His shallow breathing had a gurgling sound under it. No matter
how much pressure I put on his wound, his life still pumped out
from under my fingers in a raw, red current. The deathly cold
concrete beneath us greedily drank his blood. The light of a
flashlight I'd propped up on his chest showed glassy eyes and a
face gone dangerously pale, with a thin crimson stream at the edge
of his lower lip. He'd stopped trying to find a comfortable position
for his head against my prosthesis ages ago.
There would be no help coming for him. He'd ditched his partner
hours ago to meet me, so none of his allies had a clue about his
whereabouts. My attempts to yell out the small, boarded-up
basement windows had brought the mobsters back downstairs to
shoot me again from the stairs before kicking in my ribs a few
times. That meant that my breathing didn't sound that much better
than Mulder's, but I could tell that I wouldn't die from any of my
wounds, which I'd wrapped with scraps torn from my T-shirt.
They'd nailed him with a lucky shot at the start, and they hadn't
even cared about him.
I never tended to accept blame for anything, but I couldn't escape
the feeling that this was my fault. These were my enemies, not his,
for once. If I hadn't called him to set up a meeting... Hell, I hadn't
even had any information; I just hadn't been able to resist another
chance to fuck with his head. It wasn't like he hadn't always
enjoyed that...
The Russian mob had become more professional since I'd last
tangled with them; they'd gotten the drop on us without my
noticing until far too late. Mulder and I had ducked most of the
bullets that had followed, but one had taken him in the chest, not
too far from his heart, and another had punched through my
shoulder. They'd taken advantage of our new weakness to catch
up and beat the shit out of us before disarming us, throwing us in
the trunk of one of their cars, and bringing us here, wherever here
was. Then they'd thrown us downstairs into the basement,
presumably to deal with us later.
I'd generously let Mulder land on me since he'd been more
seriously hurt. It hadn't made much of a difference.
He'd been drifting in and out of consciousness since then, and I'd
talked non-stop to try to prevent him from fading away altogether.
I'd started out saying things that had meaning, but eventually, as
fatigue and fear settled further in, I'd been reduced to mumbling
nonsense in English or Russian, whatever came first from my lips.
I stroked his hair, which the idiot had cut short again. It was only
slightly longer now than it had been while we'd been partners.
While we'd been lovers. We hadn't been this close without trying
to confuse or beat the hell out of one another since then. That
fleeting kiss after I'd told him about the alien war had been too
brief to count. Besides, I'd done it more to stun him into letting
me leave without a fight than out of affection.
I'd always figured I'd be the one to die a brutal, meaningless
death; at least Mulder would be murdered in the course of his
lunatic quest for the truth. This... wasn't right.
I had to be fatigued if I was thinking that this wasn't fair. What the
hell was fair?
I told him what I'd do to our attackers as soon as they came back
down. After that orgy of torture and murder, I'd carry him out and
get him medical attention. I didn't say that they'd probably shoot
me from the stairs again, or that he'd probably bleed to death even
if I did manage to get him out. I think he knew all that already.
"Alex," he said so softly that I wouldn't have been able to hear him
if he hadn't been so close. I looked down at him.
He had this look on his face... It made my chest hurt and reminded
me, stupidly enough, of church. I hadn't gone to church until after
my father had brought us to this country. Religion had been
against official doctrine, but its houses of worship had always
struck me as beautiful. I remembered the bright gold and vibrant
colors of the icons. I'd been fascinated by the odd beauty in the
loving depictions of the righteous being tortured to death by the
heathens. That was how most saints achieved sainthood: through
torment and an early death.
His expression reminded me of what I'd seen in the faces of those
representations of martyred saints, that calm exultation. Certainty
and ecstasy.
"You can't fucking do this to me," I said with a harsh edge to my
voice. "All the things you've survived..."
His voice already sounded like a ghost. "Alex, kiss me."
I was never one to do what I was told, but I got the feeling that this
would be my last chance. The dust down here permeated
everything so strongly that even his cold lips tasted of it under the
flavor of his own blood. After a quick brush, I tried to pull away,
but in a last fit of strength his arms encircled me and pulled me
closer. His tongue pushed gently against my mouth, asking for
entry, and I decided what the hell, why not?
