TITLE: My Better Half
AUTHOR: Vehemently (vehemently @ yahoo.com)
ARCHIVE: Aside from Gossamer, let me know where.
WARNING: My sense of drollery may be hazardous to your health.
RATING: PG-13, for language and bad thoughts.
SPOILERS: Requiem
SUMMARY: 'Why does the way of the wicked prosper?' Here's why.
* * * * * * *
My Better Half
by Vehemently
* * * * * * *
Alex Krycek had a secretary. But then, so does everyone. What
made his special was that he retained her despite a yearlong
absence during which he was branded a traitor and his name
ritualistically cursed at quarterly staff meetings. Somehow she
had never been reassigned, so she kept on working in her boss's
interest. Even the bad guys have bureaucracy. Even the bad guys
need office space.
The woman in question wore her smart post-war Chanel knockoff
dresses and bullied minor French diplomats for news of her
boss's whereabouts. And since he had asked her to begin the
project without telling her when to stop, she continued
translating a cache of stolen files and marking the potentially
exploitable secrets. Nobody told her to stop; nobody told her to
do anything else. So when Krycek got himself roped back into the
organization, she was there waiting for him, handing him his
standard cup of black coffee with a smile and a summary of her
efforts.
She still asked him to lift heavy things for her, as if she
hadn't noticed the fact that having left the office with two
arms, he had returned two years later with only one. He seemed
grateful for her intentional ignorance, or at least he stopped
leaving his candy wrappers on her desk. His pants pockets
crinkled as he wandered past, and she smiled her secret smile.
Krycek used her to best opportunity, handing her unmarked disks
and the occasional bloody document with the sure knowledge that
she could read pencil handwriting through a red veil of
lifeblood. When he disappeared, as he often did for days or even
weeks at a time, she would finish up his most recent project and
sit reading the cooking section in the New York Times at her
desk. She knew enough now not to worry whether he would return.
Their work relationship was a miracle of allowances. A
longstanding unspoken agreement kept them together: he never
asked for the sexual favors he could have gotten away with
demanding, and she never noticed his misuse of the subjunctive,
or his passion for creative vulgarity, or his -- I am sorry to
say -- his rank inability to bathe on a regular basis. On the
whole, it worked out rather well for both of them; where her
secretarial colleagues were picking up their bosses' dry
cleaning and performing oral sex, she merely employed a deaf ear
and a little potpourri.
One fine day in May Alex Krycek strode into his office, dressed
in his standard head-to-toe black, after an absence of three
months. He was clean and clean-shaven, though a bit thinner than
the last time she had seen him. And, of course, he was cursing.
"I hate that bitch," he muttered, even before a hello. She
poured him his coffee and smiled at him. He pinked a little and
apologized, accepting the cup. He remonstrated: "But she is a
pervert, you know."
"This would be the blonde woman with the ridiculous name?" asked
the secretary, fully aware that there was only one female
operative in the entire organization, now that Diana Fowley was
dead.
"Yeah, her," replied Krycek, mangling his pronouns. "She comes
and fetches me out of jail, and she's standing there watching me
while I shower. She's creepy."
He leaned his hip up against her side table, towering over her.
She swivelled in her chair and let him play the big tall man.
"Oh dear," she murmured, lowering her head. "If I'd known you
were incarcerated again, I would have been working towards your
release."
"Oh, don't strangle yourself with your bra over it," Krycek
said. He put down his coffee to raise her chin with a finger.
"The Big Boss was going through a Caligula phase. I guess this
means he's over it." He stretched his arm over his head, closed
his eyes. "I've been in prison on four different continents now.
I think that deserves some recognition."
"Yes, sir. Especially considering they had to use a closet for
you when they caught you in the Antarctic facility."
At this Krycek laughed loud and long. His secretary smiled
without showing her teeth.
"Yeah, well, they always call me out when they got dirty work to
do." He finished his coffee and she took the mug from him.
"Will you be needing my help on this one?" she asked,
marshalling her stray paperclips into order. He watched her do
it, thinking.
"Naw," came Krycek's reply. "Standard space chase stuff. I
swear, those pointy-headed geniuses crash into things like
billiards, and then somebody's got to clean it up, every time.
They don't appreciate my talents." He shifted his weight on the
corner of her desk, and she turned in time to see his grin.
Never one to neglect an opportunity, she supplied, "They don't
know just how bad you can be?" If he saw a come-hither in her
breathy pronunciation, she allowed it.
