Title - Falling Down in Four Acts
Author - Anubis
E-Mail address - AnubisLM@aol.com
Category - SRA and E for Evil
Spoilers - through S.R. 819
Keywords - None
Summary - The backstory to Mulder's funeral.
Archive: sure.
Timeline - Inspired by S.R. 819 and other elements of season six. You
should assume that this universe is an alternate post-Tithonus branching.
No One Son/Two Fathers.
DISCLAIMER:
The X-Files, Mulder and Scully are the property of Carter et al at 1013.
No infringement is intended, no profit was made.
Ring Around the Rosy
---------------------------------------------------
Massachussetts
Steel and pistols and smoke-stained tonsils--that's what criminals are made
of. Brass and teak and mahogany chic--that's what funeral parlors are made
of. The expensive ones, anyway. The two skirted each other uneasily like
boxers in a ring fashioned from ill-gotten gold. Rockefeller versus Jesse
Ventura. Carnegie meets Rambo.
"I thought he was Jewish," Krycek remarked. He shifted his weight to the
left foot, which conjured the illusion of symmetry to his one-armed body.
His companion snorted. "He's dead," he replied. "What's it matter?"
They stood in the back of the large parlor. In these surroundings, even
the black Armani that hung off them like a second, better-cut skin couldn't
disguise the roughened toll of years spent above the law.
More people had dared to show their faces than Krycek had expected,
undoubtedly hoping to pin the tail on the donkey who'd killed their chicken
little package, their oh-so-easily-manipulated 'wayward' agent. They'd had
bigger plans for Fox Mulder, Krycek knew. They hadn't expected this.
Or at least, they expected he'd have done it himself before anybody else
could.
Council Elders and their lackeys, indisinguishable in their grey suits, sat
throughout the room, mostly near the back. "I knew Bill Mulder," they'd
probably said gruffly, if anyone asked them. It was better than Capitol
Hill on State of the Union night, and Krycek wondered if they'd
deliberately left someone back in New York like the single cabinent member.
Just in case someone thought of blowing this room sky-high.
He'd considered it. These men would kill him as soon as look at him, why
not return the favor? But oh, how much more delightful to stand in the back
of the room, to throw that cigarette-smoking bastard a wink and a smile, to
duck his head at the first elder, knowing they couldn't do a damned thing.
They'd probably think he was the man they were looking for, that he'd
killed Fox Mulder, but they'd never be able to prove it and besides, he
knew too much. Despite what the gangster flicks say, you can't kill a man
who knows too much, not if he's smart. If he's smart, he's scattered the
knowledge like seeds around the soil of the world, and his death is the
water they need to grow. Fox Mulder hadn't been very smart, but Krycek was.
His eyes panned around the room, searching the faces of the grieving and
the not-so-grieving. His gaze settled on the partner, the sidekick and
probably lover, though he'd heard rumors Mulder was a fag. He'd expected
her to be sitting with the family, next to the dead man's mother, maybe,
but she was sitting all by herself, halfway back. She wore one of the same
black suits as always, like a cartoon character or a superhero,
recognizable even though he was used to looking at them from a distance.
On surveillance. The seats to either side of her were unoccupied, as if
everyone were afraid she'd bite, or maybe she'd gotten up and moved.
When the procession of mourners and gloaters made their way past the
coffin, Krycek didn't join them, but folded his arms and leaned back to
watch. Mulder's mother, stoic and handkerchiefed, placing a single lily on
the coffin. Skinner (who hadn't seen Krycek), wiping the back of his nose
on his hand and pinching his eyesockets with thumb and forefinger. Spender
Junior trying to emulate his father's impassive stare as he gazed at the
coffin lid.
Scully got in line with the rest, though further back. Her composure was
flawless--she might have been a plastic mannequin for all the emotion she
displayed. Oh so distant, like a star, how I wonder what you are.
Krycek would've gotten in line himself, but he was too interested in
watching her. In pretending he could see inside her head, imagining it
full of anguish and imagining it full of nothing and trying to guess which
one fit better inside her red-capped skull.
When she reached the coffin, he decided on nothing and everything both.
