Author's blatherings: Usually, I despise warnings and spoiler alerts and all the other crap people clutter up stories with in order to protect the innocent and wimpy. But this time I'm succumbing, as preventive medicine.
Warnings: To pretty much everyone. Universally guaranteed to annoy. There are elements of MSR, Sc/Sk, and M/Sk, but if you're looking for an in-depth version of any of those things, or serious relationship stuff, you'll be disappointed, because these are only trace elements.
Each of these sections is entirely separate from the other, and they're in no way interrelated except for the overall theme. Which is how I've managed to cram in so many disparate relationships. They are as separate as their narrative styles. If you're looking for sex scenes, a plot line, or pretty much anything except characterization, you might wish to shop elsewhere.
Fox Mulder
It was like fog, Mulder thought, the way everything felt close around him. Sounds were amplified by the heavy air; in fog, you could hear a nearly silent car from hundreds of yards away; the rustle of leaves sounded like crackling fire. Fog made everything seem smaller. The sky was low to the ground, he was enveloped. And in here it felt cold like fog, gnawing into his bones and filling him with its dull, grey ache.
At various times he thought he had awakened. He would hear voices through that muffled air, and they were definitely speaking to him. Male voices. Sometimes he thought it was his father, sometimes it sounded like someone speaking the Navajo he'd been hearing recently, before the box car.
It was as if he was moving through a labyrinth; over, up, around, around again, backtracking, forward--always toward those voices. At the same time he knew he was dead, was certain of it, but there was no light to move toward, as he'd so often heard. Only voices to lead him through the trails.
And at the same time, he wondered if that awful, chill ache inside him wasn't from knowing what awaited him. He felt certain that if he found the end of this maze and found the voices, he would find Hell, too. Each step he took in his mind was slow and tentative. He couldn't see farther than the corners; it was very dark beyond there, and he was afraid of the footing--would he slide down some tumbling, terrifying hole? He would not end up like Alice, he knew, in some grand adventure. It would be filled only with fear and malevolence.
Everything came back to him at once, and yet not at all. Random, useless images from pop culture filled his mind side by side with everything that had happened to him over the years. One moment he was thinking he could be like Luke Skywalker, stepping into a dark endless hole filled with the most fearsome of truths; the next he was reliving his sister's abduction or his last fight with Scully. His memory was more of a curse than a useful tool.
What frightened him throughout his life had always been the element of not knowing. He'd never felt much fear on the job; he wasn't certain why. Because normally he would have been afraid--never knowing what awaited him on each new case, never knowing what awaited him with the smoker and Skinner and the rest of them. So the uncertainty of everything in his life at the FBI should have filled Mulder with dread, because he had no idea what waited around the next corner, where Death stood, how many steps until he reached Hell.
And that was what this place was, he realized. This was his fear, pared down to its essence, and he was trapped here, in his mind. What was he most afraid of finding? The answer came whispering from deep inside that fog--his greatest fear was an absence. Scully would not be there.
He knew how terrible such absence can be, had known his whole life. Without Samantha the world had darkened considerably; without Scully it would have no light at all. Hell could only be a place without her.
He hated regret. He despised that awful feeling of knowing you should have, could have, would have, but did not. He should have taken better care of her, he should have told her how much he loved her. Always, always, he was two steps late, too far behind, waiting too long to do the right thing by her. She would be out there, calling for him, searching, and he would be waiting here, unable to do anything about it. Lying helpless under these rocks and pieces of metal and wood. He should have left her something to go on. Some kind of sign.
There had been times he thought she understood his feelings. But then he'd do the wrong thing, make the wrong move, or say exactly what he shouldn't have, and she'd close to him, like one of those flowers that folded up upon itself at night. He was so useless in the face of love, and when she needed his love most, he'd denied it to her.
And now he could not even ask her what to do. To ask her what it was like to hover on the brink on death, knowing it was behind the next corner, knowing you had to take that step, and then...
What advice could she give him? It would be something practical, he was sure. Something darkly serious and maybe just a little mysterious, too. All the things about her he adored, was angered by, and humored.
