Disclaimers: "The X-Files", "Dana Scully", "Fox Mulder", and "Walter Skinner" are copyrighted by 1013 Productions and Fox. But, since I don't hope to make any money off of this, they shouldn't have any problems. All the quasi-technical stuff about the Apollo I mission is gleaned from Andrew Chaikin's remarkable book "Man on the Moon". If you at all enjoyed "Apollo 13" or "The Right Stuff", read this book. It's long, but it's worth it. The small snatch of song lyrics are from "American Pie" by Don McLean. Feedback to Jen, please. Thanks!
Thanks to Mare, Ashley and Teresa for feedback and editing, and especially for keeping me awake long enough to finish this at the eleventh hour!!
"Rise Up From Ashes"
By Jennifer Mauricio
"Cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched." - Mark 9:45
"And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever and they have no rest day nor night." -Revelation 14:11
"It ain't over till it's over" -Yogi Berra
Dana Scully could feel her partner's heart pounding against her face. Her hands ached from gripping his arms. She wasn't sure if she was holding him back, or holding herself steady. Probably both. The doctor in her was worried about his health. The part of her he called his friend and partner was worried about his soul.
She imagined they were wearing the same expression, twin masks of horrified disbelief. Mulder was speechless, gaping at the smoldering ruin that was once his life's work. She was leaning up against him, consoling and looking for consolation.
She'd spent the last 5 years of her life following this man around. Her professional plans had been taken control of by God only knew who, she had no personal life to speak of, and she had almost died, more than once, all for this man, and because of the secrets this room may have once held.
So why did she have the overwhelming urge to laugh out loud?
Anger, elation, sorrow, frustration. You name it, she had experienced it. Every conceivable emotion crammed into a split second. It was not at all unlike the first time you went on a rollercoaster as a kid. Sick with fearful anticipation at what lies ahead of you, but knowing that it's too late to turn back. The die was cast the moment you stepped into the queue. Time to suck it up and go forth.
But how do you continue on from utter ruin?
Releasing her grip on Mulder's arms, Scully stepped back to stand beside him. They only had a few moments before the arson team descended like a plague of locusts, dismantling the remains of their work, and leaving a path of neatly cataloged evidence in their wake. Assuming of course, there was any evidence to be found.
It did not take a genius to guess who had done this. She had seen his handiwork before. If she closed her eyes and let her mind wander, she was no longer in the sooty pit of their office. She was standing over a smoking boxcar in the middle of the New Mexico desert, filled with the paralyzing realization that her partner may be dead.
The man she thought of only as The Smoker had tried to kill Mulder then. And if he was responsible for this mess, as she was certain was the case, this was yet another attempt. This had his stench all over it.
"Fire is the devil's only friend," she muttered, the snatch of song lyrics flitting through her mind at a most apropos moment.
"Did you say something, Scully?" Each word was labored, as if the act of speaking caused him great pain.
She turned her head and looked up at her partner. If she thought he was listening, she would have answered him.
Instead, she studied his face. His eyes were glassy, jaw slack. She was beginning to worry that he had gone into shock. He had been made to suffer through so much in the last 25 years. With each new tribulation, she worried it would be the last straw. That he really would put a gun to his head and end the whole game right then and there, handing the victory to the bad guys.
He would want her to carry on with the X-Files, with their search. She wouldn't even begin to know how. That was precisely why she needed him. She couldn't navigate the dark paths of the X-Files without him. She had no context; her background was not rooted in the spiritual, but in the scientific. The Dana Scully that had been assigned to the X-Files in the spring of '92 would have never accepted anything on blind faith. And most certainly not on an experience that, as her partner would say, had never been proven or disproved.
Frohike asked her once if her abduction had softened her skeptical shell. She had smiled at him, his question evoking a deep sadness in her heart. "No," she'd answered, weighing her words carefully, "but I believe that the experience will effect me profoundly, once I remember it." If only she had known then how damned affected she truly was going to be. Of course, knowing wouldn't have changed any of it. There was the off chance that she would have left the chip in, thereby avoiding the cancer altogether. But, the other effect (she couldn't quite bring herself to think of herself as 'sterile'. The pain was still too fresh.), was out of her control. Removing the chip had been her call, removing her ova was some sick bastard's idea of a science project.
She had been a scientist for too long to turn and let go of her analytical ways; to make such a complete about-face and believe there was intelligent life beyond this universe was to deny the very foundation of who she was. And yet, it seemed that more and more, the answers to the question about alien existence were to be found in science fact, not science fiction. Her staunch belief in what she felt was solid scientific evidence against the possibility of life in outer space was being tested every day.
Everything they had discovered about her abduction and the events that had followed (I have cancer? I will never have children? I have a daughter? I had a daughter...) pointed not to alien abductors, looting the earth for human test subjects, but to men. Mere mortal men, who felt compelled by some terribly flawed sense of power to play God. Men who kept the world's largest tissue database hidden underground. Men who had a cure for whatever ailed you neatly filed away beneath the Pentagon - if you were lucky.
If human beings could do these things to one another, all in the name of a secret agenda that served the interests of a select few, how bad could aliens really be?
She had gone through the trials and tribulations of her cancer, only to be cured by something Mulder had once believed to be alien technology. She and Mulder had made discoveries involving cloning and the hybridization of the human race with non-human DNA. They had witnessed scenes from a war, alien faction versus alien faction. No doubt involving the men who had abducted her, at some level. The public in general was oblivious to what was going on, right on their very planet. Yet, because of the X-Files, she and Mulder had been unknowingly watching the battle develop. And whenever they had gotten close to the truth, their credibility was always called on the carpet, because of the questionable nature of their work on the X-Files.
