From: Miatsbrown@aol.com
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 12:17:44 EDT
Subject: heart and soul
Source: direct

CLASSIFICATION: VA

RATING: Break out the Dom Perignon, cats and kids, its my veeeery first 
G-rated story!  Maybe, by some, considered PG, but that's the most, I swear.

SPOILERS: Err, pretty much any Krycek episode, especially Terma, as well as 
the last Spender episode arc whose name escapes me at the moment

DISCLAIMER & NOTES: Don't own 'em, don't sue me.  Originally designed as 
slash, but chickened out at the last minute and it became sickeningly cute, 
and then weird and contemplative, but still slash-ish.  Yeah, it was June 
when I wrote this, but I was in a happy Christmassy mood.  Also, a thousand 
apologies to Mel Brooks - I borrowed a couple lines from 'The Producers'.  
And if my esteemed readers can figure out which two lines, you're just as sad 
as I am.  Also, it's set up as sort of alternating vignettes between Mulder 
and Krycek.  However, it's kind of more biased toward Krycek, because, first 
of all, I think he's easier to write for, and second of all, I personally 
just like him better.  Special thanks to Marie for grammar help. My apologies 
if the Vulcan nerve pinch doesn't work in real life (in other words: kids, 
don't try this at home).  Oh, and, about the houseplants - I've never trusted 
them.

SUMMARY: Krycek, Mulder, rampaging house plants, but no, no really, it's not 
a funny story.  Lots of Krycek-amputation angst.  You have been warned.

"Heart and Soul"
 by Miatsbrown

     "Yes, yes, Scully.  Yes, you were right.  I'm a big dumb loser.  Okay.  
Merry Christmas to you too."  
     Mulder closed the door of his apartment and leaned against it, sighing 
his frustration at the cracks in the ceiling.  Then, he noticed the rest of 
the apartment.  Trashed trashed trashed.  Some detached part of his mind 
wondered why, considering his latest case had involved sentient houseplants 
bent on revenge on negligent owners.  *The Syndicate's really lettin' itself 
go* he thought.  Then he thought about a possible connection and almost 
laughed to think of Cancerman taking a Sig Sauer to a belligerent spider 
plant.  Instead, he turned back out the door, opting for a substantially 
cleaner hotel room rather than his anti-home.
                                      
                                      * * *
     Mulder, having arrived in his hotel room, closed the door and slumped 
down against it.  He looked at his reflection in the mirror across the room 
and observed the tired, beaten looking man that gazed back at him.  Mussed 
suit, bad tie askew on his neck, face drawn, gaunt, and marred by a black eye 
sustained in his houseplant encounter.  Besides physical exhaustion, sadness 
showed on his face, a deep, long-term kind of sadness that especially 
appeared around the holidays.
     He'd spent a lot of holidays alone.  After his sister disappeared, his 
parents' marriage was pretty much over, and he was alone a lot.  His parents 
would make him eat dinner with them, and after about an hour of stilted 
conversation, his father would go to the study, his mother would head for her 
bedroom, and young Fox who had long since ceased to believe in Santa Claus, 
would sit in the living room and stare at the tree.  Or, he would stare at 
the piano.  He had no idea how to play; Samantha had taken lessons, not him.  
He remembered being amazed at how an instrument that could sit so silent and 
that produced only disorganized noise at his touch could be made so beautiful 
by another person who knew how.  His sister had been really really good.
     Oh God.  Samantha.  
     Deep in his heart of hearts, this search that had become his life's work 
was not entirely about Samantha.  It was about not being alone.  Of course, 
he loved his sister and would like nothing more than to see her come home 
alive, but at some point, he had gotten over her disappearance.  He had never 
gotten over being alone.  Maybe that was why he called Scully in the middle 
of the night all the time.	
     He got up after what seemed an eternity and dragged himself laboriously 
into bed without changing, realizing silently that he didn't have clothes to 
change into anyway.  He turned on the television and let mushy Christmas 
programming wash over him like a healing wave of white noise.