Of all the voices leading him along these dark corridors, not one of them was hers. Mulder didn't understand that. He thought he should be able to hear her, too, but then he gradually realized the other voices where those of the dead. Scully had returned to the living before death could take her. So he was alone here with the ghosts, and he wanted to cry. Scully would know, she would hold him and rock him and stroke his hair, and murmur that everything would be all right. She would know what to do next.
He tried, in his mind, to take another step, but he went nowhere. The voices got louder. He had no idea how to backtrack, though--he turned, and the pathway closed to him. Again he heard the Navajo words and soft, soothing voices. He strained for Scully's voice.
And then he picked up his feet and ran, around the corner, through that dark, cold fog, praying to a God he didn't believe in that she was there, her arms out to him, his name on her lips.
Dana Scully
In the end, it hadn't been that simple for me to look away. I wanted to. To not only know that you're dying, but that you're also looking upon something you have refused to believe in, is too much to bear. A normal person couldn't handle it; how could I, then--a gunshot wound near my heart, my past history with death?
I hadn't wanted to believe Felig. Wouldn't have had to, except for the shooting. You see, I'd already looked at death before, and he wore the face of people I recognized--doctors, Japanese scientists, cancer victims. *They* were death, not this impostor who stood in front of me, shrouded in light.
And even as I was finally able to look away, I saw enough of him this time to know that he was not a single entity. He exists within each of us. I'll recognize his spectral presence again when I see it, and this I know--I *will* see it.
Mulder's face when he came to visit was etched with the lines of concern I'd grown tired of seeing on him. I wanted him to stop looking at me that way, to stop seeing me as fragile and weak. To see smile lines instead of frown lines, to see joy on his face instead of misery. He thinks it's his fault; of course he does. That I can't go it alone without him.
Every time I do, every time I stand alone, death hovers behind me. And Mulder rescues me from him.
This time there was no rescue, because *I* looked away. Under my own power. But I don't believe in immortality. I think the reason death let me go was simple--we were old friends. Without speaking to each other, we still knew each other. He'd come so many times to my door only to be turned away, and now he was here again, my unlikely suitor. This time I opened the door to him, and he stepped forward across the threshold, only to be turned back at the last moment by some unseen voice--she's not ready to go yet, it warned him.
If he is my suitor, he is not the suitor I want. The one I want doesn't know he is wanted. He's as distant and remote to me as the man in the moon. But like the moon, he's always there, showing his reserved concern, letting me in a little at a time, then rejecting me.
Each time I go away, each time I court death, brings Skinner a little closer to me, a little farther away. I bring with me newness, another chance, a future. He tells me this with his eyes, his heart, the way his voice quavers and cracks. And then instantly he steps back, so sure that he has crossed over the line, pushing me away so that all I'm left with is distrust and rage.
We've never taken that future. We don't know how. We're trapped in regret and longing. We've rejected over and over what feeling holds for us. The distance grows, the darkness stays longer, the cold hurts your bones. Winter, spring. Somewhere there are flowers blooming, new leaves uncurling on trees. But never for us; rather, we have the last dark days of winter, perpetually waiting for new life.
When he died, I lost another chance, even though in the long run he lived. So close, too far. I wanted it then, I want it now, but it's too late.
What does wanting bring to you? I want Melissa back, I want the chance to have children, I want my father. None of this matters, because wanting is nothing. It leaves empty, dark spaces in your soul, which you fill up with other things, things that do not, cannot fill such space. I have never been able to figure out, though, whether I want Skinner to fill the space those other things have left inside me, or if getting those other things back would fill the space Skinner should take.
Next time, what choice will I have? Will I want death this time? Will I still have these burdens, which have become too much to carry alone? Will I say, take me, I'm yours? Maybe I will. Maybe next time, Mulder won't save me, and death will have elbowed any other suitors out of the way.
I could have looked right at him. But I didn't.
C.G.B. Spender
He had spent most of his adult life sending others across that river. Watching as each one put their coin into the hand of The Ferryman and then crossed the river, evaporating from sight just over the dark horizon. Sometimes, those making the journey weren't even human, but he dispatched them just the same, never knowing what final trip they would make, how their journeys ended. That was not what he was here for.
