PART 9-A
Narrative

CSM delivered back into the fold

The old man was surprisingly quiet on the flight back, which suited me fine.  It was bad enough having to sit next to him, to see him alive and watching everything around him the way a cheetah eyes prey.  He made one crack at the beginning, before we left the site, about how things had changed--obviously referring to my being with the group again.  I didn't know how much the Brit had told him, though he would've had to be careful about what he let out; the last thing the Brit would want was for the old man to come sniffing around and find out about our vaccine.

On the flight from Quebec to New York I put him in the window seat and I took the aisle.  We had the luxury of an empty seat between us because the Brit'd bought three tickets, but Morten was in the snow back at the cabin. I'm guessing I wasn't the only one glad for the space.  But I'd glance over every once in a while and I could see the old man tightening up the closer we got to New York.  After all, he was flying back to the men who'd tried to kill him.  I knew all too well what that was like, and he sure as hell deserved to find out.  But I knew he wouldn't let them off easy.  

If he was dying to know how I'd managed to survive his last attempt to get rid of me, he kept it hidden after the initial shock of seeing me, locked behind that cool passivity of his.  But I guess asking would have been like admitting I'd won and he'd lost.

My mind was all over the place: the silo; the bait-and-switch he'd pulled on me when I joined the group.  The way he'd taken Scully--not just to make a statement, or to use her, but to mindfuck Mulder.  It made me wonder why the hell I hadn't just pulled the trigger back in the snow, when I had the chance, but it was too late for that now.  And much as I hated to think about it, I knew in my gut the Brit was right: the old man would have some key to surviving the future--some card up his sleeve--and I was going to find it and take it from him if it was the last thing I did.

The risk--because there's always a risk--was that he might find out about our vaccine.  We'd have to be incredibly careful from here on out.

Of course, the situation with the Praise kid fell right into Mulder and Scully's hands in spite of Jeffrey's attempts to block Mulder from his little investigation.  It was my first glimpse of Jeff, the one the old man was actually willing to own up to as his flesh and blood, and I only saw him from a distance.  But he seemed like a wuss to me, a kid way out of his depth who'd be calling out for some referee to make everything 'fair' when the pushing and shoving started.  Still, there he was, another pawn dropped into the FBI the same way I'd been once, a sitting duck with no clue what Daddy'd do when he didn't perform to expectations.

We did end up with the Praise kid, though things didn't go according to plan.  Scully'd ended her babysitting shift early, so the guys they sent in ended up shooting Diana instead, not knowing she wasn't the target.  When I heard about it, I flashed back to that evening in Scully's apartment, Cardenal with his itchy trigger finger firing before he'd even had a chance to see who was coming through the doorway.  Well, it had kept me from shooting Scully.  In the end I was glad I hadn't; at some point Mulder could probably come to understand his father's hit as a strategic thing, but if I'd killed Scully, it would've been nothing but personal to him.  He never would have listened to anything I had to say again.

The old man turned the kid over to us and went off to check on Diana, who was barely hanging on, and then on to whatever scheming he had planned--something, whatever it was, to broaden his influence over the group.  He was back in the saddle and I knew he wouldn't waste any time taking advantage of that. 

End
 

Author: bardsmaid
Archive: only complete, and please let me know where it is
Spoilers: post-The Truth
Rating: worksafe
Summary: Back from retrieving CSM, Krycek is tasked with delivering chess wunderkind Gibson Praise to a Consortium research facility.
Disclaimer: The X-Files characters are the property of Chris Carter and 1013 Productions, but the real spirit of Alex Krycek belongs to Nicholas Lea, who brought him to such vivid, nuanced life.
 

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