                                  * * *
     
     Krycek got out of the car as soon as he was sure Mulder was asleep.  He 
crossed the frozen sidewalk and opened the frosted glass doors of the 
slightly-nicer-than-usual hotel that Mulder had picked out.
     *I hate holidays. I reeeeally hate holidays.  Oh well, better to be 
watching Mulder than fighting fizzing goopy aliens or babysitting Spender.*
     Poor Spender, thought a detached portion of his brain.  He couldn't help 
feeling sorry for him, pathetic as he was.  He hadn't learned fast enough, 
and he died for it, and he wasn't an original like Mulder either.  Mulder was 
the first, the best at what he did, and for this they let him live.  Krycek 
adapted quickly to whatever he was thrown, and he survived that way, dealing 
with what he was given.  *Whatever I'm given* he thought bitterly, feeling an 
ache in his nonexistant left arm.  
     Dispeling these uncharacteristically deep thoughts, he walked into the 
lobby and looked around him, but mostly, he looked up.  Yes, this was 
definitely nicer than Mulder's usual picks, resplendent in high vaulted 
ceilings and velvet and plaster of paris.  It also seemed to have a bar, so 
he headed in to drown misery and memory, and a constant physical ache 
compounded by cold outside and in.

                                  * * *

     Mulder awoke with a start and looked up to see Jimmy Stewart kissing his 
family, and then credits rolling.  He had been in the throes of a strange 
dream involving tap dancing houseplants, his mother, a giant checkerboard, 
and, oddly enough, Krycek.  	
     Through all his hate, through all his disgust of the man and what he did 
and what he stood for, Mulder wondered about Krycek too.  He wondered about 
Krycek himself, but he wondered even more about his strangely ambiguous 
feelings about him.  He told himself he hated him, yet alongside the hate 
existed a strange almost protective feeling toward him.  *I might kick the 
crap out of him, but you better not* he thought.  He had a grudging respect 
for the man, for his capacity to survive against all odds.  
     The last time he had seen him, he realized that Krycek had lost his arm. 
It had taken everything in him to keep a look of pity off his face, although 
somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered why he pitied a man who 
doubtless deserved to suffer. He knew Krycek would hate him for it even more 
than Mulder would hate himself for it, but the feeling was still there.
     He'd never quite gotten over the young, naive agent who'd appeared at 
his side in his darkest hour only to betray him and run.  Hero worship was 
one thing, respect another, but not being alone was the most important.  When 
he had met Krycek, the alone-ness had become a self-fulfilling prophecy; even 
though he hated it, there was really nothing he could consciously do about 
it.  But Krycek would not be put off, and followed him everywhere.  As much 
as he hated to admit it, it grew on him.  Krycek grew on him.
     Maybe that's why he hit him so hard now.  Maybe that's why he hated 
Krycek so much.
     *Hate is a very strong word.*
Mulder shook his head to clear his thoughts.  He finally decided to head down 
to the bar.

