Part Three

Skinner woke from an unpleasant dream and opened his eyes into a nightmare. 

He was in what appeared to be a huge, empty basement room. The concrete floor was littered with ancient debris, the bare walls were scarred with peeling paint and the shadow imprints of filing cabinets long removed, the only light came from tiny, slitted windows at the point where the walls met the ceiling, and a low odor of damp and disuse pervaded the whole room.

As he had guessed, when he'd awoken before, a thick leather strap manacled his ankle to a long heavy chain. It was the only comfortable part of his body. The rest, even that which was still clad in boxers and tee, was now shivering with cold so badly that his body half-arched towards the figure stood silently in the shadows, holding a bright orange sleeping bag in his arms like an offering. 

The nightmare part wasn't the room or the cold. It was the identity of his captor that made words dry unspoken in Skinner's throat. He felt his heart begin to flutter dangerously in his chest and although he forced his expression to remain calm, the shivering in his limbs increased as his captor's face split into its familiar smirk.

"Don't worry," Krycek purred, his green eyes sparkling with obvious amusement. "You'll be safe here…relatively."

For a moment, a long-forgotten incident sparked in Skinner's head. A moment of temper, of guilt, of regret and the discomfort of those memories stirred Skinner's anger enough to overcome his initial fear. Skinner's face twisted with fury and his right hand bunched automatically into a fist.

"You're dead," he growled.

Krycek shrugged. "I get that a lot," he sighed. "It's starting to piss me off. If I were Mulder I'd say something witty right now, quote Mark Twain or something. As it is, let's just agree to disagree on the subject."

Skinner surged to his feet and charged, pleased to see the green eyes widen but surprised Krycek made no move to defend himself. Then, as the savage bite of the cuff around Skinner's right ankle sharply brought his headlong charge to a savage halt before his outstretched fist reached Krycek's face, he understood why the younger man hadn't even flinched.

"You really need to work on your interpersonal skills, Walter," Krycek mocked.

"What the hell do you want with me, Krycek?" Skinner growled.

"Alex," his captor corrected. "I'm not using Krycek anymore and, besides, first names are so much friendlier, don't you think?" 

"I *said* what do you want with me, *boy*," Skinner replied.

"You've got balls," Krycek said, with a wry smile. "I'll give you that much. Shame you're a cold-hearted murderous son of a bitch, isn't it?"

Again Skinner felt the reluctant tug of old regrets, of guilty secrets, and again the feeling stirred fury in his chest. He'd mourned for Krycek. Fucking mourned for him! He'd spent weeks of sleepless nights, haunted by the specter of that treacherous face upturned towards him before he'd pulled the trigger the last time. As often as he'd told himself he'd had no choice, that leaving Krycek alive would have been as dangerous as letting a shot wild animal slink off to nurse its wounds and plot its revenge, still he'd regretted the choice that he'd made. 

He'd regretted the evil soul inside Krycek's deceptively handsome face that had *forced* him to make that choice. He'd shot a man who had calmly offered him a devil's deal. Mulder's life for that of an unborn child. A man who had fully intended to shoot Mulder dead in front of him. A man who had deserved no pity or remorse.

Yet, he'd mourned regardless. For the man that Krycek *might* have been. For the unknown mother who presumably somewhere had mourned her lost son. For the innocence that surely must have resided in Krycek *once*.

And now it turned out the bastard wasn't even dead.

"You have no fucking idea, boy," he growled. "No fucking idea at all."

Again, his captor just shrugged, though there seemed to be a slight softening in the intense green eyes as though somehow he had read Skinner's mind. A trick of the light, Skinner decided, as Krycek carelessly threw the sleeping bag at his feet.

"The chain is long enough for you to use the bathroom," Krycek explained pleasantly, gesturing in the direction of a doorway set into the back of the room. "It also will give you access to *most* of this room." The toe of his booted right foot slid sideways across the floor, drawing Skinner's eyes to a barely visible line scratched across the old wooden floorboards. A line it was now evident that Krycek had deliberately stood behind.

Skinner looked up, his angry brown eyes meeting coldly amused green.

"What the fuck do you want from me, Krycek?" he growled.

Krycek smiled, but the expression wasn't a friendly one.

"What do I want? Where would I start?" he asked. "Suffice it to say that this solution wasn't my personal first choice." 

Skinner opened his mouth to call him a liar, but something in Krycek's expression convinced him the younger man was telling the truth. Besides, this wasn't the assassin's style. Not that he doubted the idea of Krycek attacking him in the car park. That was *exactly* his style. Krycek was a rat who lurked in stairwells and garages, dark alleys and lifts. He bit with savagery but then he *always* ran to ground.

Skinner believed Krycek capable of just about any nefarious activity, but kidnap just didn't fit his m.o. Being someone's pawn though, well that fit the Krycek he knew.

"Still whoring yourself, Krycek?" he drawled.

It seemed to Skinner that the barb went home with satisfying accuracy. Krycek snarled, flushed and took a half-step forward before evidently remembering the faint line that separated safety from Skinner's fists. 