She reached for the lid's edge and pushed up slowly, despite the fact that
the body's pretty head was gone. No one dared stop her, though the room
immediately fell silent. At the hush, she turned back to look at the room,
swivelling her gaze slowly from one corner to the other, eyes resting with
brief coolness on half-a-dozen old men as if she could ferret out a
confession with a teacher-like stare. They all looked away first, and she
turned back to the coffin.
Her back was to him; he couldn't see her face, but her shoulders didn't
move. One hand tripped along the edge of the box as she gazed down into
it, and then it crept slowly up to the back of her neck, where it was
joined by her other hand. For a second, Krycek thought she was going for
the implant, but Scully had never been a drama queen. Her porridge was
always just right.
He realized at the same time everyone else did that she had unfastened her
necklace. As she lowered it into the dark confines of the box, it
glittered and danced, casting gold shadows around the room, marking the
cheeks of the guilty. And then she closed the coffin with a soft click,
turned and strode down the aisle, right past Krycek and out of the funeral
home.
Everyone, including Mulder's mother, exchanged nervous glances.
******
Three shots of vodka and two beers hadn't been enough to shake the musty
stink of the funeral parlor, and Krycek was contemplating something
stronger. Since no one knew who or where he was, drugs might be safe.
Might.
Worth the risk anyway. He'd used up the stash he'd picked up at the
pyramid in Vegas but he knew where he could get more, erase that fucking
funeral, those dead fucking legs he'd seen peeking from the Scully-opened
coffin.
No. He was tired, and standing already in front of the latest home sweet
home, room number 563 at the Grand Franklin. A couple more shots and he'd
be sleeping like a baby on the treetop. Go with it.
As he put the key to the door handle, he felt the cool muzzle of a gun at
his neck, heard the telltale click of the safety snapping off.
Pop! goes the weasel.
"Get inside, Krycek." It was Scully. Of course it was Scully.
She shoved him in with more force than he would have expected from her tiny
stature, and then she ran her tiny hands all over his much larger body,
finding even the pistol tucked in the front of his waistband. He tried to
sigh, to pitch a joke, to act nonchalant, but there was something furious
about her that made his vodka-soaked throat too dry.
"How'd you find me?" he asked at the same time she asked "Did you enjoy it?"
He decided that as long as she had the gun it was better to answer her
questions first. "I don't know what you're talking about. If you think I
killed him, you're wrong."
"I saw the tape, Krycek," she hissed, shoving him down onto the bed, gun
still trained on the spot between his eyes. She stepped backward, into the
glare of the red neon sign outside his window. Hell could have spawned her.
She spread her feet, hopscotch-style, and continued. "You didn't know they
taped it, did you? You trusted the wrong men."
"I never trust anyone," he answered, but looking into her dark, fierce
eyes, her sunken zombie cheeks, it began to dawn on him that this was a
Scully he had never met. And that he was, at last, a dead man.
"Cops and robbers," she whispered, and it was the last voice he heard.
"Cops and robbers."
As the bullet rammed through the base of his skull, plunging him into
darkness, he felt at last an inordinate peace.
---------------------------------------------------
Georgetown
Scully crossed the threshhold of her home and her shoulders slumped. She
shed her clothes as she limped into the bathroom, leaving a breadcrumb
trail for any who dared to try to save her. But there was no prince for
this sleeping beauty, not in this flawed fairy tale.
Naked, she gave the long, thin handle in the shower an upward tug, then
slumped inside. Blood spatters stained her hands and face, her neck, but
as she stood under the hot stream, they dissolved away into the redness of
her skin. She didn't notice when her own blood began to flow, trickling
down her chin and onto the white formica surface below her feet.
_Accipite et bibite ex eo omnes_
Her legs quivered and she sank to her knees, wet tangles of hair falling
into her face. The water beat down on her spine like the judgement of God.
_Hic est enim calix sanguines mei novi et aeterni testamenti_
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.
Her breasts sagged against her belly. There was no forgiveness, no father.
Her lips found the shower handle, closed around it in a grotesque parody of
love.
