c.giles@c...)
Category: K/M (mostly)
Archive: Sure
Spoilers: It's post-Existence so anything up to there is fair game.
Rating: PG - 13
Disclaimer: 1013 me baby!
Summary: "She is surprised at the sound of her own voice, at the
wretchedness of her words."
For Deslea, without whom, my dalliance with the lovely Marita would probably
have been a one night stand.
*
"He's gone."
"Gone?" She has a detached tone to her voice, an evenness that reveals
little of the speaker.
"Dead."
"Where?"
He gives her an address. No need to write it down. She turns the car around.
*
Firefighter, Veterinarian, Doctor, Astronaut, Ballerina... She remembers
children saying these words in a classroom as each child was asked what they
wanted to be when they grew up. Then there was a game of jump rope: Tinker,
tailor, beggarman thief... When you hit the rope, your profession is
revealed. Tinker, tailor, beggarman thief, traitor, informant, double agent,
whore...
This is not what she expected, but it never is.
*
"This is not what I expected."
She pours over spy satellite photographs, extracting one or two from the
pile and placing them to the side. "They're everywhere."
"Yeah."
"What are we going to do?"
He is smoking by the window. He looks pale in the sunlight. She knows he
isn't sleeping.
"I have to talk to Skinner."
"Talk?"
He grins in that way he does. Like he's enjoying himself, and she's not sure
that he is.
"Skinner can be reasoned with."
"He'd die first."
"He'd kill me first."
She turns back to the photographs. It's too much, there's too many.
And there's no way to bargain this time. No one left to bargain with.
Us against them, she thinks. Wasn't it always this way?
He throws a jacket over his shoulders and pockets his cigarettes.
"Where are you going."
He grunts. "To save the world."
She wants to say good luck, but it sounds trite in her head.
"Let me know if you need me."
*
The parking lot is empty now. It doesn't matter. She doesn't need to see the
players to know who participated.
She pulls the car up close to the body and turns off the ignition. She runs
her hands across her face briefly and stares at the windscreen for a while.
*
She thinks, there has to be an emotion for when you don't know what to feel.
Two days and Alex doesn't return. She switches into automatic and moves
their belongings to another hotel. She's been doing this for so long she
forgets what normal people do. Call the police? She laughs at the thought.
Maybe she could put up posters too. Alex on the back of buses and milk
cartons.
Instead she moves into a new hotel and calls her informants. She finds it
amusing that when she has nothing left, she still has informants. The web of
deceit is so large and complex, she has informants who are unaware that she
no longer wields any power.
"Mulder's alive," one of them tells her.
She isn't surprised. Mulder's most intriguing skill is his ability to stay
alive. There are times when she thinks she will ask him how he does it. One
day...
But it throws light on their situation. If Mulder lived, Alex would want to
know how.
*
It's certainly not the first dead body she's seen, but she covers he mouth
with her hand when she sees him. There's a bullet hole in is head and his
prosthetic arm is in pieces.
"Oh Alex... " She is surprised at the sound of her own voice, at the
wretchedness of her words.
She kneels down by the body and brushes the tips of her fingers across his
hair. His eyes are open, staring straight ahead. She looks into them trying
to read his final expression. Was he grateful for the end? Was this what he
wanted?
He never told her anything. He spoke about death all the time and she
understood that. He expected her to kill him and she understood because she
expected the same from him. Spender once told her that the only thing to
trust was the knowledge that some one wanted you dead. And they killed
Spender. Serendipity, in a meaningless world.
Alex's body is an echo of Spenders. That's the worst part. He didn't deserve
the connection, but they're both stuck with this legacy, and she knows, if
she can, she has to fix it.
She stands and wraps her arms around herself. Her jacket is thin around the
elbows. Once upon a time she used to spend her money on designer clothes.
Once upon a time appearances were all. But now her hair is limp and loosely
held in a pony tail. Her eyes are dull, she knows, and she is thinner that
she ever was.
And there is Alex, nothing more than flesh and bones sprawled on oil soaked
cement.
He doesn't even look peaceful, she thinks.
She bends over and closes his eyes. Alex couldn't sleep. He never let
himself sleep. She leaves him behind her. Alex is gone. Long gone before she
got there. Gone before the bullet pierced his skull.
*
When she was in college she read Satre and Camus and wore black. It was just
a phase, one that lasted no longer than the others, but she remembered the
more intense types amongst her crowd fixating on the question, "Are you
living or existing?"
Years later she knew that the answer was unimportant but the luxury of
contemplating the question was everything.
*
The figure by the side of the road is smoking. Little white clouds trail up
towards the sky and dissipate. To Marita the sight is unsettling.