                                    * * *

     Krycek glanced up from his vodka and around the bar, empty but for the 
bartender and one good-natured inebriate.  His eyes drifted towards the grand 
piano set up and apart in one of the corners of the bar. 
     When he was young, they told him he had a gift.  He played the Sonata 
Quasi una Fantasia, Beethoven's Moonlight, when he was nine, before his hands 
were really big enough to play it.  He loved the piano. This talent was 
really all he had, all that set him apart from the rest of the cold, dirty, 
urban world in which he lived.  He spent hours at the piano, he even snuck 
into the music room at school, cutting class to play.  Some kids caught him 
in there once, bigger kids, mean ones.  He was a scrawny little kid with a 
Russian accent playing the piano. They nearly killed him.  As he lay bleeding 
on the floor, as he heard the kids run away, he heard the music in his head, 
the sonata washing over him in endless, slow, calming waves. . . and then the 
music stopped for good.
     Krycek took another gulp of vodka.  He was big now, much bigger than the 
kids who'd beaten him up.  He'd practiced endless hours as a teenager to get 
rid of his accent, and he could hardly even remember how to speak that way 
now.  He'd survived all these with flying colors.
     The music never really came back.  He listened to recordings, but it 
wasn't the same, and somehow, he could not bring himself to play again.  He 
went to the Academy, and was recruited into the Syndicate.  He was a good 
messenger boy, a good fetcher and carrier and petty thief and thug and 
ultimately a good killer.
     They told him he had a gift.
     He met Fox Mulder, having become cynical and tenacious of life, wearing 
a bad suit and a veneer of naivete and innocence.  
     And he swore he could hear the music again.
     He wanted to play for him, wanted Mulder to hear him, and tell him he 
was good, really good, that he had a gift.  He didn't want Mulder to know 
what he had become, didn't want Mulder to be ashamed of him.
     Ashamed? That was an interesting word.  Krycek downed another shot, 
which elicited a disapproving look from the bartender.  Krycek didn't know 
why Mulder was the one.  He was tragic, but everybody involved in this thing 
was in one way or another. Long-suffering, self-sacrificing Scully.  Stoic, 
hug-me-I'm-crying-on-the-inside Skinner.  Even lonely, embittered Ol' Smoky.  
Mulder was good-looking, but Krycek had learned the hard way not to be picky 
in matters such as those.  He'd slept his way up (if not to the top) just as 
much as his other merits had advanced him.
     He hadn't felt guilt in years, but he felt it, badly, when he'd had to 
betray Mulder.  He had been prepared to kill Mulder just as much as he had 
been prepared to die himself.  But he felt bad about it.  He'd trained 
himself not to feel, physical pain, emotional pain, but he felt it now.  He 
remembered thinking he could really have loved Mulder.  
     *Maybe I did. . .do* he thought.
     But it was too late, and he'd lost Mulder forever.
     *Never had him.  You never had him, you idiot.*
     In the cold Russian night, he was awakened from deep sleep by rough 
hands grabbing him and pinning him down.  He sensed rather than truly felt 
the white hot knife slice through his skin and flesh and bone, and screamed 
in realization rather than pain.  Before he lost consciousness, he heard the 
music and his eyes flew open, the peasants holding him down jumping away from 
this man possessed.  He remembered thinking, perhaps oddly, that the only 
real regret he had was that he would never be able to play his sonata again, 
even if he wanted to.
     He'd lived through so much, this was just one more in a string of 
obstacles for Alex Krycek to overcome.  But it was more than just another 
obstacle, because at the end of the day, when doctors proclaiming he was 
lucky he was even alive had left and his employer, smirking around a 
cigarette had departed, he was alone with just his one hand and a lot of 
regrets.
     Krycek got up and walked to the piano.  The bartender made as if to stop 
him, but Krycek shot him a pathetic glance, and he went back behind the bar 
to clean glasses.
     The piano was backlit to create a loungy atmosphere.  He sat down at the 
black lacquered bench and positioned his hand over the keys, but did not 
press down.  His hand shook, he comforted himself by blaming it on the 
liquor, but somewhere in some detached part of his mind, he reminded himself 
that Fox Mulder was in this hotel.  Maybe somehow, some way, Mulder could 
hear him.  Maybe that would make everything better, make Mulder know that he 
really was sorry, not so much for the things he did, but because the things 
he did hurt Mulder so much.
     He finally pressed his fingers to the keys and out flowed the melody 
that had haunted him and eluded him all those years.  The right hand, the 
melody and accompaniment suggestive of waves and melancholy was of course 
lovely, but sounded wrong, lacked the power of the anchoring, driving left 
hand.  He stopped playing quietly and stared at the music rack in front of 
him, blank and empty, like him.