We kissed deeply, hungrily, all the more avid for knowing this
would be the final time. I could swear I felt his breath swirl
through my mouth, giving me the insane notion that I could keep
him alive by breathing for him. I tried, but it wasn't enough. All
too soon he stopped breathing entirely, and his body went slack
against me.
But I didn't let him go for the longest time, still unable to believe
that he had survived so much to die like this, so stupidly and
pointlessly. Finally I pulled away, and, impossible as it sounded,
his mouth slowly closed once mine had left. He looked peaceful,
happy.
Then I felt a strange warmth start to permeate my body. I didn't
know what the hell was wrong and had panicked thoughts of
somehow being possessed by that damned oilslick again. But this
didn't feel the same. That had been like being pulled under by a
dark, cold undertow that moved me like a puppet. This didn't
interfere with my control of myself, and it brought me strength and
felt like honeyed sunlight and... love?
Stupid. I was losing it.
Then I saw something that made me certain I was insane. But, at
the same time, I knew exactly what I had to do.
From Dana Katherine Scully's private journal, February 7, 2002:
I haven't written a diary entry in this book in so long. All those
years of filling out our case files in the certainty that Mulder's
version of events would sound too insane had burned away the
desire to write about my days and thoughts in a private journal. In
the three years following his death I'd felt too numb and harried to
do anything other than fall to bed, exhausted, every night.
But tonight I've been sitting here, staring at an impossible note, for
three hours now. Maybe writing down my jumbled thoughts and
the strange events of the day will help me make sense of them,
show me that everything has a rational explanation after all.
The information Krycek had provided and the fall and exposure of
the Conspiracy had forced me to believe in aliens. I won't believe
in ghosts too.
I'll start at the point where everything still made sense. Of a sort.
I'd been walking through the hall on my way to the room where
I'd see the end of it all at last. I kept telling myself that this was
the final one but still couldn't believe it. After three years of
investigations, hearings, trials, and executions, today would finish
it. Over those years I'd witnessed every execution of every
conspirator who—through will, greed, blindness, delusion, or a
simple unwillingness to stick his neck out to put an end to it—had
victimized me and so many other innocents. After this last death I
would be able to get on with my life, or so I told myself.
I'd thought back to the beginning of the end, that surprising 911
call from Alex Krycek. For some reason, he'd asked for me by
name. Among many other things, he'd told the operator that
they'd killed Mulder, and he'd made them pay...
When we'd arrived and walked inside the house, we'd been
stunned by the devastation that had greeted us. Something had
torn through the house and Russian mobsters with the strength and
destructive force of a tornado. Blood and debris had littered the
floor. We still haven't figured out how he'd done some of it.
We'd found Krycek in the upstairs bedroom, sitting dead-eyed near
Mulder's body, which he had arranged on the bed as if for burial
with Mulder's hands folded together in what had appeared to be
prayer. My partner had looked so peaceful... Even with all the
police around, it had taken all my strength to hold myself back
from shooting the bastard as he'd loomed over Mulder.
Confused and dazed, Krycek had let us lead him away without a
fight. His eyes had refused to focus on us, seeming to be fixed
inward instead. The official consensus had been that he'd gone
insane.
God knew, seeing Mulder's corpse had almost driven me that way
myself. Only the thought of unfinished duty had kept me going.
Even so, I'd still felt haunted by his presence, occasionally heard
his voice, and expected every ring on my cell phone and late night
phone call to be him for months afterward. At least our
banishment from the downstairs office had made things a bit easier
on me. I couldn't have dealt with trying to clear his things out of
that office, which had been so completely his...
But I'm digressing.
It hadn't taken long for the investigation to support what Krycek
had told us over the phone. He hadn't killed Mulder. And, insane
or not, Krycek had started to prove himself useful beyond anyone's
wildest expectations. Once in custody, he'd willingly told us
everything he knew. Everything. Every name and place and bit of
evidence he'd known of. He'd shown an unerring gift for knowing
which links in the conspiracy's chain would snap under pressure
and lead us to more. It had amazed me how many people were
involved and how few of them knew the whole truth of what they
belonged to, how many versions of the Conspiracy existed.
Krycek had explained that as the way the Conspiracy had survived,
with no one person able to bring it down.
I'd often wished that Mulder had lived to see it, but I got the
feeling that if he had, this never would have happened.
