By Xanthe

 "He led a double life. Did that make him a liar? He did not feel a liar. He was a man of two truths." From 'The Sacred and Profane Love Machine,' by Iris Murdoch.

Max is dying. Oh, not quickly; I don't think he'd ever do anything so strategically suspect as to die without due thought and consideration, but, nonetheless, he is dying. His doctors, characteristically ignoring patient confidentiality and, I suspect, his own dire threats, have told me that he has lung cancer. That's ironic, really, I suppose.

 I haven't seen him for three years, and I'm shocked by the change in him. His skin is paper thin, and his rugged, much-loved face is deeply lined, and pale, and yet he's still Max. Still fighting, still as stubborn as ever. He looks up as I enter the room, and I wave my hand to prevent him getting up. It's all I can do to hide my dismay at his appearance, but he sees through me anyway. He always did. He always could. Not many can.

"Max." I stride over to his side, and kiss both his cheeks, and he smiles at me, that watchful, loving smile that I'll miss so much that it makes me ache just thinking about it. "You're looking well," I tell him, sitting in the armchair by the fire, opposite his own. He shakes his head, chiding me.

"Dominik, you always were an excellent liar," he scolds, pursing his lips as he used to when I was 10 years old, and had just got into some mischief or other.

"I learned from the best." I incline my head in his direction and he laughs at me. “How’s Maddie?” I ask, because that’s always what I want to know first. He shrugs, and makes a little face.

“She’s well, Nicky. She’s fine. There’s no change, but she’s happy. That’s all we can ask for.”

We're silent for a moment, and he gazes at me. Those sharp, dark eyes miss nothing. They roam over every single inch of me, and I know that he's missed me as much as I have missed him. His expression is as clear and inscrutable as ever, but I am as skilled at reading the nuances as he is. There are no secrets we could ever keep from each other, not after all this time. He knows me too well, and I love him too much.

" Nicky, I'm sorry,” he says after he has given me a thorough inspection. He reaches forward, and places a thin, wrinkled hand on my arm. “Maybe I was wrong," he murmurs.

"That bad, huh?" I smile, ruefully, and he gives a grunt of laughter, but it quickly fades.

"Yes," he says, and then we both fall silent.

"How long?" I ask as the clock's endless ticking finally grinds me down, as if it is ticking away the last moments of his all too precious life, which, in a way, it is.

"Several months yet, I suspect." He gives me a reassuring smile, and reaches for a cigarette. His hands are not so sure as they once were, and he fumbles for his lighter. I find it for him, and flick it open, then light the cigarette.

"Still smoking?" I raise an eyebrow, and he gives another amused grunt.

"Dominik, I know those bastard quacks have already told you I have lung cancer. Doubtlessly, they've also told you that it's inoperable. To quit now would be the surest case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted that I've ever heard of, so don't be a silly boy and give me a hard time about it."

"You know me better than that, Max." I shrug. "We all make our own decisions, for good or ill. It swings both ways, though - whatever has happened to me, please don't blame yourself. I'd do it all again."

He takes a puff on his cigarette, and then gives a strained cough, before settling back in his chair with a searching look in my direction, and a raised eyebrow.

"Well, maybe not all of it," I amend softly, staring into the fire.

"No. Not all." He coughs again, almost apologetically. "We have a lot to talk about, Nicky," he says, rearranging the blanket over his knees. "A lot of things to sort out before I snuff it. There are things I need to tell you, so that you can handle it all when I'm gone." I'm not listening to a word he's saying because I'm too busy watching him. I realise that he's grown impossibly thin for such a large man. His wizened flesh sticks to his bones, and makes him look…old. That hurts; it makes it hit home, and I feel physically sick.

"I won't go back, Max. Not when you're dying," I tell him, snapping out of my reverie. "I want to be here with you."

"To do what?" He shrugs. "The Organisation needs you more than I do, Nicky. You're the only one who has seen the full picture, and knows what's going on."

"Maybe not for much longer." 

I examine my fingers for a moment, and he waits. He has always waited for me, and he has never been disappointed. Sooner or later I come to him, and tell him everything he wants to know. I’m not blind to the power of his patience, and I’ve tried to emulate him. It’s a hard but useful weapon to acquire, and it didn’t come easily or naturally to such an impatient, headstrong soul as myself. There is silence between us for a long time, and then I get up, and wander over to the window. Outside, the frost is thick and white on the ground. The trees are bare, and the winter is like a blanket over the land around us. 

"An order went out yesterday." I glance back at him, where he waits. "The circle is closing, Max. I might not have any longer than you."

"What will you do?" He takes a slow, leisurely puff on his cigarette, and blows out the smoke. It's an action that's familiar to me, but for entirely different reasons.

"Watch how it plays out." I shrug. "Play that waiting game you taught me so well."

"And what do you want to do?" He asks, those sharp, dark eyes never leaving my face.

"Come back here, and be with you when the end comes." I turn back to the winter white world outside, because I don't want to see the expression on his face right now.

"Nicky…" His voice never wavers. His will has always been so strong; he's an example to us all. "I'd like that too." And he would, but he won't allow it all the same. "But this is too important. You are too important to us. You know that. I don't matter. I'll be gone soon, but what I've worked for all my life will remain, and I’m relying on you to bring about the resolution that we’ve all sacrificed so much to achieve."

"And what about what I want? Doesn't that matter, Max?" I turn back to him, and reach his side with three strides. "Damnit, you're the closest thing I have to family in the whole world. You're the only one who really knows me, Max. You're the only one who understands." I crouch down beside his chair, and place my hand on his thin, fragile arm.

"Yes. I do." He touches my hair, gently with his yellowed, nicotine-stained fingers. "Nicky, I love you as if you were my own son. You know that. I won't order you to go back. Just follow your conscience - that's all I've ever asked of you."

"Yes. That's all." I rock back on my haunches, and consider him thoughtfully. "Damn you, Max," I curse softly, and he smiles.

"So, you're going back?"

"Yes." I get up, and return to the window. It's growing dark outside, and snow has started to fall. "I hate him you know." I twitch aside the curtains, and gaze at the whitening world. It's beautiful - so beautiful that it reminds me exactly what we stand to lose if I screw up. Sometimes I hate the weight of this responsibility, weighing so heavily on my shoulders. I've lost my mother, my father, my best friend, my wife, and my own soul to this cause. Haven't I given enough?

"Who?" His voice is rougher than it used to be, and it always had a gravelly quality; deep, and low.

"Alex Krycek." I watch the world outside turn dark and white at one and the same time, and find some resonance in that.

"Ah." He takes another puff on his cigarette.

“Sometimes I hate him so much that I want to kill him.” I let those words linger between us, holding my breath. If he were to give me the word then I’d do it. If I just had his permission then I’d kill Alex Krycek once and for all, and wipe him out of this beautiful world like the cancerous growth that he is. I know that Max won’t give me that permission though. That’s Max. He’s strong for me when I’m being weak, and stops me from doing what he knows I’ll inevitably regret.

“Something’s happened?” Max coaxes.

"Yes. Krycek is a liar, a thief, and a killer, but…what I never knew… it turns out that he's a sadist too.”  The snow outside performs a long, slow, dizzying dance that bewitches me for a moment, and almost makes me forget.  Almost. “There's a man…" I stiffen, and then turn back. "A good man. His name is Walter Skinner."

"I've read the reports," Max says, encouraging me to continue with an inclination of his grizzled old head.

"He is a good man," I tell him, urgently, because it's important to me that he understands. "I wasn't sure at first, but I am now. He's only ever tried to do his job. He's given his life for his country once already, and Krycek killed him a second time, and then brought him back to life. He's a sadist: a cat, toying with his prey. He holds a decent man’s life in his hand; with one snap of his fingers he can choose to cause Skinner pain, or release him from that pain, or kill him. It’s not good for any man to hold that power over another, Max.  It sickens me." My whole body tenses, and I spit those words out, the tension knotting every single muscle in my body.

"I know." He nods, a small, frail shell of the man I once knew, and yet still Max behind those sharp, dark eyes, still my all-knowing Max. He's the only person who understands. "Will Krycek kill Skinner?" He asks, never taking his eyes off me.

"I don't think so. I think Walter Skinner is more useful to the Project alive, so I think that's the way he'll stay - for now at least. Poor bastard. He never did anything, you know? He's spent the past 5 years running around, tying himself in knots, trying to do the right thing, and now Krycek has him - like this." I close my gloved hand into a savage fist, like a tightening noose. Max's eyes have never left my face. "It hasn't been pretty. Skinner fights. Sometimes I wish he'd just give in, but he fights. He can’t stop fighting – it’s who, and what he is. He struggles, like a wild animal caught in a trap, thrashing around, but they have him; he just hasn't figured that out yet - or maybe he has. Maybe that's what makes his death throes so desperate, and so very sad. I hate what Krycek is doing to him."

"Nicky, are you in love with Skinner?" Max asks. Did I mention that he knows me better than any person on this earth?

"Oh yes, Max," I reply, gazing into the fire, "I'm very much afraid that I am."

*****

Skinner was working late, his shoulders hunched. The words in the report leapt and danced in front of his tired eyes. It was almost midnight, and he should probably go home. He would go home if there was any point, but nothing waited for him there but a cold bed, and an emptiness he would have gone to the end of the earth to avoid right now – except for the fact there was no point. It accompanied him everywhere he went, like a cold, dead weight, nestled in the pit of his stomach. His eyes hurt, and he could no longer make any sense of the words on the page. Skinner reached up, snagged off his glasses, and then pinched his eyes, wearily.

"You should get some rest."

It was a familiar voice. Skinner didn't even open his eyes; he knew the hard tones of his bitter enemy when he heard them.

"Krycek." He put his glasses back on, feeling naked and vulnerable facing this old foe without them. Krycek was standing in the corner of his office. God knows how long he'd been there - maybe as long as five minutes. Maybe he'd slipped in when Skinner had gone to get his 8^th cup of coffee of the evening. The other man walked into the light, with that slinky, prowling grace that Skinner hated so much.

"You're looking old, and tired, Skinner, and you're no use to us like that." Krycek smiled, a cold smile that didn't reach those elusive green eyes.

"And being of use to you is my main objective in life, after all," Skinner snarled, barely keeping a leash on his temper.

"It should be. I do hold your life in my hand, after all." Krycek grinned, and reached into his pocket. Skinner stiffened, as the familiar, dark shape of the palm pilot came into view, clutched between two plastic fingers.

