Title: And Pull Us Through
Author: Flutesong


Email: Flutesong@hegalplace.com

Website: http://www.hegalplace.com/flutesong

Category: Story/Relationship/Post Apocalypse 

Spoilers: Canon ends with the Tunguska/Terma and the Alien Invasion 
begins soon after

Warnings: Eventual M/K slash  mentions of Het Sex  NC17 and
many 
known characters die/are deceased  not M and/or K

Disclaimer: CC and Co owns all the original ideas. I made these

July 2004 War of the Worlds Lyric Wheel

Great Lyrical thanks to Tarlan
 

(1) Over and Done

It's been over for years when I find him. Only then, before I walk up 
to him, do I acknowledge to myself that I have been looking. I've had 
access to all their records and several long conversations with Mr. 
Jeremiah Smith, before he too perished. So, I knew he wasn't dead. At 
least he hadn't been dead at the end of it all, but that was years 
ago.  When I saw him in that billowy, loose, dark blue shirt, 
clutching a grocery bag in one arm, I knew I'd been seeking him all 
along.

It wasn't as if we'd ever made peace or even had a truce. It wasn't 
as if he hadn't murdered Bill Mulder, or sold Scully down the river 
for advancement in that fetid group of megalomaniacs, none of that 
had changed. It wasn't as if I believed that the help he gave during 
the war, hadn't saved the day and helped us win war wasn't true 
either. It was. But, we, he and I, had never hashed it out and 
something in me was still waiting. 

He was curiously unsurprised and surprisingly nonviolent when I 
tapped the shoulder of his empty sleeve and he turned around. His 
face was clear, although there were lines at the corners of his eyes 
and around his mouth. He was thinner than I'd ever seen him, the 
bones of his face pushing sharply against the taut pale skin. He 
looked the forty I thought he had to be by now, and somehow, that did 
surprise me. I hadn't aged him in the intervening years. 

I suppose I was staring, because his "What do you want, Mulder?" woke 
me up, recalled me to the moment at hand and almost surprised a laugh 
out of me because it sounded as if I'd seen him an hour ago and not 
after a gap of four years. 

We were on a street corner in Carlisle, Vermont. It was one of those 
small New England towns that stubbornly resisted invasions by 
McDonalds, Walmarts, Interstate exits and Aliens.  The Green 
Mountains were growing back, new green fuzz covering the acid burns 
and napalm fire lines. 

We'd stopped the ships here, in New England, but almost every country 
on Earth had its own scorch marks. There were no defeated enemies 
left to make reparations, the Earth would have to renew itself or die 
trying, just as it always had.

I realized, except for him, my own recovery had been sufficiently 
underway, as well.

He began to walk, not away, just toward wherever he'd been going 
before I stopped him. I took a quick double step and caught 
up. "Skinner's dead. Scully's dead." I said. 

He shifted the bag against his side. "A lot of people are dead." He 
replied. 

"You're not," I said. I could see him tighten his lips and it made 
the side view of the groves by his mouth deepen. 

"Neither are you," he said shortly and we walked on.

"Has it always been that simple for you?" I ask as we walk, "Dead, 
not dead, I made it happen or it was out of my control? Don't you 
feel anything, Krycek?" He sighs impatiently and with a small huff, 
shifts the package again, and turns into a pitted driveway. We walk 
to a small cottage, which survived intact, behind what must have been 
a larger, grander home. The ruins of the big house are a tumble of 
brick, concrete and new vegetation. Thorny wild roses climb around 
the uppermost piles; they have a sharp sweet scent.

He puts the bag down by the door on a long, flat plank supported by a 
couple of sawhorses. I realize the table is the right height for a 
one armed man to relieve a burden, open the door, and retrieve it. I 
don't help him, just watch, as he does exactly this. Inside, he 
repeats the exercise. The table here is a scarred, but still a lovely 
antique buffet. The top half, which once held fine china and silver 
in its glass front, is missing. He pulls the door shut behind us; 
picks up the bag and goes to the small kitchen. "You want a cup of 
coffee?" He asks me and thumbs the on-button. The coffeemaker is an 
early eighty's model and the first drips hiss as they land in the 
bottom of the Pyrex pot.

The aroma of coffee masks the scent of the roses while I watch him 
put away the groceries. There is no meat, of course, there is no meat 
to had for less than a hundred dollars a pound, but there is a piece 
of filleted fish. He unwraps this right away and puts it in a bowl, 
covers it with a variety of spices and a small amount of clear oil. 
He puts the bowl in the refrigerator. It too is an old relic, a 
rather hideous green. I remember they used to call it avocado in the 
seventies.  I can hear a generator in the background and wonder where 
he gets the precious gas to run it.

I wander around the small rooms as he finishes in the kitchen. There 
isn't much in them and the furnishings are a hodge-podge of styles 
from a variety of decades. All of them would have been at home in a 
yard sale or a thrift store a few years ago. Now, their presence is 
testament to either his ingenuity as a thief or that he had a lot of 
ready cash at the end of the war.  The bedroom door is closed and I 
don't open it.

In the living room, there is no couch, but there are three chairs, 
each with a lamp on a side table. One chair is a stiff wingback, 
upholstered in a muddy brown. It would have been very elegant, once 
upon a time, in a Vermonter's law practice. The second is another 
wingback, covered in pale gold with faded green leaves. It is softer 
and has a matching hassock. A pair of old running shoes, with no 
laces, is on the floor, half hidden under the hassock's ruffle. The 
reading lamp on the end table is incongruously modern and a small 
pile of books is scattered on the tabletop. 

The last chair is, well, I think a joke of some kind. It is a lime 
green, molded plastic, low backed half-length chaise lounge. I think 
I even remember the blonde model in a 1995 Purrfection magazine 
displaying herself on a similar one, and another picture of another 
blonde going down on the first, since the arms of the thing were 
conveniently spaced for a wide spread of open thighs.  In fact, the 
chair had been used throughout that issue and at least once in every 
issue for sometime.

I hear him pouring coffee in the kitchen. The last drops of the brew 
hisses loudly as they hit the bare hotplate. I remember thinking that 
the models should have been redheads against that green. I snort 
softly to myself. I really hadn't known Scully very well at all, back 
then.

He comes out of the kitchen. Two cups and a pile of cookies are on 
the small tray he carries balanced in his hand. 

I think, Marita is dead too, and I wonder if he ever knew I slept 
with her while he must have been in agony and despair to find himself 
a cripple in a cold, cold land.

I want to ask him why he stopped wearing the prosthesis, but I don't. 

He lays the tray on the small dining room table. It only has two 
mismatched chairs. He sits down in one of them and tilts his head at 
me in invitation to join him there.  I go to the table. What had I 
asked him as we walked? I snort again and he looks at me with one 
raised eyebrow. Oh yes, I asked him if he ever felt anything. 

The coffee is exactly how I like it. His is black. The cookies are 
simple sweetened baked dough. They are irregular in shape and some 
are crisper than others. I wonder if he baked them himself. I smile. 
I don't think I'll waste a question asking Alex Krycek if he bakes 
cookies. 

"This is a comfortable place," I say. The walls of the dining room 
are lined with shelves of canned goods, boxes of nonperishable foods 
and gallons of water. A lot of them are meal-in-a-box type stuff. I 
remember the brands well; they were what I usually ate, when I 
bothered to 'cook' at all, back when I lived at Hegal Place. 

Krycek nods, "It's fine. The strange part is not being on the move 
all the time. I've been here for almost three years, never been in 
one place that long before."

"Even when you were a kid?" I ask. He blinks is surprise and seems to 
think.

"Yeah," he answers, "lived in Florida for, umm, five years, yeah five 
years," he says almost musingly, "but at three different Air Force 
Bases, one of them twice because we moved away and then back again."

"Your dad was in the military?" I ask.

