet spiral out at him. Heard the crack. He'd laughed.

And even though it was all moving so slow, he was moving slower.  Like
he and that bullet were meant for each other from the start and there
was nothing, no force strong enough in nature to deflect either one of
them.

He felt the bullet tap him in the side of the head, not even hard but it
spun him.  Then he was on the ground, face down in the cold leaves, cold
muck.  Damn, he hated the cold.  And Mulder was there. Back behind his
shoulder, just out of sight.  Just out of reach.

//Hey, Mulder,// he wanted to say. //Long time no...// But he was too
far back behind his eyes and suddenly there was so *much* to have said.
So much to have done.  And all of it slipping away so fucking fast,
pooling into warmth under his cheek and damn, he hadn't expected there
to be regrets.  His eyes still open, milking over gray as the world
receded.

And there were Dana Scully's little shoes.  How fucking *sweet*.

And then, he supposed, he died.

***

In fact he's sure of it because now things are weird in that nightmare
way that he's sure must be the afterlife.  Maybe... hell.  Which, after
what he's seen, known, almost makes him laugh.  Nice rest after a life
like his.  No aliens spewing green goo, no black oil up his ass, no
knife wielding peasants, no burning boys.  Not even screaming souls or
burning lakes or pricks with pitchforks, just weirdness.  Weirdness of a
fundamental self-kind -- wandering and forgetting.  Drifting like mist.
Maybe no more than a floating point of view.  For a long time, nothing,
but something's changing.  Something's going to happen now.

He knows this because when he's 'Alex Krycek' he is *here*.  Not the
dark and pretty woods where he died, but here, this gutted, smoking ruin
of a building where he really died.  Where his soul died with the slam
of a pointed spike to the sweet spot of the Mulderthing's neck.

"Pretty fucking poetic for a lying lowlife scumbag," says Mulder.
Krycek looks up from where he's been squatting, rubbing his hands
together over a little pile of stones as though it were a fire. There's
no one there and for a moment he is lost. He looks at his hands, they're
clean and cold and there is something else but he can't remember.

"Mulder?" he asks the empty, gray air.  His voice is harsh, echoless.
"Mulder?"

Nothing.

Just another ghost.  Mulder's voice.  That flat, amused sound.  Fuck,
he's missed it.  Has always missed it.  Craved the sound of it -- even
when it was just the Mulderthing playing his own thoughts against him:

//Want you, Alex.  Need you...//  Skin crawling at the *wrongness* of
it.  Never mind that the voice sounded right.  Mulder didn't.  Wouldn't.

//Need you, Alex...  Lo--//  And the torque and balance as he'd spun it
by its arm --, the pop of gristle and bone, steel in his hand and
*slam*.

Knowing it was right -- was *right* -- but when the thing had looked up
at him with those dead black eyes, he'd felt nothing but relief.

He can almost smell the acid stench; can feel the remembered impact
tingling in his funny bone.  He rubs the  place absently, closes his
eyes on grit.

"You feeling sorry for yourself, Krycek?"

And this time when he looks up Mulder *is* there.  Wearing white linen
robes with long long sleeves and buckles.  Squatting across from him.
Eyes clear. Looking healthy.  Looking fucking *good*.

"This isn't about me killing what was left of you," Krycek says.

"No?" Mulder is smiling.  Beautiful splay of crow's feet.  Laugh lines.
Mulder's laughing and, just like always it pisses Krycek off.

"You going to tell me what the fuck is going on?" Krycek says.  "Are you
here to haunt me like some fucking boogedy boogedy?"

"You scared, Krycek?"  He goes to say, no, he isn't fucking scared of
fucking dead FBI agents.  He isn't fucking scared of ghosts.  It's
always been the truth except... his heart is pounding away in his chest
like he's alive or something and it *does* scare him.  Fucking
cold-sweat, bowels-turn-to-water terrifies him. His teeth are chattering
so he jams them together.

"What are the rules here, Mulder?" he asks, low and still hearing the
fear in his own voice.  And Mulder laughs again.  Big laugh and at the
same time he's moving in, slow low tackle and just like the bullet that
killed him Krycek can't get out of the way.  Can only fight it --
grapples Mulder, grunts and kicks out but Mulder weighs about a thousand
pounds.  Like he's made of solid steel under the flesh.  Not even
sweating and Krycek ends up on his back in the rubble and dead, dry
leaves, Mulder straddling him, pinning his wrists.

Heat to heat where their bodies join under the white flow of Mulder's
skirts.  Heat where Mulder's weight is grinding down on him.  Mulder's
face inches from his own and he can feel their pulsebeats shaking them,
he can smell Mulder's sweat, his own.  He's shaking, fucking *shaking*.
Looking up into Mulder's eyes.  Eyes that see him.  Know him.  Looking
at him with so much compassion.  Understanding.

//*Fuck* no.//

Love.

"Bastard," Krycek growls.  "Cocksucker."

"Just say the word," Mulder says.  Krycek shakes his head but Mulder's
mouth comes down, stops just beside his mouth.  He can feel, taste
Mulder's soft hot breath on his lips.   But he *knows*...

//It isn't real.  It couldn't *ever* be real...//

Long time passes like that.  Maybe centuries. Maybe...

Sometimes Mulder is there on top of him, sometimes he's gone but it's
always Krycek lying on his back, staring up into pale grayness that he
can never see as anything but sky.

And, Christ, it hurts to be this afraid and still not even know for sure
it's hell.

=end=

***

"You laugh?  You don't believe in the devil?  Disbelief in the devil  is
a French idea, a frivolous idea.  Do you know who the devil is? Do  you
know his name?  Without even knowing his name, you laugh at the  form of
him, following Voltaire's example, at his hoofs, at his tail,  at his
horns, which you have invented; for the evil spirit is a  mighty
menacing spirit, but he has not the hoofs and horns you've  invented for
him." --Fyodor Dostoevsky, _The Idiot_

***

"Is a poisonous snake really safer?"

"Not really in the long run, but who cares about that? He must feel
real good after he bites someone."

"Safer?"

"Yes sir.  Dead people are less frightening than live ones.  It's a
step in the right direction."

"Young man, I think you're an assassin."

--William S. Burroughs, _The Place of Dead Roads_

***