Not Such A Nice Guy II
Submitted by KC Nagai
Summary: Mulder reappears (maybe), Scully’s confused (or so it seems!),
Pendrell tosses somebody’s chopped and pre-wrapped remains into the
furnace. That at least is for certain.
Spoilers: They don’t really apply except that this is post-movie and
post-latest-X-Files episode (as of March 7 1999), something to do with
a big guy made out of garbage and Malaysian curses and a bunch of psycho
yuppie neighbors. Go figure.
Disclaimer: Chris Carter owns these characters yap yip yap.
PS: Thanks everyone for sending me e-mail about this; it brought a big
smile to my face.  Sorry, Merri-Todd, he’s alive. Or is he?

Monday, 5:36 PM
Agent Brian Pendrell’s apartment
Washington, DC

Pendrell was holding his breath.

In the cellar of his apartment complex was a furnace, an old-fashioned
cast-iron contraption with a multitude of metal tubes twisting out of
it’s body, making it look something like an impressionist Kali. Scully
would probably have felt mildly nervous if the door were open.
 
People very rarely went to the cellar, and the owner almost never
ventured down. Pendrell liked it that way. It retained his privacy.

Krycek knew his secret. Or did he? The prick was probably bluffing,
Pendrell almost decided as his left eyebrow began to twitch
convulsively. Or was he?

Sweat dotted his brow and trickled into his eyes. It was five-thirty
already; Scully would be popping by at about six to check on their
captive.

There was no way in hell that Pendrell could cook up a plausible story
to cover his ass in that time.

He sighed. His return from the grave was just complicating his life
more than it was worth.

Pendrell compulsively wrung his hands as he finished bundling the
cloth-wrapped packages into the open door of the furnace. He knew
he was imitating an X-File, one that Scully had...*intimately*...
been involved with. But he had no choice.

Until he finished here he couldn’t go back.

And he wanted to go back. Badly.


Monday, 5:37 PM
End Pier Park
Washington, DC

Scully walked as calmly as possible across the dark wet expanse of
grass leading to the bench she was so familiar with. It was almost
identical to the other twenty or so that adorned the park, with the
exception that she and Mulder had met there countless times to
discuss, more-or-less privately, what they couldn’t even hint at in
their bug-ridden office.

She kept her hands in her pockets, her fingers wrapped around her
gun. No use being caught off-guard.

A familiar figure sat silhouetted against the sharp silver moon,
and Scully’s legs hitched slightly, then sped up. He was slouched
and his long black topcoat fluttered in the mild breeze. His long
legs were stretched out comfortably and his briefcase was set in
between them.

He turned as she approached, knowing she was there as he always did.

He looked terrible.

"Jesus, Mulder," she breathed.

The wind picked up as though on cue, rattling bare branches.

She shivered, and he didn’t move. Didn’t even look at her.

"Scully," he said. His voice hadn’t changed.

She didn’t ask where he’d gone and he didn’t tell her. Scully stared
at him for a moment, took in just how bad it had been. His face was
haggard and thin, unshaven, the eyes toting bags long enough to trip
on. His suit was clean, though, his shirt and ugly tie immaculate as
always. The white collar and cuffs glowed softly in the faint light.
He didn’t speak, just shifted aside to make room for her.

She sat. They stared out over the water in silence. She didn’t look at
him.

"Going to ask where I’ve been?" he said finally.

She was surprised by how hurt she felt. "No, but you’re probably going
to tell me anyway."

He was quiescent and she felt his surprise, and pain, at her sharp
retort. But she still couldn’t ask him, couldn’t touch him, couldn’t
tell him with a look that it was okay to keep yanking her around at
his leisure. Because it wasn’t.

"Four months, Mulder."

No response. Not even a blink.

"Four *goddamned* months and you couldn’t be bothered to call."

"They would have traced me," he snapped in a sharp rush of air. Why
was their reconciliation like this? Why wasn’t she more...well...
receptive? Instead she sat with a hard look on her face, intent on
blaming him for everything.

*Where the hell have you been?* she wondered, but did not ask.