"Scared of me, boy?" Skinner taunted, with far more bravado than a chained nearly-naked man should risk in the face of a man who he had last seen lying dead with a bullet between his eyes.

Krycek ignored the question.

"Feel free to make as much noise as you like. You're in the basement of a condemned building. There is a toilet and a bath. The plumbing is older than you, so I suggest you don't fuck around trying to make yourself a weapon out of the pipework unless you can swim real good. Your chain is welded to one of the foundation girders. The only way it's coming off your ankle is with a blow torch, but again you're quite welcome to try and gnaw your foot off if that makes you feel better."

"Where are my clothes?" Skinner demanded.

"Where you can't use them to conceal anything. When you're released, you'll get your clothes back. If you get cold, get into bed," Krycek suggested, pointing at the garish orange sleeping bag. "Or you could always think warm thoughts," he added with a bitter snarl.

Skinner rode the verbal punch without flinching.

"How long are you planning on keeping me here?" Skinner growled.

Krycek shrugged.

"Fucked if *I* know. I'm just a whore, aren't I?" He smirked triumphantly at Skinner's furious expression. "You'll stay here until I get the word to let you go. Or not. That's always a possibility too. Sweet dreams, Skinner."

~#~#~#~

Mulder woke to find himself lying in his tent. Except for the peculiar absence of his orange sleeping bag, it was as though he had lost a whole day out of his life.  A day of running from relentless Bounty Hunters, a day of getting progressively more lost in the depths of the forest he'd hoped would conceal him from pursuit.

He looked down at his hands, noted the scratches that covered his skin where branches had ripped at him as he'd scrambled through undergrowth. Then although he bit his lower lip nervously, uncertain he even wanted to know the answer to *that* question, he reached down and touched his quiescent cock. He winced slightly as his fingers touched the sensitive flesh. It certainly *felt* like he'd fucked the hell out of someone's tight ass.

If you were questioning your sanity then you weren't really mad, were you? he asked himself desperately.  Surely the fact that he *knew* he was seeing and fucking ghosts meant he wasn't completely insane yet. 

"Raping ghosts," a niggling voice whispered in the back of his head. "That's what you did, Mulder. You threw Alex down on the ground and raped him."

"But he was just a fantasy," he argued back. "It was just a rape fantasy and besides," he added defensively, "he *liked* it."

Fuck. Now he was hearing voices inside his head *and* giving the oldest, weakest excuse in the book for inexcusable behavior.

"But you just imagined it," the sly internal voice pointed out.

Yeah, right, but when had he *ever* even fantasized about beating and raping someone? Never. 

"Just as you never fantasized about Alex Krycek's ass?" the sly voice mocked.

"Fuck off and die," Mulder growled.

"Talking to me, or yourself?" Alex drawled.

Mulder leapt to his feet in shock, forgetting the tent was only a meter high. Badly pitched anyway, it collapsed under the impact and he tumbled in a sprawling tangle of limbs, tent poles and flapping material, while Alex mysteriously managed to transport himself back out of the danger area so that he was sitting on his heels laughing uproariously at Mulder's frantic attempts to disentangle himself.

"This is better than pay-per-view," he chuckled, as a red-faced Mulder finally emerged unscathed from the disaster that had been his tent.

"Shit. What the fuck did I do to end up haunted by Beetlejuice?" he snarled, attempting to disentangle the tent poles from the fabric.

"Forget that," Alex suggested. "They've figured out you've returned to camp. You've got about ten minutes before you're a Mulder-kebab."

"Shit," Mulder repeated, staring at the car with weary eyes and then walking towards it without argument. Illusion or not, his ghost Alex never seemed to be wrong where danger was concerned. "You could have given me more warning," he complained, as he slid into the driver's seat and fired the engine.

"Me?" Alex asked innocently, as he slipped into the passenger seat. "I'm just a figment of your imagination, remember?" Then he shrugged. "Besides, I was busy."

"Busy?" Mulder demanded, as he put the car into first and pulled it back onto the dirt track. "What do you mean busy?"

"A couple of loose ends to tie up," Alex replied conversationally. "Skinner's one of them."

"Skinner?" Mulder asked, staring at Alex incredulously. "What the hell is *my* subconscious doing with Skinner? And don't you dare say I want to fuck *him* too."

"Do you?" Alex asked, with interest.

"Do you think I'll get a therapy discount for having *two* psychoses?" Mulder asked, his eyes loosing focus as he imagined a lifetime in a straight-jacket. "Hell, maybe I should aim at three and ask for a party rate."

"Road," Alex suggested as the car began to skew dangerously.

"Right," Mulder apologized, taking control of the vehicle again a moment before it veered off the road completely.

"Has the possibility even occurred to you yet that I'm real?" 

Mulder considered the question carefully.

"As in a real ghost or a real person?"

"Either."

"No."

"Oh."

"An alien though...that's beginning to have possibilities," Mulder replied thoughtfully. "It would explain a lot. Your ability to come back from the dead, appear and disappear at will, regrow missing limbs. Could be a clone, but I doubt it. Your blood tasted red enough to me. Of course, since the alternative possibility is that I'm nuttier than a fruitcake I'm open to any and all suggestions at this moment in time," he added dryly.

