crossoverfic | Fic: Time Out in Washington 7/18 [X-Files/Torchwood/The State Within/Dr Who]

Title: Time Out in Washington (7/18)
Author:

fides
Pairing: Jack/Ianto, Mulder/Krycek (mostly UST), Mark/Nicholas discussed but whether there is any truth behind the suggestion is open to the reader's interpretation
Fandom: X-Files/Torchwood/Dr Who/The State Within
Rating: NC-17 overall (most parts PG/PG-13, only one part is NC-17 and that part can be skipped with minimum confusion if you want to read the plot but are put off by the idea of graphic sex)
Warnings: Spoilers for The State Within. Some violence and fantasy sexual violence
Disclaimer: None of the recognisable characters are mine, Santa has been really falling down on his job recently, but belong to their respective right holders
Sequal to 1. Plus Ça Change, 2. Hobson's Choice
Prequel to Interlunation
Previous Parts: Part 1 - Prologue -:- Part 2 - Sir Mark -:- Part 3 - Jack -:- Part 4 - Azzam -:- Part 5 - Mulder -:- Part 6 - Skinner

Summary: Finding out Jack's secret in the worst possible way (Hobson's Choice), Alex takes a break from Torchwood Three while he comes to terms with events and his anger towards Jack. To give him the time he needs, Jack arranges a secondment for Alex at the British Embassy in Washington working with the secret service to counter threats to the Ambassador's family. But with Mulder around things don't go to plan and Alex discovers that aliens aren't that easy to leave behind.

Notes: I know that the timelines don't quite fit so I decided to fudge things a little because it was too tempting to compare Torchwood and the Consortium. This story is set concurrent with the early part of X-Files season 6, during the second half of Torchwood season 1, during the time of the 12th Doctor (Doctor Who) and about a year after the events in The State Within. In depth (or indeed any) knowledge of the included fandoms isn't required so please don't let them put you off. Thanks to

moth2fic for the beta. Any and all remaining mistakes are own.

An illustration accompanying this section can be found here

The occupants of the interrogation room regarded her closely as she walked in. Only one of the three seemed to recognise who she was, an instinctive sharpening of posture in the presence of a senior agent. The FBI was changing but it was still a boy's game which made it easy to identify Agent Scully in return. That would make the two remaining men Agent Mulder and Alex Krycek. If it hadn't been for their relative positions she would have been hard pressed to differentiate them; smartly dressed, clean shaven and professional. She could almost see the slightly tarnished 'made in Quantico' labels stamped on their respective butts and wondered how much of that image was a lie as she studied Krycek. The young man, and he was still comparatively young, sat demurely at the interrogation table, long eyelashes lowered, skin pale against the dark material of his well-cut, and now slightly rumpled, suit and pink lips pursed. It was hard to believe that butter would melt in his mouth, let alone that he had caused as much mayhem and grief as was claimed. George didn't doubt for a minute that he had done everything and more.

Scully approached her quickly, heading her off before she could talk, with any ease, to Mulder directly. It was a nice move, protecting her partner from officialdom and giving him those few more precious moments with the suspect which could make or break a case. Not that it was likely to make a difference with their particular, and particularly intransigent, prisoner.

"Deputy Director Blake," Scully's voice held both respect and concern, "I'm Special Agent Scully. That's my partner, Mulder. How may we help you?"

"Alex Krycek," George said simply. Both women flicked glances at the man in question.

"I don't understand." George could see the words were a lie even before Scully said them. She had been expecting this, expecting someone to come and take their prisoner away from them probably from the moment they had brought him in. It had only been Skinner's delay in coming to her and her own in checking up on Krycek's file that had left the man in their custody as long as it had. They should have hidden him better if they wanted to keep him, but that had never been an option and in all likelihood they knew it as well.

"Suspicion of Terrorism?" George raised an eyebrow. They both knew what that really meant. "I assume I am not looking at Al-Qaeda's latest convert and I'm having trouble picturing him as a brother of the Aryan Nation, especially after he handed you and your partner that white supremacist militia on a plate, so what have you got?"

"He was implicated in the murder of my sister," Scully said tightly.

That had been in the file; suspect in the death of Melissa Scully, suspect in the death of William Mulder, the disappearance of a cable car operator... the list went on. Unfortunately of the only two deaths they could actually prove he was involved with, one was as a Federal Agent and the board had cleared it as a good shot, and the other was one of the right-wing home-growns he had sold out. They might have made that stick but the man had taken it into his head to run when the FBI raided and Krycek claimed he must have smelt a rat when Krycek tried to stop him - self-defence and the added confusion of his being an informant. No one was going to bring that prosecution, especially not after the forensic evidence got mislabelled and accidentally destroyed.

