DISCLAIMER: The characters portrayed or mentioned herein are the property 
of Chris Carter, 1013, and Fox.

Further disclaimer:  This wasn't my idea.  This is a tribute to the 
Houseboat Series by JiM (JiMPage363@aol.com), written and posted with her 
permission.  If you don't know these stories, proceed at once to
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Metro/4859/JiM.html
and read them:
"Don't Rock the Boat"
"River in a Dry Place" and its sequel
"Shadow of the Rock"
"Courage to Forget"
"Snows and Sins"
If you do know these stories, forgive this one for being somewhat 
different and perhaps unworthy to be in their company--but this 
combination of characters is the only one JiM hasn't done, and they 
wouldn't leave me alone, and it sure made me feel better today to write 
*something*.  I think this takes place a little further into the 
post-X-files future than JiM's stories.

For John, my husband, for loving me when I feel most unlovable.

*********************************

Summer Night - a Houseboat Story
by Merri-Todd Webster

*********************************

It wasn't a very large boat, nor even a very expensive one.  There were 
dozens of other boats in the harbor that were larger, fancier, alive with 
music and lights on this warm, humid summer night.  People were sitting out 
on their decks, barechested men and short-skirted women, drinking beer, 
laughing, playing oldies stations or the occasional snatch of hip-hop 
or classical.  On this little boat, only one light was lit, inside; no 
one was on the deck; it was silent.  But he was sure this was the right 
one.  Alex Krycek had walked casually through the crowds of polyglot 
tourists, hormonal teenagers, old people sitting in silent couples on 
benches, just one more silhouette in jeans and an unnecessary denim jacket, 
looking for this one vessel.  The "Samantha M."  This had to be the 
one.  There was a garland of eucalyptus hung on the deck railing at the 
prow.

Despite the numbers of people around him, no one saw him slip over the 
edge of the dock, over the railing.  His feet, in athletic shoes, not boots, 
made almost no noise on the deck.  No one saw a graying denim-clad shadow 
circling the deck, looking into the lighted cabin, looking for someone--

"Freeze!"

The voice had not lost its sharpness despite the years; the hands on the 
gun were as steady as ever, and the eyes behind the gun glacial, bright 
as the sun on arctic ice.  Alex threw up his hands and said the first 
thing that popped into his head, idiotic as it was.

"Ill-met by moonlight, proud Titania."

Slowly, slowly, the gun sank away from its aim on his chest, and a 
strange rusty noise rose above the clamor from the tourists and the other 
boats.  Laughter.  Dana Scully stepped out into the light of the lamppost, 
laughing as slowly and painfully as she had lowered the gun, and shook 
her head.

"The moon's almost dark, Krycek.  Why don't you come inside."

He laughed, now.  "The dark of the moon.  That's when the fairies come 
out to play, isn't it?"

He followed her into the cabin.  A single floor lamp was on, Baroque music 
was playing in the background, and a laptop computer sat on the floor in 
front of a Shaker rocking chair, its screen glowing with a word processing 
file.  Krycek stood silently, hands at his sides, feeling the sweat 
trickle down his ribs as Scully methodically saved her work, shut down 
the laptop, and set it aside.  She looked up at him from the rocker with 
the dully gleaming gun still in her lap.

"Why are you here?"

Her voice was clear and calm, as always.  Krycek squatted on the braided 
red and blue rug, taking himself a little below her eye level.  He 
touched the rug with wandering fingers.

"I was looking for Mulder."

Scully's eyes widened, but for a moment, she said nothing.  Then her lips 
and throat worked, convulsively, and she spat out the words as if they 
were toads in her mouth.

"Mulder's dead."

Krycek moved so suddenly she hadn't time to raise the gun.  His hands, 
one hot flesh, one tepid plastic, pinned her small wrists to the arms of 
the chair.

"Just tell me who it was and I'll get them.  I can still do it.  I 
promise--I'll bring you a trophy if you want."

Scully's arms tensed beneath his grip, and Krycek released her, still 
kneeling at her feet.  Ice-blue eyes held ice-green, and then she 
laughed, a short, mirthless disturbance of her chest, and again shook her 
head.

"It's no good, Krycek.  It wasn't any of Them.  There's no revenge you 
can take."  Her eyes sank closed and she forced them open, her mouth 
twisting in a grimace.  "Pancreatic cancer.  Eight months ago."