"If it means betraying Mulder again, I won't do it," Skinner snapped. "Last time there were ramifications I didn't understand. I didn't know that giving him that assignment, and making that tape would place him in danger."

"Relax." Krycek sat down, and slowly placed first one, and then the other foot on Skinner's desk, crossing them nonchalantly. He stared at Skinner, a challenge in his eyes, daring the other man to object. Skinner's jaw clenched, but he said nothing. Krycek grinned. "This has nothing to do with Mulder, or Scully. This is something you can do for us, using all the excellent resources at your disposal."

"I won't kill anyone," Skinner said quickly.

"I'm not asking you to," Krycek snapped back, equally quickly. "This is a nothing job, Skinner. And by that I mean nothing to spoil that oh so spotless conscience of yours." He smirked, as the irony of those words clearly hit home. "All we want you to do is find someone."

"You need my help with that?" Skinner raised a surprised eyebrow. "I would have thought that you and your associates were skilled enough in that field yourself."

"We are, but this is different. There's a man we've been looking for who is proving particularly elusive. We need to find him. It's important."

"And when you find him? Will you kill him?" Skinner asked. "I won't help put an innocent man in the grave."

"Who said he was innocent?" Krycek's eyes were dark, and savage. "He isn't. He's a very dangerous man, and he's been playing a very dangerous game. We need to find him, Skinner. The only trouble is, the last information we have on him is from when he was nine years old. Since then…" He shrugged, expansively, and waved his good arm in the air. "Nothing. So…we thought it was time to call in the resources of the good old FBI. What’s the point of having a pet Assistant Director if you can't make him jump through hoops occasionally, after all?"

Skinner fought with every single degree of his self-control to stop himself jumping over the desk and throttling his old enemy where he sat.

"It's a nice, easy job. You find him, and then you tell me where he is. That's all. Nothing else. You don't even have to get your hands dirty. It's just a simple missing persons case. Surely even you haven't been out of the field so long that you've forgotten how to investigate one of those?" Krycek's raised eyebrow was a challenge. Skinner considered the request for a moment. It didn't seem too bad. There was clearly no point in refusing the assignment, not until he knew more. If he found out where this person was then he might be able to warn the man before he gave the information to Krycek.

"All right. Who is he?" He asked.

Krycek smiled, and reached under his jacket for a file.

"His name is Crozier," he said, throwing the file on the desk. Skinner looked into Krycek's expressionless green eyes for a moment, and wondered what was going on behind that jade façade. "Dominik Crozier," Krycek said, unblinking. “One thing though, Skinner. You investigate this yourself. Alone. Don’t tell anyone else, not even Mulder.” 

Skinner shrugged, and nodded, then reached for the file, and opened it, and when he looked up again he was unsurprised to find that the assassin had left as silently as he had arrived.

"Dominik Crozier." Skinner flicked through the file, and began to read.

  *****

It’s late as I return to the most recent in the series of rundown lodgings that I've called home over the years. I’m cold, and weary, and I’m worried about Max. I wish he had let me stay. I pass a poster for a production of The Marriage of Figaro, and my stomach does its usual somersault. It was once my favourite opera, but I haven’t seen it a production of it for years. The last time I saw it was on my 9^th birthday, the day my life ended, and Dominik Crozier died. He died again 14 years later; Walter Skinner isn’t the only man who knows what it is like to have died twice. I wonder if that is one of the reasons why I fell in love with him. Love. I could laugh at myself for using such a word. As if I am entitled to either give or receive love. I’m an idiot, and being an idiot could get me killed. I care less about myself than what my death would do to Max, and Maddie, and the whole damn Organisation. Without me, I don’t know what chance they stand. Hell, realistically, I’m not sure what chance we stand anyway. The Marriage of Figaro. I can hear the music echoing in my head, and it makes me retch. Once it made me dance, but for years I’ve felt sick whenever I’ve heard even the smallest snippet of that opera.

I remember the journey home. Our chauffeur was driving, and I was chattering excitedly. The evening had been a birthday treat for me, and my mother was laughing as I treated her to my rendition of Voi Che Sapete. She was very beautiful, but it pains me that I can barely remember her face now. Max was right to burn the photographs, I know that, but it hurts all the same that my own memory is so hazy. I loved her very much, and I know that she had blonde hair, and eyes that were a stunning shade of turquoise. I remember that she was petite, and slim, and that she had a tiny mole beside her mouth, that her teeth were straight, and white, but I don’t remember how it all fitted together. I remember the individual parts but not the ensemble whole, and that upsets me. I wish I hadn’t seen the poster for the opera, because it’s all in my head again, and now I must re-live it, the way I have countless times over the years.

“Damn but the boy has a fine voice, Marguerite,” my father said. “You were right to pester me for singing lessons. He must take after his Mama because I can’t sing a note.”

“We know that, Papa!” I laughed. “We’ve heard you singing in the bath!”

“Monster!” He tickled me until I sank to the floor of our enormous limousine, breathless with laughter.

“Hush, boys,” my mother chided. “Nicky, come and sit up here beside me and settle down. You’re distracting Leo.” Our driver glanced at me in the mirror, and winked, and I grinned at him. Leo and I were old friends. He once took me out on his motor-bike when mother and father were off at some political function or other. I loved every second of it – the feel of the wind in my hair, and the way the world whizzed by at top speed. I enjoyed the sense of danger, of doing something illicit. I always did love sailing too close to the wind. Leo had me back at the house and in bed before Papa got home. When Mama came up to kiss me goodnight, she took one look at me, and said, with a conspiratorial smile: “I think you should wash your face before your father comes up.” When I looked in the mirror, I saw a smudge of grease along my cheekbone, and washed it off quickly. “I think, also, that it might be best if you at least pretend to be asleep when Papa looks in on you,” she chuckled. “It is one o' clock after all.” And then she pressed her lips to my forehead, and glided from the room. I don’t think Leo got into any trouble for that. I hope not.

I sat down beside my mother in the limousine, snuggling up to her. She was wearing a dress of long, cool, ice blue satin, and she smelled of eau de Mama. Maybe everybody has a smell they associate with their mothers, but I always remember her particular scent. I can still smell it if I close my eyes, and think back. Sometimes I think I smell it again, in the perfume of a woman wafting by, and I’m ashamed to admit that occasionally I have followed women, just to smell their scent. Mama had a fur stole around her beautiful white neck. She was beautiful; that isn’t just the false memory of a 9 year old boy in love with his mother. Mama was an actress before she married my father. She was well known in Vienna, where we lived. Then my father came along and swept her off her feet, and she gave up the stage for him. He was fifteen years older than her, not particularly tall, but an imposing man. His dark hair was streaked grey, the same colour as his eyes, and he was such a serious man. It was only with her, or me, that he smiled. He loved us. We were the centre of his universe, and I was happy in a way you take for granted when you are 9 years old, and your world is one of love and indulgence. Maybe I was a little spoiled, but I don’t think it made me obnoxious; it merely made me confident, and that’s no bad thing. We drove back to our house, still laughing and chattering, and just thinking about it makes me ache, because it was many years before I felt that happy again.

“I want to be an opera singer when I grow up,” I said enthusiastically. “Or maybe an actor, like Mama.”

“You’re certainly loud enough to make yourself heard onstage,” my father snorted, ruffling my hair.

“I’ll be a great actor. You’ll be proud of me,” I proclaimed, thrilled by the thought of starring in movies.

“Oh darling, we’ll be proud of you whatever you do, won’t we, Josef?” My father was staring out of the window, lost in thought, but he looked around, and laughed.

“What? Oh, yes. Maybe you’ll be a doctor,” Papa said. I’d almost forgotten that snippet of conversation. We’ll be proud of you whatever you do… I don’t think so, Mama. Somehow, I don’t think so.

Our car drew up at the house. Looking back, I always want it to end differently. I want to scream at us not to go in, and sometimes I do, but they can’t hear me. They’re still teasing each other, and 9 year old Nicky was still singing. He tumbled out of the car, eager to pirouette, and prance, to show off for his doting parents. I wonder if I was ever that precocious, but I know that I was. We wandered up to the house, and somehow I feel that there should be something to warn us; maybe a feeling, or a sign, to tell us to stop, not to go in, but there is nothing. It was a perfectly ordinary summer evening.  Papa opened the door, while Leo put the car away in the garage, and I followed behind my father, with Mama bringing up the rear.

“Nicky, run upstairs and get ready for bed. I’ll be up to say goodnight in a few minutes,” Mama said, and while I longed for the evening to go on forever I was too well brought up to argue with her, so my little pout sufficed to register my protest, and she laughed at me, and kissed my forehead, then pushed me up the stairs. I went into my bedroom, and washed, and changed into my pajamas, then sat in my bed, waiting for them both to come up. They always came to say goodnight, and read me a bedtime story, but not that night. That night I waited…and waited…I began to wonder if they were planning another birthday surprise for me, and then I heard raised voices. It wasn’t my parents arguing; they never did for a start, and my father was a quietly spoken man. I never even heard him shout before that night, but one of those voices was definitely his.

“I don’t know, I tell you!” He cried, desperately, in a tone of voice that scared me. Even at the age of 9 I knew that something was very wrong. “Please, let her go! I don’t know. I don’t have them. You’re wro…” And then a loud snapping sound, followed by a scream of pain. I jumped out of bed, ran out into the corridor, and crouched in the darkness, staring through the banisters. I could see my father, remonstrating with someone in the hallway below, beneath the huge crystal chandelier, and I could smell tobacco. A thin, wafting plume of smoke was making its way up the stairs to where I was crouched. I remember thinking that Papa was probably angry that someone was smoking in his house. Mama hated smoking so father quit the day they got married, and wouldn’t allow anyone to smoke in the house.

“You have something that belongs to us,” the intruder was saying, in fluent German with a heavy American accent, and that’s when I caught sight of my mother. She was lying on the floor, a livid red bruise on the side of her jaw. She was whimpering. Father’s hands had been tied behind his back, and he looked pale, and small, and defeated. A little boy should never see his father looking like that. A boy’s father should always seem big, and strong, and capable of taking on the world alone, and winning. That was the way my father always seemed to me until that night.

“Leave her alone. She doesn’t know anything,” my father said desperately. “It’s me you want.”

“Then tell us what we want to know,” the smoking man requested, in a voice that sounded eminently reasonable. I willed my father to agree. One of the intruders had a gun held to my father’s head, and another had his aimed loosely at my mother’s back. I didn’t understand why my father was hesitating. Didn’t my mother’s life mean more to him than some political secret?

“I can’t.” My father sounded broken, and there are tears in his eyes.

