"Addicted" by Faithless, from Cruel Intentions soundtrack

Mulder looks like the Bride of Frankenstein.

The analogy almost makes Krycek laugh, but instinct keeps him silent as he creeps around the corner. His footsteps make no sound on the floor, but Mulder is awake, half-rising on the couch with his overgrown hair sticking up all around his pasty face. His eyes are sunken, shot with blood, sockets blackened from lack of sleep. All that's missing, Krycek thinks, is an application of black lipstick and a tattered lace gown.

Now he does laugh, a muted hiss that alerts Mulder to his presence. Before the older man can scramble for his gun on the coffee table, Krycek says, "I've got it."

"What do you want, Krycek?"

Krycek absentmindedly twirls the weapon in question. "I think I want to talk to you without having your gun shoved in my face."

"Talk."

Krycek feels his lips stretch into the imitation of a smile he uses so often when he is around the Consortium. "I might have information. Or I might not. It would depend on the price you are willing to pay."

I want you to try kill me, Krycek thinks, I want you to get off the goddamn couch and wrestle the gun out of my hand. Just like old times, Mulder, what do you say? A few bruises but it'd be worth it, if only to know that it was you sitting there and not some failed cloning experiment. "I don't have much of my soul left to sell," Mulder says.

"Maybe it's not your soul I'm interested in."

They stare at each other for a moment. Krycek blinks first, for a change.

"Get out of town, Mulder," he says abruptly, "Your life is in danger."

"No doubt by the same man who is pointing my own gun at me?"

A dark chuckle. "I didn't come here to kill you."

"Then why did you come here?"

Krycek's smile fades. He would like to know the answer to that himself.

"There's a man," Krycek begins, his voice oddly halting. "He used to work for me. He wasn't a good man, Mulder...none of them are. He's seen things...not as much as I've seen...done things..." His tone flattens as Mulder shoots him another glare. "Yesterday, he saw something that frightened him so much that he resigned immediately." A pause, then, "People don't resign from our business. You should know that by now."

Krycek waits for the inevitable question, but it never comes. It doesn't matter. He knows that Mulder does not expect the truth from him.

"I didn't kill him," Krycek says, "He disappeared."

Mulder rubs at his darkened eyes. "And... what was this *something* that he saw?"

"I don't know." Krycek's response is too unplanned to be a lie. "But I do know where he was when he saw it."

And though he already must know the answer, Mulder asks, "Where was that?"

The bargain is sealed. But Krycek will collect later.

"Below the window of your sister's hospital room," Krycek says.

With that, he places the gun on the coffee table, within Mulder's reach, confident that the other man will not shoot as he turns his back.

As he closes the door, he hears Mulder lift the gun. He is relieved. Even if he must stand on the wrong side, he is glad that at least the battle is not over.

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