"I was in Russia," he said as though she had. "I heard Agent Pendrell
got my job." *He must be spoiling you*, he added silently. *Because
otherwise you’d be rushing me to your car to patch me up.*

Well. That wasn’t a selfish thought, now was it, Mulder? You asshole.

"Kersh managed to patch him on the X-Files, a fucking techie. Crippled
us, probably," Mulder snorted.

Scully bit her lip. "There hasn’t been much in the way of X-Files since
you left, Mulder."

"I know. You’ve been missing the obvious ones."

"Thank you for telling me how to do my job," she said coldly.

He was silent again, somnolent. Staring out over glittering water. What
did he see?

"Why do you think there hasn’t been any work?" he asked finally, quietly.
As though there might be people nearby who actually cared. "Pendrell’s
been screening everything, keeping you in the dark. He’s Kersh’s boy."

She took a deep breath. "I don’t believe that, Mulder."

Mulder nudged the briefcase between his feet. "I have proof."

"What?"

"Proof that even you, venerable scientist and confirmed skeptic that
you are, can’t deny."

The sarcasm was sharp and bitter and so much harsher, if only because
she had been away from it so long. Had his casual dismissal hurt so
badly before, or had repeated exposure just numbed her?

Mulder lifted the briefcase to his lap while Scully felt her heart start
thumping at a speed which threatened derailment. Pendrell wasn’t a
double agent. She’d caught Krycek just that day with his help.

"We have Krycek," she told him, as though that would stop him from
showing her the material. Even if it wasn’t incontrovertible evidence,
it would be very suggestive.  She couldn’t swallow. The walls of her
mouth were suddenly as dry and smooth as glass.

Mulder looked at her, blinked. "Krycek isn’t our problem, Scully," he
said slowly, as though she should already know that. "He’s a small
fish, caught in the net. He didn’t kill your sister, Cardinale was the
one who fired the shot. He didn’t kill my father. My father killed
himself, if only out of guilt."

It was Scully’s turn to blink.

"If Pendrell’s what I think he is," Mulder continued calmly, "Krycek
will have miraculously escaped your apartment tonight. Pendrell will
make up some plausible excuse, and you’ll believe it."

"Why?"

"Because I’m not coming with you."

"What?"

Mulder sighed. "Pendrell thinks I’m dead. If I’m right, he also thinks
he has my body stashed away somewhere up in his apartment. He’s a
killer, Scully. Trust me."


Monday, 8:45 PM
Agent Brian Pendrell’s Apartment
Washington, DC

Agent Pendrell, smelling faintly of smoke, resumed his post in front of
the now-lethargic double-agent Krycek. Pendrell gave the room a once-over.
He’d given Krycek four sleeping pills crushed into his tea-with-lemon
which the somewhat irritating captive had requested earlier. He’d also
requested a massage, a pizza, gossip on the Lone Gunmen (whereupon
Pendrell had only looked at him blankly), gossip on Marita Coverrubias
(whereupon Pendrell had looked at him even more blankly), and Agent
Scully’s phone number, along with somewhat personal information about
both Pendrell and the lady.

Pendrell had decided that Krycek could have his tea. If it made him
pass out and shut the fuck up for the rest of the night.

So he made sure it would.

"Hey, Pendrell," Krycek slurred, head lolling, eyes still somehow sharp
and clear despite all the dope in his system. "Call Skinner and tell him
I always liked him. It’s too bad about the nanomachines."

Then he passed out, leaving Pendrell more confused than ever.

Just then the front doorbell rang and the red-haired agent scurried to
answer it. Scully stood perversely ballooned-out in the magnifying
peephole, her head disproportionately large. "Let me in, Pendrell."

She sounded pissed.

Pendrell quickly undid the two deadbolts and single latch chain. Scully
swept past him into the room, eyes quickly focusing on Krycek. Cold air
wafted off of her, and the smell of water. Pendrell frowned.

"He didn’t try to escape?" she demanded, glaring at him.

Pendrell was slightly taken aback but answered quickly enough for her to
be sure he wasn’t lying. "No. Unless he was trying to get me to kill him."

