M/K

NC-17

Spoilers: Tunguska, Biogenesis, Amor Fati, Closure, DeadAlive, Existence, etc...

Summary: A humorous DeathFic -- an oxymoron, admittedly, but definitely the only description I can come up with. Written for the Beginnings Lyric Wheel. Lyrics courtesy of Campy. It’s not her fault what I did with them. 

Warnings: Seriously twisted. I dunno where this plot bunny came from but I kinda wish I’d shot it on sight. 

~#~#~#~

The scientist curled his fingers covetously over the object and looked furtively over his shoulder before speaking, as though subconsciously expecting the laboratory to have miraculously filled with spies or would-be thieves. “You understand what this appears to be? The enormity of it?” he demanded excitedly.

Krycek shrugged, his expression uncomfortable. “I heard--um--,” He cleared his throat and started again. “I heard ‘someone’ say the symbols represent gene clusters from the human genome.” He didn’t think it would be politic to identify his source as Sandoz, given his own hand in the doctor’s recent overly publicized demise.

“A map to human genetic makeup on an artifact imbued with Cosmic Galactic Radiation. It’s amazing,” Zeiderman continued.

“It is?” Krycek asked, raising a brow doubtfully.

The scientist laughed self-consciously at Krycek’s deliberate lack of enthusiasm. “Obviously it’s a fake,” he stressed. “But it’s an *amazing* fake, nonetheless.”

Krycek frowned. “A fake, huh? What gives it away? What specific evidence?”

Zeiderman looked momentarily disgruntled. “Nothing,” he admitted reluctantly. 

“I see,” Krycek sneered.

The scientist stiffened with offence. “But common sense alone demands that it cannot be genuine. I have complete faith in the ability of science to unravel the mysteries of its true origins,” he blustered. 

“You aren’t related to a woman named Scully, are you?” Krycek quipped, feeling almost giddy with relief. He’d expected credulity on Zeiderman’s part. Hell, he’d counted on it The last thing he needed was someone making the artifact’s existence public – particularly given the way he’d ‘acquired’ it - but, just for a moment, he’d been worried that the scientist really *had* found evidence that it was a hoax.

Which, given Mulder’s dramatic reactions to the artifacts, would mean Mulder was genuinely insane, rather than simply being adversely affected by the alien objects. And, contrary to popular opinion, Krycek was rather fond of Mulder’s peculiarly individual version of sanity. 

“Huh?” the scientist huffed.

“Not important. So all the symbols represent genetic markers?”

“All but one.”

“And that one is?”

“Here,” Zeiderman said, pointing at a seven-pointed star. “Overkill, I’d say. Yet another of the little anomalies that casts doubt on the artifact’s legitimacy.”

“Why overkill?”

“Well, I wouldn’t expect you to understand the significance,” Zeiderman replied pompously. “But during my anthropological studies, I’ve researched a number of myths and legends. According to folklore, a 7 pointed star represents one of the entrances to the spirit realm. It’s supposedly a gateway to the Otherworld.”

“The ‘Otherworld’?” Krycek snickered. “Wasn’t that some crap TV series?”

Zeiderman looked appropriately disgusted by Krycek’s lame joke, but shrugged.

“The definition’s arguable. Some people assume ‘Otherworld’ refers to the spirit realm. Some believe it refers to a place outside of time. Given its presence on the artifact, and the presence of the CGR, I assume whoever created this fake was trying to say that the star is a gateway to somewhere outside of the solar system.”

“A magical way home, maybe.” Krycek mused. “The ‘Otherworld’ being the place where mankind supposedly originated.”

“Yes,” Zeiderman agreed. “But, like I said, the whole thing’s a hoax.”

“Of course,” Krycek agreed easily. “Of course it is.” He idly considered whether Zeiderman was going to be a problem, decided it wasn’t actually *necessary* to kill him, and simply pocketed the artifact. 

The scientist gave a squawk of protest but, in front of Krycek’s cold-eyed stare – and given his own earlier assertions that the object was a fake - he failed to come up with a convincing argument as to why he should hold on to it.

Krycek stashed the artifact inside a footlocker in the gymnasium of the J. Edgar Hoover building. He was a great believer in the principle of hiding things in plain sight and, since his personal copy of the DAT tape had lain there undisturbed for over two years, he was satisfied the locker was a totally safe location. Besides, just in case the artifacts truly *were* responsible for Mulder’s sudden ability to read minds, it amused him to hide one in such close proximity of the FBI’s shower room. 

Maybe if Mulder actually *heard* what went on in people’s minds whenever he stripped out of his red speedos, he might actually get himself a life.

Not that Krycek spent *that* much time thinking about Mulder’s apparently non-existent sex-life, but he occasionally gave idle consideration to the fact that if Mulder wasn’t living in a constant state of sexual frustration he’d probably be a hell of a lot easier to handle. 

What with one thing and another, the artifact lay in the locker, gathering dust, for several months. Krycek didn’t forget about it, but he found no practical use for it – his only reason for stealing it had been to keep it out of Spender’s hands - and so it remained, like the DAT tape, as a piece of possible insurance against an uncertain future. During this period, the only time its existence came back to the forefront of his mind was during the time Spender and Fowley kidnapped Mulder to extract part of his brain.

Having already done all he could to help Mulder by stealing the artifact, Krycek told himself there was no point losing sleep over the kidnapping or even the operation itself. As far as he could see, Mulder didn’t have anything to lose by that point – other than permanent incarceration in an insane asylum. Even so, Krycek kept a close eye on the proceedings, via a surveillance tape in Scully’s apartment, and that’s why he overheard a conversation between her and Albert Hosteen. The fact that it took place while Hosteen was apparently in a coma, half-way across the country, gave the old man’s words a certain amount of significance.

Not being Mulder, Krycek wasn’t particularly interested in the significance of having a tape recording of someone conversing with an astral projection. Although he hadn’t been lying when he’d told Mulder he believed in paranormal phenomena, the essential difference between the two men was that Mulder embraced mysteries for their own sake, while Krycek was only interested in their potential value. As far as he was concerned, acquiring anything that couldn’t be eaten, drunk, sold or fucked was a waste of his time.

Besides, he was sure he knew the ‘reason’ for Hosteen’s ability to send his spirit out of his body in such a seemingly corporeal fashion. The Navajo people all carried hybrid blood in their veins. The Anasazi – the ‘ancient aliens’ – might all have left earth 600 years previously, but they’d left behind more of a legacy than mere ruins.

So, he was more interested in *why* Hosteen had done it, rather than *how* and when he heard Hosteen tell Scully, “There are more worlds than you can hold in your hand,” it struck a strange resonance in Krycek’s head and made him think, for some reason, of the artifact he’d stolen.

But, other than that one incident, he gave the stolen object very little thought until the day he met up with one of Spender’s FBI contacts to collect some files. Their meeting had been all but concluded when the guy suddenly mentioned Mulder. 

Krycek immediately stiffened, since he was used to a certain amount of ribbing over his less than illustrious time as Mulder’s ‘partner’. But, on this occasion, it was Mulder who was the butt of the humor, rather than himself.

“I hear Mulder’s given up his search for his sister. Apparently, he now accepts she’s dead. But he *also* thinks she’s alive, happy and dancing in the stars.” 

Krycek blinked slowly. “Run that one by me again?”

“He says the ‘starlight’ took her,” the Agent laughed. “And now she’s up in the heavens. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Samantha. I’m telling you, the guy is *seriously* wacko.”

And that’s when the memory of the alien artifact with the seven-pointed star suddenly Krycek like a freight-train. A star. A gateway to the ‘Otherworld’. A place outside of space and time, where people were neither dead nor alive but simply something and somewhere ‘other’. The place where mankind originated. 

“Eden,” Krycek whispered softly, shaking his head at the concept as Zeiderman’s words came back to him - ‘You understand what this appears to be? The enormity of it?’- and although he could barely get his head around the enormity of his own sudden suspicions, they struck a bone-deep resonance of *rightness* inside himself.

“What did you say?” 

“I said ‘Idiot’,” Krycek lied. “I’ve always said Mulder’s a flake.”

His contact nodded his heart-felt agreement. “Downside is it’s going to be harder to drag him through hoops now. The lure of his sister has always been a convenient way to distract him. We’re going to have to come up with a new obsession for him. I’ve suggested a baby.”

“A baby?” Krycek spluttered. 

“A little Sculder,” the man smirked. 

Krycek blinked rapidly. “Scully’s barren,” he pointed out, proud of his ability to keep his horror at the idea completely masked. It was one thing to vaguely contemplate how having a sex-life might magically create a happier, gentler Mulder. It was another thing entirely to imagine him actually ‘doing’ the nasty. Particularly with Scully. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just abduct her again?” he suggested and, although he felt a twinge of conscience at the distress Mulder would suffer, he comforted himself that it was definitely the lesser of two evils.

“Yeah. But, it would be overkill. A Scully abduction would send Mulder over the edge. A Scully *baby*, on the other hand, will be a perfect little X-file to keep Mulder too preoccupied to get in our way. And, if necessary, we could always abduct the *baby*.”

“How-- um—how--” Krycek stuttered.

“It’s all here in these files. Details of experiments we’ve already done on impregnating abductees with hybrid fetuses, and the necessary medical techniques for reversing Scully’s sterility. I hear Spender’s already set up a clinic and he’s going to use the subliminal technology perfected at Braddock Heights to convince Scully to try IVF, with Mulder as the father.”