If Scully and her partner had something more then George was eager to hear it; they'd still have to cut the bastard loose but with something substantial they could start official proceedings.

"And you have proof of that?" she asked.

"No," Scully admitted reluctantly, "he was named by the shooter but there was no physical evidence to tie him to the scene."

"And the shooter?" As if they didn't both know the answer.

"Dead," Scully confirmed.

George pasted on her blankest expression. "So you have no evidence to support that accusation."

They probably hadn't even asked Krycek about the death. It wasn't as if he was suddenly going to confess. Scully opened her mouth to argue the point but George shook her head.

"Maybe we should take this outside," she suggested. Krycek was watching them closely, a certain malicious amusement slowly creeping into his expression at the frustration of the two agents in front of her. It would serve the smug bastard right if she left him to the mercy of Mulder and Scully and whoever else was after him. "Why don't you get your partner?"

Scully gestured to Mulder and he wandered over, shooting suspicious glances at Krycek as he went.

"Shall we," Blake indicated the door.

She heard Scully's whisper of her name as they left but pretended not to.

"Why did Krycek ask for you, Agent Blake?" Mulder demanded as soon as the door shut behind them.

She could see the faint sheen of contempt in his face. He thought she had sold out, although who to she wasn't sure. She hadn't backed down when Skinner had come to see her; she certainly wasn't about to for Fox Mulder of the X-Files.

"Because he's part of a case I'm involved with," George told them.

She expected to see the same flawed hope in Mulder's face that she had seen in Skinner's. It was there but muted by something she couldn't quite put her finger on. He wanted Krycek. It was not the desire for justice that drove Scully or the personal vendetta that drove Skinner, although both of those motives were definitely there, but something much more muddy and complicated.

"You may not be aware but there have been some serious threats made against the son of the British Ambassador," George told them quietly. Mulder automatically looked back towards the interrogation room, a slightly puzzled expression on his face. Skinner had thought it fit Krycek's M.O., Mulder was apparently less sure.

"You think Krycek is involved with the threats?" Scully asked. She looked worried, probably realising that they might have fucked up another agent's case.

"Only in preventing them from being carried out." The two agents stared at her in shock. "He's a member of staff at the British Embassy and here on a diplomatic British passport as part of their security team."

"He's a terrorist!" Scully objected. She flashed a glance at Mulder, George read it as a query as to why she was making the arguments when Mulder was the one who had brought the subject in.

"Not on any watch list I've seen," George snapped, "or is there a separate list for Special Agents that, as a Deputy Director, I am not privy to?"

"No," Scully conceded.

"Can you show me anything," George stressed the word, "that even suggests that Alex Krycek is here for any reason other than what the British claim?"

Scully looked away. They had nothing and as much as she wanted to back her partner up she knew it. It was an unpleasant situation and George didn't envy Scully in the slightest. That type of loyalty was to be respected, even if it was misplaced. Which George wasn't convinced it was.

"Immunity doesn't extend to past crimes," Mulder drawled. "Maybe we should tell the British exactly what sort of man they hired and see if they still want him."

Did Mulder honestly think that they didn't know? It was probably the reason that they had hired him. And why Nicholas had mentioned it to her. If Mulder pushed the issue it was a diplomatic incident waiting to happen and there had been more than enough of those already. George silently cursed all well-mannered British spies who spoke prettily while they said nothing and got her into these situations. At Mulder's mulish expression she added stubborn FBI agents to the list as well.

"Putting any unsubstantiated," George pronounced the word carefully, "past crimes aside, which, Agents, is all you have given me... why did you bring him in?"

"He was trying to interfere with our case," Mulder said as if it should have been obvious.

"What case?"

Mulder and Scully looked at each other.

It was Mulder who answered, "Frogmen."

"Mulder," Scully warned quietly.

Mulder shot her a quick annoyed look. "It's a missing persons case with apparent paranormal..."

"Ritualistic," Scully corrected,

"…elements," Mulder finished, ignoring the interruption. "It had links to some old, unsolved cases in Innsmouth. We tracked down someone who we thought might have information."

For two people as close as the two agents in front of her seemed to be, they sure bickered a lot. Maybe that was what made them so strong as a team. Sibling contention was something George had all but moved to Washington to get away from, but she still missed the unwavering support that flesh and blood could also give. Irish Catholic backgrounds made for large families and 'no one beats up my little brother but me' was practically the motto in hers.

"Suspect?" she asked. It wasn't her case and it wasn't her place to get involved but if the disappearances were in any way linked to the threats on Azzam then she needed to know. She trusted Nicholas as far as one could trust a member of another country's secret services, so about as far as she could see him. She didn't hold it against him most of the time, he was just doing his job, but it got irritating when he didn't always share as much as she might want with local law enforcement, namely her. She couldn't see how scuba divers fitted in to anything but it was a long way from a dead body being fished out of a river in Virginia to a massacre in a marketplace in Tyrgyztan. The partners conferred in the silent way that they had and she waited to see what conclusion they would come to.