                                   * * *

     Mulder walked into the bar and saw his ex-partner and arch-nemesis and 
evil twin seated at the enormous grand piano, silent, sitting up very 
straight, face inscrutable as always.
     *He can't play.* 
Mulder expected to laugh at the misfortune of this his sworn enemy, but could 
not.
     *Can he play at all, or is he just drunk?*
What did he really know about Alex Krycek? Nothing at all.  Not where he came 
from or what his real name might be or his shoe size or whether he thought 
Stanley Kubrick was pretentious.  All of a sudden, Mulder wanted to know.  He 
wanted to crawl inside Krycek's head and find out what was there and hear 
Krycek's reasoning behind the whole thing.  All of this was compounded by the 
fact that Krycek looked, oddly enough, like he might cry.
     Practical side kicking in, he decided to go on over and ask how in hell 
Krycek had found him and why.  He walked through the lounge, nodded at the 
bartender, and stopped at the steps going up to the platform where the piano 
was.  Krycek should have been able to see him, but made no move.  Any harsh 
words Mulder might have had died in his throat.  He had seen Krycek angry, 
laughing, vicious, serious, even scared, but he had never seen this horrible, 
blank look reminiscent of the newly comatose.  He reached out and put a 
shaking hand on Krycek's shoulder.  Krycek flinched, as though he had 
expected a blow. 
     Mulder weighed the options in his head.  He could beat the crap out of 
Krycek. . . . but where would he go with him?  He couldn't bring him in 
without getting him killed.  But when did Krycek alive become a good thing?  
He didn't want him dead.  When did that happen?  He could just beat him up 
and leave him.  But he found he didn't want to anymore.  He was too tired.  
     Krycek was still staring ahead as Mulder came back to the moment, then 
the maybe-more-than-triple agent turned to look at him.
     "Hi," he said simply.
     "Hi," said Mulder in return, mightily confused.
Krycek's face hardened suddenly.
     "You have exactly ten seconds to take that look of disgusting pity off 
your face and replace it with one of enormous respect."
     He smiled, though.  A small, delicious slip of a smile.  Mulder smiled 
back, the same smile full of pain, and suddenly felt not as alone as he had 
before.
     "Can you play?"  Mulder asked finally, after a long interval.
     "Used to," said Krycek, laconic, with a shrug of his left shoulder.
Something silly popped into Mulder's head.  About a month of Samantha's life 
she'd never get back was spent in teaching Mulder this certain something.  
     Mulder gently nudged Krycek down the bench a bit, and began to play 
familiar, happy-sounding, block-like triads.  Krycek's cold, hard, 
expressionless face cracked open in a true smile, and Mulder noticed the room 
almost light up with it.  Krycek jumped in, one-handed, after two bars and 
'Heart and Soul' filled the lounge.
     Krycek glanced up at the bartender, but he seemed only vaguely amused.  
Mulder was concentrating on his part, which amused Krycek greatly, and his 
concentration was broken only when Krycek began to laugh in something that 
could most accurately be described as a giggle.  Mulder screwed up the chords 
and looked up at Krycek.  They were caught looking into each others' face, 
smiling like idiots.
     "Thanks," Krycek said finally.  Mulder brought his hand to Krycek's left 
shoulder and before he even thought about it he drew him close in a sort of 
hug.  Krycek's cheek was crushed against Mulder's expensive dress-shirt clad 
shoulder as his good hand reached up to play with the hair on the back of 
Mulder's neck, gentle, soothing.  Mulder didn't even see it coming as Krycek 
pinched exactly the right nerve in Mulder's neck to make him keel over, 
unconscious.  Krycek settled him gently against the keyboard, unlikely 
combinations of notes played sounding eerie in the echoy bar.
     "Sorry," Krycek said to Mulder's inert form. He slipped a piece of paper 
into Mulder's breast pocket, then walked down into the bar.  "I think he had 
a bit too much," he said to the bartender.

                                        * * * 

     The next day, Mulder awoke in his hotel room, dazed and disoriented.  He 
jumped out of bed, anger rising like a tidal wave, but then sat back down, 
too tired to do anything about it.  
     After awhile, he mustered the strength to drag himself into the shower.  
As he took off his shirt he heard the tell-tale crinkle of paper in the 
breast pocket and pulled it out.  He unfolded the small white square and read.

Mulder,
I'm sorry, but if you have this note it means you got too close.  I have been 
assigned to watch you and so cannot have any contact with you.  I knew you 
would come down here tonight.  Merry Christmas, Mulder, there's a bottle of 
cognac in your fridge.  I'll look out for you, wherever I am, because, 
believe it or not, I like you, a lot more than you know.  Thank you for being 
an anchor.  Know that no matter what (or who *grin*) I do, I mean what I say 
now.  I'll be seeing you.

     Mulder, disbelieving but too tired to show any disbelief, left the 
bathroom.  He still didn't know what to make of Krycek; the man was a 
Contradiction commercial just waiting to happen.  He walked, shirtless, to 
the minibar and pulled out the promised bottle of expensive booze.  He 
uncorked it, tipped it to his lips, and let it burn down to his stomach, warm 
and painful at the same time.  And he was acutely aware of that same feeling 
as he thought of Krycek, watching him, watching over him, a guardian angel, 
an angel of death, both and neither.  He took another gulp and sat on the 
bed, contemplating suspiciously the potted palm in a corner of the reoom, and 
suddenly feeling free to do so.

feedback appreciated. . .. but please be kind at Miatsbrown@aol.com