_Qui pro vobis et pro multis effundetur in remissionem peccatorum_
She began to weep, and it was the first time since they'd called her. The
first time since she'd seen her partner's dead body, with the blood-soaked
towel draped over the remains of his head. She'd focused on the hands, on
those long slender fingers, because, apart from his face, they were all she
could remember of him. And his face was gone.
_Hoc facite in mean commemorationem._
As was he.
******
Skinner picked the lock when there was no answer, and when he found the
clothing on the floor, clues pointing to a lover's tryst, he feared for a
moment that there was someone he didn't know about. Was that possible?
Could she have had a man if it were not Mulder?
But she was alone in her bed, sleeping with her cheek pressed to the back
of her hand like a child's, rhythmic breaths raising and lowering the
cotton comforter. She looked so small, and like a father he reached out to
stroke one stray, damp tendril of hair back from her face. She slept on,
oblivious.
He walked back into the living room, picking up underwear and clothes as he
went. Folding them neatly, he laid them onto the kitchen table, and that's
how he saw the VHS tape lying there. Labeled "Fox Mulder," and the
handwriting wasn't Scully's.
Jesus Christ.
He glanced right and left as if there might be someone there to see him,
then swallowed hard and moved to the television. Popped in the tape.
He jumped when the volume came on high, hit the mute button fast and waited
to see if she'd heard. But the bedroom stayed silent.
His heart pounding against his chest, he pressed "play." A darkened room,
a tall, familiar figure rummaging through a box. Mulder, in silhouette,
through the grainy eye of a CCD security camera. _Look behind you,
Mulder,_ Skinner found himself thinking, as if he could through telepathy
stir the younger man to action.
But it was too late. Another figure had entered the room. Tall, muscled.
The stranger raised the gun, pointed, and just as Mulder turned, mouth open
in disbelief that his luck had finally run out, there was a flash and then
Mulder's mouth was gone. His body fell to the floor like a marionette
whose strings were cut.
Skinner had to bite the back of his hand to keep from crying out.
The figure turned, and Skinner knew that in a moment or less he'd see the
face of the murderer. Half a second stretched into minutes as the figure
turned, slowly, slowly, and then there it was. Recognizable.
Oh, God.
Skinner dropped the remote and rushed back to the bedroom, any courtesy
abandoned. Scully slept on, unaware of him, but he shook her shoulder
roughly and she came awake with a groan of protest.
"Why are--who--"
He cut her off. "Scully, where's Krycek?"
She recognized him and relaxed, dropping back into the pillows. Her eyes
slipped closed again. "He bumped his head and went to bed," she murmured,
singsong.
Skinner swallowed hard. "Scully...."
"Go away, Skinner," she ordered as she turned her head. Her voice was
muffled by the pillow.
He knew then that she'd done it.
******
She dreamt of red twirling swirling around like a lollipop, the big yellow
kind with the red or blue dyes that you buy at carnivals. As it twirled,
it dragged her toward a sucking center, a vacuum, a drain, ring around the
rosy.
A Pocket Full of Posies
---------------------------------------------------
Four months later
FBI Academy
Quantico, Virginia
Scully removed the last two pages from the laser printer and stacked them
neatly with the rest, aligning first one edge, then the other. She snapped
a plastic clip onto the pile and tucked it into a manilla envelope already
addressed to the head of pathology. Six o'clock. Time to leave.
She shut down her computer and pushed the keyboard on its rolling tray back
under the desktop, where it belonged. Replaced a pencil she'd been using
in the small cup whose sole purpose in existing was to hold pencils. She
didn't keep photos in her office, or she might have dusted them off.
She shrugged into her coat and smoothed the lapel, buttoning each button
from bottom to top, then shouldered her laptop bag and exited, snapping the
lock in the door handle on her way out. Before she left, she gave the
handle a tug to confirm it was locked.
"Hey, Dana," said a voice, and she looked up to find Rick Peterson, leaving
his own office two doors down. "How's it going?"
They were all so nice to her. So, so nice. She knew they'd heard all the
stories.