He explained the double agent’s unconsciousness.

Then, shyly, he asked, "Uh, Scully, do you know a woman named Marita
Couverubisomething?"

Scully’s lips thinned until their usual vibrant color vanished in a
tense white line. "No, Agent Pendrell, I do not."

"Oh." Tactfully he said no more on the subject.

"Agent Mulder is back," Scully said with that sighing tone of voice that
Pendrell had gotten to know so well. It was an exasperated sound.

Pendrell stood remarkably straight. His knees didn’t betray a single
knock.

(shitshitshitshitshitshit)

"He was in Russia for the last three months and has now returned,"
Scully was saying with her usual clinical detachment. "He also claims
to know the whereabouts of Agents Fowley and Spender, or at least he
will in a few days. We’re going to meet him at his apartment and we’re
going to bring Krycek with us. If he’s capable of walking."

"He won’t be for twelve more hours," Pendrell said sheepishly. "I
quadruple-dosed him."

Scully immediately tugged her cellphone from her pocket and speed-dialed
something, an action which squeezed Pendrell’s chest until he could all
but feel the tissue collapsing. She still had his number memorized.

Meanwhile Pendrell’s number was inscribed on a scrap of paper in her
wallet. He knew, because she had had to ask his phone number again at
least three times since they had started working together.

"Mulder. He’s still here. No, the other one.” She tucked her hair behind
her ear as she listened, a characteristic distracted gesture so
bittersweet that again it squeezed Pendrell’s torso until he couldn’t
breathe.

"I’ll bring him over in the morning." She clicked the phone off, looked
at Pendrell. "I’m taking Krycek over to Mulder’s tomorrow. Until then,
can you keep an eye on him?"

Pendrell nodded, eyes lowered. He didn’t want to look at her. He knew
what he’d see in her eyes.

Mulder.

It had always been him.

Of course.

"Good. I’ll be back in the morning." Professional, curt tones. She left.

No goodbye, no goodnight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.

*I’ll bring him over in the morning.*

*I’ll.*

No we. No mention of Pendrell.

He sighed, settled back on the couch across from the inert form of
Alexander Krycek, and holstered his gun. The double agent would be
passed out until at least eight AM, when Scully would take him back
to Mulder’s. He’d probably be pumped for information in the cruelest
way possible, and then released. Skinner would see to it that Mulder
was reinstated on the X-Files. Pendrell, as a field officer, might be
moved to another department. Or he might just be sent back to the
labs, shunted off and no longer needed.

Pendrell stared at Krycek’s unconscious face. A good-looking young man.
Sharp features softened by sleep, dark green eyes hidden and dreaming
their drugged dreams. He felt a little guilty about doping the man up,
but he was getting aggravating, and not a little strange.

Krycek’s breathing was slow and even and hypnotic. Pendrell closed his
eyes, thought about showering, decided he was too damn tired.

He leaned back on the pillow and ignored the damp on his face.


Monday, 11:08 PM
Agent Fox Mulder’s apartment
Washington, DC

Scully chewed her lip as she scanned the printouts.

Agent Pendrell had done quite a lot of traveling during his five-week
sabbatical while presumed dead.

"It’s amazing he wasn’t stopped at any airports for using Bureau
funds," Mulder commented from the kitchen. "Frohike said there were
probably other flight records they haven’t managed to dig up yet; his
hotel records have pretty big gaps, as much as four or five days."

"Pendrell isn’t a common name," Scully pointed out.

Mulder only shrugged. He’d showered, shaved, dressed in sweats and a
grey t-shirt and was making liverwurst sandwiches for both of them.
There was iced tea in the fridge, sunflower seeds in a dusty plastic
bag on the table, and Scully on the couch. Life was beautiful.

Scully was perched on the worn black leather couch, perusing the
reports Mulder had picked up while in England. Not looking up Phoebe
Green, at least according to him. Scully didn’t really care one way
or another.

"Funny for the FBI to leave a dead man’s account hanging like that.
Especially after all the travel time."

"O’Hare to Heathrow and back four times?" Scully blinked. "This can’t
be right. That would be about...."