Krycek just shrugged, as though he hardly cared one way or the other. But when the meeting was over, instead of delivering the files to Spender as ordered, he used Spender’s secret back door, slipped into the Hoover, and stashed the file away with the artifact and DAT tape.

It was a pretty pointless bit of defiance, and not one he could justify even to himself, let alone Spender. Krycek wasn’t sure whether Spender was playing both ends against the middle or honestly hadn’t thought through the full significance of a Mulder/Scully baby. If the child was born a perfect hybrid like Cassandra Spender – which was more than likely given the combined genes and the alien technology necessary to produce this ‘miracle’ child - its existence would inevitably come to the attention of the aliens and the colonization date would be brought forward. The birth of Scully’s baby could well become the death knell of the whole world.

Even so, hiding the file while he considered his limited options for circumventing Spender’s plan – all of which unfortunately seemed to include the premature death of either Mulder or Scully – achieved him nothing but a six month spell in a Tunisian prison for ‘stealing’ Spender’s property. He was lucky, he supposed, that Spender had automatically assumed his theft had been no more than greed, rather than deliberate sabotage.

During his incarceration, Spender simply obtained a new copy of the file and put his plans for Scully’s impregnation into action. And the alien rebels not only sat back and let that happen but made no attempt to rescue him from prison either. So Krycek was pretty disillusioned with his so-called allies by the time Marita came to secure his release. 

Since Marita already hated him, and had clearly only come to ‘rescue’ him because she was under orders to do so, Krycek saw no reason to play nicely with her. He only stayed in her taxi long enough to get back to what passed for some form of civilization in Tunisia, then he twisted her arm – literally – until she handed over his passport and some cash. The other, crucial, thing he got from her was confirmation that Scully’s IVF treatment had apparently failed. 

Which meant it wasn’t too late for him to save the world.

He’d wrestled with the problem for six months, considering and dismissing a myriad of possible solutions. The most obvious answer was to kill Scully. It was an idea he still was uncomfortable with. It wasn’t a matter of conscience, but one of consequence. He was certain that Scully’s death would be a guilt too far for Mulder, and it was a badly kept secret in the consortium that Mulder had been carrying a bullet with his own name on for a hell of a long time. Scully’s death would inevitably lead to Mulder’s suicide.

And Mulder’s death was inconceivable to Krycek, for more reasons than he was prepared to acknowledge to himself. So killing Mulder wasn’t a solution either.

Neither was kidnapping Mulder and stashing him away in a secret location – though the idea opened up a whole plethora of ideas that made him seriously wonder about his motivations for wanting to keep Mulder alive – since he couldn’t seriously imagine Mulder’s sanity surviving that kind of indefinite incarceration.

So his mind kept running around in circles, endlessly gnawing at the problem, and the only solution that returned to him, time and again, was one so ludicrous that he sometimes began to doubt his *own* sanity. Yet, there was a *rightness* to the idea that resounded through him like the feeling of slotting that last, crucial piece into a jigsaw and seeing the whole picture for the first time.

The only way to stop the birth of the child *and* keep Mulder alive, safe and *happy* was to give him what he’d always wanted - a way to follow Samantha into the ‘starlight’.

So he told Marita he’d meet her in America and climbed out of the taxi. Then he stopped at a bank, arranged for a substantial amount of money to be wired to him from one of his accounts, booked himself into a hotel and spent twelve hours eating, sleeping and washing until he finally felt human again.

The next morning, he collected his money from the bank and made his way through the souqs of Tunis, carefully questioning a myriad of locals, until he found the place he was looking for in a dark side-street. According to a man he’d met in the Tunisian prison, the woman who owned the shop had a collection of genuine, ancient Persian talismans. He checked furtively over his shoulder to check no-one was watching, and then sidled through the doorway like a dirty-old-man creeping into a porn shop. He winced visibly at all the gaily painted signs, in several languages, advertising New Age miracles for sale, slunk red-faced around a display of Tarot cards and came to an embarrassed halt in front of a counter covered with crystals and rune-stones.

“May I help you?” a three-hundred-pound woman sang out, in a distinct American accent, as she emerged through a curtain of beads and waddled in his direction, waving an incense stick, like a slow but unstoppable steam-liner. 

“Um…um… just looking,” he muttered in confusion, sounding more like an embarrassed schoolboy than an assassin.

“Something for yourself or is it for a gift?” she asked, continuing her worrying advance.

“I was looking for something specific… something special,” he said, backing away, certain he’d somehow ended up in the wrong shop.

“Who isn’t?” she said, but her smile softened her words enough that he only briefly considered shooting her.

“I mean *real*,” he said. “Not this tourist crap.”

“This ‘crap’ is the only thing that stops me being closed down,” she pointed out. “Islam frowns on the belief in magic. But the local authorities turn a blind eye on an American woman selling harmless frivolities to tourists.”

“I’m not a tourist,” he growled. “And this is clearly a waste of my time. I was told you had genuine ancient Persian talismans for sale here.”

“I’m sure if such things existed, they’d belong in a museum. Isn’t it illegal to export ancient artifacts to other countries?”

“Fuck this,” Krycek growled, and turned to leave.

“But then again, I’ve always favored the idea of free trade.”

“Then you have them?” he demanded, swinging back to face her. “They’re genuine?”

She laughed, a surprisingly girlish sound considering her bulk. “You don’t look like a believer,” she said. “But they say don’t judge a book by its cover, don’t they?”

He blushed slightly, accepting her gentle jibe, and nodded.

“So tell me what you’re *really* looking for, and I’ll tell you if I can help.”

“Something to protect someone I--I care about. I was thinking of a seven-pointed star, maybe,” he suggested, deliberately allowing a note of uncertainty into his voice as though he hadn’t just spent six months visualizing *exactly* what he was looking for. 

She narrowed her eyes at him, clearly pondering his words, and then nodded. 

“A good choice.” 

“It is?”

“Each point on the star represents a pathway, or the 7 rays of manifestation of the Higher Self. The points blend with each other, nurturing and joining us as one with the Universe, bestowing personal and spiritual transformation.”

“Look, cut the mystic crap and just tell me whether you have one,” he snapped impatiently.

Her mouth twisted into what might have been a smirk, although her face was so fat it was difficult to be sure. “Let me see…”she said. She disappeared back through the bead curtain for a few minutes before emerging triumphantly and proffering a small, rusty-looking necklace. “Here. I think this is what you’re looking for.”

Krycek frowned at the dull reddish-brown medallion. He’d expected it to be gold, or at least silver. “What’s it made of?” he demanded suspiciously.

“Hematite,” she said, running her fingers in a light caress over the talisman. “The metal gets its name from a Greek word meaning blood-like because, in its powder form, it’s blood red. Ancient superstition held that large deposits of hematite formed from battles that were fought and the subsequent blood that flowed into the ground.”

Krycek shook his head thoughtfully. “Is it… the name… I mean, it sounds similar to … magnetite.”

“It’s very similar, “ she agreed, looking at him in surprise. “They’re both iron ores. But magnetite is magnetic, as the name suggests. And hematite has a slightly higher than average specific gravity.”

Again Krycek felt that odd resonance through his whole body, a feeling of *rightness* at the path he was taking so, even though his mind still jittered with disbelief that he was buying into what was, after all, nothing more than mystical mumbo-jumbo, he found his hand reaching for his wallet.

“I’ll take it,” he said.

He returned to America with the medallion hanging around his neck. If questioned at customs, he was planning to claim it was a cheap Russian good-luck charm that he always wore when flying. In the event, although it set off the metal detector at the airport, the security guards barely even glanced at it as he dropped it in a basket with his watch and coins.

Although his first instinct was to find Mulder and somehow get the talisman into his possession, he couldn’t think of a way to approach him that wouldn’t involve Mulder’s fist in his face and his gun in Mulder’s ribs. Besides which, he couldn’t afford to antagonize Spender. So he met up with Marita, paid a cursory visit to the old man – whom he was pleased to see had apparently paid the ultimate price for messing around with Mulder’s brain – and, unexpectedly, was given exactly the right piece of information to oil his entrance into Mulder’s confidence – a crashed alien space-ship.

As with most of Krycek’s well-laid plans, things swiftly went to hell in a hand-basket.

Mulder, as usual, treated him like a Greek bearing gifts and got himself abducted by the aliens before Krycek had a chance to get near him with the talisman. So instead of gaily disappearing off into the ‘starlight’ to join his sister, Mulder ended up suffering the fate she’d managed to avoid.

Then, as though the cosmic gods were really laughing at him, Krycek found out it had already been too late anyway. Scully was already pregnant with Mulder’s child.

Krycek suggested the obvious solution was to induce some form of miscarriage but the rebel aliens decided the baby was as much a potential weapon as a potential threat and ordered him to protect Scully through the pregnancy and ensure that when the child was born it was taken and handed over to them.

He wasn’t happy with the idea, but it at least kept his mind off Mulder and gave him a reason to keep breathing even when Mulder’s body was recovered. It wasn’t until Mulder was dead, and it was too late, that Krycek finally understood how he *really* felt about him. He spent three months mourning the man, and the what-ifs and maybes of their convoluted association, only to suffer another cosmic joke with Mulder’s subsequent resurrection and the return of their hate-hate relationship.

Until, one day, the stars aligned for the coming of the Sculder child, and the various dark forces that wanted to own that child began gathering around Scully like slavering wolves. Enemies wore the faces of familiar trusted friends, and it turned out that only Krycek had the means to clearly identify friend from foe because the hematite talisman glowed hot blood-red in the presence of the so-called ‘Supersoldiers’.