_They're all true,_ she wanted to tell them. _Every single one of them is
true. Except the ones where we were sleeping together. Not those, but all
the rest. So stay the hell out of my way._
"Fine, Rick," she answered. "How're the kids?"
He shrugged. "It's Michelle's weekend with them."
_See? Everyone has problems. Save your pity--don't waste it on me._
"You look like you could use a drink."
She stopped hard in her tracks, the proposition startling. "Maybe some
other time," she said slowly, recovering. "Some other time. I have
to--I'm meeting some....friends."
"Oh," he said, and she knew he didn't believe her. He believed the
stories. "Okay. Some other time then."
The conversation should have ended there, but for some reason she felt
compelled to add, "Nothing personal. I just think it's best to separate
work from...social activities."
"I understand," he agreed stiffly, and started walking in the other
direction. "Have a good weekend."
"You too," she said, breathing a sigh of relief. She knew what he was
thinking now, that she'd been fucking Mulder and Mulder was dead so now she
separated. Fine. Fine.
She'd parked across the campus, not in the garage. She liked to take a
long time crossing the concrete sidewalks. She'd developed a habit of
looking down when she walked, one foot in front of the other--looking ahead
was still too hard. Precision, that was the key. Step on a crack and
you'll break your mother's back.
Frohike let her in with the usual rigamarole of passwords and deadbolts.
Byers took her coat and gestured her toward the armchair she knew they'd
deliberately cleared off for her. She took the seat and they gathered
around her like lackeys to the queen.
"Do you have anything new on Hatherton?" she asked, directing the question
at Langley.
But Byers answered. "Hatherton's a dead end, Scully," he said, looking
down at his nervous, shuffling feet. "A decoy. We can't tell who he was
working for but I think someone wanted to make you think he was money. His
accounts are dummies, and he drives a Honda Civic."
Scully's brow furrowed and she folded her hands in her lap. "That's all
you've got? I pulled that name out of Rex Kowlowski four days before he
died. He had to have been leaking something or he wouldn't be dead."
Frohike folded his arms over his chest. "Or they thought he was. Or even
wanted you to think he was. You know how they do things."
"Of course I do," she snapped, and felt immediately sorry when Frohike's
jaw tightened. "Okay," she said. "Okay. It'sjust been a long day. And I
don't have forever."
Simultaneously, the three men looked away--Byers at his feet, Langley at
Frohike, Frohike at the door.
She continued without acknowledging their discomfort. "Can you tell me
what else you've got on him?"
"There may be one thing," Langley said, meeting her eyes again, but the
hesitation in his voice made it clear that this was a source of
disagreement. "Something your inside source might be able to clear up for
us."
"I can't use him for everything," she said. "He's in danger too."
But she took the list of numbers from Langley anyway, as well as the pile
of papers which Byers insisted concerned one of Strughold's aliases, and
could eventually lead her to the elusive German himself. But they'd had
such leads before, and she'd used up her lifetime allotment of optimism.
Because she'd promised to last week, she stopped off at her mother's, even
though it was so late that Matthew would surely be sleeping, and Tara and
Bill were leaving in the morning. The new parents, blinded by yuppiehood,
hugged and kissed her like good siblings, and Bill even asked her how she
was holding up, clapping her on the shoulder like a fellow sailor. He was
a good brother, even if he was secretly glad that her partner couldn't drag
her into danger anymore.
Not that she wasn't doing quite well on that front by herself, but he
didn't need to know that.
Scully let the other three talk and they left her alone because she took
her nephew in her arms and sat with him beside the window. It made them
think, she knew, that she was reflecting, treasuring the new life, resting
peaceful. Matthew, ever oblivious to ulterior motive, curled up against
her breast and slept, his yearling cheeks sucking at a nonexistant nipple,
eyes rolling lazily behind closed lids. He was like a hot little sandbag
in her arms, a liveweight demanding simultaneous disinterest and love
beyond reason.
"They'll have to shut down part of the base," Bill was saying to their
mother. "We may be relocated."
Stupid, stupid Bill with his trivial concerns. If only he knew the sky was
falling.
"Oh, my," said her mother.
