A/N: One shot, AU angst. WARNING: Character death
Disclaimer: I own nothing, making no money here!
Cogs
It had all been a farce. Everything they had done in the past years, because that is how long she had been leading him on. Leading him around the real truths only showing him little bits and half truths to keep him away from where he could do real damage. So many lies, so much deceit it was difficult to get his head around it. He really didn't want to believe this. He had built his life on her, come to rely on her being there by his side, trusting unconditionally. She had crippled him by taking it all away from him today.
He's observing her from some way up the street. There's a little girl playing on the lawn in front of the house where she pulled up the driveway. Seeing the car, the child drops her toys and runs to the car arms outstretched obviously overjoyed to see the redheaded woman in the car. She gets out of the car, picks up the little girl and blows a raspberry on her chubby cheek. While she walks up the lawn the front door opens and a man steps into the bright sunlight to kiss the woman and the child. A shock goes through him as he realises who the man is, who it is his partner of seven years is kissing on this sunlit, fresh green lawn.
Back at his apartment he still cannot believe what he has just seen, mere hours ago. His trusted colleague and friend, the woman he has come to love so dearly, involved very intimately with the man he least trusted in the world: his cigarette smoking nemesis.
It had all come together though, this afternoon. The suspicions that he had had for months, of being sabotaged from the inside. The suspicions that he had shared only with her, his trustee, never once suspecting her. He never would have guessed after all they had been through. Not until this afternoon when he had walked into a hushed and heated phone call she quickly broke off when he entered the office. She had been very uncomfortable and left with a weak excuse. He had followed her home.
The devastating time when she had been abducted, the cancer they were fighting together. He had been heartbroken at the thought of her being so ill that he might loose her. Now it seemed nothing more than a clever plot to get him closer to her and deeper into this deception.
All of it, every smile, every joke they shared, all the hugs and touches, it had all been part of a plan to mislead him. To distract him from what he wanted to find most desparately: the truth. And she had succeeded because she had blinded him with her presence and led him around. Every certainty, every truth taken away from him by the only person he had trusted without hesitation.
He drops his keys on the side table an collapses on his old leather couch. Head in hands, he just sits there for a while before his shoulders start shaking and desperate sobs finally escape from his throat. After a while the sobs become less frequent until they cease altogether.
He takes his gun out, the metal cooling his heated skin. He is suddenly very calm now, his hands now steady after the earlier shaking, he raises the gun to his face. This is where it will end for him, too weary to go on in this world of untruth and misinformation.
It's early Saturday morning she receives a phone call to come over to his apartment to ID the body.
Here she is once more, kneeling next to a body wearing his clothes but no recognisable face lying on the floor of his living room. This time she knows it's really him though and she is saddened that this is the way it had to end.
She too, no more than cog is this plan only her unbeloved husband seems to have the inside information on, only trying to protect the life of her daughter, Emily. A child that should not have been, but that she loves so much. So much even that she would betray the only man she ever trusted...
She informs the officers that it is indeed Special Agent Fox Mulder who is lying there cold and alone on the floor. She gets up from the floor, unshed tears in her eyes. Once more Skinner is on her side, as they depart Mulder's apartment building one last time. A look of understanding passes between them: they have both been instrumental in the destruction of this beautiful man.