“Then we’ll have to kill her,” the smoking man said, flicking his fingers. 

My “NO!” rang out, but was lost in the sound of gunfire, and the noise of a woman screaming. My mother wasn’t dead though. My father had wrenched himself free of his captors, flung himself over her body, and taken the bullet for her. A steady stream of blood was flowing from his chest, and his stiff white shirt was glowing bright red under the lights of the chandelier. The smoking man kicked my father and he rolled over, and I knew immediately that he was dead. His eyes were open, and he was staring straight up at me, and, in death, I sensed that he was giving me a message. He was asking me to save my mother. Silently, finding courage that I didn’t know I had, I tiptoed back to my bedroom, and opened the window. I climbed out onto the garage roof, and to this day I’m still not sure how, but I somehow managed to open the skylight, and half climbed, half fell into the garage. Only a few minutes had passed since we entered the house, and Leo was still there, putting the car away. He looked at me, startled. He hadn’t even heard the gunshots, and screams, because he had the car radio on, and was polishing one of the wing mirrors.

“Leo…help…Papa…” And that’s all I managed to say. He guessed the rest by the look on my face, and the look on his face surprised me. He didn’t look like Leo any more. He looked different.

“In the house?” He asked, and I nodded, the tears streaming down my face. “How many of them?” He didn’t seem surprised.

“I don’t know. More than two. They shot him…they shot…please, save Mama!” I was shaking all over, and on the verge of collapse.

“All right, Nicky. Listen to me very carefully.” He grabbed my shoulders, and sank his fingers into them. “I want you to go inside, into my apartment.” He nodded at the door leading from the garage to his sleeping quarters. “Find the phone, and call this number.” He wrote a number for me, and I stared at him in disbelief. My father was lying dead next door and he wanted me to make a phone call? “Ask for Max.” He spoke quickly, and urgently. “Nicky, just do it. It’s important. When it’s done, I want you to run. Run as far away from the house as possible, and hide somewhere. Max will find you.”

“What about Mama?” I asked him, and he nodded at me.

“It’s all right, Nicky. I’ll find your Mama. Now go.” He pushed me towards the door, and I went, but as I reached the door, I turned back…and that’s when I saw him change. Leo, my skinny, wiry little Leo, with his thin, dark hair, and crooked nose, grew in front of my eyes. He became six feet tall, taller maybe, and his hair changed to a light brown, and he was bulging with muscles. He turned, and saw me watching, and nodded impatiently to the door. “Do it, Nicky,” he hissed, and his voice was still Leo, but it changed even as he spoke, and became deeper, stronger, and if I was scared before I was petrified out of my wits now. I ran into the apartment as Leo – not Leo - ordered, and found the phone. I tried to dial the number but my hand was shaking so much that it took three attempts before I could manage it. A woman with a smooth, cultured, American accent answered the call immediately, on the second ring.

“Max…I must speak to Max,” I said urgently into the phone.

“Who is this?” she asked sharply.

“It’s Nicky…I mean…it’s Dominik, Dominik Crozier. Please, Leo told me to call. Please…” I was crying again, and she hesitated, and then I heard her talking to someone. A few seconds later, a man’s voice came on the line.

“This is Max,” he said cautiously.

“They’ve killed my father,” I sobbed incoherently down the phone.

“Where are you?” Max asked urgently, seeming to understand the situation a lot better than I did at that moment in time.

“In Leo’s apartment. He told me to run, and hide, and call you. He changed shape…” I was shaking and crying, and I knew that I wasn't making any sense.

“Do as he says. I’ll be there, Dominik. Now go. RUN!” he ordered, and I dropped the phone, scared by the intensity of his voice.  

I ran back out into the garage, and that’s when I heard the second gunshot. All I could think of was my Mama, lying on the floor with that huge red bruise on her face, and I couldn't help myself. I disobeyed Leo, and Max. Instead of running into the garden, to safety, I jumped onto the roof of the car, clambered out through the skylight again, crawled to my bedroom window, and climbed back inside. There I resumed my previous place, watching through the banisters. There were more gunshots. I could see Leo walking towards the smoking man, and my mother was still alive! She was sitting on the floor, trembling, but she was still alive. Leo shouldn’t have been. The smoking man was firing his gun, and the man who was once Leo just kept on walking. A strange green goo was oozing from the places where he had been shot, and my eyes started to burn.

“Let her go.” Leo stopped in front of my mother, and stared down at the smoking man. I couldn't see the face of my father’s murderer, just his hand, his fingers curled around a cigarette. “She doesn’t know anything, Spender,” Leo said.

“You shouldn’t be here.” The smoking man didn’t even sound worried.

“I make my own choices. Now leave,” Leo said, but at that moment there was a movement in the shadows, and I tried to call out but it was too late. For a moment I couldn’t see what had happened, but then Leo was falling forward, onto his knees, and his face was crumpling before my eyes. I didn’t hear a gunshot, and I didn’t understand what was happening. Leo seemed to be disintegrating, and the green ooze was seeping from his eyes, and mouth. He fell forward, and that’s when I saw that he had what looked like a knife sticking in the back of his neck. My mother gasped, and placed a hand over her mouth, and I started to cough, but nobody heard me in the general melee below. There was an acidic smell in the air that burnt my nostrils, and eyes, and mouth. It hurt.

“Kill her,” Spender said, and my mother screamed.

“Please…don’t…please…I beg you. Let me live…” She implored, holding onto his legs. He looked down on her, and that's when I started moving. I ran down the stairs, screaming at the top of my voice. I’m not sure what I said; and my throat was hoarse, and sore, and I was out of my mind with fright. They hadn't yet seen me; one of the men had moved his gun, and he placed it against my mother’s head, and fired. It’s that easy to kill. It takes only one second to snuff out a life. There’s no sense to it, and no justice. It’s just death. I learned that at 9 years old. I screamed at the top of my voice as I watched her lifeless body sink forward, her hair covering the blood that seeped out from underneath it in a steady stream, forming a pool, and staining her beautiful blue satin dress a bright, sickly red. Spender looked up, and saw me for the first time, and that's also when I got my first glimpse of him, face to face. I was crouched in the darkness of the stairwell, but he was standing in the full light of the chandelier. He was a tall man, with hooded hazel eyes, and a supercilious sneer on his lips, which were curled around a cigarette. I’m not sure that he even knew who I was, and at that moment one of his lackeys ran in, distracting him.

“We have to go! They’re on their way!” He yelled, and the intruders started racing towards the door, leaving only Spender, who looked straight at me. I shrank back into the shadows as he raised his gun.

“I don’t like leaving witnesses,” he murmured. “It’s untidy.” He pulled the trigger, and I started moving at the same time, and he was moving too, running for the door. I felt something slice into my head, and the world turned red as I fell down the stairs, blood running down the side of my face. I came to rest on the bottom step, and my head hurt so much that I passed out.  

I don’t know how long I lay there, drifting in and out of consciousness, but the next thing I remember is waking to find a big man, wearing a balaclava, bending over me. I came to with a start, and began screaming. The big man placed a hand over my mouth. He smelled of smoke, and that made me think of Spender - he was tall, like this dark clad stranger; maybe he’d come back for me. I was screaming and struggling as the man picked me up, effortlessly, and carried me outside.

“Hush, Dominik. It’s Max. I’m not going to hurt you. You came to me for help, remember?” he said urgently, as he bundled me into the back of a car.

“Max?” I barely remembered that phone call. It could have taken place a lifetime ago.

“Yes. Hush.” He pulled off his balaclava as the car took off at top speed and I saw immediately that he wasn’t the man who had murdered my parents. He was about 40, with a lined, craggy face, and deep-set, brown eyes. There was something about him that I recognised, even then; Max was one of the good guys. It was obvious in the warmth of his smile, the humour in his eyes, and the sheer charisma that oozed from every pore in his body. Yes, Max is an inveterate womaniser; he drinks too much, and he smokes like a chimney, but I’d trust him with my life, and he’s never once let me down in all the years since he carried a small, frightened, helpless, injured boy from the wreckage of his life, and helped him build a new one. “Dominik, you’re hurt. Hold still while I see how bad it is.” His large fingers probed my forehead, and came away blood red. I opened my mouth, wanting to scream, but caught the expression in his eyes.

“It’s all right, Dominik,” Max said softly. “You’re going to be all right. It’s just a flesh wound.”

“He shot me.” I put my fingers up to my forehead, and touched the wound.

“The shot must have ricocheted. If it had entered your head cleanly it would have killed you,” Max said. Then, as now, he always told me the truth. He never treated me like a child; maybe he recognised that when you’ve just seen your parents slaughtered in front of your eyes, there is no truth that’s too hard to bear, or maybe that’s just Max. He doesn’t like to hide the hard facts, but he’s always there to help you bear them.

“My mother…father…” I whispered, brokenly.

“Dominik, I’m very sorry.” And he was. His dark eyes were sad and sincere. “Your father was a good man, Dominik, never forget that.”

“Leo told me to hide…but I couldn’t. I heard her scream. I couldn’t leave my mother. I thought I could stop them. I ran down the stairs, but she was already…they had already…I was too slow. If I had said something sooner...I could have distracted them…I could have…”

“Dominik.” He stopped the torrent of guilty words with his finger, placing it gently over my lips. “You couldn’t have done anything. You’re just a boy. They were men, with guns. You did your best to protect your mother. You couldn’t have done anything more.”

“Mama.” I opened my mouth, and said the word in an almost voiceless whisper.

“You’ve been very brave, Dominik,” Max was saying but I was hardly listening. I was just remembering the way my father had stared at me with those dead eyes, telling me to save her, and how I’d failed him. “Dominik.” Max tapped my cheek lightly, to bring me back. “Listen to me,” he said in a firm, low voice, “You couldn’t have done anything more. You’re the bravest kid I’ve ever met. You could have run – you should have run, the way Leo and I ordered you to, but you didn’t. You went back to save your mother. That says a lot about you, and the kind of boy you are. Many a grown man would have thought twice about running back into the house under such circumstances.” I stared at him, unblinking, and he smiled at me. With those few words, he stopped what could have become a lifetime of self-blame before it even began. Oh, on some level I’ll always hate myself for being too small, too young, and too weak to save my parents, but Max took away at least some of the guilt, even if he could never take away the pain.

“Where are we going? What will happen to me?” I asked him in a small voice. I was suddenly aware that I was dressed in blood- stained pyjamas, speeding away from the only home I’d ever known, and that all the people who had ever loved me were dead, wiped out in less than ten minutes of chaos and carnage.

