- for Raietta, the sweetest chocolate online

* * *

"I can't do this anymore," he said.

Like a star shooting over the sky. Like a bell ringing in a dim winter night. Like he really meant what he said. And Alex Krycek, the assassin without a soul, was the lone witness to this show of silent infernos, like it was the end of all ends.

It must be the end. For Kryeck suddenly felt so cold, like he was in that place where all traitors were covered in eternal ice. Colder than the feel of that 3-inch Swedish blade against his thigh, colder than the time he first put that blade through a man's throat and even colder than the freezing wind that the entire wilderness in Tunguska had mastered.

"Guess every good thing has to end then." He tried his best to sound nonchalant, having stared at the man before him for 3 long minutes. While the chill was climbing along his arteries, seeping deeper into his bones.

There was no reply. Mulder just kept his head towards the other wall, his eyes looking afar. And Krycek found himself doing his best to swallow the wail strangling in his throat, the sound of a caged animal, which was bound, pierced and frozen by the unspeakable cold.

Two hundred and eleven days. It had lasted only so long. Two hundred and ten days after their very first kiss. Two hundred and eight days after they first held each other's hands. One hundred and seventy one days after they shared the apartment. They had been together, been there for each other, shouted at each other and by the night, writhed and wriggled and wrapped into each other. Now Krycek would have to face the cold that followed after - and he would have to do it alone. Even though he was sitting right there facing the man whose face he'd just this morning touched with his bare hand. It was warm then, he recalled vividly, the feeling of flesh against his fingertip, the curve of eyebrows, the texture of those lips... they were so real and full of life and he could still feel the veins flowing below the surface and all the sizzling, all the flamboyance beneath… They belonged to him, he had thought, and he'd have that warmth for as long as he was here. As long as he cared.

When he started to care, he reflected bitterly, when he allowed himself to feel the warmth and mindless bliss, he was doomed for this unforgiving coldness. Because that’s life. Light and darkness, beginnings and ends, one could never really feel the pain of coldness if one never got a taste of the warmth in the first place.

Now all he could feel was the cold. So very cold. Like a kiss from Judas.

Judas, Brutus and Cassius. That final ring of eternal hell.

But if this was hell, it's a fit judgment to his life. He did not die, but he was not alive.

"Do you think Judas had cried when he betrayed Jesus?" His voice vibrated in the air, hollow and subdued. The glock inside the leather jacket was now in his right hand.

"I bet he did."

* * *

“Io non mori’ e non rimasi vivo.”
(I do not die, but I am not alive.)

--Inferno XXXIV 25, “Divine Comedy” by Dante Alighieri