Whoever had set this fire had done them a favor. Thanks to that person, the X-Files technically no longer existed.
Standing here with Mulder, both of them having been cast into this smoldering Hell against their control, she suddenly understood.
This was their chance at a new beginning. The truth was still out there, waiting for them. Only now, they were free to pursue it without the constraints of the past to hold them back. The men who traveled in darkness could burn their files and plant their lies, but they could never take away the most important thing the two of them had. Five years of seeing, of hearing, and of living in a nest of lies, interwoven with strands of truth. Of learning how to separate the truth from the lies.
She reached over and squeezed her partner's hand, hoping the contact would at least elicit a response. She was favored with the lightest of clutches in response. Well, that was something.
Dropping his hand, she stepped forward toward the charred ruins of her desk. The top, right hand drawer was hanging open, its contents relatively unharmed. The firebug's main target had definitely been their files and bits of evidence. A dull heat still radiated from the desk. She wanted to see if there was anything salvageable before the evidence collection began.
A melted drawer organizer dominated the drawer, full of mangled paper clips, deformed push pins and warped pens. Amid the clutter, something caught her eye.
"Well, would you look at that." Scully turned to Mulder, hand outstretched. Sitting in her upturned palm was the Apollo 11 keychain Mulder had given her on her 33rd birthday. Mulder looked down at the bauble with a distressed expression on his face. Lifting his eyes to meet hers, he said nothing. Didn't have to. It was obvious he thought she'd lost her mind.
"Mulder, don't you see? In nine short years, we went from a politician's promises to landing a man on the moon. Think back even further, to Apollo I, Mulder. Chaffee, Grissom and White died before a test flight. It was a fluke accident...a fire, caused by a combination of things: a pressurized cabin full of pure oxygen ignited by a spark from some faulty wiring, further fueled by a coolant leak. And the hatch that was designed to be held shut by the pressure of the oxygen in the cabin, and that required a wrench to open."
She took a breath, and watched her partner's face. He seemed to be listening, but she could see his eyes going glassy again. "The point is, Mulder," she paused to see if he was paying attention, "the point is, there were *eleven* more manned Apollo missions after those men died on the launch pad. Do you see where I am heading with this?"
He nodded almost imperceptibly. She was glad to see that he had stopped his slack-jawed survey of the office long enough to listen to her. He was now staring at her with his lips pursed, as if she had grown a second head or something equally as curious. But at least she had his attention.
"These men know, Mulder. They know how close we have come in the past. And each time we get too close, they do something that sets us back a bit. Something buys them time, lets them get a little further ahead." She gestured towards their ruined files. "Mulder, this is possibly one of the best things that could have happened right now. Technically, the X-Files no longer exist. Our evidence is gone. Except for one thing."
Mulder rubbed a hand over his eyes. He honestly was still not able to process all that had happened in the last 24 hours, and here his partner was spouting off about the Moon landing, and the positive side of having their office burned out. But knowing Scully, there was a method behind this madness. "What one thing, Scully?"
"You Mulder. You have a memory like a steel trap. If we take a step back, take some time to regroup, we can pick up where we left off. For every door they have shut in our faces, we have found two more to open up."
In the hall, they could hear the sounds of the evidence team approaching the office. In moments, the sanitation would begin. Scully had surprised him a few times in the past, but never as much as she was surprising him now. She was being over-enthusiastic, but he had a feeling she was doing it to make him feel better. Most of all, she was right. Whoever it was that was working against them had done so many things to put them off the trail. To discourage them, to turn them against one another. But none of it had worked. They had always bounced back and gotten a few steps ahead of the shadowy men that guarded the secrets they sought. "Come on, Scully. Let's let these guys look for their needle in the proverbial haystack."
Once the evidence team had filed in, the agents stepped out into the hallway. Both turned to take one last look at their home away from home for the last five years. Scully was surprised to feel tears well in her eyes. Gripping the keychain tighter in her hand, she blinked twice, clearing her eyes. Mulder just sighed, his face looking haggard and worn. Trudging down the wet, smelly basement hallway, they must have made quite a sight.
"That was quite the pep talk back there, Scully. You surprise me sometimes." He stopped at the elevator, and pressed the call button.
She held up her hand. "I told you it was more than a 'pretty cool keychain', Mulder. You just didn't believe me."
Mulder smiled and put his arm around his partner's shoulders just as the elevator doors opened. They stepped into the car and pressed the button for the lobby. It struck Mulder as the doors slid closed that it was possible neither of them would ever step foot on this floor of the FBI building again. He turned to mention this bit of nostalgia to Scully. But she was off in her own little world, turning that keychain over and over in her hands. He had only given it to her because he knew about her secret fascination with the early days of the space program. It appealed to her scientific sense of adventure. And the parallels she had drawn between the Apollo missions and their own quest were interestingly accurate. Fire hadn't stopped the spirit that drove the first astronauts toward the lunar landing. It had fueled them towards perfection.
As much as he hated and feared fire, he couldn't deny it's cleansing nature. The rebirth that followed a serious forest fire; the fierce desire to succeed, born from the tragic death of three pioneering men in the 1960's. Scully was right. This fire was a chance for them to start all over, and do more than get close to the truth. This was their chance to find the truth, once and for all.
"You know what, Scully?" He said, reaching over and taking the keychain from her hands. "This is the best five dollars I ever spent."
_The End_