“I’m taking you somewhere safe,” Max said gently. “We’ll look after you, Dominik. I know we can’t replace your parents, but we will take good care of you. You’ll have everything you need. We look after our own.”

I wasn't sure what he meant by that, and I gazed at him, distrustfully.

“The man…that man who shot me…he was asking my father questions. He was looking for something. My father wouldn’t tell him. Why wouldn’t he tell him?” I gazed at Max, the tears filling in my eyes. “Even when they threatened my mother…why? Didn’t he love her?” Max took a deep breath, and swallowed hard, and I think he was close to tears as well.

“Of course he loved her, Dominik,” he said softly, “but there was so much more at stake. Your father was a brave man – and your mother was brave too. She knew all about the secrets your father was hiding. She knew the risks, but she never once asked him to be less than he was, or to give it all up.”

“I don’t understand,” I told him, shivering badly from shock.

“I know, and I will explain it all one day, but for now, you’re too tired, too sad, and too young. Come here, Dominik.”

He opened his arms, and I stared at him. I didn’t know this man. I’d never met him before, and yet I trusted him. A bond had been forged between us that would never be broken, from that day to this. I was cold, and tired, and I hurt. I crawled across the car seat towards him, trembling violently, and disappeared into the comforting oblivion of his arms.

“Nicky,” I whispered, resting my weary, aching head against his shoulder.

“What?” He frowned down at me, his big arms holding me tight, swallowing me up in their warmth.

“Papa only calls me Dominik when he’s cross with me. Otherwise I’m always Nicky.” I closed my eyes, and felt his arms tighten around me.

“Nicky then,” he said softly, gently stroking my hair. “Nicky.”  

*****

Skinner got out of the taxi, and paid the driver. He had taken a few days leave to travel to Vienna on the track of Krycek’s mysterious Dominik Crozier. The house was beautiful; large, and elegant, set in lovely gardens. Skinner opened the file he had brought with him, and checked the address. He didn’t know why he should be surprised: Josef Crozier, Dominik’s father, had, after all, been a wealthy politician with fingers in many pies.  Skinner opened the large, wrought iron gate, and walked up the gravel drive, his footsteps crunching as he went. He had justified this trip by telling himself that his life was on the line, and he had to find this Crozier if he was to save himself at best another spell in the hospital, his arteries choked by carbon, and at worst an early grave. This wasn’t the entire truth though, and he knew that, although he wasn’t sure why this case had captured his interest in this way. Maybe it was the fact that this Dominik Crozier, whoever he was, was so badly wanted by Krycek’s bosses that they were prepared to bring in the FBI to find him, and maybe it was because the bare facts in the file were so fascinating. There was very little information to go on at all, save for the fact that at the age of 9, little Dominik Crozier had witnessed his parents' death, and suffered what the Consortium operative writing the report had deemed to be “probably a fatal bullet wound to the head.” But if they really thought Crozier was dead, then why were they looking for him? Then again, maybe that wasn’t it either. Maybe, instead, it was the blurred, black and white photograph of a small boy, laughing as he was swung between two disembodied arms, which Skinner presumed belonged to the child’s parents, as they walked through the streets of Vienna that had caught his imagination. The child couldn’t have been more than four years old in the picture. Was this really all they knew about Dominik Crozier? It wasn’t much to go on. Skinner took the picture from the file, and gazed that the blurred, grainy image of the boy for a long time. He looked so happy. He had no inkling that in a few years time, his world would be destroyed, and his life shattered.

Skinner returned the photograph to the file, and tucked both into his duffel bag. He swung it onto his shoulder, and knocked on the imposing door. There was no reply. He knocked again, and then took a step back, and gazed at the upstairs windows, as if looking for some kind of clue.

“Nobody lives here now,” a voice behind him said, in German. Skinner jumped, startled, and turned to find himself face to face with a gardener.

“Nobody’s lived here for years. You’d think they’d sell the place if they didn’t want to live here. Must be worth something.” The gardener stared at the house.

“It’s well kept,” Skinner observed, in faltering German, gazing at the façade.

“Yes. They pay an army of people to keep it, but nobody lives here. Nobody even visits. I’ve never been inside, but I’ve heard…” The man’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ve heard that it’s like being in a time warp. Everything just as it was that night when Josef Crozier, and his wife and little boy, were gunned down, right down to the bloodstain on the floor.”

“Do you believe that?” Skinner asked, frowning.

“Well, maybe not the part about the blood stain.” The gardener grinned, ghoulishly. “Makes a good story to frighten the children with though!”

“You speak of Crozier’s son. I wasn’t aware…did he die here?” Skinner asked, his inefficient German barely adequate for the question.

“Yes. Gunned down with his parents. They cremated him in his mother’s coffin,” the gardener replied, clearly enjoying being the source of so much information. “Strange tale. Nothing stolen, and nobody knows who owns the house now.”

“So nobody ever comes here?” Skinner pressed.

“I’ve never seen anyone.” The gardener shrugged. “I’ve heard the house is haunted by the ghost of Marguerite Crozier though. The housekeeper comes here once or twice a week, and she says that sometimes she finds things have been moved, and she can smell the dead woman’s perfume lingering in the air. Gives me quite a chill, I can tell you.” He shivered dramatically, and Skinner grunted. Ghosts. This was turning out to be more Mulder’s department than his, and yet Krycek had been quite specific that he should investigate this himself. So, the local people thought that Dominik Crozier was dead; what information did the Consortium have to the contrary? And why were they looking for this man now, decades after he had supposedly ‘died’? 

  *****

I come to with a start, and realise that I’m stiff, and wet, and damned cold. I’m not dressed for this kind of weather. I’m still staring at the poster for The Marriage of Figaro, and the lightly falling rain has soaked me to the skin. On the street beside me there’s a small, steaming pool of vomit that I don’t remember depositing there. I wipe the stench from my lips with the back of my sleeve, and then turn and trudge swiftly home, still lost in thought. Max’s illness, and the knowledge that Spender’s people have stepped up their search for me, has made me question my choices. I used to be so sure, but maybe now is the time to get out, before it’s too late. Maybe it’s already too late. Walter Skinner is a clever man. He might find me where they failed. If so, then my days are already numbered. It’s almost 2 am by the time I get back to my apartment block. The familiar stench of urine assaults me as I open the door, and start running up the concrete steps. I come across a gang of youths in the stairwell further up. They’re off their heads on some substance or other, and they look at me as I jog up the stairs, hostility evident in their posture, and their dull lifeless eyes.

“Excuse me,” I say politely, waiting for them to move so I can get past.

“Fuck off.” It’s mindless, without meaning. He’s just another lost, dispossessed soul, but I have no pity for him. He hasn’t seen what I’ve seen, and I’d defy him to know the kind of tragedy that I’ve known in my life. My hand fastens easily around his throat, and I defy his other, drugged up friends to come to his assistance. They gaze at me, uneasily, sensing danger. I could kill them all before they even know what’s hit them, but I didn’t get this far by drawing attention to myself. I pull the youth out of the way, and push him down the stairs. He falls, awkwardly, and gazes after me blankly.

“Thank you,” I murmur ironically as I continue on my way.

“Motherfucker.” He fingers his throat gingerly, but he’s too scared to retaliate. There was a time when that particular epithet might have made me see red, and throw my fists around, but not any more. I've learned to control my emotions to a degree that makes me wonder if I even know what they are these days. I climb the next few steps to my apartment, and let myself in. It’s small, and grubby, consisting of one room, and a small kitchen area. The paint is peeling, and the entire apartment block smells damp and musty. I go to the basin, and splash water on my face, and then fill myself a mug of the same cool liquid, and squat down on my mattress. The water rinses the taste of vomit from my mouth, and makes me feel human again – although sometimes I’ve doubted even that. The truth is that I’m scared, not for myself, but for what will become of me without Max. When he dies, there will be nobody left in the whole world who knows my story, and also…who loves me. I’m an orphan, and I’ve walked with loneliness all my life. The two people in the world who had showed me unconditional love without question are long since dead, but Max did his best to fill their shoes, and for that I’ll be eternally grateful to him.  

It wasn’t always easy for either of us in those first, terrible days after my parents’ death, but Max was amazing. I have no idea how he put up with me, but he did, and he pulled me through. I’m not sure I can bear to lose him. Looking back on my life, he’s always been the one constant, from the moment he found me. I suppose that I took that for granted, but now, facing his death, all I can think about is how much he means to me. Maybe I need to go over these memories again now. I, of all people, know how important memories are. Sometimes they’re all we have...

I woke up in a small bed in an underground room, and, for just a split second, I didn’t remember what had happened, and then it all kicked back in, and I curled up in bed in a fetal position, and didn’t move for the next 48 hours. I was kept pretty much sedated as they healed the graze on my head, but the scars inside would take much longer to heal – if they ever could. On the fifth day, Max strode in, pulled the covers off my bed, and told me to get up. There are very few people who would dare defy Max when he’s in one of his determined moods, and, trust me, I’m not one of them. I got up. Sulkily. Slowly. I submitted to being pushed under the shower, and washed, and I put on the clothes he threw onto the bed for me. I followed him through the strange, underground place I had been brought to, and sat beside him at a trestle table in the dining room. It was then that my natural curiosity kicked in.

“Where are we?” I asked him.

“This is our base – one of them at least.”

“Base?” I frowned. This was like something out of a television show. I didn’t really understand what it meant.

“Somewhere secret, where nobody will find us. Where the men who killed your father won’t find us,” he added gently, seeing my puzzled expression.

“Oh.” I nodded, but suddenly I couldn’t eat my breakfast. He didn’t make me. Not that morning at least, but the next day when I sat morosely playing with my food, he told me I wasn’t leaving the table until I’d finished it. I think I was shocked by his tone, but his dark eyes were deadly serious. Didn’t he realise? Didn’t he understand what I’d lost, and what I’d been through? Gazing at him with deadly hatred, and finding his resolve unwavering, I realised that he did. He understood all of it.

“I’m not hungry,” I hissed, defying him, and all that had happened to me, choosing instead another path. I pushed my plate away, and crossed my arms over my chest.

“I know.” He pushed my plate back. “Dominik, if I could turn back the clock I’d give my life to make sure that the abomination that happened to you never took place, but I can’t do that. The one thing I can do is to make sure that your parents’ sacrifice wasn’t in vain and that their only child gets a chance to grow up with people who care about him, and to one day bring credit to the name of Crozier. Now eat it.”

And I did.