"No," he answers, "My uncle, my mother's brother. In the late 
fifties, she and my dad were Soviet scientists doing fieldwork in 
East Germany. They made it out and into the West. Her brother, half-
brother, was born here is the US. He was a lot younger. Her father 
was still alive at the time. He'd gotten out soon after she was born, 
right after the 'war to end all wars'." He says this with great 
irony. "Her mother had a hard time with the regime after he left, but 
my mother was a brilliant student and they educated her anyway, at an 
institute and not at home. She was born in forty-four. Her brother, 
born in '56 to a new wife, was twelve years younger. After her father 
and second wife died in a car accident, she took him in. I was born 
in the US in nineteen seventy. He joined up when he graduated high 
school, did a tour in a few hot spots and decided to stay in." 

Krycek got up and brought the rest of the coffee to the table. It was 
lukewarm. I sipped the cup he poured for me anyway. He'd forgotten 
the milk this time. "My mom and dad worked for them." I knew 
who 'them' was without him needing to elaborate. "We moved around 
back then too. Born in the US, I learned Russian and German in Europe 
and French in Tunisia. Spanish I learned in American high schools 
after I went to live with my uncle. He was not one of them." 

I bit into a particularly crisp cookie. It crumbled into my 
hand. "Why'd you go live with him?" I asked, but I was pretty sure I 
knew the answer. The Syndicate had killed off a whole team of 
scientists, along with a diseased batch of clones at a European 
facility in eighty-one. 

Krycek would have been eleven, his uncle twenty-five and his mother 
and father still young and in their thirties. The same age he was 
now, not forty yet as I had presumed, but thirty-five.

I would have been twenty, at Oxford, pissed at my dad and thankful to 
be far away from my mom, who blew hot and cold, possessive and 
distant since I'd reached adolescence. I would have been in the midst 
of young love and its all-consuming anxieties with Phoebe. 

Krycek looks at me knowingly, but obliges me with an explanation 
anyway. "I went with them to a post in West Germany. I was in the 
local boarding school, you know? The kind they have in Europe where 
the kids go home on weekends and holidays, or sometimes just for 
dinner. It was that nearby. One afternoon she came to the school 
unexpectedly. She was worried, scared, and made me pack my favorite 
things in a hurry. She had another case already in the car. She took 
me to a private airfield. She was shot in the head as she was leading 
me to the plane. I was putting up a fight. I wanted to know what was 
happening. It slowed her down." 

They left her in the dirt and grabbed me, shoving me up the steps of 
the loading ladder. I flew to the US on the same plane as her 
assassin. When I got back to the states, my uncle was waiting. He'd 
only heard that the lab my parents worked in had been the target of a 
terrorist bombing. The man who killed my mother didn't have to warn 
me not to tell him anything different." Krycek rubbed his forehead 
and took a sip of coffee. 

"When I finally opened the second suitcase, it was also full of my 
stuff. I realized she never intended to leave or knew she was not 
going to get to come with me." 

He got up and brought back a small cardboard and felt picture album. 
Inside were pictures of turn-of-the-century Russians, a lost looking 
woman with her arm around a thin teenage girl circa the 1960's, 
university graduation pictures of the same thin girl, a few years 
older, and a very handsome, laughing young man. 

There were two baby shots of a fair chubby boy with curly hair and 
freckles. They were the first of the color pictures. The baby had 
large green eyes. One picture was the baby, just able to stand, on a 
couch next to the young woman. She was smiling. The other was the 
baby on the same couch being bounced on the laughing young man's 
knee. There were a few others, the baby, now a toddler, then on a 
trike and again, front tooth missing, by a crouching, serious seeming 
teenager. A couple of grade school pictures of the boy ended the 
collection. 

Folded under the felt flap were university degree certificates and 
one American birth certificate, a few yellowing Pravda articles and, 
in a small velvet bag, two plain gold wedding rings, one for a 
slender woman's finger and one for a larger man's hand. 

The cookie crumbs on the table looked like golden-brown ashes. What 
was it that I had asked him on the walk to his house? Oh yes, I 
remember, I asked him if he ever felt anything.

I put everything in the small book and closed it. He got up and put 
it back in the drawer of the end table by the pale yellow chair. 

"William Mulder shot my mother," he said from the distance, half a 
room and a lifetime away. Krycek was in the shadow of the sunlight 
that streamed from the window by the chair. In this light, the green 
leaves on the upholstery looked black.

I dug deep and kept my voice steady, "An eye for an eye?" I asked my 
father's murderer.

He turned to face me and the bones in his face gleamed starkly white 
in the sunlight. "He said, 'it's your turn, boy'. And it was, Mulder, 
my turn, and I took it."

I carefully brushed all traces of the cookie crumbs from my fingers 
and stood up. I asked him, "Did you bake the cookies yourself?" 

"Yeah," he answered his face once more in shadow.

"They were good," I said, "sweet."

He didn't call me back as I left.

End  Over and Done

(2) One Step Forward  Two Steps Back

The sharp sweet smell of the roses made my throat ache as I walked 
back up the rutted driveway to the street. There was a lilac bush by 
the stone fence as I got to the end of the lane, I paused and leaned 
on the fence. It was in full bloom and the lavender-blue clusters 
gave off a heady scent of their own. 

My grandmother sent Samantha a large bottle of lavender cologne for 
her eighth birthday. Samantha sprayed the stuff everywhere, including 
my baseball shoes and jersey. I'd been furious, but she'd been 
unrepentant. She'd thought she was doing a good thing because my 
stuff was stinky. She'd pinched her nose, miming a bad smell, and 
giggled. I'd gone to practice in that jersey and hoped for rain. My 
mother had made me wash them when, still complaining, I got home. I 
left them in the dryer too long. The rubber shoes melted and the 
jersey shrunk. 

My mom gave the jersey to Samantha after that. I was still mad at 
them both about it when Samantha disappeared. 

I studied psychology to find the answers for my continuing sadness 
and guilt over Samantha's loss and my family's disintegration. Even 
at twenty, I had known, intellectually, that I was not responsible 
for what had happened. I knew I'd been a kid and things happen to 
kids that they cannot possibly control. My mistake was thinking that 
adults could control everything. 

When that myth had been destroyed, I went into law enforcement. I 
thought I could compel someone, somehow, to take responsibility for 
their actions. That conceit was soon ameliorated in the deals that 
were made and justice denied for all sorts of reasons, including 
career enhancement or actual subversion.  

At that point, I became interested in what was behind the crimes. I 
found my real place in the murky, less-defined arena of insanity, 
crimes of passion or mistaken recompense for pain or past suffering. 
The miasma of the mind and its ways of acting out or coping by 
committing crimes was fascinating and my successes as a profiler, 
undeniable. 

The lure of the paranormal, seemingly present too many times not to 
have some small possible validity came next. The FBI and the law 
enforcement community were not amused when I began to insist these 
elements were present in otherwise defined criminal activity. I used 
the cache my success had gifted me with, and a few connections in 
academia and the political arena to get the X Files assigned to me.  
The 'new age' influence went a long way, as well. 

The evidence that a conspiracy existed and possibly had proof of 
alien visitations came last and with it, the faint ache in my heart 
over Samantha's loss began to burn brightly again. It's hard for me 
to think, now, how long I really suspected my parents were part of 
it. Certainly, my father's ill-defined role in the State Department 
was a clue I ignored for a long time. I was an employee of a similar 
governmental institution and I knew his 'job' had been like nothing 
I'd ever heard of, or witnessed. 

Our estrangement didn't help me. The few times we spoke and I asked 
questions, he either answered with more double-National Security-
speak or not answered at all. He'd said he'd taken early retirement, 
his years in the military counting up as a full career, but I once 
opened his mail, by mistake, and found a large current pay statement 
long after that date. 

I know now, of course, what he'd been and what his role had been, as 
well. Along with most of the Americans in the Syndicate, they'd held 
protected 'jobs' all their lives. These jobs gave them virtually 
unlimited access to all government concerns and immense power to 
order Special Forces when they needed visible muscle. The others had 
held similar positions in their own countries of origin. Moreover, no 
one ever simply retired. I had inherited a hell of a lot of dirty 
money, gold and other negotiable materials after my mother's death, 
in ninety-seven, at the beginning of the war. 

It had served the Resistance well, and that money had gone a long way 
to making sure I was accepted. My previous work and attempts at 
revealing the truth were less important once the actual invasion 
began. The guerilla fighters, including Krycek who'd been one of the 
bad guys, cared little for who had known what or suspected what in 
the 'Before'. The 'Now' was all-important and you put up and shut up 
and got a weapon or did Intel and busted ass. 