"How about an alternative scenario," Alex suggested carefully. "Not being human doesn't necessarily mean I'm an alien."

Mulder grinned, enjoying the conversation, though he admitted that since the probability was that he was actually just talking to some insane part of himself it wasn't surprising they were on the same wavelength. Besides, it was nice to have company in the car. 

"You're not a vampire," he stated firmly. "You *could* be some form of lycanthrope. Dunno. Haven't seen you in a full moon yet. Maybe a mutant?"

"Think more esoteric thoughts," Alex suggested.

"Aha. A demon," Mulder replied triumphantly. "You're an incubus."

To his surprise, despite the clear morning, he heard a distinct roll of thunder somewhere over the horizon. At his side, Alex shuddered slightly.

"You shouldn't say things like that," he warned. "The incubi have got a *really* good union."

Mulder chuckled with genuine amusement, then a second later he slammed his foot on the brake. As the car screeched to a bruising halt, he half-turned in his seat and looked at Alex with wide, horrified eyes.

"Muld..." Alex began.

Mulder punched him in the mouth.

"You fucker," he screamed. "You are, aren't you? You're a fucking *demon*."

Alex rubbed his jaw carefully, pressing his back against the car door as he looked warily at the incensed man.

"Well, kind of..." he admitted cautiously.

Mulder threw open his car door, stumbled out leaving the engine running, dropped to his knees and heaved violently. As Alex walked around the front of the car to join him, wincing each time Mulder's body was wracked by his nausea, Mulder struggled to raise his head and then looked at Alex with horrified, hate-filled eyes. "I fucked a fucking demon," he choked, then threw up again.

"Think of it this way," Alex replied, seating himself on the bonnet while he waited for Mulder to recover. "At least you're not insane."

Mulder staggered to his feet, wiping his mouth with his tee-shirt then ripping it off and dropping it at the side of the road in disgust. He dove through the open driver's door, slammed it behind him and drove his foot down on the accelerator.  Alex, who'd immediately slipped off the bonnet and was crossing in front of the bumper, looked through the windscreen in horror and then disappeared under the surging car with a satisfying, wet crunch.

Tears streaming down his face over a maniacal grin, Mulder stepped on the gas and drove away without even looking in the rear mirror at Alex's mangled remains.

~#~#~#~

"Well, that went well."

Alex sat up, looked down at the mess of blood-drenched entrails that were spilling out under his crushed rib cage, then looked up at the owner of the sarcastic drawl.

"Fuck off, Gabriel."

"Why on earth did you agree when he called you the 'D' word? You know how humans react to that term."

"This is Mulder," Alex reminded him. "Fuck, I thought the idea would turn him on. He slept with a damned vampire once, didn't he? How was I to know he wouldn't have the same hard-on for Demons? Besides, theologically-speaking I *am* a Demon."

"Ah, yes," Gabriel agreed, lighting a Morley and dragging on it contentedly. "There's always *that* minor point. Still, it's your own fault. I *tried* to get you to work for my side." He flicked his golden wings thoughtfully. "We should co-operate, Alex. We both want Mulder out of the game. It's only a matter of methodology and I've always had a certain...fondness... for him."

"It was your 'fondness' for his *mother* that landed him in this mess in the first place, Gabriel. If you'd kept your dick in your pants none of this would have happened."

Gabriel ground out his cigarette with a perfect, golden toe,  tossed his tawny mane and smirked. "You're hardly in a position to lecture me on interspecies sex, are you?" he mocked, then lit another Morley.

"Just leave him to me, okay?" Alex asked, meeting Gabriel's eyes for the first time. "I love him, Gabriel. I'll protect him."

"You should have taken the risk and killed him when Luke told you to, Alex. "

"I know," Alex admitted. "But it's too late for that now. I've got to find a different way to save him."

"Speaking of saving people, what *are* you planning to do with Skinner?"

"I'm just keeping him out of the game."

Gabriel grunted. "Watch your back, Alex. My people are getting jumpy at your interference. Don't forget that if you get killed down here in your natural form, you're *really* dead."

"I know," Alex admitted with a grin. "Why do you think I'm still sitting here with my guts spilling out?"

Gabriel laughed and took another deep drag of his cigarette.

"You don't trust me?" Gabriel asked slyly, then he laughed. "Don't blame you. I like you, boy," he chuckled. "Always did. So I'll help you out here."  His form shimmered and darkened, his wings shrinking and folding into his body, his golden locks retreating back into his scull, his perfect features creasing and folding into heavy wrinkles and lines.

With a sigh of relief, Alex flowed up from the dirt-track with a shimmer of his own as his body re-knit itself into perfection. His dark wings unfolded and spread behind him until he dwarfed the now 'human' figure of his companion.

"See ya later, 'Spender'," he grinned. "I've got a car to catch."

And with a sweeping beat of his wings he rose up in the air and sped after his fleeing lover.

Go to Part Four