So Krycek knew that Doggett’s ‘friend’ Knowle Roher was an alien replicant and that Mulder was about to lead him, unwittingly, to the place where Scully was giving birth. The proof of Roher’s duplicity was hanging around Krycek’s neck.

He intercepted Mulder in the parking lot of the Hoover, forcing him out of his car at gunpoint, and tried to hurriedly explain that he and Mulder were, basically, on the same side. Mulder greeted Krycek’s comments with his usual angry incredulity, but somewhere in the tussle, Krycek at least managed to slip the talisman into Mulder’s jacket pocket.

“You want to kill me, Alex, kill me. Like you killed my father. Just don't insult me trying to make me understand,” Mulder spat.

Krycek shook his head wearily, realizing there was absolutely no way Mulder was ever going to listen to him explain how to use the talisman. All he could do was leave and hope that Mulder figured out how to use it himself. But, before he could take a step back, he heard the loud crack of a pistol firing and something kicked into his arm in an explosion of pain.

A second shot and he was down on his knees, agony rushing through his body, and that’s when he saw a faint, reddish glow emanating from Mulder’s pocket. He gasped with horror, though it emerged as a whimper of pain, sure that the hematite was indicating that Mulder was a replicant.
“It's going to take more bullets than you can... ever fire to win this game. But one bullet... and I can give you a thousand lives,” he gasped at Skinner, praying that the AD would see the eerie glow from Mulder’s jacket and somehow understand what it meant.

Something strange twisted on Skinner’s face, as though he was seriously considering Krycek’s words, and that was the moment – somewhere between fear for his own life and terror that Mulder was already long-dead, with an alien wearing his face – that the strange resonance shuddered through Krycek’s agonized body and he abruptly realized that the talisman wasn’t indicating the presence of a replicant, it was opening a doorway to the Otherworld.

Krycek forgot his pain as excitement surged through his body, as he finally understood why he, Mulder and Skinner had been brought to this fateful moment. The stars were aligned, the random factors had converged, Mulder was ‘wearing’ the talisman, and now all that was needed was the ‘trigger’ to send Mulder through to the other side.

“Shoot Mulder,” he pleaded, somehow knowing that the talisman would react to a mortal threat against its wearer by transporting him through the gateway. Yes, Mulder would be *dead* in any corporeal sense. His body would be lying in the parking lot. But his spirit, his *soul*, would flow through the talisman and follow the starlight to the place where mankind had originated. The place where Samantha was patiently waiting for him.

Krycek felt a wave of almost orgasmic joy at the realization that he was finally going to be the one to give Mulder the only thing he’d ever truly wanted. The truth was ‘out there’, on the other side of the gateway, and Mulder was finally going to find it.

‘I love you,’ he whispered silently.

And then Skinner fucked the whole thing up by shooting *him* instead.

It was only afterwards, when he had time to think about it, that he realized that it *was* Skinner who’d fucked up, because if Mulder hadn’t been meant to ‘die’, what happened next wouldn’t have happened.

He found himself floating several feet in the air, suspended over his body by a whisper-thin smoky tendril. He was looking into his own face, staring with disbelief at the black third-eye burned into the middle of his forehead, and wondering if every corpse looked so damned *surprised* to be dead. 

The worst of it, by far, was that neither Skinner nor Mulder seemed even slightly bothered by his demise. He could accept Skinner’s cold-eyed stare. Hell, he’d worn a similar game mask himself on more than one occasion. But it actually fucking *hurt* that the man he’d just admitted loving – if only in his own head – looked more bored than appalled by his demise.

“Self-centered fucking asshole,” he muttered petulantly, and decided he was almost glad Skinner shot him, since Mulder obviously didn’t *deserve* to go to the Otherworld, after all.

He tried to float away from the less than poignant scene beneath him, but he couldn’t break the tether that was holding him to his body. He began to panic, wondering if he was cursed to spend eternity haunting the Hoover parking lot. 

And that was the moment when, like something out of a bad horror movie, black smoke began to seep up from the ground a few feet from his body and rapidly began to solidify into a dark malevolent form. 

“Oh shit,” Krycek choked, as the ‘thing’ materialized into a tall, black-cloaked specter with a scull where its face should be and a sharply glinting scythe in one of its skeletal hands. “I don’t fucking believe this,” he whimpered, as Death – for who the hell else could the phantom actually be – stepped towards his body.

There was a moment of clarity, as a thousand long-forgotten childhood tales tumbled into his consciousness, and he realized that Death was there to slice through the tether that held him to his corpse. It was a moment of terror, since he realized the physical manifestation of Death as a real entity suggested that *other* myths and legends were probably true too. Krycek, who had never before given any credence to the idea of heaven or hell, could already feel the burning fire of an eternity of hellfire and brimstone.

“I guess it’s too late to say sorry, huh?” he quipped weakly and, despite being in spirit form, gave in to the physical urge to close his eyes as the specter approached him.

It was only when a couple of endless minutes passed with absolutely nothing occurring that he cautiously opened one eye. Not only was his tether still intact, but Death had apparently walked right past his body and was now standing in front of Mulder, his whole posture radiating confusion.

Krycek struggled against a wave of near hysterical laughter. Death hadn’t come for *him*. He’d come for *Mulder*. 

Only Mulder wasn’t dead.

In front of Krycek’s horrified eyes, Death reached into the bilious folds of his cloak, retrieved a battered, leather-bound notebook, and double-checked an entry. Then Death shook his head in confusion before shrugging and reaching a skeletal hand out towards the unsuspecting Mulder. He touched Mulder’s chest and a wispy tendril of light grey smoke began to trickle out of Mulder’s body.

“No, you stupid fucker,” Krycek yelled, as he realized that Death was drawing Mulder’s soul out of his body. 

Death gave a start of surprise, half-turned until Krycek could see glowing eyes radiating from the sockets of the scull, and paused in his collection of Mulder’s soul. 

“That’s it. I’m the one who’s dead, you asshole. Leave him alone,” Krycek urged.

Which was the moment when the Talisman suddenly sent out a blinding pulse of blood-red light. Death gave a howling scream of surprise as he was engulfed by a maelstrom of whirling energy and, before Krycek’s disbelieving eyes, Death’s shade folded in on itself, seemingly sucked towards Mulder’s pocket, until with a final scream of shock both Death and the pulsing red light simply vanished.

##

Krycek’s first thought on waking was he’d never order a double-pepperoni pizza with extra cheese again. Not that he could actually remember eating a double-pepperoni pizza, but he recognized the side-effects only too well. Eating rich food late at night always played havoc with his REM sleep.

But enough was enough. He’d had some humdingers of nightmares in his time, but his dream of being shot to death by Skinner, in the Hoover parking lot, had been far too fucking *real* for his liking. And what the fuck had his subconscious been telling him by including that preposterous last scene? Who the fuck seriously believed in an actual physical manifestation of Death? 

He cautiously inched his eyelids open. Since he couldn’t remember eating, it was equally possible he’d also drunk – and forgotten – a bottle or two of cheap vodka. If so, opening his eyes was going to invite a whole new kind of nightmare into his head.

“You’re awake. Good. It’s about time.”

/What the fuck?/

He threw caution to the wind and let his eyes shoot open. He also, just to be on the safe side, launched himself out of bed in the direction of the strangely familiar voice and wrapped his hands around the throat of his unexpected visitor before said victim even had time to squawk in protest.

“What the hell are you doing in my apart…” Krycek began, only to flinch into a defensive half-crouch as he realized he’d woken in a completely unfamiliar room.

“Gugggahgugughhh…” his victim gasped, his eyes bulging in a rapidly darkening face.

Krycek reluctantly relaxed his grip slightly around the little man’s neck. “Where the fuck am I?” he demanded, staring wildly around the huge, luxuriously-furnished bedroom. “And what the fuck are *you* doing here, you little troll? This is something to do with Mulder, right?”

“Isn’t everything?” Frohike muttered, somewhat bitterly. “I was going to break it to you gently, but since you’re being such an asshole I don’t see why I should bother. You’re dead, Krycek.”

“Ha, fucking ha,” Krycek drawled. “I’ll give you two minutes to tell me the truth, then I’ll start breaking bones. Want me to start with your hands or your feet?”

“Speaking of hands, haven’t you noticed anything, Krycek?” Frohike spat.

Krycek abruptly released his choke-hold and stared with disbelief at his hands. Two hands. On the end of two arms.

He had two arms. Two fucking arms!

“How the fuck?”

“I told you. You’re dead. This is the afterlife. Well, kind of.”

Krycek shook his head in vehement disbelief. “Fuck this shit. What the fuck kind of trick are you trying to pull?”

Frohike clicked his fingers and the far wall of the bedroom transformed into a movie-screen. Krycek watched with a growing sense of horror as the scene of his ‘dream’ was replayed in the kind fuzzy black and white images taken by a CCTV.

“The whole thing was caught on camera,” Frohike explained unnecessarily. “Still think this is a trick?”

Krycek paled, blinked at the screen, looked down disbelievingly at his two hands, and swallowed heavily.

“I’m dead?” he whispered.

“Yeah. Kind of.”

“Skinner really killed me? It wasn’t a dream?”

“Yeah,” Frohike repeated. “Kind of.”

Krycek shook himself, decided he was fucked if he was going to give the little bastard the satisfaction of watching him fall apart and adjusted his features into a sneer. 

“What the fuck do you mean by ‘kind of’?”