Scully had been horrified. She'd wanted us recognized, I think, and 
lauded for being right. It never happened. 

Skinner was less surprised and knew this is what happens in war. God, 
he'd been tough. He'd gone with Krycek and a force of former Viet Nam 
Vets, Gulf Vets, a few former prison inmates and various other 
brigands on an early raid and destroyed four downed, but not out, 
ships. It wasn't until I saw them returning that I realized almost 
all of them were gimps of one sort or another. 

Later, over whiskey and an increasingly rare cigar, he and the men 
had laughed at my observation. Skinner had qualified, they joked, 
because he was bald and that was a real handicap. Their missing 
pieces hardly compared. Krycek, who'd been on the fringe of the group 
with a few other of the younger men, had not laughed. 

Later, Krycek and a slender, sort of fey, but fierce young fighter, 
left the company and went out into the night. It was the first time I 
realized he was gay or bi or simply expedient. The other young man 
was missing his right arm.  Skinner met my eyes and held them 
steadily for a long time. My impulse to go find Krycek and continue 
our private war, however, continued to simmer. 

I remember wondering about Krycek and that young man. I wanted to 
know what they were doing. Did they fuck? Did they talk to each 
other? Did they bare their wounds and their souls? The sum total of 
what I knew about homosexual sex whizzed through my brain, but I 
couldn't imagine Krycek sucking cock or being fucked by another man. 
If he did, it changed our private war in ways I didn't want to think 
about. 

I gulped two whiskeys down way too fast and felt sick.

Skinner told me to get up. It snapped me out of my half drunk 
half-
sick misery and I followed him into the canteen. I was surprised that 
he was angry. "Don't you dare," he started and stopped, rubbed at a 
burn on his cheek and scowled at me. 

I got pissed. He wasn't my boss anymore and I wasn't a Private to his 
Sergeant. "Don't tell me what to think!" I yelled at him. 

He grabbed my shirtfront and pushed me up against a cabinet. It was 
no contest. I was woozy and he was stronger and it was too ingrained 
in me that he was AD Skinner. I didn't hit him and calmed down. 

He let go and stepped back. "Listen to me, Mulder. Whatever the 
bastard did, or was, can matter again later, if there is a 'Later'." 
He said it like people were saying Before and Now. Like they 
whispered After. "There are only two sides now. Them and Us. Do you 
understand?" I nodded sullenly. "You will not ignore this for the 
sake of your personal grievances or anything else." 

I glared at him. "My father was murdered. He murdered my father!" I 
said it imperatively. 

"Thorne committed perjury in a bank scandal. Bellamy killed his wife. 
Parker raped a fourteen-year-old girl. Simmons was a Priest and 
Johnson was an English teacher. Giorgio was part of the Mafia and 
Jones was a dentist. You and I were Federal Agents. We all 'were' 
something. Now we 'are' part of this unit. Later, when law and order 
are restored, the survivors will decide how to deal with criminals. 
Now, we keep watch and keep little girls away from Parker if the need 
arises. If and when someone commits a 'crime' as part of this unit, 
we will probably kill him. There are no brigs in this war, no Geneva 
Convention, no trials and no juries and, Mulder, no one appointed you 
judge over Krycek or anyone else. Today he fought as we all fought. 
Could've died like any one of us and be just as dead as Morse and 
Henley. So you take your anger and your righteousness and use them 
against the Enemy."

I slumped against the cabinet. He was so wrong and so right. I hated 
him, Krycek, and myself. I nodded and he nodded back. I went to my 
cot in the Communications tent. 

Two things came of that evening. I insisted on being with the unit on 
raids and on the front line and I began to watch Krycek for more than 
a possible double-cross. We seldom spoke, Krycek and I, but I watched 
him closely and he knew it. 

Sometimes, on nights when the unit fought a bloody battle and took 
casualties, one or another of the younger men would sit beside him 
and eventually get impatient. He would meet my eyes. Most of the time 
the other man would wander off, but once in a while, Krycek would go 
too. In those moments before he came to a decision, I could see 
despair tauten his features and make the bones in his face sharpen. 

I would go to bed sick with a queasy, victorious feeling if he 
stayed. If he left, I couldn't sleep at all and paced the length of 
the tent until dawn. There were no women in our unit or in any of the 
small units manned with former mental patients or criminals. In our 
way, we tried to preserve some small measure of civilized norms. 

We came across women willing to sleep with anyone for clean water, 
rations or medicines. Sometimes camp followers attached themselves to 
our unit for a few days or a week or two, until we got too close to 
the front or they found a better-supplied contingent. 

Krycek never seemed to sleep with any of them, although they all came 
on to him. A fewer number came on to me, but I didn't go with them 
into their makeshift dwellings either. 

On a temporary reprieve at Central Command, after we'd suffered a 
large number of causalities and need to rearm, recruit and replenish 
our supplies, I bunked with Scully and we became intimate. She'd 
evolved into an even stronger, more committed woman than before. 
Action seemed to suit her. By the time I saw her again, almost seven 
months later, she'd found a steady companion and I slept in my 
sleeping bag with the rest of the troops. 

Those three weeks were the only time Krycek and I shared close 
quarters during the entire war, and although there were hundreds of 
troops in those tents, I bunked next to him and he never ventured 
off. 

Less than a month after that bivouac, Central Command was hit and 
Scully died. Krycek and I were on different teams that week and he 
returned to the unit, with his men, several days later. I never told 
him about Scully and never knew if he'd been informed of her death. 
All I did know was that for remainder of the time we spent on the 
front lines, he never went off with anyone again. 

In ninety-nine, he told me, just after he returned from a Recon 
mission, that Marita was dead. It was the only time in the entire war 
he got drunk. He threw his prosthesis into the campfire, but a quick-
witted soldier fished it out before it burned.

Skinner made it to one of the final battles and died in an acid 
barrage. His bones, indistinguishable from all the others, were 
buried in a mass grave near Lake Placid. It's a memorial now, the 
names of the dead etched on red-veined white marble.

For almost three years, Krycek and I fought as part of the same unit. 
We ate the same food, shared the same latrines and the smells of 
death, heard the same screams, sweated, and froze as the seasons 
changed and changed again. We never made peace and never declared a 
personal truce. Nevertheless, as long as I knew he was alive, I hoped 
for a Future when I could have my vengeance and make him pay for what 
he'd done in the Before. 

As the afternoon became dusk, I remained stopped by the lilac bush. 
Night-blooming jasmine seeped into the scented sweetness of the 
coming evening. It was dangerous to walk about at night, but I 
lingered anyway. I saw a small light come on, back down the lane, 
inside his cottage. I imagined I could smell cooking fish and pungent 
herbs, could see him bring a plate to the table and slowly eat his 
dinner. 

There was no one left. The Syndicate was gone, Skinner, Scully, my 
parents and friends. The Gunmen had survived and were rebuilding 
Silicon Valley. Mail was infrequent, but Byers had married, Frohike 
had a hot prospect in the wings, and Langly lived in a commune. I was 
a professor in the Modern History department at Harvard. My students 
were much more interested in my early research and cases into the 
paranormal than the recent history that shaped the world community 
and their lives. I was constantly being taken to task for filling 
their heads with nonsense.

Finally, I allowed myself to answer the question for Krycek and for 
me. "Yes", I said aloud to the night, to the stars that were clear in 
the sky once more, "yes, Krycek, you felt something, maybe too much 
and you couldn't bear it, didn't bear it any better than I did."

I made my way carefully through the night to the train station, by 
noon I was back in Boston at my desk.

END One Step Forward  Two Steps Back

(3) Past is Prologue

On October 13th, two-thousand-five, my forty-fourth birthday, I went 
to the finest restaurant in Boston and ordered a steak. It'd been so 
long since I eaten meat that I felt overfull and the blood seemed to 
rush to head and stay there. 