It had turned out that Krycek wasn't even really Krycek. He had
been born Alexander Kochevikov in Leningrad, a citizen of the
USSR. His parents, deep cover agents, had immigrated with him
to the United States when he had been eight years old. Depending
on how you felt about him, you could say that he had been born to
treachery or that he'd never been given a choice.
Over time, I'd come around to the second way of thinking.
That didn't matter to the government. He would be executed for
treason with the rest of the conspirators. Too many old men in
power, still longing for the good old days of the Cold War, were
thanking God that they'd been given one last Commie bastard to
put to death. Krycek's appeals, his insistence that he'd been taken
advantage of while he'd still been too much in shock to cut a deal,
fell on deaf ears.
My pleas for him had been as much use. My original refusal to
involve myself had crumbled under the feeling that Mulder would
never forgive me for
Damn. I'm telling things out of order again. I'm stronger than
this.
A few months after Krycek's incarceration I'd been given a chance
to see him. Alone. The cameras would be running, and officers
would be next door waiting eagerly for the chance to beat him
down if he made a move for me, but I'd be in the room alone with
him.
I'd asked him what had really happened in that house, how Mulder
had died, and why he'd spilled everything he'd known for no
reward. Krycek had looked at me in a way that had seemed so
familiar to me yet utterly alien to him. Then he'd asked, "Do you
believe in ghosts, Scully?" The tone had been a perfect mirror of
Mulder's similar question to me the first day I'd met him.
Then I could swear that I'd seen him myself. Mulder. Wearing
the suit and trenchcoat he'd worn the day he'd died, sitting and
looking very companionable on the cot next to Alex Krycek, with
his head leaning on Krycek's shoulder and such a look of desperate
hope in his eyes...
I'd refused it all: the thought of his unquiet spirit walking the earth,
the picture of tenderness I saw before me. I'd fallen prey to the
power of suggestion and my own hope that he wasn't truly gone
forever. "If thinking you're haunted by Mulder's ghost helps you
tell us the things we need to bring your bosses down, then you can
believe what you like, Krycek. But you can't fool me into letting
down my guard for an instant."
My denial hadn't made Mulder disappear, and he'd looked
disappointed but rueful. Krycek had nodded. "He'd figured you
say something like that."
I'd left the room in a hurry and tried to tell myself I hadn't been
fleeing.
When I'd watched the camera footage later, the tape hadn't shown
a trace of Mulder's presence. But every time I'd seen Krycek after
that, I'd also seen Mulder near him. And looking so strangely
affectionate.
The sound of sirens had interrupted my train of thought and
passage to Krycek's execution. A guard had then pulled me aside
and into a room to wait. The warden had locked down the prison
as the guards had searched for the escapee. No one would tell me
anything no matter how many times I'd flashed my badge, but I'd
known who'd escaped.
Into the fifth hour of the ten I'd waited, I'd put my hand into my
coat pocket and heard something rustle. I'd pulled out a common
piece of paper with writing on it. It had said:
2/7/02
Scully,
I don't expect you to believe—not even our Christmas excursion
made you believe in ghosts—but please read this.
Alex has finished all my unfinished business, but I'm still here, to
my endless surprise. And he doesn't mind, to my further surprise.
The initial transfer had shocked the hell out of us both, since
neither of us had expected it. If it hadn't, Alex wouldn't have been
so zombified that he'd just meekly allowed himself to be
incarcerated. Three years... I blame myself.
Anyway, he's no saint, and he sure as hell is no martyr. He's
mine, and I'm his, and he doesn't want to die. I don't want him
to die.
We're long gone by now. I've learned the ropes over the last three
years, more than enough to get us free without getting anyone hurt.
Get on with your life, be happy, and we'll be happy and get on
with ours. Goodbye, Dana, and don't ever forget that I love you.
Love,
Mulder
It had even been written in his almost illegible handwriting. It's
still with me, and I'm still staring at it now. Evidence.
This isn't any more rational now than it was when I'd started
writing, but maybe it makes its own kind of sense.
Maybe believing in ghosts is just humanity's way of trying to
comfort itself. Maybe that's not such a bad thing.
I believe that his work is done, and he's happy at last. Maybe...
maybe that's enough.
He's moved on. Now, so can I.
THE END
Saints and Martyrs
by Viridian5
I'd been dreaming of having Mulder's head in my lap again for the
longest time. I never wanted it like this. I should remember to
watch what I wished for.