She pulls the car alongside the figure and winds down the window.
"Agent Reyes?"
A woman leans a Sig Sauer through the opening. "Nothing personal, you
understand."
She nods. Nothing personal is little consolation to the dead.
"Just get in."
Reyes opens the door and lifts a large file from the passenger seat, before
settling her own weight in its place. "Is this for me?"
"Yes."
They drive off as smoke trails out the open window.
The car comes to a halt by the Potomac. Marita watches Reyes take a packet
of cigarettes out of her coat pocket and then return them as an after
thought.
"I'm unarmed," she says still looking at the gun.
"I really don't like taking chances with you people," Reyes holds up the
file. "So what will I find in here?"
"Everything."
Reyes gives a wry smile. "Alpha to Omega, huh?"
"Agent Reyes, the information in that file has far reaching consequences for
the entire human population. You have to be careful with it." She has said
those lines so many times before. She wants it to be different this time.
"You can't just hand it over to your superiors. There are names of key
figures in a governmental conspiracy to conceal what might be the greatest
discovery that history has to offer. My name is in there. Mulder, Scully,
Doggett, yourself..."
Reyes looks up sharply. "Me?"
"I collated your file personally."
"Why?"
Because there was no one else. Because the information was needed whether
there was someone around to order its collation or not. Because this is what
she does and the habit refuses to die. Because she has to know.
"It's what I do."
"I" Singular. Alone. Just one person now. No consortium. No resistance.
Nothing in between.
"And Alex Krycek?"
She swallows. No Alex. No Spender. No black oil. No Fort Marlene.
"Who are you?" Reyes's brow creases. Marita remembers rumours about Reyes
that suggested extraordinary powers of insight.
"No one now." She taps the file. "Everything we were is in there."
Reyes lowers the gun. Marita stares at the dark Potomac, stretched out like
a ribbon of black oil before them. If Reyes can make sense of her thoughts
then surely here is a person worthy of the legacy she is about to leave
behind.
Reyes reaches once more for the cigarettes in her pocket and this time goes
as far as to light one.
"You're leaving?"
"Yes."
"Where are you going?"
Marita thinks about Europe, about Russia, Tunisia, South America. She could
go to any of these places but when she contemplates travel plans it doesn't
seem real. She doesn't know where she'll go. And she wouldn't tell Reyes if
she did.
"Somewhere else."
Reyes nods, an answer she expected.
Marita pulls the keys out of the ignition and holds them out for Reyes to
take.
"You'll need them to get home."
Reyes frowns. "You want me to take the car?"
"I don't need it." Marita opens the door and begins to step out.
"Wait! What am I supposed to do with it. All of it?"
A light breeze lifts the hair off the back of Marita's neck. Soon it will be
Winter in the capital. Winter without Alex, Winter without Spender and
perhaps Winter without her. She smiles wryly.
"Save the world," she says, and she closes the door.
*
Fireworks explode in the night sky of Sao Paolo and the crowds cheer, "Happy
New Year!"
On the balcony of a room at the Mofarrej a woman in a long blue dress, and
blonde hair neatly knotted on the top of her head, raises a glass of
champagne and then returns it to the table beside her.
Humanity survives another year. But it hasn't been that long - two years
now. Too early to tell but the signs are good. Maybe Reyes knew what she was
doing after all.
The room behind her is large. Too large for a small and slight woman
traveling alone, but she has an allowance from the Consortium that she needs
to spend and expensive hotels are like a final irony. No more hiding in dark
apartments or underground bunkers. She is out on the balcony of the Mofarrej
for all to see.
She leans over the balcony railing and looks down on the street below.
You would never know them to look at, she thinks. You wouldn't know if it
was your neighbour, or your best friend, or your lover.
She wonders how they ever trusted each other, any of them, and she remembers
they didn't. Which somehow makes it difficult, after all these years, to
remember Alex like this, to remember who he was and what he meant to her.
Relationships in hindsight are often more transparent, less complex, but
this one defies explanation, even now. It seems inappropriate to speak about
love and yet it's precisely this concept that occupies her thoughts at these
times.
As an undercover field agent in the CIA she was told she could love anyone
if she needed to, but she thinks they misunderstood the process because
surely a need to love someone insured the success of the bond. And was that
any less legitimate than a bond formed romantically or by familial ties?
She picks up her glass and takes it inside. She pours the remaining
champagne down the sink because she's never really been a drinker, and she
flops onto the King size bed. She's amazed at how she finds being alone so
comfortable, and so familiar. She wants for nothing and she need never need
anything again.