It isn't many people who have watched their own funeral procession. I have. Max said it would be for the best if we pretended that I’d died in the house. I was 9 years old, and hardly in any position to argue. Besides, looking back, he was probably right. Spender knew I’d seen his face, and even though it was unlikely he’d ever be brought to justice he’s the kind of man who prefers to, as he said, keep things tidy. Some of Max's associates didn’t want me to even attend my parents’ funeral, deeming it too dangerous, and, of course, it was, but I was adamant, and Max was, surprisingly perhaps, on my side.

“They’re his parents. He needs to say goodbye,” he told the assembled people in his usual blunt, no-nonsense way. I didn’t have a clue who half of them were. They were just some of the faceless folk who climbed out of the woodwork in the immediate aftermath of my parents’ death, and then faded away again afterwards. Max was the person I clung to, my new reality, and he didn’t let me down.

“Take him then,” said a woman, who seemed to be in charge. “But we’ll hold you accountable if anything happens to him. He’s your responsibility, Max.”

“I know that, Janna. He always will be from now on,” Max replied, and a fiery look passed between the two of them. I sensed some history between them, but I was too young to understand that back then. Of course Janna was one of Max’s many conquests. He lived life on the edge, risking that life almost daily, and he took his pleasures in equal proportions to his risks.

So, on the day of my parents’ funeral, Max took me to a hotel overlooking the crematorium, and we watched from the room he’d booked. It was a bright, sunny day, not a cloud in sight, which made no sense to me, as my world held no beauty any more. I watched, numbly, as the coffins were carried into the crematorium.

“Why can’t I go inside?” I asked Max, who was standing by the window next to me, wearing a stiff, formal suit and looking supremely uncomfortable in it. Max was a man more used to casual clothing. After that day it was to be 10 years before I saw him in a suit again.

“Because you’re dead,” Max reminded me bluntly. I stared, silently, as aunts, uncles and grandparents filed into the crematorium They were my family. I knew them, and yet they thought they were going into that church to pay their last respects to me. I caught a glimpse of my mother’s sister, Maria, and felt an almost overwhelming sense of homesickness. She had my mother’s curled blonde hair, and the same petite figure. For a moment I thought she was my mother, and that the events of the past week had been a dream. I gasped out a startled “Mama” and ran towards the door, only to find my way blocked by Max’s large body.

“It isn’t her, Nicky,” he said.

“No, it is, you’re wrong…she isn’t dead,” I cried, trying to get past him, pummelling him with my small fists.

“Nicky…” He let me fight it out of my system. He let me pound against his chest until I was too tired, and hurt too much inside to carry on, and that was when I broke down and cried for the first time. Then he picked me up, carried me over to the bed, sat me down, and held me tight while I sobbed inconsolably into his white shirt. They were all filing out of the crematorium by the time I’d finished. Max wiped my tears away with a huge, ink-stained handkerchief, and then he picked me up and carried me back over to the window, and held me there so I could watch. I’m glad he did that. I wasn’t capable of walking by that point. I stared, sullen, and swollen faced, as my family filed out of the Crematorium, and the big black cars rolled away. Then I placed my hand on the window-pane, knowing it was all over.

“Goodbye,” I whispered. I stared out at the sunlit world for a long time, trying to remember the way my mother laughed, and the sound of my father’s voice, and then all the energy left me, and I became as limp as a rag doll. I rested my forehead against Max’s craggy face, and he held me close, and kissed by hair, and then, after several long, silent minutes, he walked me out of that room and into my future.

  *****

Skinner sat in his hotel room, and watched the snow fall outside. Winter in Vienna was beautiful. It had been a long time since he had sat and watched the world go by, and it was curiously restful. He rolled his shoulders, trying to release the tension in them. He was always tense these days. Maybe it had been years. Years of living one lie after another had taken its toll on him. He took a gulp of brandy, and glanced at the equipment laid out on his bed. It had been a long time since he had gone on a mission like this, and his gut rebelled against breaking into that beautiful house, and defiling that dead family on the orders of Alex Krycek of all people, but he had no choice. He was here to find Dominik Crozier, and he’d reached a dead end. He needed more information.

It was 6pm. He had hours to kill before he could do his enemy’s dirty work, and he couldn’t spend it sitting here in this hotel room, all alone, with only brandy for company. He’d be in no fit state to break in anywhere if he did that. Skinner picked up the phone, rang the concierge, and asked what there was for a man to do in Vienna in the evening. He could almost hear her laughing as she reeled out a long list of concerts, plays, operas and ballets. Opera. He was a regular visitor to the opera in Washington. He had first met Sharon at the opera, more years ago than he cared to remember. Music was one of his loves in life. He was a solitary man, and music spoke to him, in a way that little else did in these days of numb emotions. Skinner skimmed through the list of available options he had noted down, and dismissed the great tragic operas immediately. He was in no mood to deal with all that death and despair. He chose Mozart instead. The Marriage of Figaro. It wasn’t his favourite opera – he disliked all the ridiculous farce about mistaken identity – but he loved the music. The music soothed his soul; he could bury himself in the music. 

Skinner took a shower, and dressed in stone-colored chinos, and a navy polo neck sweater. He pulled on a smart jacket, and surveyed himself in the mirror. Krycek was right. He was looking old, and tired. Leading a double life could do that to a man. By day an Assistant Director of the most famous law enforcement agency in the world, by night a common burglar, breaking and entering into a place where he had no right to be, courtesy of Alex Krycek. Skinner gazed at himself with loathing. How had it come to this? He had sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his own life – has it really been worth it? Was he really doing this to help Mulder and Scully? To keep in the game so he could be of use to them, or was it just self interest at the end of the day? The desire of a survivor not to relinquish his grip on life, to selfishly cling on, no matter what. Twice he had died, and twice he had been returned to life and for what? To eke out this miserable existence in thrall to a man he loathed beyond any other? Skinner picked up his wallet, and exited his hotel room without a backward glance. He had made his choice, and now, god help him, he was having to live with it.  

The opera house was full, teeming with well-dressed Viennese hausfraus and businessmen. Skinner took his seat, and closed his eyes as the first aria rose up and filled his soul. He felt as if he was soaring with it, lost in the music, far away from the bitter complexities of his own life. If only he could stay here, and never return. Here there was no Krycek, no dead wife, staring at him with reproachful, lifeless eyes, no Mulder, no Cancerman. Here he felt none of the aching loneliness that had been part of his existence since puberty, and the choice he had made all those years ago, to effectively lead a double life. Here there was only the music.

“Excuse me, sir.”

Skinner looked up, surprised, as the voice cut through his reverie.

“The opera is over,” the woman said, and he realised, with some surprise, that she was right. The auditorium was empty; the last few patrons were just walking through the door. “Are you all right?” She asked, her dark eyes full of concern.

“What?” He frowned. “I’m fine.” He brushed off the inquiry brusquely, and she smiled uncertainly, nodded, and walked away. His glasses were smeared, and he reached up to clean them, and that was when his fingers found the slick wetness of tears on his cheeks. 

Skinner returned to his hotel, and slowly removed his clothing, and then, equally slowly, dressed himself in plain black pants, black sweater, black shoes, and black jacket. He placed the tools he would need in a thin cloth bag, and tucked them into the inner pocket of his jacket, along with a fine bladed knife that he knew he could use to kill a man in less than five seconds. It was a trick he’d learned in Vietnam, and, once learned, it was never forgotten. Was this what he had come to? What difference was there, he wondered, as he slipped out of the hotel, between himself, and Alex Krycek? They both skulked around in the night, both of them knew how to kill swiftly, and silently. How many times had Krycek left on a mission such as this, with similar tools of trade tucked into his pocket?

The house was in darkness when he arrived. It was protected by a sophisticated security system, but Skinner had done his homework well, and he knew how to bypass the trigger areas, found the main control box, and disabled it. His black gloved hands worked quickly, surely. It should have surprised him how well he could perform this task, but it didn’t. He knew what he was capable of. He’d known it since he was 18 years old. It was living with that knowledge that was hard.  

The lights in the house were set on a random timer, to give the illusion of occupancy. There was no problem therefore in turning them on – nobody would be surprised. Skinner walked silently down a long, grand hallway, past a huge, imposing flight of stairs, and flicked a switch. He held his breath as the house was suddenly bathed in the light of an enormous chandelier. This place was beautiful – and the gardener was right about one thing: it had been maintained just as it had been on that fateful night when the Croziers died, but he was wrong about something else; there was no bloodstain marring the polished wooden floor. Skinner had read the Consortium report on their mission that night. He knew they had gained entry to the house while the Croziers were at the opera – a birthday treat for their nine year old son. They had been lying in wait in the kitchen, and when the Croziers had returned the boy had been sent straight up to bed. His parents had been cornered in the hallway. Skinner wondered what information Josef Crozier had that was so important his entire family had been butchered for it. He paused under the giant chandelier. This, according to the characteristically thorough Consortium report on that slaughter, had been where they had been standing. Josef Crozier had his back to the staircase, and the Consortium operative leading the mission had been facing him. There had been 6 of them in all. Six fully armed men to take on one frightened man, his petite wife, and their small son. Skinner’s jaw did a sideways clench. He crouched down, and glanced at the floor. Even after all this time, there were sometimes still small clues. Finding nothing, he stood up, and glanced at the staircase. The boy must have heard the commotion from his bedroom. Skinner began to silently climb the stairs.  

The first doorway at the top of the stairs, on the left, was open, inviting him in. He pushed open the door, and turned on the light, and almost gasped out loud in surprise. This was unmistakably the child’s room – and it was exactly as it must have been all those years ago, on the night that the Croziers were wiped out. The bed was made, and the room was clean, and tidy, but it was frozen in time. The blue walls were covered in posters of the Beatles, and some sporting stars he could not identify. There was a pair of roller skates propped up by the bed, next to some ice skates. The closet was covered in a myriad of word and letter magnets. They had been arranged to spell out: This boy’s room is a pig sty, and beneath it, the reply: but he likes living like a pig! Oink! Skinner ran his hand over the magnets, and smiled, imagining the child and his mother leaving silly little messages for each other on this closet door.  The room certainly wasn’t a pig sty now; it was as tidy as the rest of the house.  

Skinner opened the closet door. The child’s clothes still hung there, covered in plastic, and shrouded in mothballs. Skinner frowned, and pulled out a small, boy’s sized sweater. Who had ordered that this house be kept like this? It had been systematically wrapped and preserved, like a precious possession, nothing changed, or altered, nothing allowed to decay. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He had been right; this was Mulder’s territory.  

