retribution
by She's a Star
Disclaimer: X-Files belongs to Chris Carter. I, alas, am not he.
Author's Note: I haven't written in a really, really long time, and I started this piece quite awhile ago, and felt randomly reinspired tonight. Hence the completeness. It got a lot stranger than I had intended it to. :S But . . . ah well. I am just going to allow myself to celebrate the fact that I wrote something. Hallelujah!
Setting: In between 3 and One Breath.
--
He can't remember the last time he slept.
The days stream by now, uneventful, and it's not that he's not tired. It's just that it's so thorough, this tiredness; it's forever, not the kind of thing that can be cured by a few fluffy pillows and twelve hours of z's. He deserves it, he figures. Because he just had to go out – God forbid anyone should have to go a morning without orange juice – and miss her phone call. It's his fault, he knows that, just as much as it is Duane Berry's fault. Not that it matters. Duane Berry's dead, a useless corpse, soon to be rotting. And the way they spell it out, this is his fault too. He can't bring himself to care. Not when he's just got pieces of her – a tiny cross that almost shines white when it catches the sunlight that sneaks through the blinds; a message on his answering machine that he's listened to a thousand times. He studies it now, the way one would a fine painting, obsessively, and here's his Mona Lisa. "Mulder, it's me," and he'll close his eyes and pretend that she's there. "What the hell is this thing, Mulder?" He closes his hand around the cross, imagines his name falling, effortless, from her lips, and his mind recites along with it as it breaks the silence of his apartment. "It's almost as if . . . as if somebody was using it to catalogue him."
He turns it off here sometimes. Others, he listens; it's a self-inflicted kind of punishment, this is what you did to her. He knows. If you'd have turned her away, she never would have fallen into this. Any of it. He knows.
Tonight, he listens. The distant shattering of glass. "Mulder! I need your help!"
His eyes are closed, and the scene plays out in front of him. He sees it like he was there, like there's something extraordinary in the desperation of her voice, like it takes him there somehow. It's a byproduct of grief, and pain, and exhaustion. It's stupid to think otherwise. But when his eyes are closed, he remembers. Mulder, that's completely illogical. This tape, the cross, they aren't all he's got of her. She comes alive in his head sometimes. He doesn't let himself think that it might be because she's dead elsewhere. It's nothing. He's convinced himself of this, and it's probably a good thing. Otherwise, he'd probably talk back.
"And wouldn't that be spooky," he mutters aloud, wryly amused – not amused, exactly, but it's a parody of amusement. An imitation. He can't fall apart entirely, and he's aware of this. That means he's given in to this idea that she's gone, she's lost, and he won't do that. If the tables were turned, she wouldn't have. It makes sense when he thinks of it this way, for some reason.
His mind wanders, inexplicably, to Kristen. Dead, nothing more than bones and ash, even though he can't picture it. He sees pale skin and haunted eyes; graceful hands with carefully painted red fingernails. She's nothing anymore, killed by desperation and blind faith, and was she ever anything? Not to him, not exactly, and he wonders what Scully would have thought, if she'd have been investigating the case with him. She'd have some scientific explanation; maybe she wouldn't have liked Kristen. He recalls her hating Phoebe. He knows that if Scully had been there, he wouldn't have kissed her. Maybe he would have been drawn to Kristen, but nothing would have happened. He doesn't know why, exactly; just that it goes back to Scully, to respecting her. He imagines sitting with her in that club, sees a light smirk twisting her mouth, a subtle annoyance in her eyes. If that had been the case, nothing would have happened, and sure, he may have been resentful as hell about it, but right now it seems like she's the only thing he needs in the world, and there's no competition.
