Life Goes On
Chapter Two
By Semper Mea
Disclaimer: Not mine. I'm not making any money, don't sue.
Author's notes: Poor Mulder. Wonder what he's up to while Scully's been busy forgetting him.
One monotonous case after another - that's what my life has become. First, I investigated a sighting of Bigfoot in the Colorado wilderness. Legend had it that he had appeared on the outskirts of Denver at midnight every Saturday since October 22 of last year. Turns out that it wasn't Bigfoot at all, not that I really expected it to be. It was really an extraordinarily hairy man by the name of Jerry Morris, whose wife had died on Saturday, October 22, and had gone running drunk and naked through the woods where she died as a kind of memorial to her thereafter. I guess there are your garden-variety weirdoes everywhere.
Then, I attempted to go back to what I knew - alien abductions. I looked into a report of an alien abduction in the little town of Gulfport, Illinois. The woman that I talked to on the telephone seemed clearly distraught and genuine, so I agreed to meet her at her workplace in Gulfport, and got all the necessary paperwork from Skinner.
When I arrived in Gulfport, I found not a nice woman working in a nice establishment in a nice little town; but instead, I pulled into what I quickly gathered was a bar town. I checked into my motel, which didn't allow you to pay for a full night, but rather, by the hour, and drove to the woman's place of work - it didn't take me long to figure out that it was a rather sleazy strip club. She was sitting outside on the hood of a supped up 69 Ford Mustang, dressed in a leather skirt that barely covered her, and a matching black leather halter top - I turned my old, G-Man Ford Taurus around so fast that the tires squealed.
That was the last case I ever investigated as part of the X-Files division.
Now, they've got two new agents assigned to it. Skinner let me handpick them. He said it was my division, that I was still going to be the head of it whether I actually worked on the cases or not, whether I wanted to be or not; that way when she got back we could take over again if we wanted to. He actually said 'when she gets back.' I just growled at him to never say that name around me again and left. I think he got the message, because he never has. Not even when he handed me that wedding invitation.
I can't think about this now. I told myself that I was going to move on, that I was going to stop letting her monopolize my thoughts after all this time. It's not healthy. I've got to put her out of my mind - I just, for the life of me, don't know how.
Maggie's been a godsend throughout all of this; I don't know what I would have done without her. Probably put a gun in my mouth, then I wouldn't have to worry about what's going to happen to me day after day. I wouldn't have to give up everything that I ever loved in order to function; nothing's the same without her. Why the hell did she have to go?
One final push, that was all it took. One slight misunderstanding, one last frayed strand of trust, and she was gone. I always knew it would take a lot for her to leave me, I just never realized it could be something so seemingly petty and insignificant that would finally do it. To go back to that day, to do it all over again, I'd give anything. Anything. I'd give my next breath to know that she didn't hate me, to know that maybe, there was a chance for us. Anything would be better than what I'm going through right now, what I have been going through for the last three years.
It's been hell. Hell doesn't even begin to describe it.
Back when she was still here, I'd stay at work until ungodly hours, tracking down leads far into the night. Not anymore. I get there exactly at 9 a.m., I leave right at 5 p.m. - my work day is now dictated by the clock, something that's never happened before.
Everything's changed. I can't eat, I can't sleep, I can't go to work, I can't just sit around my own freaking house without thinking about her. She pervades my thoughts, and that makes me angry. She left me, dammit. Why can't I move on? She has. She's getting married, for god's sake.
And I, I'm destined to stay in this sprawling metropolis, dreaming of her every damned day until I'm gone - God only knows when that'll be. If I think I'm going to forget her, I'm kidding myself.
As I'm sitting here, sprawled out on the leather sofa that once gave me solace, watching but not really seeing some inane rerun yet again, I wonder when it's all going to stop. It's been three years. Three years without her. And yet, life goes on. It never stops.
Please, just make it stop.
A/N : Whoo, Mulder!Angst in full gear here. What do you think, should Mulder welcome Scully with open arms? Would he? We'll find out.