Skinner put the sweater back in the closet, and closed the door silently. He didn’t like being here. It felt as if he was intruding on someone’s memories, on something too painful, and too precious to be trampled on by a stranger. He was about to leave the room when something caught his attention. By the child’s bed, there was a photo frame – an empty photo frame. Skinner picked it up in his gloved hand, looked at it thoughtfully, and then he returned it to its place on the nightstand, and silently exited the room. The other rooms were equally eerie. All of them were exactly as they must have been that night, when the Croziers met their end, and although there were countless elegant silver photo frames all over the place, none of them contained any pictures. It was puzzling. The master bedroom was elegantly furnished, and the lady of the house had her own en suite dressing room. There was a dressing table, covered in neatly arranged potions and lotions, perfume bottles, and hairbrushes – as well as the requisite empty silver picture frame. Skinner sat down at the dressing table, and gazed at it. It was kept perfectly dusted, as frozen in time as the rest of the house. Some of the perfume bottles were half empty, and one of them was out of place, as if it had been recently used…Skinner placed one black-gloved finger on the bottle thoughtfully. A ghost who wore perfume? Or was there a much more earthly explanation for the mysterious scent? He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and he looked out of place. He was big, and clumsy, and, clad all in black, he didn’t look as if he belonged in this light, airy, feminine, pink room. He was an intruder, and he didn’t like that feeling.  

Skinner got up, turned off the lights, and slipped silently back out onto the upstairs landing. The boy, on hearing raised voices downstairs, must have tiptoed out of his bedroom, and stood up here, looking down on the terrifying scene below. Skinner couldn’t begin to understand what that poor child had felt, seeing his parents surrounded by men with guns. He looked over the banisters – there was a clear view below. The child would have seen everything. At some point he had come down the stairs, trying to stop the men below from killing his mother, and he had stopped…around here…Skinner decided, glancing at the Consortium report. The stairwell was relatively dark, cast in the shadow, and the Consortium operative would have had trouble seeing his target, especially if he was moving. The report said that the chauffeur had disturbed the mission, and he had been killed…but if that was the case, why had they aborted the mission without first making sure the boy, the only witness to these atrocities, was dead? Skinner thought about it for a moment. It didn’t make sense. “Probably a fatal bullet to the head” the report said. Why probably? Since when had the Consortium ever been so sloppy? Unless…they had been interrupted. Not by the chauffeur, who was already dead, but by someone else – or by someone they expected to arrive. But who? And what had they found when they got here? Krycek wouldn’t have given him this case if he didn’t believe that little Dominik Crozier was still alive, and if the boy had survived that fateful night, wouldn’t it be likely that he had become some kind of nemesis for the people who had killed his parents? His hatred of the Consortium must run very deep.  

Skinner paused, his black gloved hand finding a small nick in the polished banister as he walked down the stairs. He crouched down, and examined it at eye level. A small piece of wood was missing. Skinner glanced behind, and measured what trajectory a deflected bullet might take. Supposing the bullet had hit the banister, and ricocheted, catching the boy only a glancing blow to the head, and then continuing its path…such a bullet might end up round about…here. Skinner ran his hands over the wall. It was smooth. There was nothing…and yet. He stepped back. A whole panel of wallpaper had been replaced. It was a neat job, and over the years it had become almost unnoticeable, but for an almost imperceptible difference in colour. So, little Dominik Crozier had lived. Skinner felt an almost absurd sense of triumph on hearing that. The boy had lived, and someone had taken him to safety – but why spread the lie that the child was dead? To protect him in case the Consortium came back to finish the job? That was plausible. But how had the child managed to hide so convincingly, and for so long? And what had Crozier become that the Consortium feared him so much?  

Skinner reactivated the security system, and, with one last glance around the house, left it as silently as he had entered. He returned to his hotel, and called the number Krycek had given him.

“What do you have for me?” Krycek demanded, in his usual cold, belligerent tones.

“Nothing. Not yet. I was wondering what you had for me,” Skinner replied, glancing out of the hotel window. Outside the temperature had risen fractionally, and the evening’s earlier light flurry snow had turned to rain.

“What the hell do you mean? Don’t play games with me, Skinner,” Krycek snarled.

“I’m not. I’ve been doing some investigating, but I’m working in the dark here. We need to meet.”  

Krycek hadn’t sounded too pleased by this request, but he had acceded to it. With a weary heart, Skinner folded away his black mission clothes, packed his suitcase, and prepared to return to Washington DC.

  *****

For the first few months after my parents’ death I lived in a daze. I clung to Max as my only reality amid the wreckage of my life. He was good to me. For such a large, worldly, blunt- talking man, he could be surprisingly sensitive. We stayed in the underground base in Vienna, and he slept in the bunk below mine, sticking close to me, like a bodyguard, or a parent, both of which I suppose he had become. The night after the funeral, my mother came to me in a dream. She was calling to me, but I was paralysed, and couldn’t reach her. She was surrounded by faceless men who tied her to a pyre, and lit a fire beneath her. She was burning to death, and I just watched, unable to stop them, or to help her. I saw Leo in the crowd of people around her, and sobbed at him to rescue her, and, beneath my horrified gaze, he changed shape, and became Max, and I watched as those faceless men plunged a knife into the back of his neck, and his whole body crumpled in front of me.

“Nicky…hush! It’s all right. It’s okay.” I woke to find myself screaming into Max’s face. He smelled of cigarettes, and whisky, and it was the most reassuring smell in the world, because it was the scent of life. I’ll always be ashamed, to this day, of what I said to him next.

“You let them burn my mother! She was still alive and you let her burn!” I railed at him helplessly, and hit him as I’d done so often in our short acquaintance, but he’s a big man, and my small fists made little impact. He held me tight, captured my fists in one large hand, and pushed my sweaty hair out of my eyes with the other.

“She’s dead, Nicky. She was dead. You saw them kill her, Nicky. Hush. Hush.” I crumpled, my eyes swimming with tears, and he slipped into my bunk beside me, held me in his arms, and rocked me back and forth until I had cried my eyes out on his shoulder. Then we just lay there, gazing at the ceiling. I don’t know what in life had equipped Max to be the saviour of one small, lost boy, but it was a job he did brilliantly. It’s ironic, because he’s a long way from being anyone’s ideal father figure. My mother would have turned in her metaphorical grave if she had known who was looking after me, but, despite appearances, Max was a good man. He still is – and I trusted him, which was the most important thing. As we lay there, both exhausted by the nightmare, I finally spoke about something that had been at the back of my mind for several days.

“Max, Leo changed shape.”

“Is that so?” He didn’t seem surprised.

“Can you change shape, Max?” I asked, and he roared with laughter.

“No, Nicky, I can’t.”

“Oh.” I was disappointed. “You could in my dream.”

“Well, I’m afraid I can’t.” He smiled down at me.

“How could Leo do it?” I asked him, holding my breath.

“Well, Leo was special,” Max said softly. “That’s why we sent him to look after your father.”

“Why did my father need looking after, Max?” I asked, remembering Spender’s questions, and my father’s refusal to answer. Max’s large arms closed around me, and he squeezed comfortingly.

“Your father was helping us, Nicky. He had found out something – something very big. Something that certain people wanted to cover up. We asked him to see if there was anything else he could discover, and he promised to help us. We sent Leo along to protect him.”

“It didn’t work,” I whispered into Max’s chest. “Leo died too, didn’t he Max? That green stuff that came out of his body…” I trailed off, convulsed by another sob as I remembered the burning sensation in my eyes and mouth that Leo’s ‘blood’ had caused.

“Yes, Nicky. Leo’s dead too,” Max confirmed, although I had already known that.

“He was kind to me. He took me out on his motorcycle. Papa didn’t know. We never told him.” Max made no reply, save to drop a kiss on my hair. “Max…” I ventured, after a long silence. “Why did they kill my parents? Who are they? What was Leo?”

“Nicky, you’re nine years old.” He looked down at me, his dark eyes glowing in the lamp-lit room. “I will answer all your questions but you’re not old enough yet.”

“Adults always say that,” I accused, crossly. “I am old enough, Max. I want to know.”

“And I promise I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

“Adults always say that as well, but they never do,” I snapped angrily.

“Well, I don’t lie. If I say I’ll tell you then I will. Why don’t we set a date?” He suggested. I looked at him, curious. Max was different to any other adult I’d ever met. “How about your 16^th birthday?” He said. “How about I tell you then?”

“That’s years away. How about my 10^th birthday?” I haggled. His eyes widened with amusement.

“Let’s settle in the middle – your 13^th birthday. Shake on it?” He disengaged himself, and held out his hand to me. I sat up, one hand on his chest, and regarded him thoughtfully.

“It’s a promise?” I pressed.

“Yes, Nicky. It’s a promise, and you’ll find I always keep my promises.”

“All right. It’s a deal.” And we shook on it.

Max saw me through many more sleepless nights, and when the nightmares came, as they always did, he saw me through every single one of those as well.  

We stayed in Vienna for only a couple of months while Max resolved the complication that was my inheritance. Of course, as I was officially ‘dead’ I didn’t stand to inherit a thing, but having already lost my parents, Max wasn’t about to let my fortune slip away from me as well. Instead, an illegitimate son was invented – and my father’s will was duly altered to leave everything to one Nicolas Remarque. I didn’t ask questions as to how this was achieved. Max knew a way – and, as is the case when children view the adult world, I had no idea that what Max was doing was actually difficult and complicated. It’s a testament to his skills that I am now an exceedingly wealthy man. I have no idea what my aunts and grandparents made of the news that my father had an illegitimate son. I never gave them a second thought. I was, after all, dead. My old life had been burned in that crematorium along with my parents. Max intended to give me a new life – but I still didn’t know who or what he was.  

He took me to Geneva in the Autumn of my ninth year, to an absolutely enormous mansion, bigger than any place I’ve ever been, before or since. It was set away, in the countryside, and guarded by an impenetrable security system. This was to be my home for the next four years. It was beautiful. There were large grounds, where a boy could roam for days on end, and a huge lake, visible from the west wing of the house. That was the wing where I lived. Max lived there too, in his own apartment, along the corridor from the room I occupied. It was here, as the leaves fell around my head, and the cold winds began to blow, that I met Neil.  