“Well, he did and he didn’t. In cases like yours, the process is always a bit more complicated.”

“What do you mean, cases like mine?” Krycek demanded suspiciously.

Frohike shrugged. “The whole good/bad thing. Gotta admit it shocked the hell out of me that there was any question of whether you were going downstairs, Krycek. But it seems you aren’t quite the rat bastard everyone always assumed. For every shitty thing you’ve ever done, it seems you did an equal amount of good stuff too. Not that I personally witnessed any of it. Anyway, it turns out that when people die in a state of balance, the only person who can judge their soul is Death himself.”

“Himself?” Krycek asked, beginning to feel a distinct feeling of uneasiness.

“You know… big guy, black cloak, sharp scythe, bad case of anorexia.”

Krycek swallowed heavily. “You’re talking about the… the Grim Reaper?”

“The one and only.”

“And he decided I was a good guy?” Krycek asked, with considerable surprise.

“Not exactly.”

“Well, if this is hell, it’s a shitload better than I expected,” he admitted, looking around the room.

“You’re not in hell,” Frohike agreed dolefully.

Krycek smirked. “So I’m a good guy? Hot damn. Who’d have thought it, huh?”

“I never said that.”

“But this Death guy judged me…”

“No he didn’t. That’s the problem.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“He’s gone missing.”

“What?” Krycek demanded, although a tiny voice in the back of his head muttered ‘oops’.

“The last time anyone saw him was just before you died. Next thing anyone knows, you’re here in the afterlife with your soul still awaiting judgment, and Death’s gone AWOL. A lot of folks up here are saying you killed him.”

“I killed *Death*? How the hell could I kill Death?” Krycek blustered guiltily.

“I admit it’s unlikely. You weren’t even on his daily schedule of appointments. The thing is that he was *actually* sent to collect Mulder’s soul. But, somehow, Mulder’s still alive and *you’re* dead, and since you were with Mulder at the time everyone is blaming *you*. ”

“There’s a change,” Krycek snarled defensively. “If in doubt, blame me. Seems to be a universal constant.”

“The guys and I have been working on the problem,” Frohike admitted reluctantly. “Anyway, the point is, Death’s missing and so you’re here.”

“So where’s here?”

“This is Death’s house.”

“His house?”

“Well, not so much *his* house as the house of the Office of Death. Kind of like the white house is the *President’s* house, rather than the President’s *house*. Know what I mean?”

Krycek just blinked.

“You either killed him or knocked him into some other dimension, Krycek. So…well, *someone’s* gotta take over the job and…well, since it’s your fault he’s missing, it’s up to you to take up the slack…”

“You’re telling me I killed *Death*, as in ‘the grim reaper’ kind of *Death*, and now *I’m* expected to fill in for him?”

“In a nutshell.”

“Fuck this. I wanna talk to someone in charge.”

“It’s too late. They had a vote, and you lost. The guys in Heaven don’t want you, and apparently the guys in Hell are afraid you’ll take over. So you’re stuck with being Death until he comes back from wherever you sent him. Always assuming he *can* come back.”

“Oh fuck. I don’t believe this,” Krycek groaned.

“If you stop and think about it, it’s a cushy number, Krycek. There’s not *that* much for Death to do. You have a huge staff to process the majority of souls. Although you can take anyone’s life, you only *have* to get personally involved when there’s any doubt about which direction a soul ought to go in. Me and the guys will help you get into the swing of things.”

“The guys?”

“Byers and Langly are here too. We’re temporarily part of Death’s administration staff.”

“Hang on a minute. When did you three die? You were all fine last time I saw you and I would have heard about any hits out on you.”

“We only died a couple of months ago. You’ve been… well, out of the picture for a bit. On hold, as it were.”

“Exactly how long are you saying I’ve been dead?” Krycek snarled.

“About a year,” Frohike admitted reluctantly. “You, and all the other balanced souls who’ve died since then, have just been piling up in a cosmic in-tray waiting for Death’s return. Only Death hasn’t returned and things are reaching a crisis point now. So some people - well, it was us, actually - suggested you’d make a good temporary substitute.”

“Why me?”

“We thought you’d have a talent at it,” Byers said, walking into the room with Langly at his heels. “Being an assassin and all that.”

“What he means,” Langly interrupted, “is we’re pissed as hell with you, and it seems like poetic justice to make you sort out the mess you created.”

“You’re pissed with me because I’m dead instead of Mulder?” Krycek demanded coolly.

“No. We’re pissed with you because you got us killed, you asshole,” Frohike growled. 

“*I* got you killed? I thought you said I’ve been dead for a year. So how the hell did I get you killed?”

“You’re the *reason* we’re dead,” Byers explained. “Seems our reputation as super-hackers proceeded us and The Powers That Be decided we were the best bet for tracking down where Death has disappeared to. So they snuffed us out, dragged us up here to Death’s mansion and said the only way to get out of here was to get Death back on the job.

“Only, when we finally tracked his movements to the precise time of his disappearance, guess who we found was involved? You, Krycek. So the way we figure it is this. You find out where you sent him and help us get him back, or you end up having to keep the role of Death yourself. Either way, TPTB get *someone* doing their dirty work and we get to move upstairs.”

“This is fucking insane,” Krycek snarled, though a voice in the back of his head muttered that being asked to play ‘Death’ for a while was a hell of an improvement on spending eternity in hell fire. Maybe if he *did* find Death he could broker a deal. From the way Frohike had explained it, it was up to Death whether he went ‘upstairs’ or ‘down’. Rescuing Death from the Otherworld *had* to be worth a few brownie points.

He was also more than curious about why Death had gone to collect *Mulder’s* soul. That indicated Mulder wasn’t as lily-white as he’d always suspected. And thinking about Mulder reminded him about Scully’s baby.

“What happened to the kid?”

“Oh, it was all a storm in a tea-cup,” Frohike shrugged. “William turned out to be nothing particularly special, after all.”

“FUCK! You mean I died for *nothing*?” Krycek demanded.

“Yeah, well now you know how *we* feel,” Byers snapped.

Krycek clenched his fists and took a half-step in his direction, a look of menace on his face.

“Chill out, Death dude,” Langly said, jumping between them. “You wanna wring someone’s neck, there’s a huge backlog of candidates waiting for your personal attention.”

“Come with us, and we’ll show you the operations room,” Frohike suggested. “Then you’ll have a better idea of what’s involved in the job.”

Krycek nodded sullenly and followed them through the vast marble halls of the mansion into a high-ceilinged library filled with countless thousands of leather-bound books similar to the one he’d seen Death consult in front of Mulder.

“Everybody’s assigned time of death is automatically written into these books,” Byers explained “and Death uses them like appointment diaries. The name of everyone who’s ever lived is in this library.”

Krycek was impressed despite himself. “It looks pretty organized,” he admitted reluctantly.

“Oh, ignore all this antiquated crap. We’ve gotten everything modernized,” Langly interrupted. “We’ve computerized. Here...” He produced a slim black palm pilot from his back pocket. “You’re familiar with using one of these, aren’t you?” he asked Krycek, with a deliberately innocent smile. “Just use the stylus to click on today’s date and all your appointments will come up.”

Krycek stared suspiciously at the tiny computer. Its screen was insistently flashing ‘2301’.

“What the fuck does that mean?” he demanded.

“Oh, there’s a bit of a backlog to clear up,” Byers answered with a shrug. “But once you clear that, your schedule’s relatively light. The majority of souls make it up or down without Death’s direct intervention. As Frohike said, you have a pretty extensive staff to do the grunt work. You just have to collect the souls of the complicated cases.”

“And how the hell am I supposed to get back and forth to Earth to collect these souls?” Krycek demanded.

“As Death you have your own transport,” Frohike said. “Didn’t you ever hear about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?”

Krycek’s mouth curled into a disgusted sneer. “A horse? No fucking way.”

“But Death rides a ‘pale horse’,” Byers argued. “It’s part of the job description.”

“Yeah? Well I’m changing the job description then. I’m not riding a fucking *horse* anywhere,” Krycek spat. “It’s time Death realized it’s the 21st century.”

The gunmen exchanged worried glances.

“What?” Krycek demanded. 

“I don’t think TPTB will be happy if you change things around. You’re only ‘Acting Death’, remember.”

Krycek shrugged carelessly then raised the palm pilot significantly and gave them an evil smirk. “I’m not changing things. I’m just ‘modernizing’.”

After much muttering among the gunmen, a couple of consultations with other members of Death’s staff, and several angry denials by Krycek of alternative options that were put forth, it was eventually decided that it was permissible for Death to ride a pale Harley Davidson.

“Just imagine it in your mind,” Byers told him. “As Death, you have the power to manifest anything you require for the fulfillment of your office.”

Krycek visualized the motorbike and waited for it to miraculously appear. And waited. And waited some more.

“Try closing your eyes and clicking your fingers,” Byers suggested, when nothing happened.

“Or click your heels,” Langly snickered.

Krycek gave them both a repressive frown, but tried the finger-clicking thing. A gleaming silver Harley-Davidson materialized in front of his stunned eyes.

“Fuck me,” he said, deciding that maybe being Death was pretty cool, after all.

Taking advantage of Krycek’s air of smug satisfaction, Frohike decided it was a good time to present him with his raiments of office.

Krycek gave a dubious sniff at the proffered black cloak and scythe. 

“Aren’t I supposed to have a scull mask or something?” Krycek demanded petulantly. “I’ll look like Rasputin the mad monk in this damned cloak.”