Krycek acknowledged her repartee with a dirty grin and a
waggling finger. "You've never seen the depths of my depravity."
Privately she wondered if she had, knowing that he enjoyed the
Korean cabbage dish Shchii whenever he could get it. But Krycek
went on: "When we're finally rid of the Big Boss I'll be
depending on you to lie, cheat and steal our way into the corner
office."
A pause. She blinked. "He's dying, you know."
His smile didn't fade even a little bit. "I saw."
With that permission, Krycek's secretary leaned forward,
hunching her shoulders. The shoulder pads of her dress rose up
behind her like folded maroon wings. "One dismal failure might
be enough to incapacitate him for the last time."
"You think?" asked Krycek, staring at her heart-shaped face. She
wore a very dark red lipstick that made her skin look
unnaturally white. "Maybe this damn space chase can turn out to
be something after all."
She leaned back, smiling as one might at an especially ardent
first-grader. Krycek pointed his eager chin at her for a moment,
then dropped his head. "But Itchy and Scratchy are out there, at
the crash site. They'll fuck it all up." He watched his
secretary stand and put something away. She stood near his
shoulder, pursing her lips, looking down at him.
"Oh, come now," she demurred. "They could be useful."
"What, them?" He gave an incredulous laugh and fell into her
chair. "Bleating each other's names in the dark like a pair of
drunken yodelers?"
She leaned her hip against the desk, crossing her arms. "So many
people, with so different motives, converging on one place at
the same time -- where is the crash site?"
"Oregon. A little bedroom community called Bellefleur. All
artists and inner children, that kind of town."
Her indrawn breath was audible. "Not the same --"
"Yeah." He smiled his devastating smile at her. She didn't smile
back. "The abnormal brain activity capital of the world. Even
odds the missing deputy from the scene of the crash was
tainted."
"Oh, Mister Krycek," breathed his secretary. "How fortuitous."
Her eyes shimmered promise.
"You're having an evil thought," he admonished, turning her
chair this way and that.
She lowered her chin, demure. "Will the two of them be in
Bellefleur long?"
Krycek scratched, ruminating, and answered, "Miss Pervert said
they were having budget problems. They may head home early. You
think I should keep them there?"
Fleet fingers swooped to the locked file cabinet, rolled its
secret contents forth. "There is that administrator." Her
laquered nails tapped down a row of names, each name a sprightly
yellow file folder. "Didn't you suborn him to have direct access
to the X-Files chain of command?"
Krycek made a gargling noise one could generously regard as
disgust. "They took the control device away from me last year."
He spun her swivel chair away, but his secretary's words drew
him back around.
"He doesn't know that, does he?" Krycek's grin stretched from
ear to ear, and she blushed at his approval. She let her fingers
dance at the edge of her desk, fluttering in front of him.
"Mulder had that unfortunate episode last fall." She pouted her
sympathy for the erstwhile mental patient, blinking her long
black lashes at her boss. "I do believe it changed his brain
chemistry."
Krycek narrowed his eyes at her. " . . . Like those other people
in Bellefleur."
"Yes. Those people who have since disappeared."
"So I should . . ." He reclined in her chair, finding a fulcrum
for balance. Her red dress stirred not one whit as she stood
over him. One could hardly tell she breathed when she said:
"Eventually, that ship will have repaired itself, and it will
take up its cargo and go home. Unless you find it."
Krycek made another of his gargling noises. "I can't afford to
get caught doing anything -- he'll kill me this time, even from
his damn wheelchair."
She leaned forward, a vermillion billow over Krycek's inclined
face. "You can get caught. Not doing anything."
"You mean I should -- " The hamster ran on its wheel, the cogs
began to turn, and at last comprehension entered Krycek's
features. "You're a genius," he exclaimed, chuckling.
"Yes," she replied, showing her straight white teeth. "I am."
Krycek leapt up to punch the air, grinning like the madman he
is. His secretary helped him pack the essential gear he would
need on his trip to Bellefleur.
"If I see the opportunity," he told her, as they leaned over his
briefcase, "I'll take it. Dying isn't dead yet."
"If you do take it," she said with eyes lowered modestly, "make
sure dead is dead." He gave her an 'of-course' grin as he
snapped the briefcase shut.
She stood in the doorway as he strode off down the hall, waving
bye-bye to his black silhouette.
* * * * * * *
END (11/03/00)
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