Scully stared out the window at the grey evening light, at the frothy
clouds behind the house across the street. A cherry tree grew in the front
lawn and she remembered her father planting it, wanted suddenly to chop it
down and take it with her back to New England. Oh, my.
Here was her mother's hand on her arm, big brown eyes and lined face
demanding attention. "How are you doing, Dana?" she asked.
"I'm fine, Mom," she said, just like always.
"It's so hard, honey," her mother said. "I know it's so hard.
Please--talking about it makes it easier."
Scully didn't want to think about her Little Boy Blue. Certainly, she
didn't want to try to explain it to her mother. _Oh, Matthew, if only you
knew what sins these hands of mine...._
"Dana, he's gone," Maggie said. "The problem is, I think you've followed
him."
Scully sighed, turned her face back to the window, considering that.
"Well," she said after a humorless pause. "That's my job, I guess. He's
Jack, I'm Jill."
"Dana," Margaret said, firm and motherly. "He's _dead._"
"Whatever," Scully replied.
Margaret pursed her lips together and her fingers tightened on the arm of
Scully's chair. Scully didn't turn, an unequivocal dismissal.
***
She spent the night on her mother's couch: Bill and Tara already had the
guest room. She dreamed again of the last words she'd said to him, over,
of all pathetic things, a cell phone.
"Weather's supposed to be chilly," she'd said.
"Yeah," he'd replied. "I'll meet you at the airport."
"Thanks," she'd said, and then, without thinking, "Bye."
He hadn't shown up at the airport and the police called her cell phone
while she was in the taxi. Was it her fault? Had she tempted fate with the
careless use of that word they never said?
In her dream, she woke and he was sitting beside her on the couch, cramping
her ankles against the cushions with his hip. "It's chilly out," he said.
"Mulder," she breathed, because she didn't feel like she was dreaming.
"You should dress warmer," he told her. "I failed, you know. I'm sorry."
"No," she said. "No, you didn't, it was me, I should have made you wait
for me, I shouldn't have let you go in there alone I shouldn't have hurt it
I should have gone myself-"
But there was no one there. The living room was silent and empty but for
her own heartbeat.
She felt the tickle beneath her nose before the flow got too strong, and
made it to the bathroom without damaging the couch. After the bleeding
stopped, she cleaned her face and dressed, wrote a note to her family and
left before they woke.
Nine, ten, do it again.
She kept the list the Lone Gunmen had given her crumpled in her hand
against the steering wheel like a talisman. A pocket full of posies.
Ashes, Ashes
---------------------------------------------------
One Week Later
Mannassus
"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned."
Scully was almost out of priests. She tried hard never to go to the same
one twice, and so she'd had to fan out across the greater D.C. area,
sometimes even venturing all the way to Baltimore just for confession. She
hoped they never compared notes.
Today wasn't as bad as the days when she had to speak of murder and endure
the turmoil of the frightened priest. Today was simpler.
"I am guilty of blackmail, Father. I have gathered the secrets of a man to
make him tell me more secrets."
"For what purpose?" the priest asked. He didn't understand yet, of course.
Didn't understand the necessity of some evil.
By the time she'd done explaining he was insisting she come to his office
for counselling, demanding promises that she stop. She had to leave
quickly, to say however many Hail Marys she could squeeze into the car trip
on her way back to D.C. It wasn't exactly peace with God but God would
understand. And if He didn't, well, there were more important things. She
would sort that out with God later.
After another slow and precise day at Quantico she picked up the latest
from the boys, which confirmed what she'd already suspected. Hatherton's
killer had been Yeats, and now he'd have to die too.
end of (1/2)
Falling Down in Four Acts by Anubis
Part 2 of 2
Georgetown
Skinner was smoking a cigarette out on the balcony watching the sun set
beyond the buildings that blocked his potential view of the Potomac. The
days were getting longer again. Unfortunate, that. He preferred to sleep.
He took a long drag on the cancer stick and pressed his cold toes into the
balcony floor. It was so fucking cold out he couldn't tell his breath from
the smoke. Everything, these days. Everything felt cold.