This time it was The Smoker's turn to pay, to step into that boat and cross the river. There were few surprises left in his life, and his death had not come without expectation. He'd seen the man following him. And those in charge of the project had made it clear that he had become a liability. The red light of the laser sighting had traveled slowly toward him and he had merely waited in those split seconds, comforted finally in the knowledge that death was at long last coming for him.
So it was, in the end, surprising that The Ferryman had turned around halfway across that black and boiling river, and he had stepped back on the shore from which he'd left. He did not see the other side, despite his curiosity. Perhaps it was for the best, because the souls that he had dispatched to this fate would be waiting for him, and wasn't that ultimately what hell was about?
But who had crossed The Ferryman's palm with gold enough to turn him back? What was the message? He didn't know.
Now he was alive. Outside the cabin snow piled up, drifts rising and falling in soft, undulating curves. Branches of firs laden with pounds of it, falling around him, cracking the night air like a gunshot. He would start each time, the wounds on his chest still fresh and painful in the fear.
They wouldn't leave him alone. Eventually they would return, perhaps in spring when the snow had melted. This time, would he complete his journey? Perhaps it wasn't in his hands, it was not for him to decide.
He would sit at the ancient typewriter and write--letters, stories, memoirs. Each time he finished something he would read it again, then burn it. Twice he wrote letters to Fox Mulder, detailing the history of the men he worked for. They burned, along with the stories. In the end, who would know the difference between the fiction he concocted and the truth he tried to explain?
He was not yet physically capable of walking out of here, not in the snow. So he waited each day for the boy to bring him things. Each time he paid the boy, putting the money into his small hands, he thought of The Ferryman, and what currency, next time, he must carry with him to make the journey complete.
Walter Skinner
How many times now? Two, or three? He can't remember. He thinks it was merely two, but isn't that more than enough for anyone--two deaths, two resurrections? Two second chances.
Skinner is never certain, though, if he's made good on those chances. It would be desirable to say that he's righted wrongs, set off on the correct path, all that crap. But he honestly doesn't know the answer any more. Now he has death hanging over his head again, his own personal Sword of Damocles, waiting to show him what happens to those who relax, who feel confidence or the promise of their second chance. Impending disaster awaits him.
He spoke to Scully about regrets. About mistakes, and what he'd do if he could have a second chance. And then, given one more shot at it, Skinner lied, fell into a trap, did it all wrong again.
That's probably the hardest lesson to learn, and you'd think that dying twice in one lifetime would clue you in to it. But there's no convenient sign saying, "this way to the one true path," much as Skinner would like. His decisions are usually based on some misguided sense of justice and protection. As if he's supposed to bear the weight of all this misery, as if he were put here solely to take the hits for Mulder and Scully. And over and over, Skinner finds he can't do it, or at least do it effectively. That's the worst failure of all, really--to know when others rely on you, and you let them down. This is what he hates most in himself.
The world sometimes reminds him of the soap bubbles his older sister used to blow when they were children, dipping her little circle into the jar of solution then gently puffing out a breath until the bubble grew and floated away. He liked how they drifted in their own direction, going where the wind took them. Beautiful and shimmery in the sun, fragile; all it took was one touch and poof! they were gone, instantly.
Once his sister showed him a trick, sliding a soapy needle, borrowed from their mother's knitting basket, into a large bubble, and the bubble folded around it but didn't break. It had fascinated him then. He thinks of it now because it comes to him, standing here on his balcony, looking out at the lights below him, hearing the traffic sounds filtering up to his ears, that his life is folding in on itself, maintaining its fragile and delicate state while at the same time absorbing an invader.
Skinner wonders each day when the invasion will consume him, swarming over him like platoons of enemy soldiers. When he will feel that constriction in his neck, that blinding headache, and know he is going to die again. Certainly he would like to be more cavalier about it, but he can't. He would like to live each day as if it were the last, seize each moment--pick your cliche. Not worry about the future. His greatest fear is that the same thing will happen to Mulder, or to Scully.
