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Disclaimer: I didn't do it. OK, I did. I stole them. Mulder and Scully, and Co. belong to Fox, Chris Carter and 1013, not me.
Summary: Basically, this is my conclusion to "Gethsemane." I think that about covers summary. Spoilers, of course.
Yay! Three cheers for my shortest author's note ever!
"After the Cock Crows"
K. Judson (Katiefrog@aol.com)
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"...All ye shall be offended becaue of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered. But after I am risen, I
will go before you into Galilee. But Peter said unto him, Although all shall be offended, yet will not I. And Jesus saith unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this day, before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice. "
--Mark, 14:27-30
"'Great God! but for one single instant show thyself,'" cried Starbuck: 'never,
never wilt thou capture him, old man--In Jesus' name no more of this, that's
worse than devil's madness. Two days chased; twice stove to splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from under thee; thy evil shadow gone--all good angels mobbing thee with warnings:--what more wouldst thou have? Shall we keep chasing this murderous fish till he swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the sea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh, oh, impiety and blasphemy, to hunt him more!'"
--Starbuck, from _Moby Dick_, by Herman Melville
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Scully felt like a dog with her tail between her legs, sneaking out of the
Hoover Building. It was a feeling she had never relished, a feeling she would
go to great lengths to avoid. It was the sole reason she declined to "make her
peace with God," as Father McHugh had suggested. This particular feeling,
however, was worse than anything else. She was a liar. A liar. Dana Scully,
with her bright, scientific mind, devoted to truth and justice, had just lied
like a rug. And the worst part was that she felt no remorse. None at all.
She had been put in a truly difficult position, a position where she could lie
to cover her own ass, or lie to cover someone else's. She could lie to a power
she once held in unmistakable awe or she could lie and break one simple heart.
Maybe her brother had been right, for it was the breaking of that one heart
that scared her the most. As the scenario had unfolded, she realized that there was no question. Strangely enough, it seemed that in order to save Mulder, it was necessary to betray him.
Sitting in that conference room had been like sitting in a pressure cooker.
Despite her cool demeanor, Scully had been sweating like crazy. It was all she
could do not to squirm in her chair or leap up and stick to the ceiling in
sheer nervousness. She'd ducked out as soon as she had been dismissed, walking
briskly so as to avoid being called back or asked one more question about her
ex-partner. The facade had held, even then. Dana Scully was carved in perfect
alabaster, but for a metastasizing tumor that pulsed angrily under the pure,
white surface. And only she felt the red pulse of life being tugged out of her.
In the car, all alone, Scully felt herself unravelling. She made it through the
dreaded traffic circle. She pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store
and came unglued. Her knees shook wildly and she shuddered over and over again. She clutched the steering wheel and held it. Her knuckles turned white. After a few minutes of labored breathing, she took her phone off the seat next to her. She dialed a number and waited.
"Hello?" a voice answered.
"It's me. It's Scully."
"Agent Scully. We were waiting for you to call." Scully could hear a tussle in
the background, accompanied by a muffled, "It's Scully? Let me talk to her." She could imagine Byers holding the reciever aloft, admonishing his cohorts with a glare.
"Have you heard from him?" she asked, effectively bringing an end to the
argument. Langly must have emerged victorious from the phone-battle, as it was
he who answered her.
"Not yet, Scully. I'm sorry."
Scully took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She heard a click as an extension was picked up. "That doesn't mean something's wrong," Frohike assured her.
"Still, we have no assurances that Mulder is alive." She refused to be too
optimistic. She heard Byers make a loud noise of annoyance in the background. He had something to add. There was a scuffling. Scully heard Frohike say, "No!
Get the other one!"
"The other extention doesn't work," said Byers. More scuffling.
"Agent Scully," said Byers, "We recieved a letter from Mulder by courier. He
wasn't sure he should send it to your house, so he forwarded it to our office."
"What is it?" she asked. There was a click as a third extension was picked up.
"Byers, you liar," said Frohike, "This one works just fine." They started to
argue. Scully cleared her throat. They didn't catch on.
"The letter," she reminded them.
"We didn't look," Langly assured her. Of course not, she thought sarcastically.
"It's not a bomb," offered Frohike.