As the tears pooled in his eyes, searingly hot, Alex Krycek bowed his 
head, bent till he was almost leaning on the lap of his old enemy.  
Almost, but not quite.  "Jesus," he said at last, and the tears fell onto 
Dana Scully's knees.

One hand came to rest on his shoulder, a touch so light he could barely 
feel it.  Yet he felt it, and was able to get up and move away from it, 
to sit on the small, squashy loveseat opposite the rocker.

"What happened, Scully?" he asked hoarsely.  "When it was--over.  What 
did he--you--do?"

There was a long silence.  Her face was turned away from him, her profile 
perfect, severe.  He could see the age in it, and the illness, and the 
beauty he had always hated.  She was a thousand light-years away.  Her hands 
closed around the gun and turned it over and over in her lap as though 
it were a bundle of knitting, a child's puzzle, anything but a deadly weapon.

"He looked for you," she said finally.  "That was the first thing he 
did.  He looked and looked."  Her eyes came to rest on Krycek's face 
again, coldly glittering.  "He wanted to make sure you were dead, he 
said.  That's what he told Skinner and the Bureau.  He didn't tell me 
anything different, but I know he wanted to make sure you were alive."

Krycek shrugged, puzzled.  His clothes were sticking to him with the 
humidity.  "He had to think I was dead.  Everyone had to think I was 
dead.  I made damned sure of it."

"Yes, you did."  She spoke almost absently.  "I left the Bureau.  He did, 
too.  I went back to school, wanted to get re-certified for private 
medical practice.  And he asked me to marry him."

Krycek held his breath.

"Don't you see?"  Her eyes traveled over him, searching as lasers, 
opening up his skin and burning into his vitals.  "You had to be dead.  
You had to be out of the way.  Before he came to me.  That's why I said 
no.  Said I preferred living in sin.  I never did marry him... until I 
knew he was dying."

Krycek exhaled.  "You've got it wrong."  His voice grated in his chest. 
His skin was soaked, but his mouth was so dry.  "He was always yours.  You 
don't think I did--what I did--all that, because it was my *orders*, do 
you?  Do you think I'd've killed Mulder, if those had been my *orders*?"

Scully leaned forward in the rocker, fingers tightening on the gun.  
"Yes, I do think so.  Wouldn't you?  Wouldn't you have killed him?"

"Dammit, I loved him!"

She sat back so hard the chair took the motion and kept going.  Nothing 
moved except the silvered fringes of her hair as the chair went back and 
forth.  Krycek couldn't help but smile bitterly at the astonishment on 
her face.

"Why did you come here?" she repeated.    It seemed to be the only thing she 
could say.

Krycek covered his face with his living hand.  "To see Mulder.  To tell 
him what I could never tell him.  To say I was sorry, little as that 
means after--what we went through."

He dropped his hand and looked at the woman who had won, and she was 
crying.  Her mouth twisted up, narrowed eyes brimming, her whole face 
hurt and beautiful with fighting it.  He had never seen Dana Scully cry, 
knew her, in spite of himself, well enough to know that she rarely did 
so, even more rarely let anyone see it.

The boat rocked in its slip, and Krycek's stomach rocked with it.  Scully 
reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out some tissues, blotted her 
eyes.  The weeping was over as abruptly as it had begun.  "He should have 
known.  He needed to know.  He needed to know that we loved him."  Her 
eyes found his again, calm, neither arctic ice nor probing lasers.  Calm 
as the dead.

The words came out of him because they were the truth.  "He knew you 
loved him, Scully.  And I think he knew I loved him, too."

He got up and crossed the red and blue braided rug to kneel before her 
again, laying his useless left hand on her knees.  "Aren't you too tired 
to have enemies, Dana?  Aren't you tired of the killing?  I know I am.  
Too old and too tired."  As gently as Mulder might have, he touched the 
fading hair over her temple, then drew back to rake stiff fingers through 
his own silvered hair.

She did not answer right away.  The boat rocked; Telemann played softly 
and was drowned out, for a moment, by a passing burst of Led Zeppelin.  But 
after more than a minute of silence, she lifted the gun out of her lap and 
put it on the table at her right, beside the laptop.  "Can I get you 
some iced tea?" she asked.

*********

end