"Witness," Mulder insisted and Scully nodded although with a slightly sceptical expression which suggested to George that she was agreeing against her better judgement.

George didn't envy Skinner having to deal with the report that would eventually end up on his desk. "And?" she prompted.

"We tracked the possible witness down to the hospital. It was taking some time to interview him as he wasn't being co-operative." Mulder looked personally offended at the man's unwillingness to confide in him. "While we were there we spotted Krycek skulking around."

"So you thought he might be involved in..." George cast around for any logical conclusion that they could have drawn, "…suborning his testimony?"

She could see from the knee-jerk reaction in his face that in his mind he had been there and that Krycek had been there so there must be a connection; the realisation that arrogance and Occam's razor are occasionally indistinguishable and the reasonable doubt warring in his mind with his unreasonable history with Krycek.

"Did you check with the British Embassy as to his itinerary? Find out what he was doing there?" No, of course they hadn't. "Would you like me to do that now?"

Mulder shook his head, eyes shuttered and angry. "They'll just make up some reasonable sounding excuse," he said bitterly.

Not totally naive then. That was the voice of experience talking if ever George had heard it. She almost felt sorry for him but sorry was for agents who thought about the consequences of their actions and the amount of inconvenience it caused the rest of the bureau.

"So you had no real reason to bring him in?" She knew she was being overly harsh but they were getting nowhere.

"He assaulted a federal agent," Scully put in.

George waited.

"He handcuffed me to a radiator," Mulder admitted reluctantly, "when I tried to take him into custody at the hospital."

"You were trying to illegally detain him," George pointed out. "Do you really want to make a case over him cuffing you, with your own cuffs," Scully's inability to keep looking at them confirmed that aspect, "rather than letting you bring him in for questioning, which you had no right to do? You may like being a laughing stock, Agent Mulder, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't involve the rest of the agency."

"He was acting erratically," Mulder muttered. There was a sulky look in his eyes, like a child being told off for something they didn't believe was their fault.

"What do you mean?"

Mulder gestured vaguely. "He wasn't making sense."

He'd brought Krycek in, interrogated him for hours because he wasn't talking sense? The defiant look was back. He knew how it sounded and he didn't care. Krycek obviously made sense to Mulder. Whatever tales he span and lies he told, and George was sure he had told many, Mulder expected the man to make sense. That was... interesting, if unhelpful.

"Was he violent towards you, beyond the incident with the handcuffs?" George ran through the standard questions. "Did he threaten you in any way?"

Reluctantly Mulder shook his head. "Not this time."

"Did he do anything else?"

Mulder flushed and George would have been willing to lay money on the fact that he was blushing slightly.

"No," he said shortly.

Well that was a lie, but if Mulder didn't want to talk there wasn't much George could do about it and she was beginning to think that pushing the matter would be a very bad idea.

"Agent Scully?" she asked for formalities' sake.

Scully looked embarrassed as she shot an apologetic little glance at her partner. "I didn't actually see Krycek myself."

From the blush, George was beginning to wonder exactly how Krycek had managed to get Mulder in the handcuffs, because he sure as hell had been doing something other than talking strangely. The bad feeling that she had about the whole situation intensified. She'd been hoping that Scully could at least vouch for Mulder's conduct.

She looked from one to the other, feeling oddly defeated. These were agents from her bureau; she had hoped for better from them. "Please tell me this isn't all you have?"

"He's part of a conspiracy," Mulder insisted, a sudden and reckless passion driving his words, "one that reaches all aspects of the government. He has information vital to exposing it."

That was probably true enough. Hell, Krycek's file practically had 'black ops' written between every line. It stank.

"Last time I checked we are supposed to be catching the people who want to bring down the government - not making it easier for them by trying to do it ourselves, Agent Mulder."

Against her will she was beginning to feel a little less hostile towards Krycek, working with Mulder must have been an exercise in frustration. While she had frequently damned anyone involved in black ops straight to the hell where they would all eventually end up, if extreme measures were sanctioned then she had to believe that the democratically elected government she represented were doing what was necessary to protect their country. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't even close to good, but how could she act as an agent of the FBI if she believed otherwise. Even if it was worth reminding them on a frequent basis that just because they were helping run 'one nation under God', it did not make them God themselves.

It was time to end it. "You have nothing to hold him on and there aren't any warrants out against him - we're cutting him loose."

For a moment George wasn't sure if Mulder looked happy or sad at the prospect.

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