The End Of Existence

**It'll take more bullets than you can fire to win this war.**

Mulder grinded his teeth together resolutely and clenched his eyes shut.

"I'm still close enough to hear you say: "do as the beautiful ones do..."" The radio's loud playing was hurting his ears.

He watched the little lights dancing around the darkness of his closed eyes.

'is that what you see when you're dead?'

...Fox Mulder's face was twisted in a grimace of pain. Every muscle was tense.

'that's where you go when no-one cares -six feet under... under ground.'

If Mulder had tries to open his eyes at this moment, or even if he had allowed the slightest relaxation of his countenance, he would have broken. Shattered into a thousand irretrievably wrecked pieces. So he remained inert, all cells drawn together like rock. He didn't dare move for a very long time.

'brother'...'tovarish'... 'What did he WANT from me?'
'me'

'you, he wanted you. You. Me. And... I wanted him. But now he's gone. And maybe all he has are the dancing lights in the darkness of his own mind. Or... no. He has nothing. Because he is dead. And dead people... well... dead people just AREN'T ...or are they? Dead people can't hear your apologies... nor your pathetic excuses because dead people can't hear anything. Because they're dead... right?'

'maybe there is an afterlife? Maybe, maybe.... They are watching us. HE is watching us. Watching me.'

'maybe he knows that I didn't want him to die. Maybe he knows I would have saved him. Maybe he wanted to die for me. Did he get what he wanted? Did I get what I wanted? Did you? Is that what you wanted? It is, isn't it? You wanted him dead for so long. Your wish was finally granted, are you happy now?'
'No?'
'Surely it's a little late for second thoughts? Dead isn't reversible is it! Not even if you really really want it to be! Or, perhaps... if... no. Dead is dead, dead is forever.'

'forever'
'forever without him'
'because he's gone!'

Mulder slowly let his body uncurl. He realised how moist and pasty his cheeks were -raw from tears that had somehow escaped through the forbidding wall of his eyelids. He realised how much pain his entire body was in, pulsating with physical agony.

'he died for me.'
'to save me.'

Mulder gradually got up, surprised that his legs accepted to bear him, wondering where they were taking him, wondering what wound it was the jagged knife was tearing open over and over. Where was this blade? It was embedded in the soft tissue of his stomach into which it had been stabbed with a force that made him fall to his knees and stay there, hunched over, letting the understanding sink in, that never again would breathing come naturally to him.

Every breath was a forced agony.

'because he doesn't breath anymore.'
'he doesn't need to breath, dead people don't have those worries.'

Mulder's eyes fell to the shattered wineglass on the carpet. The red stain had dried into a dark crimson.. He crawled on hands and knees towards the shards.

'so its come to this...'
'has it?'
'do you see any other way?'
'no.'

His fingers clamped together on the jagged piece of glass. Mulder looked up, barely recognising his room through the blur of his heart's waterfall.

'he should have asked me. He should have asked me to go with him!'

In a lightening move, his hand swiped past his throat, and for a moment, Mulder thought he had missed in his haste... before noticing the torrents of thick red blood that were painlessly running down his throat.

'no pain.'

He smiled as he felt the temperature abruptly going down.

"you should have asked me... to...go...with...you..."

His skin felt sticky as his eyes focussed for the last time on the ruins of the broken goblet, cheek tightly pressed against the reddening carpet. With a sigh of release, Fox Mulder closed his eyes.