“Oh, the scull isn’t part of the uniform,” Frohike said. “That’s just the way Death looks. I think having the right image was why he got the job in the first place. You could always create the ‘illusion’ of a scull. Death has the power to project any physical illusion. But there’s nothing in the rules that says you *have* to have a scull for a face.”

“But I have to wear a black cloak and carry a fucking scythe?”

“It’s… well it’s the *image*, you know?” Langly reminded him apologetically. 

“Yeah? Well, *my* image is black leather and an Uzi,” Krycek growled. He concentrated, snapped his fingers, and the cloak liquefied and reformed around him as a tight body-hugging sheath.

He looked down at himself. It wasn’t *quite* what he’d had in mind. On the other hand… 

“What the hell are you wearing, Krycek?” Byers squawked. 

“Like it?” Krycek smirked, admiring the way the costume defined and emphasized his musculature.

Byers just blushed and swallowed heavily. 

“It’s awsome, dude,” Langly said. “You look like Batman’s evil twin.”

“Batman’s pornographic evil twin,” Frohike snapped, his eyes bulging at Krycek’s clearly defined groin. “You’re supposed to be Death, not a BDSM centerfold. You’re bringing this office into disrepute.”

“How the fuck can I make Death more disreputable than he already is? ‘Sides, have you ever tried wearing a cloak on a Harley?” Krycek countered. 

“Death’s going to be majorly pissed with you, dude,” Langly muttered reluctantly. “But *I* think you look cool.”

Krycek shook his head and offered him an evil grin. “Nope. I look *hot*.”

“Well now you’re dressed…” Byers started.

“That’s arguable,” Frohike interrupted.

“… and we’ve sorted out your transport,” Byers continued, with a repressive frown at Frohike, “ it’s time we explained the rules to you.”

He reached into one off the bookcases, withdrew a huge volume and, staggering under its weight, carried it to a table. 

Krycek stared at the book in horror. “Those are the rules?”

“A through L,” Byers replied. “There’s another book for M through Z.”

“Fuck that,” Krycek announced firmly. “I’ll play it by ear.”

The gunmen exchanged horrified glances. “You can’t,” they said, simultaneously.

Krycek threw his leg over the Harley and smirked. “Just watch me,” he said, and gunned the engine. 

He’d been on a few wild rides in his time, but nothing in his mortal experience prepared him for what happened next. The Death Mansion instantaneously dissolved around him and he was flying at warp-speed through a whirling maelstrom of light, speeding through a kaleidoscope of bleeding colors so swiftly that it felt like the flesh was being peeled from his bones. He burst out of the tunnel of energy into an exploding supernova of light and found himself floating, several hundred feet above ground, over an unfamiliar city.

“What a fucking rush,” he muttered, feeling like he’d just emerged from a major LSD trip. “So what the hell do I do next?”

Either by coincidence or in response to his question, he felt a burning sensation at his right hip and reached down to retrieve the palm pilot, which was glowing with an eerie, otherworldly light.

He flipped it open and saw a directional map scroll down onto the screen with a blinking red light in the top left-hand corner. After a quick thoughtful perusal of the Death bike, he slipped the computer onto a small bracket over the bike’s engine. The bike immediately began to move, at a fortunately more leisurely pace, over the city buildings until the blinking light was in the middle of the map and he was floating over a small detached house.

“Okay. This is pretty easy,” he said to himself, and used the stylus to switch the pilot to diary mode. An entry immediately flashed up. ‘John Peterson. STOD 22.47. 4MAC.’

“STOD?” Krycek queried. “What the fuck’s a stod?”

‘Scheduled time of death’ flashed up on the screen.

“Right,” Krycek nodded.

‘John Peterson. STOD 22.47. 3MAC.”

“MAC?”

The diary entry flickered and was replaced by ‘minutes and counting’.

“See?” Krycek declared triumphantly. “Who needs to read a fucking rule book, anyway? I’ve got three minutes to off this guy.”

He brought the bike down to the front yard of the house, climbed off and walked up to the front door. To his considerable satisfaction, as he approached the door his form became translucent and he simply walked through it like a ghost. 

Old habits reasserted themselves and he found himself sneaking furtively up the stairs before he remembered he was Death now, which meant he was presumably invisible and *definitely* invulnerable. Well, unless John Peterson happened to be wearing an ancient Persian talisman, he reminded himself with a snicker.

“2MAC” flashed at his wrist on the screen of a previously non-existent watch.

“Talk about being on the clock,” he grumbled and hurried up the stairs.

There were two bedrooms. In the first he saw a young teenage boy sitting up in bed, his face buried in his arms. The kid appeared to be crying silently. In the second bedroom, he found an overweight middle-aged man snoring heavily. He had a beer-gut and the florid face of a regular drinker. On the guy’s bedside table there was a half-empty bottle of cheap whiskey, a packet of Morleys and an overflowing ashtray. 

“You’re a heart-attack waiting to happen, aren’t you?” Krycek announced disgustedly. He had a particular loathing of Morley-smokers. “Well, guess what? Wait’s over, Mr. Peterson.”

Remembering the way Death had started to retrieve Mulder’s soul, Krycek reached out and touched the man’s chest. Immediately a cancer-black tendril of smoke began to pour out of the man’s torso. Krycek tugged on it and more and more of the wraith-like substance came flowing out. He began to panic as his hands filled with the ropy tendrils, until it occurred to him to begin wrapping it quickly into a makeshift ball. Considering it looked like smoke, it was surprisingly dense and by the time he had enough to form a small football it was almost too heavy to hold. 

“I should have brought the fucking scythe,” Krycek grunted, as he tugged at the ball but found it firmly tethered to Peterson’s heart by a final, surprisingly strong tendril.

He put the balled soul on the bed, snapped his fingers and produced a wicked-looking hunting knife. As he sliced through the final tendril the man’s eyes opened wide. Peterson gave a final choking gasp for breath, and died.

Krycek reached for the soul, hoping the palm pilot would have some kind of clues as to how he was supposed to do the ‘judging’ thing, but the ball rolled out of his hands, over the bed, dropped onto the carpet and began to sink through the floor.

“What the fuck?” Krycek asked, as the soul disappeared from view.

On his left wrist, the watch was flashing “-2MAC” and then, as he stared at it in dawning realization, the display changed to “-3MAC”.

“Oh shit,” Krycek said. He gave the corpse a weak grin and muttered, “Oops.”

After a couple of minutes intense thought, he decided that if the father wasn’t his target then it was obviously the boy’s soul he’d been sent to collect. He felt momentarily guilty about offing the wrong victim, but then shrugged and decided that the fact the guy’s soul had so clearly and significantly dropped ‘downstairs’ meant he wasn’t any great loss to the world.

He rose and walked into the boy’s bedroom. The kid was still crying, and as Krycek approached the bed he realized two things, that there was a razor blade on the mattress near to the boy’s left hand and the room stunk of sex.

As soon as he approached, the boy reached for the blade. Krycek froze mid-step, and so did the boy. He took a step backwards and the boy dropped the razor with a sob and returned to hugging himself. It was as though he needed the actual presence of Death to go through with his suicide attempt.

Krycek stumbled out of the room, feeling sickened and wishing, fervently, that he’d made the boy’s father suffer one hell of a lot more. It was all too obvious to him now *why* the father’s soul had been damned.

“I won’t fucking do it,” he announced, throwing his head back and glaring defiantly at the ceiling. Then he raced back down the stairs and jumped back on the Death bike.

‘Current backlog of souls now stands at 2302,’ the palm pilot flashed accusingly.

“Fuck off and die,” Krycek retorted, gunning the bike and visualizing himself back in Death’s mansion.

“This system is completely fucked up,” Krycek announced, jumping off the bike, and tossing the palm pilot at Langly in disgust. “That kid’s a victim. He’s never done anything wrong. He doesn’t deserve to die. I won’t do it.”

“This is a *really* bad time to grow a conscience,” Frohike pointed out snidely. “You’re Acting Death, not the fucking tooth fairy.”

“His time’s up, Krycek,” Byers pointed out, in a more sympathetic tone. “He’s scheduled to die tonight. The only question is where he goes next, and that’s up to you.”

“The kid doesn’t need my help. It’s the bastard who hurt him that’s gone to hell.”

Frohike shook his head sadly. “His soul’s in balance, Krycek. Unless you intervene, there’s at least a 50% chance he’s going to the other place.”

“Why?” Krycek demanded angrily. “What the hell could he have ever possibly done? Nicked a couple of candy bars? Told a few white lies? You can’t possibly be saying he’s being damned for being a victim of abuse? Who the fuck makes the rules around here anyway?”

“You’re right that up until today his soul was practically unblemished,” Frohike agreed. “But suicide’s a mortal sin, Alex. The minute he uses that razor, his soul is going to be so badly stained by that one grievous sin that he *might* fall.”

“Then I’ve got to stop him dying.”

“You can’t. But you can stop him from killing *himself*,” Byers said. “Go back down there and take his soul yourself.” 

“This job fucking SUCKS,” Krycek announced disgustedly, returning to his bike. “I’m not killing him, and neither is he going to kill himself. I’m going to go down there and knock some fucking sense into the stupid little bastard.”

“Can I offer you a helpful hint?” Langly suggested sweetly. “Try not to kill any more bystanders, okay? The paperwork’s a real drag.”

Krycek just gave him the finger and returned to Earth.

As soon as he returned to the Peterson house he realized Byers was right. In the short time he’d been gone, John had reached the point of no longer needing Death’s spectral presence to go through with his suicide bid. Krycek entered the boy’s room and found him firmly clutching the blade and moving it towards his left wrist with a look of clear determination on his tear-stained face.