I watched the satellite feed on the large screen at the bar in the 
restaurant.  Few of us owned electronics anymore, electricity was 
still iffy, and batteries were precious and expensive. Most of the 
Earth's satellite systems had been destroyed and while the dregs of a 
new program was forming; as yet no successful launch of new ones had 
taken place.  Public places and the very wealthy were the only ones 
to be able to receive broadcasts.

As a testament to human spirit, theater, concerts and performances of 
all sorts, happened everywhere and at all hours of the day and at 
night in the safer districts. Soapbox orators and other assorted 
crazies made their presence known too. 

I left the restaurant and watched a young violinist play in the 
square. His left hand, as it fingered the notes, was so dexterous 
tears came to my eyes. 

I'd thought and I'd hoped the odd encounter with Krycek, last summer, 
was the end of my obsession. True, I'd reread files and transcripts 
from the thousands of Syndicate documents. True, I'd looked up and 
listened to endless war-stories from surviving members of our units. 
Also true that I'd found the other one-armed man. 

We'd met in an outdoor cafeteria off Malcolm Street in Cambridge. He 
worked in a food distribution center and the only time he had to 
spare was lunch hour. We talked about the war and laughed about how 
Skinner kept harassing all of us about foot rot and the need for 
clean socks. When he'd finished his frugal meal, the man looked at me 
wisely and rubbed the part of his arm where the stump ended. "You 
wanna talk about Alex now?" He asked me boldly and with no small 
amount of scorn in his voice. 

I flinched at his tone and my transparency. "Yes," I answered 
gruffly. 

He relented, marginally, and looked around at the ruined buildings, 
which lined the square. I looked at him. He was heavier than during 
the war, his hair mostly gray instead of light brown, and like 
Krycek, his face was set in deep groves around his mouth. "It hurts 
all the time, you know?" He began to speak softly. I leaned in to 
hear him. "The arm," he elucidated. "I had state of the art surgery 
and it hurts. Alex was butchered. It drove him crazy sometimes, 
especially after a long stretch without the ability to remove the 
prosthetic or when he had been crawling on his belly and dragging it 
along. I used to watch you watching him. I always wondered if you 
hated him or loved him, certainly you were obsessed with him. He 
never said anything about you, but he was always so aware of you, 
attuned in some special way." He laughed to himself. "I was hot back 
then, you know? Arm or no arm, war or no war. Alex, well, he was 
hotter. Every queer-boy and a lot straight guys came on to him. You 
probably won't understand this or more likely, pretend you don't, but 
Alex was beautiful. I always wondered what he would've looked like 
dressed GQ style. I spent a lot of time imagining getting him out of 
a tux." 

He smiled ruefully and stopped talking. "Please go on," I said. 

He looked away, "His first choice wasn't guys, but the pain, you 
know? Not just his arm, all of it, the blood, filth, and the screams. 
Sometimes he just needed to be touched so bad, so bad, and I was 
willing to do anything, be anything he wanted, just to be the one 
with him. He was kind. I know that'll sound strange to you, but he 
was kind. We'd sit afterward, I'd lean against his chest and pretend 
his good arm was my own and I could wrap myself in them again, 
scratch my chest and head at the same goddamned time. He would let me 
use him like that, you see? But Alex, he never pretended anything, 
and quickly, too soon, he get just as crazy being touched as he'd 
been needing it so badly before. After some chick he knew died, he 
never went walk-about again. He shut down and stopped needing 
anyone." 

He ran his hand down the material of his pant's leg, wiping the sweat 
off. "He still watched you all the time. About a year after it was 
over, I got a delivery. It was a huge box of chocolates and a pair of 
silk pajamas." He laughed a little, near tears, "There was a note 
that said he hoped I would find a real lover, one who'd appreciate 
me. But he was, you know? A real lover. 'Cause I loved him." The man 
stood up and drew a packet from his coat pocket. "He wrote that if 
you ever came looking for me, it would mean he was dead or if I heard 
he was dead, I should give you this." He stuffed the packet in my 
hands. "Fuck you!" He said angrily as he began to walk away. Then, he 
stopped and faced me. "What were you to him anyway? That no matter 
what, the pain, the blood, the impossible loneliness, you never had a 
kind word, never smiled. How the fuck much would that have cost you?" 
He glared at me and I had no answer. He stalked off.

The packet contained documents I'd seen before. Copies of DNA 
records, William Mulder's signature on many test and death orders and 
a list of abducted who had been confirmed dead in eighty-three, 
Samantha's name among them. The only item I'd never seen before, was 
a picture of Sam and my mother, in seventy-nine, on a garden bench. 
Sam looked weak and thin, but she and my mom were smiling.  Taped to 
the back of the picture was a note from Krycek, it read: Found this 
in Tunisia/02. Was in Strughold's office. Thought you'd want to know, 
AK.

I watched the violinist play seemingly impossible numbers of notes, 
very fast. 

The war had lasted from late '96 to nearly the end of 2000. I saw 
Krycek at a meeting a few months later and not again until last 
summer, a period of almost four years. He'd sent this to his friend 
in November of 2002. Like his mother, so many years before, he'd 
expected to die before he saw me again. I didn't find it at all 
ironic for him to know me so well or trust his friend so much that he 
was sure I would see it eventually. 

I remember my mother telling me at a concert, a year after Sam was 
gone, that when a soloist played a rapid number of notes in a 
brilliant flurry, it was called pyrotechnics because the audience 
could imagine the instrument bursting into flames.

I thought again how my mother had known all along. The rich dinner 
burned in my stomach and I reached an alley just in time to lose it. 
I retched unceasingly, until weakly; I came back to my surroundings 
to find myself on my knees in the muck. 

For the first time I was entirely hollowed out. There was no more for 
me to discover about the depths betrayal can reach, no more grief to 
spend on the hope that I'd held so long. The hope that my mother had 
been spared my father's infamy, Samantha's fate and had been unable 
to tell me the truths I'd spent my life searching for. She'd known 
all along. 

After all my animosity and vengeful punishment to Alex Krycek, how he 
must have known I begrudged him any human comfort or companionship, 
even fucked the woman with whom he'd been involved, when I couldn't 
punish him directly. And still, in the end, he'd wanted me to know 
the real truth so I could find a lasting peace.

What 'was' Alex Krycek to me? What is he still? 

I walk back to my apartment. The sweet clusters of musical notes 
gently fade the farther I go. The night smells of the ruined city are 
complex and varied. Here  decay, there  fresh sawed lumber,
but 
nowhere do I get a hint of roses, lilacs or jasmine. 

END  Past is Prologue

(4) For Every Season

The snow was white and piled high. It covered the small town of 
Carlisle and made the narrow lane to his house hard to find. How well 
could a one armed man shovel snow anyway? And why bother when he had 
supplies enough to last to first thaw. 

I tramped up his driveway hoping I wouldn't break a leg in some rut 
or trip over some random brick. The very tops of the naked rose vines 
stuck out of the big mound of snow-covered ruins. Against the snow, 
the shadows of their plentiful thorns loomed larger than life.

I had a pack full of perishables on my back. They would keep in the 
snow if he had no power, but I was sure he wouldn't want to freeze 
the beer no matter what.  

The door opened before I made it to the first, freshly shoveled, 
step. "I stopped believing in Santa a long time ago, Mulder," was how 
he greeted me.

"Get real, Krycek," I answered. "I'm Jewish and it's February."

"There's coffee," he said.

"There's beer," I replied.

"If there's a steak in there, you're Hanukkah Harry for sure," he 
said, reaching for my back as I knelt to remove my boots. 

"The last steak I ate made me sick. There's fresh fruit, today's 
bread and chocolate," I enumerated, as he dug each item out. He held 
the six-pack to the light as if savoring the taste by just looking at 
it. When he found the pretzels and peanuts, he began to grin. 

"Fuck, Mulder," he said in mock disappointment, "there's no game on 
TV today."

I shrugged out of my coat and hung it on the peg. "Today's lineup, 
playing center field for the Yankees..." He laughed and signaled me
to 
keep going. I did, I knew every play by heart. I was hot and heavy 
into the bottom of the third inning by the time he had veggie burgers 
frying and was dubiously trying to read the expiration date on some 
old packets of fastfood relish, mustard and ketchup. 