Neil was fourteen, and English. He had a broken leg, legacy of an unauthorised midnight swim in the lake during the summer holidays, which was why he was still at The House, which was what the mansion was incongruously called by the many people who lived and worked there. Neil was a tall boy, with thick sandy hair and freckles, and a smiley face, and I liked him immediately. Although I was only nine, I was fast witted and old for my years, whereas Neil was more of an athlete than an intellectual. His leg only slowed him a small amount – and levelled the age gap between us. We spent three months running wild, with very little adult supervision, save for Max’s sometimes gruff, sometimes indulgent attention. I amused Neil by making up voices, and mimicking the people who lived in The House, including my beloved Max, and Neil amused me by standing on his hands, and walking the entire length of the lawn, all the way to the lake. Superficially, we had little in common, but there was one thing that bound us together more than anything else: Neil had been orphaned by the same people who had killed my parents.

“This place is huge. Don’t go in the East wing – that’s got so much security they can hear a mouse breathe and you’ll get into big trouble,” Neil instructed, as he showed me to the room we were to share. “The West wing is where we all live.” Neil showed me into various rooms, and pointed to a door along the corridor. “That’s where Max lives. He gets a whole apartment to himself because he’s so important.”

“He is? Why?” I asked, running along to see if I could peek into Max’s apartment, only to find the door locked.

“He’s one of our best agents,” Neil said with a shrug. “He’s broken into the Kremlin – and the Pentagon,” he added, with a certain degree of pride.

“Why would he want to do that?” I frowned, wrinkling up my forehead.

“I don’t know, but it was important,” Neil said, as if the reason was irrelevant to the daring of the deed itself, which, to him, it probably was. Neil always did have an uncomplicated way of looking at the world. I was more curious, and less inclined to take anything at face value. 

He showed me to my room, and life soon settled into an easy pace. I still suffered nightmares, and often crept along the corridor to Max’s apartment, and let myself in, bypassing the lock without too much trouble, much to his amusement. Often I’d find him in bed with some lady friend or other, and she’d wake up with a groan to find me standing in the doorway, the sweat sticking to my forehead, and sigh, and move onto the sofa in the other room so that I could slide in beside Max. Max never once turned me away, although I must have put a serious crimp in his vigorous love-life. My nightmares became less and less frequent though, and I was even, in the way of nine-year-old boys, happy.  

The House was home to a few children during the school holidays, but I was a fish out of water. Older children went to boarding school during term time, and there was a nursery for the little ones. Many of us had been orphaned either directly, or indirectly, as a result of our parents’ involvement with Max’s Organisation, whose purpose I wasn’t to fully understand for several years. The very small children only stayed at The House for a short while, before being re-homed with members of the Organisation who took good care of them, and treated them like their own. I was different because I refused to be adopted – Max was the only person I’d have allowed to adopt me and he didn’t lead a normal life - and I was too young to be sent away to boarding school. Although there were always plenty of other adults around to take care of me, Max was special. He knew me better than anyone else – and he could see through me too. I wasn’t any more badly behaved than any other young lad I don’t suppose, but the tragedy that had changed my life did affect my behaviour to a certain degree. I had periods of morose sulking, and other times when I’d just disappear into the grounds for days on end, camping out under the stars. My mother would have been horrified, but Max was a firm believer in boys being boys, and he pretty much allowed me to do what I liked – as long as I told him what I was doing, and where I was going.   

My whole world began and ended with Max and Neil, and the first crisis of my new life came when Neil’s return to boarding school coincided with Max preparing to leave on the first mission he’d been on since we’d come to Geneva. I couldn’t believe that having lost my parents just a few months before, I was now going to lose two more people.

“Why don’t you ask them if you can stay here?” I pestered Neil, who looked at me in surprise.

“I don’t want to stay here? I want to go back to school. School’s fantastic,” he informed me. He had told me all about his beloved Stowe school, in England, and I hated hearing how much he loved it, as if it was a direct competitor with me for his affections. Neil was far too straightforward to understand my dark and complex emotions, so I went to appeal to the ultimate authority in my life: Max. I found him sitting on the terrace of the West Wing, overlooking the lake, his legs resting on the balustrade, a familiar puff of cigarette smoke clouding around his shoulders. It was cold, but he was sitting out in the open air, his long black coat tucked around his large body, lost in thought.

“Max, Neil is going back to school tomorrow,” I said, stomping out onto the terrace to stand beside him.

“Hmm?” He said in a distracted tone. Then he looked up. “Oh. Yes. Nicky, come here. I need to talk to you.” He held out his arm, and pulled me close. “Nicky, I have to go away next week,” he said. I stared at him aghast, unable to take in what he was saying. First Neil, and now Max. My young world suddenly seemed very fragile, and I was taken back in time to the moment when my parents had been forcibly removed from my life, and a dark, ugly cloud descended on me.

“Going where?” I asked blankly.

“I’ve been out of action too long, Nicky,” he said. “I wanted to make sure you had me around for awhile, but there are jobs I have to do. People who need me.”

“What people?” With the arrogance of youth I couldn’t understand who could need him more than I did.

“Just people.” He shrugged, and took another puff on his cigarette.

“What jobs then?” I asked desperately. He paused for a moment, a distracted look in his eye as he gazed out over the lake.

“I won’t lie to you, Nicky – they’re dangerous jobs. But you’re safe here, you’ll be taken good care of.”

“Are you saying you might not come back?” I stared at him, aghast, and he shrugged.

“There’s always that possibility, Nicky,” he said gruffly.

“Then don’t go. Don’t leave me,” I implored, and he shook his head, and tried to hug me, but I was stiff, and unresponsive.

“Nicky, I have to go. You’re not the only person who needs me,” he chided. I stared at him, feeling an intense sensation of betrayal. He tried to talk to me, but I pushed him away, and stalked angrily back to my room, shaking. I’m not sure if I was more angry, or more scared, maybe a combination of both – but it was a potent combination. I’d never been without Max since my parents’ died. He was my security, and, despite all his shortcomings, I adored him.  

I refused to say goodbye to Neil when he left, and spent the next day wondering how I could hurt Max as much as he had hurt me. Don’t ask me what was going through my mind, because I’m not sure it was anything coherent, but I took it into my head to hide. Maybe, if he couldn’t find me, he’d understand what it was like to lose someone you cared about. The only trouble was that he knew The House and grounds and all my favourite hiding places as well as I did. That was when I decided to break into the East Wing.  

Neil was right; the East Wing had a state of the art security system that was seriously impressive – but I’d been watching people come and go in and out of the wing for months, and, as I’ve said before, I’m a naturally curious person, as well as being somewhat inventive. I had no idea what I was getting into, but I did know enough to let myself into the rooms of one of the personnel, and steal their ID.    

I chose to break in during the early hours of the morning. If I succeeded then I’d be missed at breakfast, and if I failed then I hoped that the resulting chaos would at least mean that Max didn’t get to spend an entire night with his latest amour, a tall, willowy brunette called Suzette who I loathed with a vengeance.

The hallway leading to the East Wing was in darkness when I tiptoed to the main internal security door. I had already shorted out the camera that surveyed every movement made in the outside corridor, and it was a simple matter to slip the ID card into the slot provided, and wait for the door mechanism to open. That wait seemed to take forever, but after a series of clicks, and squeaks, the door swung open, and in my euphoria I thought I was through. I was a child, and had no idea that of course it couldn’t be that easy.  

I wandered down a corridor and looked in a few rooms, but didn’t find anything interesting. Further down the hallway was a flight of stairs. I dithered, but finally decided to go down, rather than up, and found myself in a dimly lit corridor blocked at regular intervals by a series of intriguing plastic doors. I had, in my ignorance, stumbled into the most secure zone of the wing, and a few seconds later I tripped an invisible laser beam, and within seconds a loud alarm was sounding throughout the building, and the plastic doors in front of me had all slammed shut. I tried to run back the way I’d come, but the siren was so deafening it scared me, and I ran instead into a small side room. There was shouting in the corridor outside, and I hid, trembling, under a table in the dark room, seriously scared out of my wits. A few seconds later, a security team descended on the room I was in, tracking me with a heat seeking device, and, no longer thinking straight, if I ever had been, I decided to make a run for it. A bullet rang out, missing me by a hair’s breadth as I darted across the room towards the window, and then a light went on outside, flooding the entire building. I saw the leader of the security team raise his gun to take aim again, and hesitated, unsure what to do next, caught in the spotlight, and then I heard a voice yelling,  “Don’t shoot for god’s sake – it’s Nicky!” and Max was standing in the doorway, dressed only in a pair of boxer shorts, a gun in his hand. “Christ, Nicky, what the hell are you doing in here, and how the fuck did you get in here?” He growled, crossing the room towards me, and grabbing me literally by the scruff of my neck. He shook me a few times while I stared, dumbfounded and shocked into his dark, angry eyes.

“Let me go!” I screamed, surprising myself, and I kicked his bare shins soundly with my sneakers.

“Not fucking likely. You could have been killed, Nicky. Christ, you could have been killed.” He alternated shaking me with hugging me, and I struggled uselessly in his grasp as he hauled me back up the corridor and into the West Wing, trailing a horde of security guards in our wake. “It’s all right. I’ll take care of this,” Max told them shortly, and they nodded, as a man and a woman who I knew to be important operatives came towards us, tying their robes, angry looks on their faces. I’m not sure what happened next. There was a bit of shouting, and some terse exchanges, and that was when I realised I’d wet myself. Max noticed it too, because he gave a muffled exclamation, then ended his conversation with the others, promised to deal with me and report back to them in the morning, and hauled me off to his apartment. He stripped off my clothes, shoved me under a hot shower, pulled me out again, roughly towelled me dry – all without saying a single word to me, and then he threw me one of his tee shirts, which came down to my ankles. Finally, washed and warmed up, he sat down on the couch, pulled me to stand in front of him, looked me straight in the eye and said: “Dominik Crozier don’t you ever, ever pull a stunt like that again. What the hell did you think you were doing?”

I shrugged, and looked at my bare feet, sticking out from under his tee shirt, but he wasn’t going to allow me to get away with that.

“I want an answer, Dominik!” He rapped out, crossing his arms over his chest. I shrugged again, and he sighed, and tried reasoning with me instead. “Dominik, you almost died. What you did was dangerous,” he said in a softer tone of voice.

“I know,” I muttered.

“So why do it?” He asked in despair.

“You tell me!” I yelled at him. “You’re about to go and do something dangerous, and you might die and not come back, but you’re still going to go!”

He gazed at me steadily with those dark eyes. “So, that’s what all this is about,” he said eventually. He reached out, and put his hands on my shoulders. “Dominik, there’s a difference between putting your life at risk for good reason, and behaving like a spoilt child.”

“I am a child,” I muttered resentfully, glaring at him.