"But we didn't look at it beyond that," Byers cut in. "We wouldn't do that to
you, Scully." In an odd sort of way, Scully supposed that she was flattered.
"It's from a Marita Cor...uh...Corv," Frohike was struggling with the name.
"Marita Covarrubias," Byers interjected with just a hint of self-satisfaction.
"From the UN," said Langly.
"I'll be there in ten minutes," Scully said, clicking her phone off before she
had to listen to more of the Gunmens' headache-inducing banter. She was already in a pretty foul mood.
***************************************************************
They handed her the letter almost immediately after she entered the small
office. There were none of the usual jests or wacked-out theories. This was serious. They made a pretense of going back to their various tasks and allowing Scully some privacy, but she was aware of them at all times. They were surrepititiously watching her at every turn. She scanned a handwritten note from Mulder, put it in her pocket, and slipped the plane ticket to New York in her briefcase. Then, she turned to the Gunmen.
"Mulder wants me to meet him in New York," she said quietly. The three men
perked up. "I don't know why; he won't say in his note, but I'm going. I have
to go." Part of her had just had it. Part of her wanted to ignore him, run away from him and never look back. In for a penny, in for a pound, she told herself, not quite sure when the "penny" started or where the "pound" stopped. "Thank you very much for this letter," she told Mulder's friends.
"Scully, call us when you get there. Tell us if you find Mulder." Frohike
looked at the ground. "We...we want to make sure you both are safe."
"Frohike," said Scully, "I have a feeling Mulder and I are a long way from safe."
Byers, usually so reserved and mellow, looked through her with piercing blue
eyes. "Scully, you told them he was dead, didn't you?"
She didn't answer.
"They found a body in Mulder's apartment and you misidentified it, didn't you?
You told them it was Mulder so he could continue his search." Byers was growing more and more excited and all three men were smiling at her, practically applauding her decision. Her decision to betray her government was looking less and less dire. She nodded slowly.
"So who was it, Scully?" asked Langly. "Who died in Mulder's apartment?"
Scully shook her head. "There are some things even I don't know, Langly." She let herself out, every step of the way hating what a liar she had become.
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Scully came up the subway stairs and squinted slightly in the grainy sunlight
before she thought to put on her sunglasses. She walked to the rendezvous point, cutting through a crowd that waited to get on a tour boat. They flocked
to the Statue of Liberty, even on a hazy day in March. The weather didn't
matter to Scully. It wouldn't have mattered either way. The cold beauty of the
lady in the harbor couldn't hold the intrigue it once had for Scully. She
suspected it never would again.
She was at South Street Seaport before Mulder. She leaned over the railing,
trying to catch the scent of salt through the pollution. She was unsuccessful.
Scully wondered if she would ever be able to have faith in anything after this. Neither God nor her country was too interested in her now, it seemed. She'd been pinning all of her hopes on Mulder, and he was ten minutes late...
Scully tied the black belt tighter around her trench coat. The wind whipped at
her hair. She closed her eyes, afraid to cry, for she had found that there were always more tears in her than she thought, and once she started to cry it was difficult to stop, and once she stopped, she was left with a feeling of emptiness because she didn't even have her sorrows to hang on to. Scully was
beginning to wonder if her sorrows were all she had left.
Just as her swift mind clamped down on that most distressing thought, someone
spoke up behind her. "Nice trench coat, Scully. Very covert. You blend in like
a flukeman in a toilet." Scully lifted her eyes heavenward. If God was
listening, if there was a God, she thanked him with all her heart. She turned
around, smiling hugely. Mulder had put her through Hell, he was late, she was
nervous and upset and a million other things all at once, but she was still
thrilled to see him. Nonetheless, Scully set her feelings aside again and
launched right into the question that had been nagging at her for days.
"Did you kill Kritchcau, Mulder?"
"No, Scully. Why would I?"
"Because you thought he was a liar? Because he threatened everything you believe in?"
Mulder looked at her with surprised eyes. "Would I do that, Scully? Do you
think I would kill someone because he posed a threat to my beliefs? Does that
sound like me?"
"Did you?" she asked again. The Fox Mulder she knew wouldn't do such a thing,
but lately, she didn't seem to know Fox Mulder very well.