"Those never expire," I broke into my reiteration of the game to tell 
him. "By definition, anything in packages from take-out restaurants 
last a minimum of a thousand years. The roaches know this and collect 
them in vast underground warehouses."

"Okay," he said and with a totally deadpan expression, dumped a huge 
bag full of everything from soy sauce to motel-sized freebies of hair 
conditioner on the table. Some of these products had been 
old 'before' the war. It was like Christmas as I happily sorted 
through the pile of stuff: shampoo, hand lotion, perfumes and 
colognes, mouthwash, ketchup, mustard, duck sauce, 
tampons, "Tampons?" I questioned and he shrugged. I grabbed some 
bowls from the shelf and tossed edible products into one of them and 
personal care stuff into another. 

"God, you're so easily amused, Mulder," he said and returned to the 
burgers, they almost smelled like meat. 

There were little packets of nails, screws and curtain hooks. I began 
to understand that this wasn't just some kind of weird survivalist's 
bounty, but that he must have collected them all along. Had he 
planned a crime that depended on having a supply of day-glow orange 
fish tank rocks handy? Had the secret to alien resistance been in 
tube of cheddar-flavored processed spread all along? 

He startled me by reaching, over my shoulder, for the 
tube. "Cheeseburgers!" He said happily. 

"Not on your life!" I yelled and grabbed for the tube. He danced away 
holding the tube to his mouth and attempting to twist off the cap 
with his teeth. 

I managed to get hold of it just as the cap came off and it spurted 
in a slimy, chunky, truly repugnant smelling mess down the front of 
his shirt. 

We both stared at the bright yellow goop in stunned amazement. 

He recovered first, swiped his hand across the lumpy spillage, and 
collected it in his fingers.  He stared at his hand and began to 
smile again, evilly. I backed away. He advanced. I backed away some 
more. "It's cold out there, Mulder," he intoned. "Very cold and you 
have no shoes on." 

"The food is burning," I tried as an opening gambit.

"Fuck the food," he said and raised his hand.

"I brought the beer!" I implored.

He wiped a line of the stuff across my forehead. I gagged, piteously. 
He was unmoved.

"I brought chocolates!" He paused, considering, and then wiped 
another line down my right cheek.

"I brought condoms that haven't reached their expiration date," this 
was my final plea.

"What for?" He asked softly and painted my other cheek.

I thought fast, but he was smearing the stuff on my nose and it 
tickled. Stank too. It distracted me. His mouth was damp and slightly 
open and he was breathing rather heavily. That distracted me 
more. "So you could show me?" I said stupidly.

"Show you what, Mulder?" He breathed. I dropped the tube I didn't 
know I was still holding. 

"You." I said even more dumbly.

"You want me to demonstrate how to use a rubber?" He laughed very low 
in his throat. "You haven't learned how to do that yet?"

"No. Yes. Krycek!" It was all I could manage to say.

Very calmly, he rubbed the goop on my neck, wiped the remainder off 
his fingers onto my shirt and stepped back. "My name is Alex and the 
burgers are done." He went into the kitchen and left me standing 
there stunned, aroused and painfully bereft. And smelling vile, as 
well.

I took off my shirt and scrubbed my face and neck with it. I went to 
the kitchen door to ask where the john was and he was standing there 
with his back towards me. He'd taken off the long sleeved thermal and 
was washing it in the sink. A broad expanse of bare, pale skin, 
stretched over powerful shoulders and tapering to a compact waistline 
filled my eyes. I'd never found a man's back sexy before. I'd admired 
good physiques on athletes and actors, but I'd never wanted to touch 
them. 

"Alex," I said, lost in discovery.

He shut the water off and turned to face me. He leaned arrogantly 
against the cabinet. He waited. 

"This isn't a game," I said more to myself than to him. "I'm not 
playing a game," I said a little louder. 

He waited.

"How could I know?" I asked him. It was a stab in the dark, but I was 
sure he understood. 

I gathered myself together. "Where's the john?" I asked.

"Through the bedroom," he answered and led the way.

He opened the bedroom door and turned on the light, walked to another 
door and opened it. He tossed his damp shirt over the shower curtain 
rod and stepped out. I went in and washed my face and neck, 
halfheartedly scrubbed at my shirt and flung it next to his. 

Dinner was on the table. The beers were in a tarnished silver ice 
bucket, filled with snow. We ate companionably and had two beers 
apiece. I cleared the table and while he washed the few dishes and 
the frying pan, I got the package of condoms and the new tube of KY 
from my pack and laid them on the bare table. 

He came out of the kitchen and saw the display. He nodded, raised an 
eyebrow questioningly and sat at the table. "What do you want, 
Mulder?" He asked, handed me a third beer and took the last one for 
himself. 

The beers had given me a pleasant buzz, it'd been a long time since 
the last time I'd had any, but I wasn't in the least drunk. Neither 
was he. "I think you've asked me that question a thousand times," I 
said.

"Maybe not a thousand," he answered seriously.

"I've wanted a lot of things from you. I wanted you to be a 
supportive fellow agent, someone young and strong and on my side. I 
wanted to kill you for what you did to Scully. I wanted to know why 
you did it. I wanted to torture you and kill you for the murder of my 
father and for being a traitor. I was sure you were evil. I wanted 
you to suffer, Alex. I wanted you to suffer a thousand deaths and rot 
in hell each time." He did not look away and I remembered he hadn't 
looked away in the firelight of a hundred campfires no matter what 
he'd suffered in action, or how hungry he was or how tired. 

"I wanted to hurt you. I wanted to know how you dared to find solace 
by fucking men. I wanted you to be alone and ostracized and spat on." 
The words came faster and faster, spewing out ten years of hate, 
anger and denial. He did not flinch and he did not look away.

"I wanted, no, I needed you to be a coward, a liar and beneath 
contempt by all. I wanted to hate you for having a soft mouth and big 
eyes that dared to show pain. I needed to hate you for the feelings I 
had when I watched you walk, when I saw you swallow, when I watched 
you sleep." I broke off just as my voice broke. 

We sat in silence. I finished my beer to ease my sore throat.

He turned off the light and the house settled into evening. I thought 
I could smell the very faint scent of roses, as if it came from the 
cottage walls themselves.

"When you fuck a man, Mulder," he began quietly.

I made a move, to stop him, in discomfort, or fear. I didn't know 
which.

"Shut up," he said, although I hadn't made a sound.

He talked it out, explaining about preparation and penetration. He 
explained positions and reciprocity. His voice was amber honey, but 
it was passionless and cool. He finished his lecture and drank the 
remains of his beer. "We're not going to do it, Mulder," he 
said. "We're not going to fuck, you are not going to fuck me and I'm 
not going to fuck you. Not tonight and not anytime soon, maybe not 
ever." He got up and collected the bottles, took the ice bucket and 
dumped the melted water in the sink. He returned, locked the door and 
stood behind my chair. 

"Sshhh," he said, although I hadn't made a sound. 

He touched my hair, smoothing it back from my forehead and stroked 
his fingers down the back of my neck. I shivered. "Sshhh," he 
whispered. He caressed my face and neck, pulled off my undershirt and 
massaged my shoulders, one at a time. He stroked my chest, ran his 
fingers through the hair on there, and rubbed my stomach, soothingly. 
I missed his hand when he pulled off his own undershirt, but the 
warmth of his belly against my shoulders more than made up for the 
brief absence. He ran his hand down my arm and took my hand, tugging 
it gently and I stood and went with him into his bedroom. 

He drew the quilt back and removed his shoes, socks, pants and 
underwear. He was only half-hard and breathing easily. His body was 
smooth, firm, and powerful. I tugged off my socks, pants and 
underwear. He smiled, pleased, and got on the bed. He motioned for me 
to follow, but when I headed for the opposite side, he shook his 
head. I crawled over his leg and sat in front of him, my back against 
his chest. 

He did everything over again: my hair and face, neck and shoulders. 
He fondled my stomach and smoothed his hand down my arm. He took my 
hand and put it on my erection. Keeping his hand over mine, he began 
to move it. I jerked hard into my hand and against his chest. He 
moaned softly and I felt him harden next to my butt. He kept the pace 
slow and I panted, but let him lead. He was teaching me something 
important. Whether it was about him, or me I didn't know, just that 
it was important. 