"Six thousand not including expenses," Mulder smiled, trying to hide
his pleasure. Scully seemed a tad more attached to Pendrell than he
would have expected. He thought she would have shot him by now. Even
abject adoration lost it’s charm after...oh, thirty seconds.

"So. We’re meeting him in the morning?"

"Along with Krycek, yes. If they’re both turncoats..."

"They are."

"Mulder..."

"I know you don’t believe me, Scully." *And I’m not the least bit hurt;
I’m just your partner, confidante and best friend. Or at least, I was.*
"But I’ll prove it, tomorrow. In the most plausible way possible." His
last word was swallowed up by a gargantuan yawn.

"You’re tired." She turned away from the mass of papers and looked at
him with the first real concern she’d shown all night. She reached up
and touched his face. "Get some rest."

"Where are you going to sleep?"

She looked around. "I thought you had a waterbed. Or something."

"I got rid of it after it sprung that leak. Actually my landlord did it
for me. Expensive."

They both looked at the couch.


Tuesday, 12:05 AM
Agent Brian Pendrell’s apartment
Washington, DC.

Krycek was far from asleep.

What Brian Pendrell needed to knock him out for the night and what
Alexander Krycek needed by comparison were two very different things.

Pendrell needed a teaspoon of children’s Tylenol Cough and Cold.
Krycek needed ten cc’s of morphine. Nytol only gave him a slight
buzz.

He sat wakeful and watched agent Pendrell. Good looking guy. Nice
hair color. Subtle. He wondered vaguely if it was real, or just a
paint-by-number dye job like Scully’s.

Krycek observed his bonds. It was a nice chair, but it wasn’t solid
hardwood. Splintering it wouldn’t be a problem. Splintering it quietly
would be, so he’d have to go about it some other way.

It was too bad Scully knew about the prosthetic arm; he had a few
toys stashed away in it that would have been particularly helpful.
He’d always thought that bitch was too smart for her own good.

Pendrell murmured softly in his sleep.

Must be nice to be able to just snooze like that, holding a gun but
not really knowing it, left to keep guard but forgetting your duty as
soon as the dreams kicked in.

Krycek wondered when the last time he’d had a decent night’s sleep was
and decided that it had been around the time he’d joined the academy.
Since then, nightmares.

It made him an excellent operative. He was a very light sleeper.

Oh, well. To the task at hand.

He began to quietly shift the chair forward over the rug. Tricky
business, especially since the chair was so heavy and he only had
one arm to lift the weight. He crept forward bit by bit, eyes focused
on the gun in Pendrell’s slack white hand, and more importantly, the 
keys to his cuffs in Pendrell’s trouser pockets.

Krycek smirked to himself, the patented smirk that always earned him
a few good uppercuts from Agent Mulder. This was going to be
disgustingly easy.

He had edged the chair up until he was nearly touching the snoozing
former lab tech with his knees. Krycek eased his hand as far forward
as the chain of the cuffs would allow, sliding long fingers into the
slit of Pendrell’s pocket. His fingertips brushed cold metal—

And Pendrell opened his eyes.

They stared at each other for a moment, then Pendrell had the gun up
and had leapt off the couch with astonishing quickness.

"Jesus!"

Neither was sure who had said it.

"How did you—" Pendrell began, then glanced at where his throw rugs
were bunched up in a pattern behind the chair. "Shit."

Krycek sighed. Coises. Foiled again.

As Pendrell finished attaching another cuff to the closed chair arm
and fastening it to the door, Krycek tried to say something in his
defense. He was somewhat surprised when Pendrell smacked him on the
back of the head and told him to shut up and hold still. He always
managed to bring out the best in those around him.

At last Pendrell gave the four extra handcuffs a final tug and rose,
satisfied. Krycek hadn’t asked why he had so many pairs and Pendrell
wasn’t about to explain himself.

"What were you dreaming about?" Krycek asked suddenly.

Pendrell turned, blinked. "Nothing, really. Why?"

"Must be nice," he said.

