Title: After
Author: Me!
Rating: K
Pairing/Characters: MSR, but not terribly shippy. Skinner makes an appearance
Time: Post series, bit of a follow up to my "Unfortunate" story, but stands alone.
Summary: That was before, and this is after. Some things are worse, but most are better.
Disclaimer: THE X-FILES IS NOT MINE.
PLEASE R AND R. And RR my older fic too please! Constructive criticism highly appreciated.
After
When the world ended, the just universe died, and took believers and skeptics alike.
She thought it ironic, how clinging to logic or believing in things beyond coincidence could have the same effect in the end.
For life as anyone knew it was over. Dramatic shifts had occurred, crazy ideals had been born, and those who were not dead either wished they were or wanted to turn to the passionate savagery that had overtaken the great "before." "After" was a blank world, inverses and opposites united and divided constantly.
Some went crazy and leapt for joy, turning on old music and taped television shows, believing and knowing with every fiber of themselves they could do nothing but feel old joys in the last instants of their lives. In the places with still blue skies and beautiful clouds, beautiful people and surviving simple joys, people breathed the last of the fresh air and danced.
Groups formed, either through paranoia before or panic afterwards.
Those alone were left alone; they stayed that way and perished in desolation, living on the eeriness of a silence that never ended.
Dana Scully could not bring herself to cry or smile or say anything. In a chair by a fire, she stared at the wall, at a crack that had formed during the end. Behind her chair was a world, one that was new. The people in the room were reborn, and she was no longer running from the world anymore. The world was dead. She had to remember that.
On a couch facing the fire, Fox Mulder could see the back of Scully's chair. A cold, metallic chair, industrious in its industrial-build-to-last habitat, contrasting with her red hair that his mind still tried to connect to the once thriving Scully. 'She must be cold,' he thought, and knew it to be true. He did not move.
In the background, old friends and acquaintances talked. Skinner and other scattered people, those sane enough to listen to Mulder or Scully, had gathered here in an old bunker in the desert of California and Nevada. They only knew that they were alive. Nothing else. No intelligence agency represented here knew what threat they were facing, whether it was a toxic atmosphere or total annihilation of any reason to live.
On the morning of the day before the end, Mulder had gathered their things from a tiny room in New Mexico. It was not dawn yet, and he had not the cruelty to wake Scully from what little peace she could find. Suitcases numbering three, clothes and pictures of past lives, a novel from an author who had once interviewed Scully were the only things left.
When the car was loaded and the bloody sunrise gathering intensity, he woke her with a kiss on the forehead and a simple, "Time to go." She said nothing, but forced a smile and kissed him back. The long drive was silent, and her demeanor did not change when they arrived or met old allies.
So now everyone was living in their own thoughts. Scully did not speak, and Mulder knew that time had taken its toll and he could do nothing to save her from so many injustices.
Skinner paused in his cataloguing of supplies and looked at the couple. He knew now that two people together could be infinitely more lonely than just one. How can anyone survive the things they've been through? But as just their Assistant Director, he only could see the cause and effect. The defeats and the fighting, things that had lead to a loss of belief in both of them. 'What do I believe in?' he thought, and answered his question: 'Nothing.' Walter Skinner had never believed in anything but balance, that for every justice there was injustice, that you had to realize that to survive. But Scully...she had believed that in the end, the good guys win. That for all her sufferings, something good had to come in the end. But she had been left weak and alone, save for Mulder. Her logicalities were broken into small pieces; each fitting into a puzzle of the supernatural and insanity. She believes in Mulder, he knew, that Mulder had lead her to this point in life but had given her the most love possible. Did she blame him? Skinner didn't think so.
Mulder's belief in the truth had been shattered when he knew there was nothing to do to stop it. Life for him lay in Scully, a reminder of before and the last thing he cared about. He did not want to die, because not only would he lose her, but she would lose him. Without him…there would be nothing separating her from the oblivion of madness and the dreamscape of reality.
When the fire had been reduced to dying embers, Scully left the room for the space she and Mulder were sharing. Mulder followed her and switched on the dim bulb when she did not.
"Everything's different now."
Startled out of his solemn bedtime routine, Mulder turned around to see her blue eyes gazing into space.
"Yeah." What else could he say? There really wasn't anything to say, was there? Everything had changed when they had ran, but everything…everything was startling now.
"Do you believe…do you think that we can ever find our way back to the way things were before…?" Her eyes were searching his, hopeful that he could say something to comfort fears she couldn't identify. Leaning forward, Scully rested her elbows on her knees and sighed.
Mulder said nothing, and looked away with desperation in his eyes.
They sat quietly for a few minutes, side by side on the edge of the bed.
Sadly, he smiled at her. "I think the real question is…can we ever start living again?"
She nodded slightly, giving Mulder the look of a lost child, before starting to shudder. Voice breaking, she said, "I can't live like this anymore…I hope so Mulder…because I can't live like this anymore."
Breaking for the first time in a long time, she started to sob, wracking cries that made her shake and lose breath.
Without Mulder, she would break. Would shatter into the million pieces her mind had become, the infinite effects of infinite causes. So he held her close until her harsh breathing subsided, and then kissed her. She had no protest, and they found peace without knowing when the morning came.
They awoke with no sense of time, only an idea, a seed planted in their minds that today something unfathomable was different.
Everyone had slept a long time; some were still slumbering in their own dark rooms. There wasn't a reason to get up, so they didn't.
But through the morning, afternoon or night, whatever time of day it was in their warped new reality, the haze lingered in everyone's mind. Everything was so new, so foreign, that logical thought ceased to function. Different reports were coming in, environments upside down and turned black or blood red, cities shattered into states of broken metal and glass, crazy things in the corners of the mind were apparent, and when people stopped mid-sentence to laugh or to cry, to walk away or to simply stop, it was not noticed, by the people near them or by the person themselves.
Reports of colonization in some places, some places the invaders had abandoned, left untouched or embroiled in beautiful decimation showed up on unused radio frequencies.
After two days, no one could stand hiding or confusion anymore. Reports showed positive atmosphere and no invaders anywhere near their position. So they left, striding proud and tall.
Marching through the desert, a scattered line of people, not the largest group by far, but still standing and ready to face the unknown if only to find peace of mind again, to know that they had any idea of what was occurring in their world. Their garage had been decimated, but they were not far from a city.
Some older, some younger, and those one could swear had lived forever walked in the heat of the morning sun, towards the remainders of a civilization that had been virtuous by most fibers of its being, but corrupt at its heart. That heart no longer beat, and a new one had been born out of pain and knowledge and the will to survive.
When they reached the city, they were shocked by the brightness of the desert sand. A city blown apart by some form of weapon they had never known, breaking everything and everyone. Miles and miles they could not see the edge of, miles and miles of twisted metal and burnt glass. Blinding.
They stood in awe of what had become of everything the human race had worked so hard to build, of how easily it could die. It would be harder to rebuild, but somehow, no one expected society to ever reach this point again. No one wanted to reach this point again.
Mulder glanced at Scully as they stood at the precipice of fact number 1 of the new reality, the aftermath. But unlike everyone else, she did not stare into the heart of the enemy.
She was gazing at the sky, its deep cerulean blue reflecting off her lighter eyes, and the cool air blowing through her vibrant hair. Scully stared, eyes wide with wonder at the clouds that graced the expanse. As he watched her, she closed her eyes and breathed deeply, opening her lids to continue to gaze into the heavens.
She was smiling at the bright sky and the gentle breeze, and Mulder thought she had never looked so beautiful.
All Scully could think was that the universe had never seemed so just.