He remembers, barely, needing other things. Truth, and closure; his sister. An answer. He's clung to these things for so long that maybe they've eaten away at him, and now he's just a shell, paranoid and angry and bitter as hell, maybe half-crazy. Sitting alone day after day in the basement; an embarrassment, a disgrace to the F.B.I.'s good name, a joke, Spooky Mulder, and of course he's insane but you have to feel sorry for him just a little bit, don't you, because he won't give up. He's a fool and he's searching for things that aren't real and he doesn't even see it.
And then she stepped into his world one day, the sound of high heels foreign and strange against the cold floor, trying to be charming and defensive all at once, and God, he'd thought she was aggravating as hell. She'd had some nerve, he remembers thinking – coming down there and thinking that she'd make the important guys upstairs proud by getting rid of that pesky Fox Mulder once and for all. Positive that she could do all this, follow their orders to a T and still manage to look young and disarmingly innocent. He still remembers the perfume she'd worn on that day - something a little like vanilla - because she hadn't again afterwards. She'd lost the need to prove anything to him, and he'd lost the ability to hate her, and it had always been like that between them, in some ways. Instead of doing her job and confirming what she easily could've – that he was skewed, insane, a hindrance to their fine institution – she'd stayed with him, without having to. He'd been walking behind a pair of secretaries in the hall once and heard them call her "Mrs. Spooky," and it had dawned on him then, it dawns on him now, everything that she's sacrificed. For no reason; for him, he almost thinks, and this breaks him even more. He'd never wanted any of this. The idea of a partner, of someone else had been laughable at first. Ludicrous. He hadn't needed anyone, no way no how, not on this one-man crusade, and now God oh God (even though he doesn't pray, he doesn't sleep) he needs her back.
He's no stranger to his flaws. It's just that he chooses to ignore them, sets them aside because he's got work to do, answers to find, and maybe once he does he'll be able to sit down and sort them out. He's messy. He loses his papers and never throws his sunflower seed shells away. He doesn't call his mother as often as he should and he's stubborn and sarcastic when he shouldn't be. He spends his Saturday nights with whatever's on late night Cinemax and even though he knows that Scully's birthday is February 23rd he's never gotten her anything, he doesn't know what she would like, it's the thought that counts but he's always been bad at that kind of stuff. He takes things for granted. He wallows in his self-inflicted solitude and pretends that he doesn't deserve any of his suffering and doesn't appreciate it when he's given something that finally makes his life worth living. Instead, he just keeps searching for things he doesn't need: werewolves, spirits, little green men. He knows with a certainty that they exist. He isn't sure, right now, that he believes in them. Because it demands a spirituality, believing, and he doesn't know if he can do that, or anything. It's just that he's tired, and angry at everything or nothing (he's not sure which), and Scully, she believes with a fearlessness and a vulnerability that he can't quite embrace. He looks down at the cross and imagines the way it presses lightly against the base of her throat and it's almost like lust, not because he thinks of her like that but because he needs her so much he almost can't comprehend it. I want to believe, but he can't, he won't, he's too fucked up and she's the only thing that almost made him like a person again. (Again? Was there a before? He can't remember it, can't quite remember it right now.)
Mulder, I wouldn't put myself on the line for anybody but you, and he hadn't believed her when she'd said it because there wasn't any reason in it. She was, is, is too good for him and he's always known it and doesn't know why she'd sacrifice herself for a truth she doesn't believe in. (For him; only him; nobody else.) And now she's gone, somewhere out there but he doesn't allow himself to imagine past this because every horror that she's experiencing was meant for him. She is innocent and he is insignificant, a half-life or a shadow, something pathetic that can't even answer to its own sins. Must be fate, Mulder.
Funny, that he decays without her and they're not even on a first-name basis.
His eyes are heavy, his mind hazy and haunted by mingling sentences murmured in her voice (he can't tell them apart, the ones that are real and the ones he's made up). Mulder, it's me, and his hand stumbles blindly across the end-table until it finds the answering machine. Fingers the buttons in a way that is almost routine. Presses play.
"You have
no
new
messages and
one
old
message."
This is his retribution.