"No." He didn't yell at her, he just sounded hurt, so he must have understood
how alienated she felt. She wished he would keep the hurt out of his voice.
Keeping her tears at bay was difficult enough without it.
"Come on, Scully," he continued, "Kritchcau was one of the most promising leads
I'd had in a long time. If I could prove that he was lying, or even that he
wasn't, maybe I could have uncovered the truth about my sister or more
importantly, your cancer."
Scully stood and looked at him intently, sizing him up, analyzing him. Then,
satisfied, she suddenly reached out to him and hugged him, hard. "We thought you were dead," she said, after a long silence had passed.
"You lose," said Mulder, "I'm not."
"Mulder," snapped Scully, "Shut up. I was worried sick. I did what we
discussed. I went to a meeting; I talked to Blevins and the others, told them
the X-Files were worthless, told them you were dead. They've closed the X-Files. I've been reassigned."
"It's what you wanted."
"Mulder, will you quit being an idiot? If you're referring to when I said I
didn't want to go to the Yukon, I was upset then, and I didn't want to follow
you on what I thought was a snipe hunt. I *never* said I wanted the X-Files
closed down. When we discussed your disappearance, I said I thought it would
be safer. If I kept working on the X-Files, they'd keep watching me and they'd
know your whereabouts. I didn't want the X-Files to close down, but I didn't
want you to run away from me either. Funny how we don't get what we want and
get what we don't want.
"Don't think you'll be safe forever, Mulder. They'll figure out the body was
Kritchcau's very soon, if they haven't already, and then they'll be looking
for you."
"They won't find me," said Mulder, turning away from her.
"Where are you going?" she asked gently, wishing none of this had ever
happened, wishing they were back in their office and arguing over something petty, like whose turn it was to buy lunch. Scully looked out over the rail,
aware that they were not back in their office and probably never would be again.
"I don't know where I'm going," said Mulder after a moment of consideration. "I
don't have a coherent plan yet. I know I want to get to the bottom of it all.
I want to know who killed those men. I want to know if Kritchcau was lying. I
want to help you, Scully. I want to help you in any way that I can."
"Don't make promises you can't keep, Mulder."
"Scully, I'll keep it. I'll do anything to keep it."
"Mulder, please. You once told me you trusted me, that you'd stick by me, and
here you go, running off without me again."
Mulder's jaw dropped. "Scully, don't you understand? I did this for--I wanted
you to be--"
"Mulder, please stop." Her voice was as level as gunfire, and no less lethal.
She bore no malice in her tone, and yet every word twisted in Mulder's soul
like a dagger. "You drew yourself out of the living world. I have to stay in it as long as I can. It's not fair to those who I love and who love me. My mother, my brothers, they're worried sick. I can't keep running away from them the same way you keep running away from me. It was your decision, Mulder. The last steps you took, the last plans you formulated, you did those things on your own. Or with Marita Covarrubias, whoever she is, not that it matters. What matters is that you chose, and now I have to choose for myself. No, not even for myself, for my family. That is where my loyalties lie, and you have made it clear where yours are. Hold on to your cause, Mulder. I respect and admire your tenacity. I respect and admire you. I always will."
"Scully," Mulder sputtered, "I wanted you to be safe. That was all. I wanted you to be safe."
"I know. I offered you a great deal of help, a great many opportunities,
friendship, perhaps. If I thought I could, I'd continue to work with you, but
Mulder, I can't."
"But why?" he asked so plaintively that she smiled.
"Because it's just not fair."
"To whom?"
"To either of us," she replied, but he knew what she meant: to me. Of course it
wasn't fair to her. She got the raw end of the deal. She was dying. But Mulder
really couldn't help his selfish desire for her company, for her help, for her
friendship. Perhaps his last decision had been rash. He'd take it all back, if
he could. If it meant he had to march up to a member of the shadow government
and throw himself at their mercy forever, he'd do it, just to see her safe. It
was then that Mulder realized what he had done. His cause might have been, and
might still be, the reason for her death, but his leaving her was the most
bitter of all, because she could feel it. She could know he was gone and feel
more pain from the emptiness than the disease that threatened to claim her life.