I reached the edge too fast. He squeezed my hand hard and I panted, 
but did not come. He took my hand and we caressed my balls. My 
fingers, his fingers, it was bliss and oh, so intimate. "Keep 
touching," he whispered. He adjusted himself against my lower back. I 
felt him stroke himself and my mouth watered as if I was about to 
take a bite of a ripe fruit. He pulled me closer, he was very hot and 
hard, and the head of his erection was damp against my back. 

The scent of his skin and mine, of sex and roses made me dizzy. He 
brought his hand back to mine and to my penis. This time we stroked 
to get there. He undulated against my back. We panted in unison. I 
started to come and he came first, hot against my back. He cupped my 
chin with his hand sticky from me and, as I hit that perfect moment, 
and I came hard, he turned my chin and kissed me. 

I opened my mouth and moaned into his. He kissed me wildly, gently, 
and fiercely. He kissed me, moaned, kissed me, and whispered wet, 
slurred words into my mouth. He kissed me, I was lying on the bed, he 
was on top of me, and still he kissed me. He kissed me until I 
stopped panting and he kissed me until I wrapped my arms around him 
and turned us over and I was kissing him. 

Finally, he laughed and I pulled up and looked down at him. 

He was entirely beautiful. His face flushed, his eyes lazy, his chest 
moving quickly as he took rapid breaths and chuckled. I smoothed my 
fingers across his eyelids, his cheeks and dipped into his red, red 
mouth. I kissed his neck and rested my face in the ruin of his 
shoulder. He shuddered. "Hush," I whispered into neck. 

I sat on my knees, between his legs and feasted my eyes. I touched 
him everywhere: the soft hair of his armpits and the curly hair on 
his groin. I licked his flat nipples and didn't find any lack by 
comparison. I cupped his sex in both hands. I touched him gently as 
if I were a child with a butterfly on my palm. He hardened and I 
encouraged him. I ran my thumbs more strongly up and down his penis 
and he began to burn, to fill and flush a deeper hue of 
red. "Mulder!" He exclaimed, but softly.

"Hush," I said again.

I was learning something and it was for both of us.

I bent to lick him, "No," he said, but I understood it wasn't to stop 
me for himself, but to protect me, to allow me to pretend this wasn't 
real when tomorrow dawned.

"Shut up," I growled, and he shivered and his cock was hot in my 
hands. It was hotter under my tongue and scorching in my mouth. I 
dared more. I cupped his sac and found the stretch of smooth tight 
skin beneath. He cried out and I tasted his fluid in my mouth. I 
didn't stop and he thrashed about, raising his knees and I fingered 
his small opening. 

"Oh, God! Mulder!" he cried, "Don't hurt me." And, I was lost, burned 
to ash, vaporized. I sucked harder and he came in my mouth, into me, 
and fucking Christ, I finally understood. 

END  For Every Season

(5) When the War Is Over

We had the remains of yesterday's bread, dipped in egg and fried for 
breakfast. He was up and dressed long before I awoke. The steps were 
freshly shoveled and the house warm. 

"How long are you staying?" He asked me.

"The school is shut down until better weather," I replied. Energy was 
too precious to use in old drafty buildings like the few that 
remained on the Harvard campus. He went into the bedroom and began to 
change the bed linens. I helped and asked quietly, "May I stay?" He 
didn't reply immediately.

He brought out another set of sheets from a small cubbyhole closet; 
they smelled of lilacs and roses. "This whole place smells like 
flowers," I said hurriedly. 

He smiled and tucked in the bottom sheet. They were very old 
fashioned without an elastic edge. "These are original to the house," 
he said, "and the cottage is over 100 years old. There are sashes 
tucked and hidden everywhere. At first, I threw out the ones I found. 
After a while, I realized they suited the place. If it continues to 
survive, I won't be the final occupant. I found these sheets too and 
on the bottom shelf, dozens of little bags for more petals. All the 
supplies were there; threads, needles, rose-oil and bits of lace and 
velvet bows. Everything but the petals." He smoothed the sheet, "I 
can't sew, of course," he fluttered his one hand, "and I doubt it 
would've ever been my kind of thing, but I like to think the next 
tenant will someday." We shook out the quilt and laid it on the 
bed. "Yes, you may stay, Mulder. I'd never thought this could happen, 
you and me, at the end of the war."

He sat on the freshly made bed. I sat beside him. "You were surprised 
last night," he said. I nodded. "I think, you thought that sex with 
me or maybe with another man had to be less that this was.  Perhaps 
something more aggressive or less intimate? You're right, of course.  
Sex with anyone can be intimate or not, emotionally, I mean." I 
nodded again. "But Mulder, we have a long history between us. We've 
been intimate all along."

My throat hurt again. 

"It was just combative. Now, it's become something that I truly hope 
isn't combative at all. There is no need to define it. I don't 
particular feel an overwhelming need to do that. If you stay, we'll 
take it as it comes. Just know Mulder, you can still hurt me. Maybe I 
could still hurt you too. I would like very much for us not to, not 
any more."

He got up and left the room. I thought about what he'd said. I could 
stay, I would stay, and we would take it as it came. I got to my feet 
and from under the corner of the sheet I had so poorly tucked in, I 
saw a little, plump bag fall to the floor. I picked it up and walked 
to the cubbyhole closet to return it, but thought better of it and 
tucked it back under the edge of the bed between the mattress and the 
box springs. I would know where this one was hidden and it would be 
my talisman. 

We spent the day rather quietly; I looked through his books and was 
delighted to find he had an old IBM Selectric typewriter, round font-
ball intact. He had a journal, of sorts, and a large expanding folder 
beneath it. He made a self-deprecating shrug when I held it up, but 
he said I could read it. 

I was absolutely fascinated. I mean, how much did I really know about 
Alex Krycek anyway? None of the pages were bound. He had handwritten 
dates on them at some point. Since the war, I thought. Many pages 
were computer-generated printouts and some were written by hand. 
There were magazine articles, newspaper clips and other small flat 
mementos in between the pages. 

He'd run track in high school, a couple of letters, never sewn onto a 
sweater, fell out of a stack when I picked them up. His high school 
and undergraduate transcripts were there. He was a good student, only 
an occasional 'C'. There were no yearbooks from any of the schools 
he'd attended.

He had a Master's Degree in Political Science and I saved his thesis 
to read later, more interested in his personal notes. I was amused 
and a little sad to see he addressed himself as Hey JA, when he wrote 
actual journal entries. JA, when I asked him, stood for Jack Ass. He 
did get a laugh when he said for every alias he'd used; he chose 
names starting with J or A.

He wrote to JA about many topics. Some of them clearly showed that 
the nerd side of the young 'agent' I'd first met was real. He'd liked 
or disliked professors and other students in completely normal 
adolescent ways, taking small slights and incidences too personally 
and way too seriously. 

He mentioned Troi and Riker as fantasy material until Riker got fat 
and ruined the delightful mnage-et-trois he'd enjoyed. His 
description of a car ride back from watching a field and track event 
with the first boy he'd succumbed to was riveting. He would have been 
nineteen and here in this long, furiously written entry, he'd 
attempted to come to terms with himself and the possible reaction of 
the only person he loved and trusted, his young and extremely 
homophobic uncle. 

His first heterosexual encounter had been, a few years earlier, in 
fact, due to the uncle's lifestyle. The man would bring home parties 
of young officers and their wives after a few drinks at the Officer's 
Club. More liquor would flow and coming home late one night from a 
friend's house, he'd found a woozy young wife in his room, in tears 
because her husband had gone off with someone else. He'd gotten the 
woman coffee and a washcloth and tried to find his uncle. The man was 
occupied in his own room, the rest of the party continuing without 
its host.

She'd seemed to sober up and calm down and they talked, in the 
intimacy of his room, for a long time. She convinced him he would be 
more comfortable talking while sitting on the bed, with her, instead 
of the distance he'd kept by sitting on the floor. Ruthlessly, he 
noted in the journal that he'd hoped for a better view of her body in 
her low cut party dress. He was fifteen and very easy to seduce. She 
was gone when he awoke in the morning and simply never acknowledged 
him again when they passed on the base. 