He jumped when he heard the machine gun knock that could only be Scully.
He wasn't ready for her, not tonight. He hadn't prepared. His fingers
tightened on the cold railing and he waited until she knocked a second time
before he dropped the cigarette onto the frozen concrete and went,
resigned, to answer. She'd pick the lock otherwise, and if she found him
here she'd be angry.
He hated it when she was angry.
She blew in like a wind and folded herself into a seat, as usual. She was
dwarfed by the chair she chose, making her look deceptively like
Goldilocks. Her voice betrayed her, though--dry and serious, a contralto
scalpel dissecting issues he didn't care to think about, mincing names he
knew but didn't want to hear.
It took him ten minutes to understand that she wanted him to do it.
"We have enough now," she repeated. "Enough to nail that smoking bastard
to the Whitehouse wall. That's how far this goes. Yeats is the only
thing, the only one in a position to protect him. They'll give him up if
Yeats is dead, and Yeats gave the order to have Hatherton killed."
Skinner sighed, sinking into the chair across from her. "Who was Hatherton
again?" he asked, weary and a little frightened, Jack-be-nimbled.
She gave him a severe frown. "Skinner," she said, like a teacher. "You
know exactly what I'm talking about. We need Yeats out of the way. My
position's compromised-I don't have access. But you know people. You can
make the alibi I can't."
She wanted him to kill this man. Of course she did. He should've known it
would come to this. Jack be quick.
Jesus, God, he was tired.
"Why, Scully?" he asked, rubbing his forehead. "Can't you just let it go?
Why do you have to keep shaking the Tree of Good and Evil?"
She smiled--a stunningly beautiful smile--but her eyes darkened. "Because
I've got a thing for apples."
The image of a grinning wolf superimposed itself over her elegant features
in Skinner's mind and he looked away, wishing for a moment he could put
Scully in a pumpkin shell.
She leaned forward and put her hand on his knee. When he looked back at
her, her face was a mask of concern. "Walter," she said, quieter now. "I
don't mean to scare you. But don't you see? We have to bring them down.
No one else will. Look what they did to you! Krycek had his fist around
your balls, he would've killed you as soon as blink. How can you be so
complacent?"
He looked away; his eyes fell onto the magazine on the coffee table. When
did he start getting _Business Week?_ He couldn't remember.
"It doesn't matter," he croaked. "It doesn't even matter what they did to
me. You--"
Her intensity unshaken by the trembling in his fingers, she squeezed his
knee. "Then do it for me," she urged. "You owe it to me, Walter. You owe
it to him."
Oh, yes, _him._
She didn't mean what she was saying--he knew that. She had become as adept
and devious a manipulator as...well, as _Krycek._ But he looked into her
eyes, where he'd always imagined he could read her depth from the blueness,
and saw no trace of deception. Only earnest intensity. Only Dana Scully,
whom he admired, respected, pitied. Loved.
She was right, even if she thought she was lying. He did owe it to her,
and to Mulder.
Her slippery hand was tripping up his knee, along his thigh, and despite
himself the blood rushed to his groin. She saw the lump in his pants and
slid forward, onto the floor, stroked her hand over his hardening crotch.
He hissed; it was almost like pain. "Scully," he chided, removing her
hand. But she was slithering up him now like a drop of water on glass,
easing herself onto his lap by the force of surface tension alone. Her
palm lay flat against his chest like hot iron, like a brand, and as her
lips captured his he found he couldn't resist her.
He never could. Scully was quantum, Scully was gravity, Scully was mass
and acceleration rolled into one.
She might as well have her finger on the same button Krycek had. He
thought this only after she slept, her naked limbs woven between his like
something more innocent than the devil. Like trust.
But she could kill him too.
****
Scully woke in the middle of the night to find herself alone in the big
bed. Skinner was probably out on the balcony, smoking a cigarette again.
He thought she didn't know about his secret habit, but she tasted it on his
breath every time she kissed him. He'd started it just after Mulder died.
Not died. Was killed.
