Summary: She never expected it to be different this time. Angsty Krycek/Marita, PG13.

Title: bound
Author: Winter Baby [ winter_baby@mad.scientist.com ]
Rating: PG-13
Category: SRA
Archive: Anywhere, but e-mail me.
Spoilers: only a little of Patient X, Terma, and One Son.
Keywords: Krycek/Marita
Summary: She never expected it to be different this time.

Author's note: Visit my site at www.geocities.com/winter_baby84
Feedback: Send anything to winter_baby@mad.scientist.com
Disclaimer: Not mine. Chapter titles are Farscape episodes.
Timeline: Pretend Requiem never happened, ok?


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+ brood +
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[ prologue: self-inflicted wounds ]

"You'll let go, won't you?" she whispers quietly, almost
desperately into his ear. He doesn't answer, but instead holds
her hand even tighter. This time it's a command. "Let go."

Krycek releases his grip, and she flexes her numb fingers. He
steps away from her and almost backs into the wall behind him.
Marita drops onto the bed, onto the grimy motel sheets and itchy
blankets.

"What are you going to do now?" she asks, and Krycek turns away
from her. Marita lets him brood. He seems to be so good at it.

"I'll do what I do best," he answers. Marita looks up at him, at
the way he leans against the wall so casually, as if it is any
other night.

"And what's that?" She knows the answer even before she asked the
question.

"I'll disappear." His voice is flat, and the indifference in his
posture seems to ebb away as he grows more uncomfortable under
her stare.

Marita nods, not the least bit surprised by that answer. She has
heard it before, has said it before. It isn't at all unexpected.

He's leaving her again. How many times has it been already? She
lost count after the first few desertions, and they slowly lost
their meaning. So he's leaving. So what? It isn't the first time,
and it definitely isn't going to be the last.

He will walk out the door without even looking back at her. And
then one day, when she has forgotten all about him or thought for
sure that he is dead, he will show up again and turn her life
upside-down.

She knows this because she has done the same to him. It's some
kind of vicious cycle of betrayals and desertions, each leaving
the other for survival or revenge or both. Marita can't even
remember how it all started.

She's lying now, even to herself. Of course she remembers. She
was the first to leave. His only mistake then was trusting her.
Maybe even loving her. And now? Well now, he's missing an arm and
most of his dignity. He's made a lot of other mistakes after her.

She stares at Krycek now and wonders what it would be like to
love him. Dangerous, Marita thinks, but then everything about him
is dangerous. But she knows that she can't afford to fall in love
with Krycek. Her one weapon against him is that she can walk away
without even thinking it about it twice.

They are alike that way.

She thinks it would have been nice to be in love. It's something
she should experience at least once in her life.

Marita doesn't allow herself to think about it anymore, about
where that love could lead her. That's something she couldn't
have anymore. Maybe at one point in her past when she was still
ignorant of what was really going on, she could have had a normal
life. But wishing for that now doesn't change anything. There are
much larger matters than her selfish desires. In her world, there
is only room for survival.

"Do you need to pack?" she asks Krycek, only because she doesn't
know what else to say. He shakes his head.

"I carry what I need," his answer is simple, and her gaze slips
to the gun on the dresser. It is in reach of his right hand, his
only hand. Marita will have to be careful.

Sometimes Krycek goes a little trigger-happy with that gun, a
loss of control not common in him but it isn't unheard of. It
scares her, the way he can look at her with a murderous purpose
in his eyes, but she prides herself in not showing that fear.

Fear is a weakness; she learned that the hard way. It's actually
a perfectly safe flaw in itself, but revealing it is what could
get her killed. It works to her advantage that hiding her
feelings comes so naturally to her.

But to read them in another person? It took years of sex and
betrayals and everything in between to learn how Krycek's mind
works. She has some sense of what he's thinking, some idea of
what he's planning to do next, and in a way some control.

If she wants, she can easily convince Krycek to stay with her,
delicately promising him power and sex. It's just a question of
offering which one first. She knows his weaknesses because she
knows the weaknesses of men. And before anything else, Alex
Krycek is a man.