He'd told his uncle who'd laughed, took him to the PX, bought him a 
variety of condoms and let him hang around when his buddies came over 
and watched porn.

His journal entry made passing reference to two other experiences of 
intercourse and a few more, more age appropriate attempts at 
girlfriends and dating. Oral sex was a revelation to him and he 
enjoyed it, finding the girls willing to do that, and avoid the 
complications of full intimacy and think the date was successful.

The boy, in the car ride home, set a scene, like the wife of a few 
years earlier, that Alex hadn't resisted too strongly. The boy talked 
about how horny he was and no chance, this late of hitting up one of 
the girls in his dorm. He talked about his successes with girls and 
Alex had been thoroughly aroused. The boy parked the car, a few miles 
from campus, on a private road. They both got out taking a piss, in 
the undergrowth, and the boy kept talking. He made his move when they 
got back in the car. Convincing Alex that a hand job was desperately 
needed. Alex admits he knew the boy didn't mean jerking off by 
himself. 

He let the boy touch him and touched back. It had been brief and hot. 
His teenage angst, written so emphatically on that long ago night, 
was partly fear of disappointing his uncle and part understanding, 
that for him, an important kind of innocence was lost. 

He handed me a cup of coffee and glanced at the pages I was 
reading. "Trust you to read about the sex, Mulder." He said wryly.

I shrugged, "You had a dossier on me, no doubt, back when." I said.

"True," he replied and after a moment smiled. It was that irritating 
smirk he used to do. 

"What?" I asked, quickly trying to remember if anything particularly 
salacious could've been in that file.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk." He answered and went back to sanding the chair leg 
he had in a vice on the table. 

Thoroughly engaged and amused, I put down the journal and followed 
him to the table. Making the first overture, I touched the back of 
his neck. We hadn't touched since I'd fallen asleep the previous 
night. 

He laughed. It was a carefree laugh and one I'd never heard him make 
before. "Wouldn't you like to know?" He baited me.

"I can convince you," I murmured into his ear and his bit neck 
lightly. He laughed again, but I heard the small gasp he made. He 
leaned his head against my abdomen, "You can try." He invited.

I did to him what he had done to me the previous night. Taking off 
his shirt and batting his hand away as he reached for me, "splinters, 
Alex," I chided and he laughed.

I wanted to touch him more than I wanted to get off. I had a moment 
of disorientation when I realized I was lightheartedly fondling the 
man who'd been my adversary for so long. I must've clutched him 
somehow and he turned, rubbing his face on my stomach in a comforting 
manner. 

"They knew, Spender and the rest. They read all my stuff and had been 
watching me for a long time. There is nothing about them, written 
down, until after the war started and I was sure they were dead." I 
continued rubbing his shoulder, forgetting in his speech, the 
truncated arm and caressing it as well. "They sent people to seduce 
us both. That was in your file and mine too, when I found it. Not the 
Syndicate's official files, Mulder. Not the ones you saw. These were 
the private ones and we weren't the only young people they tracked. 
They were very thorough." He sighed in resignation. "You know, when I 
found those files, after everything I already knew about their 
corruption, I was surprised. I was still so young, I guess never saw 
them as Peeping Toms getting off on watching." He laughed bitterly 
now. I kept rubbing. 

For a brief moment, I thought how little I'd known about my father. I 
waited for the flash of anger, pain, or sorrow. There was none. The 
old adage every child flings at their parents, at one time or another 
that they hadn't asked to be born, and the truism that you can't 
chose your relatives, did run through my brain. I hadn't chosen my 
enemies either, but I could chose my friends and did chose this man 
for more than that.

"Did they want you to seduce me, Alex?" I asked him.

'No, they never indicated that. What they wanted was for me to let 
you know I was in the closet, they thought it would make you more 
sympathetic and bond over being at odds with the establishment." 

"Yeah, that makes sense. Outcasts and all that." I replied. He nodded 
against my belly.

Very quietly, he said, "I didn't have relations with anyone for ages. 
You think you lived by a 'Trust No One' maxim, shit Mulder, you have 
no idea. Marita set me straight, made me understand that whatever 
they thought or saw, it was beyond our control. Perversely, it did 
give me a sense of freedom and a fuck-them attitude."

"You had a real relationship with her then?" I asked. "Something you 
counted on and meant something to you?"

"Yeah. She got by my defenses and I think it was the same for her. We 
never talked about feelings. She was as solitary as me," he 
paused, "or you, for that matter. She wanted to know if I was 
attracted to you or Scully."

"Were you?" I had to ask.

He laughed, less bitterly and with real humor is his tone. "I was so 
paranoid, Mulder, that I didn't even jack off for weeks after I found 
out. After I was assigned to you, I saw Marita a few times and made 
sure we got into bed. I hid it well enough from her and Spender's 
notes have nothing in them to indicate I wasn't successful there 
too." 

He slid off his chair and was on his knees before I could take a 
breath and when he unzipped me, I couldn't breathe at all. "Was I 
attracted to you?" He pulled down my pants; I looked down at his head 
as he rubbed his cheek against my erection. "Yeah," he said and took 
me in his mouth. 

Forty-four. I was gonna die of a stroke at forty-four. Nothing had 
ever compared. I lost the power to stand, the power to think and I 
heard him chuckle as I collapsed. He followed me down and never let 
up. Now, he'd come for a second time last night when I did this to 
him, but the difference between that 'this' and this 'this' was a lot 
like saying a hurricane was a spring shower. 

I came with a roar. I reached down to see if I still had a dick and 
he laughed until tears ran down his face. "Oh my god," I said 
wonderingly.

"Well, duh, Mulder," he said and chuckled some more, "that's just the 
beginning."

I struggled to my feet, went in the bedroom, kicked off my pants and 
fell on the bed. It was dinnertime before he came to wake me up.

I stayed and began to join him in rebuilding and refinishing the 
furniture in his house. I noticed he never sat in the lime green 
monstrosity. I almost did once, but thought better of it. We played 
cards and chess and I learned how to caulk tile. We got radio 
reception once in a while and we listened to records on a stereo.

We didn't fuck and there was no penetration at all. I learned, inch 
by inch, what pleased him and he reciprocated. 

I finally asked him about the chair. He looked at it and shrugged, "I 
got it cheap," he said. "I couldn't manage to drag a couch and I had 
this idea that only two chairs was weird, like, what if people really 
visited, where would they sit? So, I bought it."

I looked at him and tried to discern if he was putting me on. 

"It's not comfortable at all," he said in answer to my stare.

I got up and straddled his lap. I'd never done that and I didn't do 
it now to be sexy. I wanted to get right in his face and try to know 
if he was putting me on. 

He frowned at me and tried to adjust to the weight and pressure of my 
body. Finally, he got irritated, "What?" He asked angrily.

"You," I said and poked my finger in his chest, "are putting me on!"

He was totally puzzled, thought for a second and asked, "Is this 
about the damn chair?"

"Damn chair, my ass," I said and poked him again. He tried to shove 
me off his lap.

"What about the fucking chair," he yelled in my face.

"Exactly!" I yelled triumphantly and poked him again.

He made a mighty effort and spilled me on the floor. "You are 
certifiable," he said and prodded me, hard, with his foot. "It's an 
ugly green chair. From a teenager's Saturday Night Fever fantasy or 
something. I agree," he said, "it's tasteless and all that, but what 
the fuck bothers you so much about the chair?"

He wasn't kidding. He wasn't kidding, I said it to myself a second 
time. "You 'are' a queer," I said. 

He looked startled. "Did you hit your head, Mulder?" He asked in 
genuine concern.

I began to laugh. "Alex, the chair is famous for being in a 1995 
issue of Purrfection Magazine. It was commonly called the 'Fucking 
Chair" and had women displaying themselves, with abandon, 
throughout." 

"No way," he said and eyed the chair askance.

"Way," I replied laughingly.

"You thought I bought an old pussy chair?" He asked indignantly.

"Purrfection," I gasped.