He's used to living alone, to being alone. There's a quality to aloneness he appreciates; but he understands that most people think of being alone as loneliness. The two are not synonyms. The only time he feels lonely is when he lets Mulder or Scully down. Then he knows that failure is a part of loneliness. Failure to connect, failure to help. Failure to love?
He's always thought of himself as a typically American, straight man. But years ago he realized that his willingness to do things for Fox Mulder went beyond any kind of avuncular support that he understood, at least in principle. Beguiled, he thinks. That would be the word. Intrigued, possibly, as well. A lure into something darker and more dangerous, something mysterious. And isn't that what Mulder represents, to almost anyone? The mysterious, what's hidden in all of us.
Scully is in love with Mulder, as well, Skinner believes. Maybe they're all a little in love with each other. The thought brings a laugh to his lips. Mulder pays more attention to Skinner than he should, is more ingratiating than a normal agent. And Skinner thinks this is because they do have feelings for each other, but neither knows how to take that long, long step toward the other and close the distance. They are both too alone, too used to being alone.
Perhaps Mulder is that soapy needle again, sliding under Skinner's fragile skin, penetrating his soul without breaking through. Maybe they are destined to float through time and space this way until the day--poof! they really die.
He thinks about the people who have influenced him. Mulder asked him about that once. The only answer he could come up with was, "people who aren't influenced by others." It's that singularity thing again, a concept that's ruled his life. What he always responds to is the unique, the anomalous. Of course both notions describe Mulder and Scully. He would give anything to know what they think of him, but it would take everything in the world to make him ask.
What he's influenced by right now, though, this very instant, is death. His own, the threat of others'. At that point, when those you care for are gone, aloneness becomes loneliness.
He rubs his neck and stares out at the sky and its canopy of blackness, sprinkled with lights, and thinks that that, indeed, is a fate worse than death.
Alex Krycek
You kill.
But you don't die. Or maybe it's that you won't.
Sometimes you think you should have. But you make your escape. Is it that you have nine lives? Or that you're here for a greater purpose, and thus indispensable? Probably not. A cog in a wheel, more likely. At times, you're not even sure why you're here or why you're doing what you're doing. It's been like that all your life, a direction set by others, one which you follow, for the most part, while sometimes going around the path. In your own way.
Certainly Mulder would like to see you dead. Scully, too. Can't blame them. You're a bringer of death to their lives. Maybe that's why you've escaped it so often, when it was so close you could feel its breath against your neck. It doesn't want you, it wants you to be the carrier.
The look that Skinner gives you now is filled with regret. He wishes he'd killed you when he had the chance; all those times and he let you slip by. His eyes are those of an honest man made to do dishonest things. Killing eyes. If he could, oh, he would.
He doesn't know that those eyes are yours, as well. That each time you look in the mirror they're staring back at you, wondering who this face belongs to, a face with such eyes.
You didn't start out this way. But you think it's long past the point where anyone but the most naive or goodhearted person would believe that. Who plans to be a killer when they grow up? A liar, a thief, a cheat... what did Mulder call you once? A scum-sucking invertebrate? Something like that. Not what a kid tells people he wants to be when he grows up. You were like anyone else, wanting to be an astronaut or a fireman. Yet even then, knowing there were other plans for you.
And how to explain that? Who would care? Would Mulder look at you and say, of course it's not your fault, and offer you forgiveness? Would Scully run her soft hand over your head, smoothing your hair, offering her benediction? Would Skinner shrug his shoulders and toss off a gruff "forget it," as though we were all just buddies?
We pass a point where there is no forgiveness. The world has built in set limits for that. We forgive certain sins--adultery, sexual indiscretions, lies--but even the most forgiving can't look away from murder, kidnapping, blackmail, and treason. Somewhere along the way you stepped over a line. You can't remember far enough back to know whether you saw that line when you moved past it.
Or, as when you committed each one of your sins, did you simply look in the other direction?
Everyone dies. At some point, Death will catch up with you. You'll stand there and feel his hand on your shoulder, a sure grip, pulling you back with him. You know there's a Hell, and that that's where he'll take you. Where else could you go?
But when you do die, will your last glimpse of this world be the three of them, standing over you, smiling in satisfaction, grinning with relief?
End
10/27/99