The captive fell silent and Pendrell shook his head, walking back to the
couch. He lay down, pulled out the gun, laid it across his lap with his
fingers curled protectively about the butt. "Behave," he said.

But Krycek had fallen asleep.

Actually, Pendrell *had* remembered his dream.

Part of it, anyway.

He remembered what had happened when he had "died", he remembered where
he had awakened after being dumped out of whatever place he’d been. He
remembered his name, his badge number, his less-than-thrilling general
existence. He remembered Agent Scully, that he’d had a crush on her.

But there was something else, wasn’t there? A point where that crush had
ended, had simply gone...dead. Flatlined. When he had realized she would
never look at him that way and had not resigned himself to it, but had
actually reveled in that knowledge, had actually felt *good* that she
wouldn’t. Because he knew she wasn’t all that, wasn’t for him, and that
he didn’t need her, didn’t even *want* her anymore.

Someone had shown him that.

Who?

He knew it had happened, and not long before his brief sojourn into
hell. He knew there was a face he hadn’t seen since he’d come back.

He also knew it had happened because every gesture towards Scully,
every affectionate and worshipful attempt to attract her, felt
rehearsed. Just under the surface he was sick of it. Sick of trying
to coax those rare and beautiful smiles, sick of trying to get her
to call him Brian, sick of having her forget his fucking phone number
while Mulder’s was apparently unerasable.

Sick of playing Pygmalion to her Galatea, the sculptor in love with
the carved marble image of the goddess Aphrodite, willing to be turned
to stone if he could only stay with her.

But he wasn’t a man who could train her to be what he wanted, because
she was already what he wanted.

Or was she?

No. He was more like Echo, staring after Narcissus, helpless to
communicate his love.

Dammit, that wasn’t what he was.

He never would have been sick of it before, for the four years he was
apparently under her thrall. Four wasted years of single bachelorhood
waiting for the goddess to look twice.

She never would.

He knew that.

His irrepressible optimism before would never had allowed him that.

Someone, some person from before, face just under the surface, had
shown him.

Pendrell lay back on the couch and squeezed his eyes shut in
frustration. He knew it was there, buried in his memory, perhaps a
bit of data erased by....whoever they were.

"Can’t sleep?"

The voice was still as raspy and low as ever, dulled by sleep. But
Krycek’s eyes seemed genuinely concerned.

Pendrell looked up. "You know about how I...came back."

"Yeah."

He shouldn’t say anything to this man. Shouldn’t even pass
pleasantries, because he was the slickest bastard Scully had ever
come across and that meant something in her world of high intrigue,
didn’t it? That meant something extremely heavy.

But.

There was also something strangely comforting about this slim dark man
in the black clothes, something familiar. Krycek wasn’t in his past,
wasn’t buried in the shreds he could remember from before...the
accident. Still, he rang familiar, close. Close to whatever was
buried. Whatever had freed him.

So Pendrell spoke.

"There’s other stuff that I don’t get. Stuff that won’t come to me.
Like a piece of my brain’s missing."

Krycek looked at him curiously. "You don’t set off metal detectors when
unarmed, do you?"

Pendrell sighed. Just another of Krycek’s weird, idiot responses. "No."

"Oh." Of course. The implants had only gone into women. Hah.

"Well, it’s probably nothing. Get some sleep, Krycek. I expect they’re
going to pound the shit out of you tomorrow at Mulder’s."

"I told you, Pendrell. You know it as well as I do. The bastard’s dead."

"No, he’s not," Pendrell snapped, his words sounding strangely childish
in his ears. *no he’s not, no he’s not, no he’s not*

"Yes, he is," Krycek said gently. "Get used to it. Whoever it is, it’s
not him. Scully doesn’t know it, but it’s not him."

"Then what is it?" Pendrell demanded peevishly.

Krycek shrugged. "I don’t know," he lied. Scully sure kept this kid in
the dark. "I want to talk about your dream."



Well, I’m out of ideas for the week. Not really, but the other stuff after
this is going to take so much *planning*... makes me tired just to think 
of it...

Again, comments or whatever, send ‘em to kc_misu@yahoo.com if you want to
know what happens next.