Krycek did what anyone would have done in the circumstances. He yelled “NO,” at the top of his voice and dove for the razor. Although the boy didn’t react to his voice, he jumped as Krycek barreled into him and dropped the razor onto his lap, his eyes opening wide with shock. Krycek gave a sigh of relief and stepped back, only to freeze in horror at the fine silvery tendril of smoke now connecting them together.

“No,” he said, shaking his head in angry frustration. “I don’t want your soul, kid.”

But still the gossamer-fine silver smoke continued to pour out of the boy’s body.

“You came for me,” John whispered, a relieved smile spreading across his thin, tired face. 

“You can see me?” Krycek demanded, horror-stricken, as his hands began to fill with the boy’s feather-light soul.

“Angel,” the boy gasped, and died.

The ball in Krycek’s hands began to float upwards, until it reached the length of the tendril still fastening it to the boy’s body and then it began a frustrated, bobbing dance until, with a choking sob, Krycek reached for his knife and severed the silver thread.

He watched the boy’s soul dissipate through the ceiling, then looked down at the surprisingly peaceful look on John’s face.

“I was trying to save you,” he said, stroking the boy’s hair softly.

Then he looked back up at the ceiling and shrugged. “Maybe, in a way, I did,” he whispered. He patted the boy’s shoulder awkwardly, then left the house and got back on his bike. The palm pilot was flashing a new directional map. He turned it off. 

He returned, instead, back to the Death Mansion, and asked John Byers to teach him the rules of being Death.

It took him three weeks to learn enough about the Ars Moriendi, the craft of death, to feel ready to resume his duties. He learned how to touch people without automatically extracting their souls. He memorized all the varied and complicated reasons a soul could be damned or saved and began to understand that being Death didn’t make him responsible for someone dying. He was just a mediator, a way for a soul to pass over as swiftly and painlessly as possible to the afterlife.

It then took him a further two weeks to clear the backlog of souls awaiting judgment, which had grown to 2759 during his self-imposed sabbatical.

And then he finally climbed onto the Death bike and went to work as the new, albeit temporary, manifestation of Death. He was imbued with a new and unfamiliar sense of purpose. For the first time in his life - so to speak – he had a clearly defined and necessary role to fulfill. 

He discovered there was satisfaction in releasing a soul from a body. Old age, disease and injury could become a prison from which a soul was eager to escape. And, admittedly, he gained a considerable amount of satisfaction from occasionally hastening the demise of the odd piece of low-life scum he stumbled across during the execution of his official duties.

There was a certain amount of rumbling complaint from TPTB whenever he gave in to the temptation to take a soul before its time but, since no-one ever actually put their foot down about it, Krycek decided it was an unofficial perk of the job that he’d be allowed to indulge in as long as he kept his office tickety-boo and ship-shape.

Mulder was never far from his mind, although for the first few weeks after waking up dead he’d admittedly been more consumed by his hurt over Mulder’s apparent indifference to his demise than by any more charitable feelings. But being Death had a way of putting a lot of mortal emotions into perspective. When he’d been alive, he’d been too busy sulking over the way Mulder treated him to ever stand back and look at the situation from Mulder’s point of view. Now, looking at his actions objectively, and allowing that Mulder had no way of knowing his true motivations for his behavior, Krycek could see how Mulder had grown to feel such loathing for him.

With understanding came forgiveness, particularly since dealing with mortal fragility on a daily basis was inevitably giving Krycek a far more sympathetic attitude towards mortals in general. So, as the weeks went by, Krycek found his thoughts of Mulder increasingly colored by his previous feelings of affection. 

Plus he was horny.

It took a little time to correctly identify the emotion, given that he was dead and naturally assumed he’d no longer be plagued by physical desire. Besides, he’d often gotten a hard-on during the execution of an execution. So he put his occasional boners down to excitement rather than desire until he reached a point at which he could no longer fool himself that he was anything other than sexually frustrated.

When he ‘casually’ mentioned the fact to Frohike, the little man struggled to keep a straight face and admitted that the previous Death had been known to have the occasional ‘romantic’ dalliance with a mortal. 

“I hear he was a great hit with Goth chicks. You might be dead, Krycek, but you’re also the current personification of Death. And Death *isn’t* dead. He’s something ‘other’.”

“So I can have sex with a mortal?” Krycek demanded excitedly. He’d occasionally had vague daydreams of having sex with Mulder but all of them had, of necessity, involved Mulder being tied up and helpless. As *Death* however, he could actually imagine a scenario in which Mulder’s curiosity might overcome the need for five-point restraints. Mulder might rather eat a bullet than let Alex Krycek fuck him, but there was a definite possibility the kinky bastard would spread his legs for the manifestation of Death. He’d fucked a vampire, hadn’t he? 

“If you can find anyone who’d have you,” Frohike snorted. “As long as you practice safe sex. You don’t want any accidents, do you?”

“Death can impregnate a mortal?” 

“No. But Death *can* accidentally remove a soul if he’s not paying attention. You don’t want your amorous advances to be the literal kiss of death,” Frohike reminded him. 

The reminder effectively quashed Krycek’s half-formed urge to see whether the fact he was a walking X-file would be enough to overcome Mulder’s feelings of loathing for him. He decided he’d take a leaf out of the previous Death’s book and slake his sexual hunger on strangers instead. 

Except at the actual moment of death, mortals couldn’t see Death unless Krycek deliberately decided to make himself visible. As often as not, Krycek *did* choose to let his clients see him. A large part of that decision was he was pretty proud of his appearance. He’d done a little work on his costume over the weeks, making its already body-hugging contours even tighter to emphasize his physique. He’d also grown and darkened his hair, so it blended perfectly with the midnight-black of his outfit – which just made his eyes seem an even more dramatic shade of green – and he’d lightened his skin to an almost luminescent whiteness. He was sure the souls he collected appreciated his efforts to look more like a glorious Angel of Death than a skeletal Grim Reaper. 

He was certainly a hit with the living. Now and then, when business was slow, he took the Death bike down to Earth and found himself remarkably successful at hunting willing ass. 

Even so, Mulder had a nasty habit of popping into his head at the most inconvenient times. Krycek decided it was just guilt over the unfinished business between them. He dealt with the unwelcome intrusion by starting a concerted campaign to rid the world of all the alien collaborators and replicants. 

The collaborators were easy. Most of them were old men so he caused very few ripples by his decision to move their STOD’s further up the list. Particularly since the gunmen figured out a way to make their names *accidentally* pop up on his palm pilot. The replicants were more difficult. Since they were already dead, they were already well past their STOD-dates and should, therefore, have been easier to dispatch without creating suspicion. The problem was there were so damned many of them. Although he had no problem in dispatching them, courtesy of a magnetite scythe, it was hard work to fit their deaths invisibly inside his schedule without TPTB noticing he was moonlighting.

Between a new war breaking out in the Middle-East and the time-consuming task of ridding the world of the replicants, Krycek soon found himself too rushed off his feet to go cruising. So, naturally, he started daydreaming about Mulder again. This time he managed to convince himself that his *real* reason for wanting to see Mulder was that he had the talisman.

As much as Krycek was getting into the swing of the Death-thing, it was only tolerable because it was temporary. Although being Death still had that bright, fresh new-job excitement, Krycek was pretty sure it would pall into tedium eventually and his only chance of getting out of the office was by getting the previous occupier back from wherever the hell he’d accidentally sent him. And the key to finding Death was the talisman Krycek had put in Mulder’s pocket.

Mulder was harder to track down than he’d anticipated. The Death bike was pretty damned good at seeking anyone with a current STOD, but just sat there like a hunk of useless junk if he asked it to find someone who wasn’t scheduled for death. Even the gunmen couldn’t help him. Although they could use the Death Mansion computer to hack into any computer on Earth, Mulder had gone into hiding with some bullshit death-sentence over his head, and had dropped off the radar. 

Although he wasn’t truly certain he *wanted* to see Mulder, the fact that he *couldn’t* see him drove Krycek crazy. He’d never been particularly good at understanding the meaning of ‘You can’t’, and having spent several months as the practically omnipotent personification of Death he’d forgotten the concept even existed.

He paid an unscheduled visit to Skinner, scaring at least ten years off the man’s life by materializing at his bedside in the middle of the night, and used a newly learned trick to withdraw just enough of Skinner’s soul to read Mulder’s location before letting the soul twang back into Skinner’s body. He’d actually planned to cut Skinner’s thread after getting the information but, when he realized Skinner was the only person who was still supporting Mulder, he reluctantly decided that allowing Skinner to continue aiding and abetting the fugitive Mulder was possibly more important than his own desire for petty revenge.

He found Mulder living alone in a trailer-park in Idaho, which for some reason struck him as ludicrously funny. Scully had, apparently, long since decided she wasn’t cut out for life on the run and had returned to DC claiming temporary insanity.

For some reason, instead of wafting through the door or simply materializing inside the trailer, Krycek chose to walk up to the door and knock for entrance. Hearing furtive movement inside the trailer, Krycek backed up enough to let Mulder see him clearly through the peephole. A moment later the door swung open and a bespectacled, bearded, bed-haired Mulder greeted him, not with a gun but simply with the words, “You’re dead.”

“Nope. I’m *Death*,” Krycek corrected cheerfully. “There’s a considerable difference.”

Mulder blinked at him owlishly, ran a hand through his hair, used his other hand to tug nervously at his stained sweat-top, and said, “You’d better come in.”

