-----------------------
Deslea R. Judd can now be reached at deslea@deslea.com and her fic at
http://fiction.deslea.com.  This information replaces all information found
elsewhere in this file.
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From: Deslea R. Judd <drjudd@primus.com.au>
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 12:37:09 +1000
Subject: NEW: The Wrong Man *PG13* by Deslea R. Judd
Source: atxc

The Wrong Man *PG13*
Deslea R. Judd
Copyright 2001

ARCHIVE: Sure, just keep my name on it.
DISCLAIMER: Characters not mine. Interpretation mine.
RATING: PG13
SPOILERS/TIMEFRAME: Missing scene from One Son; spoilers to Closure.
CATEGORY/KEYWORDS: Angst, vignette, allusion to Krycek/Marita romance,
Jeffrey POV.
SUMMARY: Jeffrey reflects on Krycek and Marita, and his own future. This fic
arose from a discussion on glass_onion about the merits or otherwise of
outsider, or bystander POV. The challenge? To write one that wasn't
voyeuristic or pathetic. I don't know that it's really bystanderfic anymore,
but I think I did an okay job of it.
MORE FIC: http://fiction.deslea.com
FEEDBACK: Love the stuff. deslea@deslea.com


"That son of a bitch!"

I pace angrily, my hand clasped around my glass in a spasm of fury.
The bourbon is gold, sloshing merrily in the flickering light. In
another lifetime, that might have appealed to my senses. Now, it seems
surreal, like everything else. 

The woman sits by the fireplace, warming herself, rubbing her hands
together compulsively. Her hair is clean now, and it frames her face
in a shock of spun silver. It's a little haphazard, a little
uncontrolled, last year's designer haircut grown wild. Her lips are
smooth now, and I know that's an illusion - they have the faint sheen
of vaseline - but just the same, it is a comforting one. She has drunk
glass after glass of water, and the dry redness framing her eyes is
easing. She sits there, swamped in my flannel pyjamas like an elf, her
knees drawn up to her breasts, her arms closed around them
protectively. Wrapped in an afghan, she looks into the flames
contemplatively. She could be a Mona Lisa, a Madonna. The only things
betraying her calm facade are those compulsively twisting hands. 

I'm still pacing an hour later; still punctuating my paces with
occasional expletives; but at last, my mind impresses upon me that she
might need quiet. I grow still, and I calm myself, and finally, I drop
to my knees at her side. 

She looks away from the flames, turning her head on its side and
resting it on her arms. She watches me, her expression kind. I feel a
little ashamed of my earlier tantrum. After all she's been through,
how is it that she is kind and I am childish? Isn't there something
wrong with that picture? Isn't she the one who is supposed to break
down hysterically, while I maintain some semblance of calm for both of
us? I don't know what my role is here. I feel like an impostor; a kid
playing hero who suddenly found out the game is for keeps. 

At last, she breaks the silence. Her words are unexpected. 

"It isn't his fault." 

I stare at her. "Alex?" I query, at last. "You know him?" 

"He's my husband," she says, as if that explains everything. She turns
her head to watch the fire once more. 

"I don't understand." 

Her jaw settles into a grim line. "He's also your brother, Jeffrey.
Your father, the man who did this - he's my father-in-law. Has been
for twenty years." 

This throws me, but not too much. Alex wouldn't be the first
illegitimate Spender I'd come across. My mother had even raised one of
them for a while.  So I nod, mentally absorbing this information and
incorporating it into the puzzle. 

"So why did he leave us to find our own way out?" 

"He didn't," she says simply. At my uncomprehending look, she looks at
me;  says cryptically, "He didn't leave us. He just didn't stay." 

"I still don't understand." 

She doesn't reply for a while, and for a long moment, I think she
isn't going to. But finally, she says warmly, "I know about you,
Jeffrey. I know how you and Samantha were together in 1979. Your
mother reared her like she was her own child - do you remember that?" 

"Yes, I remember." I smile a little. The memory is a fond one. "It was
only very recently that I realised she must have been Samantha
Mulder." My voice is half-querying, but I don't really expect her to
contradict my conclusion;  and she doesn't. 

She's nodding; a bittersweet smile playing around her lips. "Did you
ever stop to wonder why the colonists returned her in the first
place?" 

That stops me in my tracks, because I hadn't. But it's a good point.
My mother and Samantha are the only abductees from the original deal
who ever came back. Was I so grateful for that that I forgot about
everything else?  Where has my head been since all of this began? If I
ever needed proof that Fox Mulder belonged on the X Files instead of
me, that was it. 

I struggle for a response; but in the end I simply ask, "Why *was* she
returned?" 

She's looking into the fire again. I wonder what she sees there.
"Because that year, Alex and I had a child." 

It all comes together in a single, sickening moment. "My father traded
your baby for Samantha?" I demand. Suddenly the air around me seems
very hot and stifling. 

She nods, and the lines of her throat contract and release. "He said
he had adoptive parents lined up. He didn't mention the fact that they
weren't human." Her head droops a little in the fading light. "Alex
was against it.  We both were. But your father told me that if I did
it, then Alex could go back to school, and there could be lots of
babies later. We'd had her just long enough for me to see how hard it
was going to be, and I guess I thought maybe he was right." 

"How old were you?" I wonder. 

Her voice is dull...morose. "I was fifteen." 

"What was her name?" 

The lines around her mouth soften. "I was fifteen and in love with my
childhood sweetheart." She looks at me, her eyes twinkling. "What do
you think?" 

"Alexandra? Alexis? Alexa?" I hazard, and am rewarded with a crooked
little grin. It's endearing. In another lifetime, it might have been
love. 