It wasn't that Mulder was God's Gift to Women, or even God's Gift to Scully. It
was simply that Mulder understood Scully quite well, in some respects. They
experienced the same things. Their interpretations of those things were more
different than night and day, but their shared experiences lent them fleeting
glimpses into the psyche of the other. These glimpses allowed them compassion
and understanding for one another, and after all, what do humans want more than to be understood? It was simple as birth, and Scully, who never had trouble connecting the dots, was letting it elude her. She wasn't even facing him anymore. She had turned to the ocean, and stood, staring out into the horizon. The wind whipped her coat, and tossed her hair in her face. She swiped at it impassively, squinting into the grayness.
"And it's not even there," she mumbled.
"What isn't?" he asked, barely aware of what she had said, taking her
mannerisms and shapes into his mind, aware that there was limited time for the
two of them.
"The horizon. It isn't there. It's just an imaginary line. The ocean and the sky never meet."
"Maybe they do."
"They don't, Mulder. They never will. The sky will go on, and so will the sea,
belonging to separate worlds. They'll never meet, and they'll never know the
difference."
"But I will." Mulder's focus changed from the imaginary gray line to the
striking redness of Scully's trademark hair.
"Excuse me?" She turned to face him.
"Will we ever meet, Scully?"
"Perhaps. I hope so."
"But you don't think so. Think is different from hope."
"I hope, Mulder." Her voice trailed off as a group of tourists shuffled by,
determined to see the sights despite the dreary weather. It began to drizzle.
It was not enough to soak, but enough to be annoying and make Scully wish for
her warm hotel room.
"Scully, you could just stay."
"Mulder..."
"Scully, with me. Please come back with me."
"Mulder, I can't. It wouldn't be..."
"Scully, I love you." The group of damp tourists looked towards them,
horrendously out of place in their plastic coats stenciled with the words "New
York City". Those words are strong enough to make anyone look up. Except Scully. She wouldn't. Her eyes fixed to her shoes, and she thought about how the suede might be ruined if it got too wet.
"Mulder, please, I have to go."
"Scully, didn't you hear me?"
"Yes, Mulder, but I have to..."
"I love you, Scully." He sounded very, very sure.
"I'm sure you mean that, Mulder, and maybe I knew it all along. It's not the
point now. I have a family that needs some answers and you have demons that
demand them. You made the decision, Mulder, not me. You wanted me to cover for
your staged death and I did. But it's over now. Everything has its season and
all things must come to an end. I leave you to your quest and I'll go to mine,
no matter how much it breaks--." She sniffled once and then twice. Mulder,
recognizing the signs, fumbled in his pockets for a handkerchief and held it
out to her. She took it in her limp hand, not knowing quite what to do, and
then thrust it back in his direction. As the blood burst forth from her nose,
she tried to stem the spillage with the back of her hand. The effort was futile. Mulder tried to bring the cloth, still in her hand, up to her face. She shook her head. "I don't want to wreck it," she said. The blood ran in a trickle down her lip and over the hand that was still pressed to her face.
"Oh, for Christ's sake, Scully." Mulder ripped the handkerchief from her grasp
and pressed it to her nose. "Lean forward and pinch your nose, or it won't stop."
"Mulder, it will never stop."
"Scully..." His voice was breaking. He took her arm and led her, holding the
cloth to her face, down the sidewalk and away from the prying eyes of the
slicker-clad tourists.
He held her close as they walked, aware that they might never share such
closeness again, and yet still hoping that something could be done to dissuade
her. Mulder knew Scully, though. Her mind was made up. She was probably right.
He could think of no reason to drag his faithful Starbuck on his crazy Ahab's
quest other than the fact that he loved her. Loved her to death was more like it, he told himself. After all, Starbuck died on the quest for the white whale, a creature as elusive as truth. Mulder would move mountains to keep Scully alive. It was just going to be that much harder without Scully to catch the boulders as they tumbled for his head. But maybe they would live, he thought, both of them. Perhaps they could live to see one another again. And in a different place, at a different time, he could make her understand what she had been to him for all those years. Or maybe that was simply an unattainable horizon, too.
Her eyes glistened as she looked up to him. "I wish it didn't have to end like
this," she said shakily.
"It doesn't," he told her, just as shakily.
"It does for now," she replied, and hailed a cab, leaving him alone on the
sidewalk as the rain started to pour down.
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~The End~
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