“You look like shit,” Krycek announced, accepting the invitation and stepping into the dingy interior of the trailer. “And…Jesus, Mulder…. I always knew you were a slob but this is a whole new definition of the term trailer-trash.”

“So, you’re here to kill me?” Mulder asked dully, plonking himself down on the only seat not covered with a layer of books, print-outs, take-out boxes and dirty clothes.

“What makes you think that?” Krycek asked, worried by Mulder’s obvious lack of concern at the prospect. He’d collected enough souls to recognize when someone had reached the point of welcoming death rather than fighting it. 

Mulder shrugged listlessly. “A supposedly dead assassin turns up at my doorstep, dressed like a demonic Batman, and says he’s Death come calling. Doesn’t take much to figure it out, Krycek.”

“What the hell’s happened to you, Mulder?”

“It’s over, Krycek. Haven’t you heard? The replicants are all dead. The collaborators are dead. The colonization isn’t going to happen.”

“And that isn’t a good thing?” Krycek demanded, feeling totally unappreciated. There was no fucking pleasing some people, he decided.

“Of course it’s a fucking good thing,” Mulder replied, without heat. “I’m not that damned selfish. I got what I wanted. The fact it’s left me with nothing worth living for is *my* problem.”

“What about Scully. The baby. The X-files. Surely you…”

“What about the death sentence hanging over my head?” Mulder snapped. “I can’t go back to my old life.”

“Then make a fucking new life, you sorry bastard,” Krycek snarled.

“I thought you were here to kill me.”

“Yeah, well you never fucking understood me, Mulder. I *never* wanted you dead.”

Mulder rolled his eyes in weary disbelief. “Then why did you say ‘I’m Death’?” 

“Because I am. The genuine article. The physical personification of Death. Wanna see my scythe?” Krycek leered.

“Death? As in the ‘grim reaper’ Death?”

“None other,” Krycek agreed smugly.

Mulder gaped at him for a moment, then shook his head and snorted. “Fuck. You’re completely insane.”

“Funnily enough, that was my own thought, at first, but I’m kinda getting into the swing of things now.”

“Either you’ve finally cracked or I have,” Mulder chuckled. “Want a beer?”

Which was how Krycek discovered that Death might be virtually omnipotent but was no better at handling his liquor than any other guy. After he and Mulder had downed a couple of six-packs between them, he merrily demonstrated the fact that not only was his costume not made of rubber, like Mulder was insisting, but neither did he, as Mulder had slyly suggested, have a sock stuffed into his groin for added effect. 

“S’not a fuckin’ sock,” he slurred. It took him a couple of abortive attempts before he managed to successfully snap his fingers, but then his costume dematerialized and he gestured smugly at his naked lap, from where his cock was rearing proudly at attention.

“SHIT!” Mulder yelled.

“Told ya,” Krycek agreed proudly, loosely grasping his considerable girth and stroking it fondly.

Sadly, Mulder seemed more impressed with the disappearance of his clothes than what their absence revealed. “How the hell didjya do that, Kry…kryc…’lex?”

“S’all ‘lusion,” Krycek told him, grinning inanely at finally being called by his first name. “’cept my cock.”

“S’big cock,” Mulder agreed, nodding solemnly.

“Fuckin’ A,” Krycek grinned.

“So…ya really *are* Death, huh?”

“Told ya.”

“Unless you’re some kinda hol…holo…hola…thingy,” Mulder pointed out, and burped loudly.

“Wan’ me to prove I’m real?” Krycek leered, staggering to his feet and waving his assets in Mulder’s face suggestively.

“Sure,” Mulder agreed, grabbing Krycek’s arms in an attempt to drag himself upwards. “Hey, ‘lex. You got two arms.”

“And a big dick,” Krycek said, as he threw his right arm around Mulder’s waist and dragged him down the trash-strewn trailer in search of a bedroom.

Krycek was woken the next morning by the steady insistent pulse of his watch. He half-opened one eye, saw the flashing screen and groaned.

“Fuck. What the hell did you stick up my ass last night?” a voice moaned from under the crumpled sheets. “I can’t fucking move.”

Krycek smirked, patted his cock proudly, and decided it had definitely been worth his current hangover and a severe case of beard-burn on his ass. Who the hell would have figured a guy like Mulder would be such an accomplished ass-licker? “I gotta go to work,” he groaned.

“Work?” Mulder said, his head appearing suddenly from under the sheet. “What kind of work?” 

“What the fuck kind of work do you *think* Death does?” Krycek countered. “Places to go, people to kill.” He dragged himself reluctantly out of bed and rematerialized his costume.

Mulder’s eyes went huge and his mouth gaped open in shock.

“What?” Krycek demanded.

“I thought… thought we were drunk.”

“We *were* drunk.”

Mulder blinked stupidly and waved a hand in the direction of Krycek’s costume. “I thought… thought I was seeing things. Like pink elephants.”

“You saw a pink elephant?”

Mulder shook his head fretfully. “No. I saw you make your clothes vanish. And now I saw you make them come back. How the fuck did you do that?”

“I told you. I’m Death. I can do anything,” Krycek said. It didn’t even feel like an exaggeration, given that he’d managed to get Mulder into bed.

“I thought…thought you were ly…I mean joking,” Mulder admitted bashfully.

Krycek felt a momentary flare of anger. He hadn’t missed that rapidly corrected ‘lying’. But before his outrage had a chance to take hold, he suddenly realized what Mulder’s words really meant.

“You slept with me.”

“Yeah,” Mulder agreed carefully. “I slept with you.”

“No, I mean you slept with ME. Not Death.”

“But you said you are Death,” Mulder reminded him.

“But you didn’t believe me. So you slept with ME.”

“Fuck, Alex. I’m well past the point of caring about our history, and I’ve always thought you were sex on legs. So, yeah. I slept with YOU.”

“Get up,” Krycek demanded.

“I can’t move. My ass is killing me,” Mulder groaned.

“GET UP.”

“Why?”

“You’re coming with me.”

“Huh?”

“Back to Death’s mansion. There’s nothing in the rules to say I can’t take you there.”

“Why the hell would I want to go to Death’s Mansion, Alex?”

“Because it’s where I live. Besides, I’m not leaving you in Buttfuck, Idaho. I saw the state you were in last night. I sure as hell don’t want to come back here in an official capacity, you asshole. Get dressed, or not, and get your butt on my bike.”

Mulder stared at him without speaking for an endless minute, then shrugged. “Okay.”

“You, um, wouldn’t happen to have a necklace of mine, would you? Dull reddish metal?”

“You mean the ancient Persian talisman in the shape of a seven-pointed star?” Mulder asked, with a deceptively innocent smile. “I figured you’d slipped it into my pocket. I kept it for you. Just in case you wanted it back.”

“You kept it for me? But you saw me die.” 

“So?” Mulder shrugged. “I’m walking proof that death isn’t necessarily a permanent state.”

“Let’s hope so,” Krycek muttered under his breath.

“What?”

“Grab the talisman, and let’s go.”

It took Mulder a couple of minutes to throw on some clothes and over twenty more to rummage through the detritus of his life to find the talisman, then they climbed out of the trailer together.

“Wow,” Mulder said, as he took his first look at the Death bike.

“She’s a mean machine,” Krycek agreed, with a proud grin. “Why don’t you get on and start her up, Mulder.”

Mulder climbed on board, shifting forward in the seat until Krycek could fit snugly behind him, and then looked back over his shoulder, his expression nervous. “Are you sure about this? I mean, what if it…um…”

“Just kick on the starter and give it all you’ve got. It’ll be fine,” Krycek answered, then smirked evilly. “What you scared of, Mulder? Death?”

“Should I be?” Mulder replied, with an arch of his eyebrow.

“I promise I'll take you places that you've never seen.”

“Except in my worst nightmares, no doubt,” Mulder said dryly.

“Did I tell you the gunmen are at the mansion?” Krycek asked, just as Mulder gunned the engine.

“What?” Mulder gasped.

Krycek’s answer was lost as the bike ascended like a rocket and shot into the whirling energy matrix that carried them back to Death’s home.

“Fuck,” Krycek gasped, as the pressure of the vortex pressed him so hard into Mulder’s butt that he either had to dissolve the portion of costume that covered his groin or risk castration. 

“That was fucking unbelievable,” Mulder sighed, as they burst out of warp-speed and landed gently in the Death Mansion.

“Yeah,” Krycek agreed, with a laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“I always thought you were sexy enough to make a dead man come, Mulder,” Krycek snickered, looking ruefully down at his lap. “Now you’re wearing the proof.”

Fortunately, he remembered to cover his now softened dick before the gunmen charged up to the bike in an excited gaggle.

“You look like shit, Mulder,” Frohike announced. “There a razor shortage on Earth these days?”

“Fuck, dude. It’s great to see you, even if you *are* looking like an abominable snowman,” Langly yelled, throwing his arms around Mulder in an enthusiastic hug. A moment later he released Mulder and stepped back, sniffing the air. “You even *smell* like an abominable snowman.”

“How about you guys show him the facilities,” Krycek suggested. “I’ve got something I need to do.”

“Where are you going?” Mulder asked, his eyes slightly panicked.

“To put things right, babe,” Krycek replied. Then he blushed furiously at his unthinking endearment, climbed back on his bike and placed the talisman over the directional map on the palm pilot.

He had a moment of worried doubt, but then a tiny red light blinked on the map and the Death bike surged into life.