But she doesn't. She offers him nothing, and there is no reason
for Krycek to stay here. She wants him to leave. She wants to be
alone in this rundown motel room, watching local cable and
forgetting he ever existed.

Marita stands up slowly and she can feel Alex's eyes on her body.
He wants the sex and the power, but he can't bring himself to ask
for it. Too much pride would be compromised in that action. It
has to be her offering and it has to be him accepting.

She kisses him gently on the cheek, carefully running her hand
down his prosthetic arm and surprisingly Krycek lets her. Usually
he's so sensitive about his missing limb. Something has changed
in him. Maybe he's growing tired of the games they play.

She feels that way.

"Goodbye, Alex. I hope you find a better life out there," she
whispers these empty sentiments into his cheek, letting her lips
brush his skin as she speaks. She doesn't mean a word of it, only
because he can never find a better life. They don't exist
anymore.

Krycek knows this too.

"Games, Marita. This life is nothing but a game."

His words are disgustingly truthful. She finds that she's frozen
in that position, her lips on his cheek and her hand still on his
missing arm. She is unable to break away, taking the warmth of
his body and not letting go. He gently pushes her, his hand at
her waist. She does not object or even look at him, but instead
lets him move her as if she is nothing but a doll.

Krycek grabs the gun off the dresser, tucking it into the back of
his jeans as he walks out the door. He disappears down the
hallway and his footsteps follow him until they are gone too.

She sinks down onto the bed, staring at the empty spot where he
stood.

"Let go," she whispers to herself.


[ chapter one: the way we weren't ]

The first time she had kissed Alex Krycek, it had been
unexpected. She had never realized that he had been staring at
her while she spoke in front of the Elders. During those
meetings, she was cold and official, a Syndicate double agent
reporting her findings on the UN offices. But it had been raining
that night, and he had slipped into her apartment while she
slept. She had let him kiss her and touch her, without ever
knowing his name.

The second time, it had been much more deliberate. Marita had led
him into an empty boardroom and this time she knew his name. The
kiss had gone beyond physical attraction. It was their sign of
alliance, that they were working together now and occasionally
some sex would be thrown in. It had become the strangest yet most
balanced mixing of personal and professional relationship she had
ever had. Sometimes she wished she could go back to that time,
when it had almost been simple and they had no other loyalties
but to each other.

They had wanted to rule the world then. In retrospect, maybe that
had been a little bit ambitious, but she had seriously thought it
could work. Later, she realized betraying Alex would be so much
easier. She had left him while he slept, the only time his face
ever looked innocent.

That was probably when it all went wrong. She had taken that
precarious balance and tipped it, spilling everything onto the
ground like so much blood. Alex had hated her after that; he
could never fully trust her again. She didn't blame him.

What had driven her to steal the boy, leaving Alex and all their
glorious plans behind? She truly had no idea. It had been so
tempting, watching Alex sleeping like that and then looking at
the boy who was the key to all the power they had ever denied
her. Maybe she was selfish.

Or maybe she was a realist.

She had known from the beginning that her relationship with Alex
was a dangerous one. Something would have gone wrong, even if she
hadn't betrayed him the way she had. If she had stayed, he
probably would have shot her later on in the future. It would
just have been a question of when and over what.

The boy had been insurance. The boy had been her way out of
subservient spying. She had been sick of being pulled back and
forth between the UN and the Syndicate. She had wanted to stand
by herself, and maybe Alex was something else that would have
taken all that away from her.

In any case, it was done. The boy was dead and she was back on
the team, even after all the horrible things they had done to her
at Fort Marlene. Alex, on other hand, had never given his loyalty
so easily. He had his own agenda, and she had to admit she would
love to be apart of that again.

Maybe that was why she butted into that stupid meeting.

The news that Krycek was in the building always traveled fast,
only because everyone had to be on guard. She made her way
quickly down the corridors, listening carefully for his voice. If
she could find him, figure out why he was back, maybe she could
deceive her way into his plan.

Before she found him, she heard the shot. It was loud and clear
in the air, like it was meant to mark his presence. She ran down
the hallway, stopping short in front of a boardroom door, the
same one she had kissed in him years ago.

