There was no official letter to inform her of her lover's unfortunate and untimely departure. There were no messages of sympathy and condolence addressed to her, no baked goods and flowers waiting in the mail. No one offered to come 'round and keep her company, and no one made excuses for her under the assumption that she was still stricken, stunned with grief.
Still Marita Covarrubias wore black, because even if she hadn't actually been widowed, she could damn well act and feel like she had in the absence of her partner-in-crime.
It wasn't even as if it had been a particularly romantic affair- just a few heady, torrid nights shared every month or two, when they were in the same vicinity, under the guise of information to be shared. Little did the Syndicate know that the agent Marita was informing was none other than the man who had turned his back on them and run off, sworn his loyalty to the Russian syndicate long ago. No wonder she hadn't exactly been noble when it came time to reign him in and bring him back to Earth. Certainly the Syndicate would have sternly disapproved of those few minutes of gasping and necking and pulling of hair down on the mattress in that sweaty little room on board the freighter. They would have disapproved even more had they seen the pulsing red marks he left on her breasts and collarbone. (In fact, she had always suspected that their examination of her infected body, and subsequent finding of the undeniable proof that Alex Krycek had touched her, had led to her casting out of Eden in the end.) But as long as it got the job done, had her immorality really mattered in the long run?
It wasn't as if their last night together had been very passionate, either. He had repaid her for selling him out by leaving her in the hands of a less competent caretaker while he ran away to save his own ass. The wedge driven between them after that couldn't ever be completely demolished. Even after eradicating every last shred of the Syndicate, it was only the presence of a nightmare that drove Marita back into his bed and his embrace. As she climbed beneath the sheets, he asked her, in equal tones of peevishness and bemusement, what the content of the nightmare had been. She answered tersely, afraid that a more in-depth response would bring the oil back to clog her nose and throat and effectively drown her, and then asked him what the worst moment of his life had been, in order to keep her mind off of her own.
Krycek was silent for a while, during which she managed to snuggle under his cool arm and long for those thick hotel curtains to be pushed aside just a crack and let in the barest smidgen of light, and then he replied that it had to be the three days in the missile silo, because at least he had blacked out during the amputation of his arm and was spared from the worst of it. The glibness of the last statement did not escape Marita's notice, but she knew even if she pressed the matter she could never get her stubborn bedmate to talk about it. Instead she substituted silence and kissed his hand like a prince's fair maiden, knowing that it was killing him that he couldn't feel it.
After a pause he said "Moy dragotsennyy Marita," which wasn't fighting fait and they both knew it. She ignored her frustration by pressing her lips to his plastic hand again. And so they continued, Marita teasing the limb that lacked nerve endings and Krycek speaking in brief fragments of Russian, until he gave an angry huff and she was afraid that he was going to steal all the blankets and sheets and leave her to retreat, shivering, back to the couch. But instead he leaned in and rudely, nakedly kissed the spot where her ear joined her neck, and that was when she knew it couldn't be put off any longer. So they entertained for a while, and it was all right- the vanilla sex of two partners who took the other's presence for granted. How ironic it was that they parted ways permanently the following day, the cool affair now buried deep in the ground. She could no longer feed on his grandiose visions, and so their splendid, mad tapestry of passion was quietly unraveled.
She'd heard he'd made a further descent into darkness since they'd last seen each other. News seemed to travel her way whether she wanted it to or not. And now there probably wouldn't be a body to bury, unless those long-estranged foster parents had to be appeased. This new operation was far more ruthless about potential security breaches than the last one had been.
By all rights, Marita thought, she shouldn't mourn, shouldn't even care. Krycek was just another liability holding her back from fully submitting to her "normal" life.
But she was tempted to mourn, and the simple reason behind this was that she missed him. She detested the fact. But she missed Krycek, or rather missed those X-rated nights, missed his idiotic grin whenever she growled "Alex, you shithead" at him and missed the telling glow in his brown eyes that meant he was knee-deep in mental plotting. She missed the grayness of his morals, the wickedness of his plans and the leather of his jacket. But most of all, though it had caused more trouble than it was worth, Marita missed how Krycek had never allowed himself to bend to a higher power for very long. He was his own person, on his own side, and screw anyone else who got in the way of that. His mindset was not that God was dead, but that He was virtually indifferent to the fateful squabbles of mortals. Therefore, there was nothing that Alex Krycek couldn't get away with, because the rules of how he lived his life could no longer be defined in terms of sin.
There was no reason for it, but still Marita wept for him, and hated each bitter tear that rolled down her stainless cheeks. She was the only one who could mourn for the glorious piece of trash that Krycek had become. And simultaneously she mourned for her extinguished chance at a blue-sky, suburban life of casual choices and daytime soap operas. If her life has been put on screen, it would have been nigh indistinguishable. Alex Krycek had had the last laugh and stolen Marita's life away after all. Amidst the clinging haze of emotional pain, it dully dawned on her that she would have to go back, that this was far from the end. She still had several miles to walk down this path of paranormal, and it was all the fault of a man who had been shot down in a parking garage and made to suffer like a helpless and dumb dog, whose body had been discarded without a thought or care in the world, who at the end of the day had favored no one but himself.