“Yes, and I can treat you like one if you want. That means giving you a bedtime, and making you stick to it. It means confining you to the house, and not allowing you into the grounds on your own. Is that what you want, Mister?” He demanded roughly. I shook my head, my eyes full of tears. “Well, that’s what you’ve bought yourself, for the next two months at least.”

“Two months?” I glowered at full force, but my sulkiness made little impression on him.

“Two months. Did you think I wouldn’t punish you, Dominik?” He asked. “Did you think that because of what has happened to you that you’d get special treatment? Is that what you thought?” 

I opened my mouth to protest but closed it again. Max knew me too well, then as now. He knew that I was genuinely devastated by my parents’ murder, but also that I was bright, and had a certain animal cunning, and that I would play on people’s sympathy if it would get me anywhere. It never got me anywhere with him but it had worked on a couple of his girlfriends.

“I hate you,” I seethed at him under my breath, but he just smiled, mildly, and shook his head.

“I don’t hate you, Dominik. I love you. That’s why I’m not going to let you risk your life just because your emotions got the better of you.”

“Go to hell!” I snapped, and he threw back his head and laughed out loud, taking all the wind out of my sails.

“Oh, Nicky, that’s inevitable,” he said, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes a few seconds later. “Come here.” He held his arms open, and I grudgingly edged forward, unsure whether he was about to spank me or hug me. He did neither. Instead he sat me on the sofa next to him, put his arm around me, and said something that has stayed with me all my life. “Nicky, you have a choice.” He looked down into my eyes, and his expression was intensely serious. “You can allow what happened to your mother and father to ruin your whole life. That would be easy – it would even be understandable. Nobody can know what it’s like to walk in your shoes, and live with that kind of memory. I’m asking you to be bigger than that. I’m asking you to be stronger, and to take the harder path. We both know that you’re brave – I’m also asking you to have courage. That’s something else.” He paused for a moment, and I melted into his arm, needing the reassurance of the scent of whisky, and cigarettes that made him my Max, and not this serious stranger he had become. “You can give in to the sadness, Nicky, and let it rule you. You can spend every single day of your life wallowing in self-pity and never make anything of yourself or this precious gift of life that your mother and father gave you, but I don’t think they’d want that. They want you to grow up strong, and confident, and to live your life to the full. Yes, there will be times when you ache with sadness for your loss, but they’d want you to hold your head up high, and keep on going throughout the tough times, to make them proud of you. So, Nicky…” He gently brushed a strand of hair out of my eyes. “Like I said, you have a choice. It’s your life, and it can be a full, and happy one, or it can be a damaged, self-pitying one. It’s up to you. Nobody can make up for what you’ve lost, but it’s your choice whether you get over it or not.”

And that was Max. Saying it like it is. Not pulling any punches. I was only 9 years old, but even at that age, I knew, instinctively, that he was right.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, putting both arms around his neck, and crawling into the comfort of his lap. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m scared that you’re going away. Nobody stays. Everyone goes,” I whispered into his neck.

“Hush. It’s all right.” He held me tight, and kissed me gently. “I can’t promise I’ll come back, Nicky, but I’ll do my damndest. I’m not ready to die just yet.” He smiled. “And now I have even more reason to live,” he said. “Nicky, I don’t have any children, but now I have you, and as far as I’m concerned you’re my son. That’s a powerful incentive to me to come home safely, believe me, but if I don’t, I want you to remember what I said to you tonight. Everything’s a choice in life, Nicky. Everything – even down to whether you choose to be happy or not.” I nodded into his neck, clinging on for dear life, and a few minutes later, he snorted into my hair. “Nicky, just between you and me, and don’t tell anyone I said this, but I’m seriously impressed by tonight’s escapade.  How the hell did you manage to break into the East Wing? I helped design that security system myself so I know how damn hard that must have been. You’re a clever boy, Nicky.” I stared at him incredulously, and then we both started to laugh.  

Looking back, Max’s words resonate with me. I don’t blame Max for what I’ve come to now, sitting in this rundown apartment, staring at these peeling walls, and listening to the sounds of the couple next door arguing and beating up on each other. I made this choice. It’s down to me.

  *****

Skinner waited in the bar, nursing his third whisky of the night. He should stop. He knew that he should stop, but he had long since developed considerable tolerance for hard liquor – during the long years of his marriage it had sometimes been all that numbed him to what he was doing, both to himself, and to Sharon. She shouldn’t have had to lead the lie he had built up between them, but he had been too lost in it himself to see how unfair he was being to her. He would do things differently now, he decided, staring at the bottom of the glass. Now, facing himself caught in yet another great lie, he could see what he hadn’t before.

“Thinking warm thoughts?” A sly voice said in his ear, and he stiffened, and turned. Krycek had slipped into the seat beside him.

“No. I was thinking what a fucking sorry excuse for a human being I’ve become, thanks to you.” Skinner raised his glass ironically, and downed the rest of it in one gulp.

“Oh, you give me too much credit,” Krycek hissed. “Lying, cheating, killing…it’s all so easy, Skinner. It all starts with one tiny lie. You managed that all by yourself.” 

Skinner grunted. Krycek was right. One expedient lie to Mulder, denying any knowledge of the man who had placed the nanocytes in his bloodstream, had sealed his fate and brought him to this. One small lie to Sharon on their wedding night had turned into a huge gulf between them over the 17 years of their marriage.

“What is it Mulder says? All lies lead to the truth?” Skinner slammed his glass back down on the table. “If so, I’m not sure I’m ready for the truth.”

“I didn’t come here to discuss semantics. You wanted information,” Krycek said, bringing the conversation abruptly back to the point.

“Yes. I went to Vienna, but I’m sure you already know that.” Skinner watched Krycek’s eyes but they gave nothing away. Krycek inclined his head, acknowledging that he did indeed know of Skinner’s little European jaunt.

“Find anything interesting?” He asked.

“Maybe. I need to know one thing – that file you gave me says that Dominik Crozier probably died with his parents – why do you think he didn’t?”

“That’s irrelevant.”

“Not really. So far, all my investigations, and all the paperwork I’ve sifted through have led me to conclude that the boy is dead. Any other line of investigation leads to a dead end. So, why are you looking for him? If I know, then it might help me figure out where to start looking.”

Krycek shifted uneasily in his seat, his green eyes hooded, and distrustful. “We have information that leads us to believe that Crozier didn’t die. We think he’s still alive. You do too, I think. What did you find in Vienna?”

"I went to his house - the one he lived in as a child," Skinner said. 

Krycek nodded. "We've looked there. There's nothing there."

"Maybe you were looking for the wrong thing," Skinner said softly. Krycek looked up sharply. "You were looking for a man. Maybe you should have been looking for a ghost."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" Krycek snapped.

"I'm not sure - yet. There was something about the house, though, something I haven't figured out yet," Skinner mused.

"You went inside?" Krycek pressed, leaning forward, his green eyes glowing.

"Yes." Skinner shrugged.

"How did you get inside?"

"I broke in - what's the matter, Krycek, did you think you were the only one who knows how to break and enter?"

Krycek sat back in his chair, a look of triumph curling around his lips. "How easily your lofty values are corrupted when your own life hangs in the balance, Skinner," he stated with utter contempt.

"Thank you for showing me the darkness of my own soul," Skinner said ironically, tipping his glass in Krycek's direction. "I'm in your debt."

"And what did all this law breaking gain you, Skinner?" Krycek asked, snapping out of the uneasy banter and returning, once more, to the point.

"Nothing. I've told you. The boy didn't die in that house, but you knew that already or you wouldn't have sent me looking for him."

Krycek's expression remained unchanged, but he gave the slightest shrug of his shoulders.

“Why track him down after all this time?” Skinner asked, fighting down a sense of impotent fury. “You surely can’t possibly still believe that he’d be able to testify about his parents’ murder? That can’t be what all this is about.”

“What it’s about is irrelevant,” Krycek said brusquely. “We gave you an order, and we expect it to be obeyed. That’s it, Skinner.” His hand went to his pocket, and he removed the palm pilot. “Or do I have to give you another taste of this to make you obey?” He asked, moistening his lips with his tongue.

“You son of a bitch. Listen to me; if that kid is still alive, why the hell can’t you leave him alone? Haven’t your people done enough to him? Gunning his parents down in cold blood, and nearly damn well killing him too? God knows what kind of injury he suffered from that bullet. Doesn’t he deserve some goddamn happiness after what you butchers did to his folks?” Skinner demanded angrily. Krycek’s eyes narrowed, and he flicked open the palm pilot, and played, idly, with the controls. Skinner stiffened.

“You’re in no position to issue threats, Skinner,” Krycek said in a low, sibilant tone. Skinner took a deep breath, and held it, then slowly released it, never taking his eyes off the palm pilot.

“Tell me why you want him, or I won’t look for him,” Skinner said. “As far as I’m concerned he’s earned his anonymity the hard way. I’m not making any trouble for him now.”

“You seem to think that he’s still a nine year old child, Skinner,” Krycek snapped. “He isn’t. He grew up - and he grew up to become a very dangerous man. He isn't an innocent little boy any more. He’s a killer. An amoral, utterly ruthless murderer.”

“I suppose it takes one to know one,” Skinner growled, his fingers tightening around the glass he was holding. It would be so easy to just smash the glass into the hated face of his enemy, and grind it into the other man’s flesh until blood poured out of those evil green eyes. Skinner didn’t know that he had ever hated anyone more in his entire life than he hated this man sitting next to him.

“Find him,” Krycek hissed. “And fast – before he does any more damage.” Looking into those vengeful green eyes, Skinner had a sudden flash – and something that had been bothering him slotted into place.

“Christ, you’re not just asking me to find out where he is, are you? You don’t know who he is – and that’s why he’s so dangerous,” he murmured, realisation sinking in. He could see he was right by the way Krycek’s eyes narrowed, and a wave of tense fury possessed the other man’s body. Was that it? Dominik Crozier had become some kind of threat to the Consortium and they had no idea who the man was? No wonder Krycek was riding him so hard to find Crozier.

“Just do your job, errand boy,” Krycek sneered, standing up. “After all, you don’t really have a choice, do you? It’s either Dominik Crozier, a man who you’ve never met, and know nothing about, or yourself. Don’t tell me that you’re really having any trouble with the math involved in that equation. I know you too well for that.”

Skinner’s hand snapped out, and grabbed Krycek’s real arm, and he squeezed, hard. Krycek’s face registered just the barest degree of pain.

“Not all of us would sell our souls to save our own life,” he hissed. “Not all