"Alexandra," she agrees; but then her smile fades, and the lines of
her face settle into something hard. It's painful to watch. 

Hesitantly, I ask, "Where is she now?" 

"Dead, I should think," she says with heartbreaking simplicity. She
turns her head with now-familiar precision, and stares into the fire.
"Burnt to death, like all the others. You know, they do say that once
the body temperature starts to rise your body shuts down. They say you
don't feel very much. 'Course, I bet 'they' never went through it
themselves." Her eyes are following the dancing flames, entranced.
It's a disturbing thing to witness. I wish I could make her look away,
but I don't know how. 

"Why do you think that?" I ask at last. I don't want to ask - it seems
so trivial in the face of her understated suffering - but I feel like
I'm missing an essential piece of the puzzle. 

That gets her attention. When she looks at me, I have the unhappy
feeling that she gave me more credit than I apparently deserve. "Don't
you understand, Jeffrey? The rebels took the alien foetus. They mean
to ambush the colonists and our families at the handover. They mean to
kill them - all of them - just like they did in Kazakhstan and at
Skyland Mountain and everywhere else." Her eyes are so bright, it
hurts to look at them. "And Alexandra's there." 

At last, the pieces fit together. "That's why Alex ran. He went to try
to get her out." 

She bows her head. "He won't get there in time. I know that." Her
eyelashes are wet and gleaming, but no tears fall. "And in a way, I'm
glad." She doesn't really need to explain, because I feel the same
horrified relief about my mother. But she does, in a low, droning
voice that is so raw, it's like the inner workings of her body laid
bare. "She'll be free. And so will he." Tears are falling now.
"Whatever Alex and I had, it got burned out of both of us a long time
ago, Jeffrey. But - I want him to be free. I really do." 

"I can't imagine what it must have been like to live like that." And I
can't. The anguish of the last few days has been awful...and yet, I
can look at the suffering of this woman, and of her husband, my
brother, and see that I have been spared. That makes me feel guilty
gratitude and horrified self-loathing all in the same breath. 

She shrugs a little. "You make compromises, and we were lucky enough
to have someone who always understood, and always forgave - each
other." There is a bitter undertone to her voice. "Because even when
we had to work against each other, when things were held over us and
our choices were taken away, we always worked for our daughter." She
gives a sad, rueful smile. "You can't sustain a marriage on that sort
of compromise. But you can still love." 

I try to smile back, but it feels forced. I suspect it's more of a
grimace.  She looks back at the flames, and after a while, I say
hesitantly, "Alex will be here soon - won't he?" 

She nods. "One way or the other." 

We wait out our vigil. She talks; sometimes sadly, sometimes with dry,
self-deprecating humour. There is more, much more. She tells of the
abortions, children they loved too much to bring into their world. She
tells of a time, four years before, when they actually got her back;
and of their attempted escape to Argentina. She tells of finding him
in a missile silo with a radioactive aircraft, his hair gone, his eyes
glassy; and of the tumours and the infertility that he sustained
there. She does not tell of her own, recent ordeal; that wound is too
fresh. But when I dispose of her clothes, there is trace evidence. I
don't ask if she consented. I don't need to. 

At dawn, there is a knock at the door. She shoots me an agonised
glance, and rises from her fireside vigil. Her face was flush from the
warmth, but now the colour drains out in an instant. I know what to
expect, just as she does; but still, I feel my stomach and my heart
tighten painfully with apprehension. 

I open the door, and stand aside to let him in. 

He comes through the door wordlessly; but as I close it behind him, he
seems to hover in the passageway uncertainly. And that's when I know
for sure;  because when has Krycek ever been uncertain? He is dirty,
covered in soot, and as I come around him and move back to the fire, I
see that only the circles beneath his eyes are clean. A vision comes
to me, one of him kneeling amid charred bodies, checking them and
moving on with the methodical care that I sense has kept him alive,
stopping only to wipe back tears for a young woman, a child he was
never allowed to know. The vision is an uncomfortable one; because
whether accurate or not, this is not a scene I was ever meant to see. 

She goes to him, stopping a few feet away. She begins to speak, but
falters;  and I wish I could bring myself to leave, but I can't.
Because if their daughter is dead, then so is my mother; and that is
something I have to know. 

His shoulders slump, and she gives a single, piteous gasp, her hand
flying to her throat in anguish. He holds out a glass vial. There is a
sliver of metal inside. And then he holds her, and her sobs are
silent, more vibrations on the air than sound; and he doesn't weep or
shake, but his fingers twist through her hair as though he's clinging
to her for his life.  They mark her with the ash of the dead,
imprinting her with all that is left of the life they made, blood of
my blood now sacrificed for the sins of our father. So many have died,
of whom this unknown niece of mine is but one;  but watching them now,
I understand its horror in a way I have never understood it before. In
their tragedy lies life in small. I feel great sadness. 

He looks up at me over her weeping form, and he meets my gaze. He's
waiting for me to ask, though I hardly need to. I look at him
questioningly, though, and he shakes his head regretfully. I feel
dull, aching resignation, because like their daughter, my mother is
free now, too. 

I turn from them, and leave them there to grieve; for I have grief of
my own. More than grief, I have things to do. Because I understand now
my own powerlessness in the face of this threat with which the world
is faced. In my pathetic excuse for a position, I am, perhaps, the
only man left who can fight the future. And I am the wrong man. Of my
brothers, I am the least worthy, the least able; and that is a bitter
realisation, but it is also a relief. Because that means that there is
one who is right. 

I close the door. 

END