Krycek was expecting to experience something pretty spectacular but soon decided the journey was pretty much an anti-climax. Other than being longer and colder and more intense than any previous trip he’d taken on the bike, he found it surprisingly easy to reach the Otherworld and, when he arrived, he discovered the place didn’t even necessarily look any different than Earth. Cleaner perhaps, with fresher tasting air and an aura of peace that was lacking from all but the most private, exclusive vacation resorts, but, all in all, it was nothing particularly impressive.

It was just a nice place.

“We tend to think of it more as The Nice Place,” a young girl with pigtails announced, materializing seemingly from nowhere.

Krycek blinked at her in amazement. “Samantha?” he asked. “Samantha Mulder?”

The girl nodded and laughed. “It’s one of the reasons we call this The Nice Place. You’re always greeted here by a friendly face. Even if you’re not planning to stay.”

“How do you know I’m not planning on staying?” he asked.

“Because you belong to Fox, and you didn’t bring him with you.”

The words ‘you belong to Fox’ sent a thrill of resonance through him, a kind of rightness that he hadn’t felt since he’d last used the talisman and, for the first time, he wondered whether everything had turned out the way it was meant to be, after all. But then he shook his head. He couldn’t be right. Surely Mulder’s place was with Samantha.

“Was I supposed to bring him?” he asked worriedly.

She shook her head. “Oh no. This was never where he was meant to be. Sure, I’d like to see him sometime, but he wouldn’t like to live here. It’s too…uncomplicated. And Fox wouldn’t like that.”

Krycek laughed out loud. “No,” he agreed, grinning at the girl. “Fox is anything but uncomplicated.”

“But you’re here for a reason, aren’t you?” Samantha asked.

“I…um…accidentally sent someone here.”

“Oh yes. Mr. Death,” Samantha agreed. “Boy, was he pissed when he first got here.”

Krycek swallowed heavily. “Is he… um…”

“I’ll take you to him,” Samantha offered. “Help me onto your bike.”

He lifted her into the saddle and she touched the screen of the palm pilot. The engine roared to life, and their surroundings dissolved into a flood of light. They landed, seconds later, in front of a scene of two men playing chess together. Well, one was a man and the other was the displaced personification of Death.

Krycek cleared his throat noisily.

The two chess players turned to face him, and Krycek found himself looking into a pair of glowing eyes in an all too familiar scull-like face.

“You!” Death snarled. “I know you. You’re the one whose talisman sucked me here, aren’t you?”

Krycek gulped audibly. “It was an honest mistake.”

“I’ve seen your soul, Krycek. I doubt there’s an honest bone in your body.”

“I was trying to send *Mulder* here,” Krycek protested. “Not you.”

“I’d find that a little more believable if you weren’t sitting there in my clothes, riding my…” Death stuttered to a halt and glared in horror at the motorbike. “What the hell did you do to my horse?”

“I modernized. It’s the 21st century. Who the hell considers horses an efficient form of transport anymore?” Krycek snapped defensively.

“I managed perfectly fine on my *horse* for over three millennia,” Death pointed out acerbically. 

“Yeah? Well, as soon as I get you home you can have your goddamned horse back, okay?”

“Home?” Death sneered. “I don’t think so.”

“Huh?”

“After much consideration, I regret to inform you that I’ve decided to stay here rather than return to my previous abode. So fuck off.”

“What?”

“I quit.”

“You can’t quit. You’re Death.”

“Beep. Wrong answer. I can. I have. Tough titties. I’m not going back.”

“But…but you *have* to go back…”

Death shook his head. “Well, *eventually*, I suppose. But not yet. I like it here.”

“But…”

“Don’t see your problem, kid. Looks like you’re doing a fine job. I reckon you can hold the fort for me for another century or so.”

“But I don’t *want* to be Death.”

“No? Personally, I think Death becomes you. And think of the perks of the job.”

“What perks?”

“You telling me you don’t have a favorite mortal? A little preferred morsal you like to nibble on now and then? This *Mulder* you mentioned, perhaps?”

Krycek blushed. “What if I have?”

“And, let me guess, your favorite squeeze isn’t exactly the holder of a lily-white soul?”

“I’m beginning to think *no-one* has a lily-white soul these days,” Krycek spat disgustedly.

Death chortled. “You may be right, kid. You may well be right.”

“So what’s your point?”

“Well,” Death said thoughtfully. “Although *generally* Death isn’t permitted to sway the judgment of a soul, in certain exceptional circumstances, a word in the ears of TPTB makes all the difference.”

“What exceptional circumstances?”

“For instance, if the *temporary* holder of the office of Death were to return with the message that the original Death is taking an extended vacation, and that the *temporary* holder of the office might be successfully convinced to cheerfully hold the reins in his absence, well in *those* exceptional circumstances I think TPTB would agree to guarantee the disposition of a couple of souls.”

“A *couple* of souls?”

“Well, let’s face it. There’s little point you getting your Mulder upstairs if you’re not going to be there with him, is there?”

“So I save Mulder *and* myself?”

“Here’s the deal. For the length of Mulder’s mortal life, you agree to remain in the office of Death. When the time comes for him to pass over, I return to take the reins again and you both wander off into the sunset together.”

Krycek reluctantly agreed. It wasn’t like he had that many options as he could see it. The fact that Death *had* gone to collect Mulder’s soul the last time proved he was right that Mulder’s soul was in a precarious balance. At least this way he could protect Mulder and, hopefully, pass over to the afterlife with him.

Although he was really going to have to check out whether souls ‘upstairs’ had a sex life. Having just found the glory of sharing a bed with Mulder, he was damned if he was going to give it up.

He said his farewells to Samantha, promising he’d return there with Mulder for a visit, and rode back to the Death Mansion. 

“Where’s Mulder?” he demanded, as he walked in and found the gunmen alone.

“Shaving and washing,” Langly announced, with a smug grin. “I told him if he was going to be living around here he needed to damned well clean his act up. It’s okay,” he added, as Krycek gave him a worried frown, “he was whistling in the shower when I left him.”

Krycek smiled with relief and turned to Frohike.

“Quick, while he’s gone, log on and check Mulder’s life-line. I want to know his exact STOD.”

Frohike gave him a puzzled look but started up his computer. He flicked through a number of screens and then turned to Krycek with a strange expression on his face.

“Um… Krycek?”

“What?”

“His time of death is 20th May, 2001.”

Krycek shook his head. “It can’t be. That’s the day *I* died. Check again.”

“I checked and double-checked. Mulder’s life-line ended in 2001 when he *should* have died, and…um… so … well, naturally, there’s no record of when he’s going to die again. Which means…um… he isn’t.”

“The fucker. The bastard, scum-sucking fucker!” Krycek screamed.

“Mulder?”

“Death! That bastard tricked me. He said he’d take the office back when Mulder dies. Only…”

“Only Mulder *isn’t* going to die. Oops. So…um…I guess that means I can throw away the *acting* portion of your nameplate, huh? Now you really *are* Death, I mean?”

“Hey guys,” Langly asked. “Doesn’t that mean we’ve completed our task? We can move upstairs now.”

“Yes,” Byers agreed.

“Yeah,” Frohike nodded. 

“See ya, Death dude,” Langly said, turning off his computer.

Krycek stood there frozen for a moment, as they started to file out of the room, then he raced after them. “What about Mulder? He’s your friend.”

“Course he is,” Frohike agreed. “Anyone seen my coat?”

“But… but he’s going to need you guys. He’s been really depressed lately.”

“Well, that’s your job now,” Byers replied. “See you around.”

Krycek opened and closed his mouth several times, blushed dark red and whispered, “But I *need* you guys.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Frohike demanded, moving back into the room and taking his coat off. 

“Yeah, dude. We’re dead, not psychic,” Langly said, sitting down at his desk and booting his computer up again. 

“We *can’t* stay here, without your invitation,” Byers explained, as Krycek gaped at them in disbelief. 

“You *want* to stay?”

Frohike shrugged and gestured around the room at the elaborate computer set-up. “Heaven doesn’t get any better than this, Krycek.”

“Besides,” Langly perked up. “Someone’s gotta keep you and Mulder on your toes.”

Krycek struggled unsuccessfully against a smile, blushed again and went in search of Mulder.

“So you’re Death for keeps?” Mulder asked, when Krycek had finished telling him the tale.

“Seems like it,” Krycek sighed.

“Well, look on the bright side,” Mulder smirked.

“Which is?”

“We get to keep the bike.”



The End

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THE ROLLING STONES 
"Start Me Up" 

(M. Jagger/K. Richards)

If you start me up
If you start me up I'll never stop
If you start me up
If you start me up I'll never stop

I've been running hot
You got me ticking gonna blow my top
If you start me up
If you start me up I'll never stop

You make a grown man cry

Spread out the oil, the gasoline
I walk smooth, ride in a mean, mean machine

Start it up
If you start it up
Kick on the starter give it all you got, you got, you got
I can't compete with the riders in the other heats
If you rough it up
If you like it you can slide it up, slide it up

Don't make a grown man cry

My eyes dilate, my lips go green
My hands are greasy
She's a mean, mean machine

Start it up
If start me up
Give it all you got
You got to never, never, never stop
Never, never
Slide it up

You make a grown man cry

Ride like the wind at double speed
I'll take you places that you've never, never seen

Start it up

Love the day when we will never stop, never stop
Never stop, never stop
Tough me up
Never stop, never stop, never stop

You, you, you make a grown man cry
You, you make a dead man come
You, you make a dead man come