by Phetsy Calderon <phetsy@earthlink.net>
Copyright (c) 1997 Phetsy Calderon All rights reserved, except that the characters Dana Scully and Fox Mulder are the property of Chris Carter and 1013 Productions. No copyright infringement is intended, and all rights to the characters remain with the copyright owner.
Please do not forward to any lists nor archive this story.
A woman stood in the great marble portico of the Jefferson Memorial.
The moonlight slanted in flat bars across the gallery of columns.
A distant clicking became the hollow echoes of footfalls as a tall
man in a dark suit walked into sight around the curve of the gallery.
She stood utterly still as he moved deliberately close to her.
She looked up at a man she could not be seeing, because he was dead.
Dead, from a bullet fired by his own gun, triggered by his own hand.
She had seen his body, and she knew he was dead.
But the dead man stood in front of her, silent and still.
The part of her that was trained in clinical observation cataloged
her response--the flat calmness, the desperate clinging to reason.
Shock. Utter and complete. The pyche's refusal to accept the
unfathomable. She had wanted so desperately to see him once more that
she could not take the risk of believing her eyes. If this delusion
proved unreal, if it were only the desperate need of her soul
projecting itself, she would have to accept his death a second time.
She could not risk believing this particular lie.
He stared down at the small, slender woman, her head tilted back to
look him straight in the eye. They stood in a patch of light. The
moon leached the fire of her red hair to a shade of shadow. Her eyes
were a flat silver in the whitened light. His eyes told her nothing,
and his face gave her nothing.
He was only watchful, and unmoving. There was no greeting, and no
warmth, and nothing to release the grief and despair she had felt at
his supposed death. She had seen him this still, this ungenerous with
his thoughts, but always to others. Never to her.
Her voice broke the silence.
"I was called to identify your body."
She heard her own voice, a hollow echo from the marble facade beside
her. The calm was another lie. There was simply no degree of
hysteria, no extreme of mania, that could express her bewilderment
and shock. She was seeing and talking to the impossible--a man who
was dead, a beloved friend who was cold and detached. She clutched at
the straws of calmness and reason.
Calm. No questions. No accusations. She would give him only the calm,
reasoned facts.
Silence answered her.
"It wasn't you." Another silent answer. She still could not see his
eyes. Before, she would have known what she would see in them. She
would feel his thoughts like her own.
But that was. . .before. Now he was closed to her, face and thoughts
alike.
"Alright, Mulder. You don't have to tell me how you did it, or why.
At least not now. But you called me here, or rather someone called me
for you. I assume this is to some purpose. What is it?"
And then she gave him back the stillness and silence.
"Have you had an oncology screening lately, Dr. Scully?" The voice
was the neutral, uninflected tone she had heard him use in hearings.
It had never been directed towards her. . . before.
"Yes, I have."
"And what were the results?"
"The cancer has metastasized and spread through my blood stream." She
waited for an answer. She waited for a movement. She waited for the
tightening of his breathing.
He gave her nothing, for long moments. Finally he spoke.
"Then I still have. . .obligations to meet." It sounded as though the
words tasted bitter to him.
She watched him turn, as though seeing him through old and rippled
glass. Everything had looked that way, since the moment minutes
earlier she saw a dead man walk and heard him talk. She had been
unable to sort through the jumble of her thoughts and disbelief. She
had never before considered how to converse with the well-loved
dead.
"What are those obligations, Mulder?"
He paused. Moved his head to answer over one shoulder.
"I will continue to hide myself and my knowledge of the existence of
extraterrestrial presence. Among other things." His voice was still
flat. He turned his head forward and once more began to walk
away.
"Mulder--why? Why are you doing this? Are you saying your--supposed
suicide was part of a some sort of plot?" By the time he paused
again, she had worked it out. "You were too close, weren't you? They
stopped me, but they couldn't stop you. So they set you up to look
gullible, and they dangled a cure for my cancer---"
"A treatment. An experimental, unapproved treatment."
"--over your head. That's it, isn't it?"
He dropped his head for a moment. It was the first crack in the mask,
but quickly mended.
"Mulder, was there something else? Why are you so. . . cold? Why are
you treating me like this? I didn't put _you_ through the aftermath
of staging my own death."
At first, she didn't hear him. And then she wished she hadn't.
It was a low, furious sound, a whisper that was angry.
"Why did you lie to me? Why did you betray me?"
She was so tired, so confused, so shocked. Working out what he had
done had taken up all her resources. She knew he was being unjust.
She did not know how to refute him.
"Mulder, what do you mean?"
"You lied to me about seeing the wraiths. You lied to me about your
condition. You lied to me about why you couldn't go to the excavation
site. You lied to me about what was happening to you and you lied to
me about how you felt about me."
"How could I do that? I've. . .we've never even talked about
any--feelings."
He turned to face her again.
"Did you know that I trust you? Did we talk about that?"
"Yes, Mulder, we did." A fact.
"Did you know how I feel about giving trust?"
"Yes, I did." Another fact.
"Did you know what it does to me to have my trust betrayed?"
"Yes." She closed her eyes, and felt what was coming.
"Then how could you pretend to be my friend, how could you claim to
care about me to any degree, and not give me your confidence? How
could you keep the facts of your condition away from me? And most of
all, how could you go to that committee and tear down everything
we've done?"
"Mulder. It wasn't a judgment of you personally--I was simply
assessing the facts scientifically." Calm. Rational.
"Science must be a warm and loving master, Dr. Scully, since you
value its regard far more highly than any mere mortal's."
She was dying. She was bewildered. She was shocked by the
resurrection of her dead friend, and hurt by his behavior. But Dana
Scully was not without wit, or a backbone.
"Just as the Truth must be a kind and gentle mistress, for all your
pursuit of her in the face of the damage she does your life," she
shot back
He stepped forward into a bar of light.
"It's true that I have more than my share of demons. I live with the
darkness, and betrayal and lies. Sadness and despair are the houses
of my soul. Distrust and pain are part of the landscape. Devils and
demons people my world.
"It was once my hope that in your integrity, I had caught some echo
of the angels."
Then he turned, and walked away into the shadows.
Silence echoed behind him.
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