"Whatever," he said and looked more closely at the chair. When he 
began to move his hand and tilt his head as if positioning the view, 
I really lost it. I got up and grabbed his shoulders trying to get 
him to sit in the chair. We tussled. He won, and I was on the floor 
again. He kneed me in the thigh, "Listen to me, Mulder." When I 
didn't answer he kneed me a little harder. 

"What?" I asked.

"We, as in neither of us, is ever gonna use that chair. Not to sit 
in, not to 'display' in and not to fuck in. You understand?" 

"Can I blow you in it?" He nudged me hard. "Once?" I begged 
facetiously. 

"No sex in that chair," he said flatly.

He got up once more and walked around the chair, turned and addressed 
me, "If I'm a queer, what does that make you, boyfriend?" He sneered 
and left the room. 

I had to acknowledge it was a great exit line. He didn't touch me for 
two days and moved away when I reached for him. I sanded a lot of 
furniture and bided my time.

After lunch on the third day, I cleared the table and removed his 
unfinished coffee. "Hey, I wasn't done," he exclaimed. "Shut up," I 
said.

I sat opposite him and put my right arm on the table in arm wrestling 
position. "You've got to be kidding," he sneered and made to get up.

"Sit down," I said softly, but imperatively. "Add your arm, Alex."

His face closed and that blank look from yesteryear was back. He 
maneuvered his stump onto the table and put up his right arm, 
grabbing my hand. I put my left arm on the table, for leverage, and 
grasped his hand. "On three and two out of three wins," I said 
tonelessly.

He nodded, his lips flattening into a tight line.

He was strong and got me easily the first time. I eked out a victory 
on the second try. We were both sweating and I was panting for the 
third round. This is what I wanted, what I hoped for when I'd thought 
it through. All or nothing, an equal match. I'd learned a lot of 
lessons from him over the days I'd been here as his friend, lover, 
and companion, from this time of truce. But, a truce was only a 
temporary halt in a conflict, not a stopping place. 

It was time to end the war forever; we could both win or lose. It 
wasn't possible for one of us to be more than the other, or less. 
This was something I had to teach him. I had to make him see he had 
to stop protecting me from him and from myself. We each had to pull 
on through for each other and ourselves.

He'd been ashamed of his parting shot the other day. I knew at great 
cost the terrible, painful price of shame. It had to end or we would 
never be at peace.

The third round lasted a long time. I got stronger as I realized he 
wasn't going to cave in, wasn't going to give away his own hard 
fought autonomy. He'd paid too much for it too, along the way. It was 
time he knew it, for the last time.

The sweat poured off us and he was panting now. My arm was trembling 
from the strain and I saw a small trail of blood course down his chin 
from biting his lip. "Yes, yes," I whispered breathlessly, not even 
realizing I'd spoken aloud until I heard my own voice. I had him; his 
hand was two inches from the tabletop, at most. 

He groaned, hissed "bastard," and with a concentrated, teeth grinding 
push, laid my hand down.

He cried then, his face in the crook of his good arm. He cried 
silently and motionlessly. I let him, making no move or sound of 
comfort or intrusion. 

When I could stand, I went to the bathroom and washed up. I brought 
back a towel and wiped the sweat from his hair and off the back of 
his neck. I left the towel hanging there. 

I finished our evening chores, took a long shower and went to bed. I 
waited.

A long while later after his own long shower, he joined me. "Why'd 
you force the contest, Mulder?"

"It seemed to be the right thing to do," I gathered my thoughts, "the 
greatest gift you've ever given me, I'm calling it a gift because I 
can't think of another word that encompasses so much.  Was the gift 
of an equal adversary. Sure, you were on the inside and I thought you 
knew more about the secrets I wanted to uncover. Sure, you seemed to 
appear here and there, now and again, having done some kind of 
spectacular action. But, Alex, face-to-face we met and fought as 
equals, or at least I have always seen it that way.  Basically, I 
beat you up and you bled. You offered me possible chances at getting 
to them and I ended up screwed. I was unrepentant about what I did to 
you and I always thought you were the same regarding me." I turned on 
my side to watch him in the moonlight. I fancied I could smell my 
sachet. "It took me a long time; way into the war, to realize your 
continued survival meant a lot more than that. You, Alex, well; you 
were my talisman. If you could keep going even though you were a 
cripple, then, for god's sake, I could keep going under the weight of 
my anger, pain and guilt. I could keep going no matter what, if only 
to even the score with you someday."

Alex sighed heavily and rubbed his head. I took his hand and held it 
to my chest, "Once the war started, I felt confident and superior. 
Surely I would be the better fighter, the better strategist, and 
recognized for all the work I'd done in the Before. It didn't turn 
out that way. What I'd done in the Before hardly mattered and what 
really pissed me off was that what you had done in the Before didn't 
seem to matter at all. I missed the personal connection. With you to 
be able to hate and blame personally, I could keep my guilt and shame 
at a distance because you knew, you Alex, knew and were part of it. 
If we both survived I could, and would prove I was the better man, 
once and for all." I laughed sadly. "But you broke the rules I'd 
made. You fought bravely and without special consideration. You never 
overstepped your position or insinuated yourself into anyone's graces 
for favor, least of all mine. I had to face it; you were a fine 
soldier and very possibly, a man of equal standing to me." Alex shook 
his head and I squeezed his hand tightly. He winced slightly and I 
realized his hand must be bruised from our contest and held it more 
gently. 

"Yes," I said, "and Skinner was only the first to insist I 
understand. He confronted me the first time you went walkabout with 
the other one-armed young man. I was furious you know. How dare you 
be able to find companionship and solace? How dare the other guy 
trust you?  How dare you be gay? It changed everything. I thought 
about the times I beat you up and you held me off, defensively, but 
never harming me in return. I thought of you lying down for another 
man and was furiously jealous. You were mine. I owned the right to 
make you 'take' it, no one else."  I rubbed my face against his 
shoulder; he was holding himself very stiffly.

"It took me a long time to realize my jealousy was also about desire 
and the hurt was also about my need to be all important to someone, 
just once, for once, in my life. It took even longer for me to 
understand you did put me in that position. I was so important to you 
that you stopped having even the vestiges of physical comfort with 
anyone. I was so important to you that you never transferred out of 
the unit or took a promotion to stay near me. It took me a long, long 
time to understand I held so much power to hurt you. Alex," I 
whispered, "Alex, it took me the lifetimes of almost everyone I'd 
known, cared about, or depended upon to realize whatever had happened 
in the Before and everything that was happening in the Now that the 
connection between us wasn't hate or based on reciprocal vengeance. 
We needed each other to be whole. After the war and without you in my 
life, I couldn't settle. I was left incomplete."

"Mulder, Mulder," Alex turned and wrapped his arm around me. 

We slept, my best and last enemy and me, together. 

END  When the War Is Over

(6) Pull on Through - EPILOGUE 

I stayed. Eventually we got a couch, but we never got rid of the ugly 
green chair. The neighborhood grew up around us and children visited 
and played on that chair, but we never sat in it. We managed to 
purchase the large lot, including the ruins. The wild roses grew into 
an encompassing mass and became a small mountain of rich, sweet 
fragrance. The prolific thorns prevented anyone from cutting it back, 
lots of small animals and birds found safety under those vines, safe 
from human interference. 

We became lovers in all ways and friends; it seemed to me, even more. 

Eventually society rebuilt and both of us became footnotes in the 
history texts. My early work into the paranormal garnered me more 
fame and, from time to time, there was a resurgence of interest and 
reporters or students would come and talk to me about it. Alex would 
let them in, smack my back and say, "I did see Cole with a gun," and 
go make coffee.

The sachets, my talisman, never lost their faint smell and I often 
thought, blessed the house. Alex was right, we were only temporary 
occupants, and the next people would be welcomed as well. 

The End


 
Apocalypse Please
by Muse
 
Declare this an emergency
Come on and spread a sense of urgency
And pull us through
And pull us through
 
And this is the end end
This is the end
Of the World
 
And it's time we saw a miracle
Come on it's time for something biblical
To pull us through
And pull us through
 
And this is the end, the end
This is the end
Of the World
 
Proclaim eternal victory
Come on and change the course of history
And pull us through
And pull us through
 
And this is the end the end
This is the end
Of the world