Marita pushed the door open with such caution, afraid that the
next bullet would find its way into her chest. But she safely
made it into the room and walked over to Krycek.

He looked at her with no guilt whatsoever, not even with that
dead body bleeding all over his boots.


[ chapter two: with friends like these ]

He found that killing somebody was just like riding a bike. It
was something he couldn't forget how to do.

It was simple, really. Aim the gun at the right part of the body
and the rest was just logic. If done correctly, the end product
was a corpse.

Krycek really didn't know why he had shot the man. The old
bastard had just been calmly explaining the terms of his
reinstatement. But Krycek couldn't resist the temptation to pull
out his gun and threaten him.

Then one thing led to another...

It was all like a really bad soap opera.

"You fool," Marita hissed. "What have you done?"

He hadn't even heard her come in until she was standing right
next to him.

Krycek just shrugged as an answer. Usually everything he did was
so completely planned out - traps set up, escape routes laid out
in detail. But this had been totally unexpected, even to himself.
He didn't know what to say.

"Why?" she asked. Marita couldn't stop staring at the dead body,
the cigarette in its hand still burning and curling out smoke.

Maybe Krycek had done it so he wouldn't become what she had
become, a slave to gray-haired mercenaries disguised in expensive
suits. She once had the courage to betray them, and then in turn
they had betrayed her. In Krycek's opinion, they had inhumanely
tortured her and maybe that was when she had lost all her
strength. He stared at her, the woman he had once loved, but that
had been years ago. Now Marita was nothing but an empty shell,
her eyes dull and vacant. Fort Marlene had taken its toll on her
and he had left her there.

He remembered that she had also stabbed him in the back,
something that would never be repeated or forgotten or forgiven.
Maybe he should just shoot her now, tie up all his loose ends and
exact his revenge in one swift movement.

But her voice interrupted his thoughts.

"Come on, Alex. We've got to get out of here," she grabbed his
hand, her fingers wrapping around the gun too. He snatched it
back and she just stared at him.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked, suspicion and doubt
overpowering his fear of capture.

"They're going to hear about this, Alex. When they do, you're as
good as dead." She sounded sincere, as if she really wanted to
help him but that was the way Marita worked. She would lull him
into trusting her again and then he would find himself missing
both his arms. Probably more.

She grabbed the sleeve of his leather jacket. "I know you don't
trust me, but right now I'm your only hope of escaping here
without getting shot."

Still he did not move. "What if you're the one doing the
shooting?"

She smiled a little, sarcasm painting her lips.

"You're the one with gun," she answered. He almost smiled, and
let her take his hand.

They ran down the halls together, fleeing unseen assassins.


[ chapter three: thanks for sharing ]

When Alex remembered the Russia of his childhood, he remembered
the snow. He thought of Moscow in the wintertime, when everything
was white and still.

His return to his homeland had not been in the snow as he had
imagined it, but in the rain. He had ended up crawling through
mud as a prisoner to a foolish man. Tunguska was not his Russia;
it was not his home. It was built to trap him.

He had lost a part of himself to that trap. Searing red-hot knife
and men in the dark woods. The memory of it was all too real. He
would never be whole again.

In some ways his missing arm had made him stronger, forced him to
depend only on himself. It was ironic the way that had turned
out.

But no matter how things had ended up, he still wished Tunguska
had just been a bad dream. Sometimes he would wake up in the
middle of the night, screaming from the pain in his arm and then
sighing in relief when he realized that it was just a nightmare.
But it wasn't a nightmare. It had been real, and he was just
reliving the moment over and over again in his sleep.

Alex was a man who did not cry, but he wasn't whole anymore and
sometimes that was just too much to bear.

Marita was the only one who understood that, who knew what it
felt like to lose a part of oneself. They had taken his arm in
Tunguska and they had taken her strength at Fort Marlene. His was
a physical absence; hers was an emotional one. He wondered which
was worse.

He shifted in his seat, the belt increasingly annoying as he
tried to buckle it across his prosthetic arm. Marita was
dangerously weaving her car in and out of New York City traffic.
The night sky was empty, and only the brightest stars could be
seen past the city lights.

Alex stared at her, at how much more alive she seemed now that
they were on the run. Marita lived for this, he realized. The
thrill and the chase - that was what brought her strength back to
her. Maybe that was why she was helping him. She wanted to be
alive again, to be strong again, like she had once been.

He decided then that his physical absence was much worse than her
emotional one. All she had to do was run away and her strength
would return to her. But he could never regain what he had lost.
A part of him was still in Tunguska, and there was no going back
to that.

Still staring at her profile, Alex gave up on his seat belt and
let it go. He watched as she tucked a strand of blond hair behind
her right ear, and then pulled at her lobe. He wondered why she
did that. It was a strange habit to have, and he couldn't
remember a time when she didn't do it.

He had once asked her about it, after the first time they had
spent the night together. He had lain on his stomach, staring at
her smiling face when she had tugged at her earlobe. She had
laughed at his question and shrugged.

"I don't know. I never really noticed," she had replied and
Krycek couldn't help but kiss her again.

And then the question had been forgotten, as if it had never been
posed or answered.

He couldn't ask her about that now. They had been different
people back then and asking personal questions like that had been
fine. But they were no longer sleeping together and talking about
each other's little quirks would just blur the lines of their
working relationship.

Assuming that this was a working relationship.

Somehow he doubted that Marita would want to run away with him
again, and somehow he doubted that he would offer anyway.

She coughed, bringing him back to their reality. They had driven
out of New York City an eternity ago, it seemed. Now they were
racing down a deserted highway, checking for someplace to stop.

He spotted a motel on his side of the highway, and Marita nodded
when he pointed it out to her. She slowed the car and eased it
into the parking lot. It was empty, and Alex guessed so was the
motel. There was nobody around for miles.

That was a small comfort.

They checked in as a married couple, using one of Alex's fake
names. The desk clerk didn't even look up from his magazine as he
gave them their key.

Her hand was warm in his, a smooth piece of reality to hold onto
as he led her through the empty night.


[ epilogue: die me, dichotomy ]

She should let herself be forgotten. She should just fade away,
so slowly that nobody will notice until she is gone altogether.
She should slip into the darkness and find another life, one that
isn't filled with treachery and conspiracies and apocalypses.

But disappearing isn't going to make those things go away. Marita
knows that they will follow her wherever she goes, that they will
follow Alex too. The only difference is that he's good at
carrying those things around with him, like they're nothing but
spare change in his pockets. She, on the other hand, carries them
like they're a world upon her back.

She sinks down onto the bed, staring at the empty spot where he
stood.

"Let go," she whispers to herself, as if somehow that will
command all those secrets and lies to slip off her back like so
much water. That those two words will make her light again. That
she will be innocent again.

But they are just words.

He wanted her to stop at the motel so he could dump her off,
travel his way alone. A long time ago, she would have been angry
and offended. But she feels so tired now and what difference does
it make? He is gone, and Marita knows that soon she will be too.
She will return to the UN and the Syndicate, even with that dead
body bleeding in the boardroom.

She will tell more lies, say that Alex took her hostage; they
won't fully believe her but they have no proof. They will be
forced to leave her alone.

Alone.

She doesn't know if she despises that word or cherishes it. It is
a lonely state of being but a safe one.

Alex is gone; he can't kill her. She is far away from the
Syndicate; they can't kill her. The only one that can touch her
now is herself and she doesn't have the strength for that.

Lonely but safe. She wonders if it's worth it.

Of course it's worth it, she tells herself. In her world, there
is only room for survival. She needs to live, to see this
godforsaken life through till the end because it is nothing but a
game.

She rests on the dingy bed, sighing her sighs. Alex has gone his
separate way, and she will also. They divided from this motel
room, he going to some unknown place and she staying behind. Soon
she will have to get up and leave, but for now this bed is as
good as any other.

He will return to her; she is certain about that. He will come
back to screw up her life again and she will love him for it. But
it won't be for a long while now, and she can't let the waiting
take over her life. When he comes, he'll come. For now, she will
just slowly let go of her memories of him, one by one, until
nothing remains but herself.

It has been so long since she could look herself in the mirror
and not see his reflection.


[ end ]