"It wasn't your fault," Skinner had told her, and that's why she'd kissed
him. Why the first time, anyway. For knowing, recognizing, why Mulder had
gone back into the DOD.
It was nice of him to lie to her.
She touched again the scar on the back of her neck, its jack knife edges
and still-swollen cords. She heard her father's voice in her head: "Don't
pick at it, honey." Remembered the scabs on her knees and elbows, she'd
always been a tomboy. She should have listened to Daddy.
Skinner'd helped her through the first round of chemo, his heavy hands
holding her head over the bucket that received the offerings of her ravaged
stomach. He'd picked her hairs, the color of dried blood, off her pillow
when he thought she wasn't looking. He'd cradled her when her own cells
gave up on her, surrendered to the brutal, primitive drugs.
Such was the worldly treatment for an otherworldly disease. Then, her body
wracked with pain and her rebellious innards refusing all nutrition, then
was the only time she hadn't wished for Mulder back, because then she was
getting what she deserved.
When Skinner didn't come back to bed, she decided it was time to end his
silly little game of hide and seek. It was only nicotine, after all. It
only gave you cancer.
She buttoned one of his white starched shirts around her middle. She liked
the way it dropped below her knees, the teenage nightshirt feel of it. It
reminded her of her father.
The living room was dark and she couldn't see the telltale red spark on the
balcony, but a jack-o-lantern flame flickered from beyond the kitchen door.
What was he doing, writing by candlelight?
She tiptoed into the kitchen, hoping to surprise him, but he wasn't there
and all that was left was the single candle, tall and cornflower blue. She
hadn't pegged Skinner for a candle man.
Below the candle, though, was a note crumpled like tissue, and at the sight
of it her bowels twisted. She lifted it with trepidation, straightened it
and drew it close to her eyes.
*
Scully,
You're right. I do owe you. But I've never been
good at doing the right thing. You're better than
this, but I'm not. I killed Mulder, because Krycek
had his fist around my balls.
-Skinner.
*
Scully heard Krycek's voice pounding against her brain, just before she'd
blown away his. _I wasn't even there!_ (Bang, bang, you're dead, fifty
bullets in your head.)
Skinner. Skinner had been there. Mulder's body, slumped on the ground,
Mulder's blood, Krycek's blood. Melissa's blood. Christ's blood, and now
Skinner's. Bang, bang.
Skinner's face, his eyes glazed and the muscles of his neck straining,
teeth bared like an animal's as he pounded into her and she had felt
nothing, nothing, nothing. Nothing but the nothing she felt now.
Mulder had been walking, leaning over the shelf, looking for her name.
She'd seen the tape! He starts to turn and then there's the figure, bang!,
Mulder's dead, the killer--and then she saw how it could be. Krycek's face
had only been a blur, a few seconds of damning tape. Whose body supported
that face? A wider one, a broad-shouldered one, a profile she knew as well
as her own.
The paper fell from her hand, its corner catching the edge of the candle
flame and curling inward. Scully swallowed as she watched it burn.
Had Krycek put him up to it? Had Skinner acted on his own? Had--
She slammed her hand into the table and smeared the ashes across its
formica surface. They had lied to her.
Skinner had lied to her.
Scully turned in a slow half-circle, was propelled back to the balcony on
unwilling feet. Her lover lay crumpled like the note he'd written, the
blood still flowing hot and slick. Someone must have heard the shot,
someone must have called, and the police would come soon. Far below, the
noises of morning traffic chugged to life, and she thought she heard a
not-so-distant siren.
Scully reached down beside what had been Skinner's head, gently pried the
bloody weapon from the limp fingers. She wrapped both hands around the
weapon's base in a grip both tender and tight, then bent her head over it
as she would an erect penis. Opened her mouth wide, relaxed her throat,
prepared to see how deep she could go.
But the first touch of metal on her tongue reminded her of the coppery
blood which still coated the weapon, and, repulsed, she pulled back,
spitting. There were better ways to go about this.
She brought the gun to her temple and clicked off the safety.
"Scully," Mulder said.
She closed her eyes, gritted her teeth. He wasn't real.
"Scully, don't," he insisted, and it sounded like he was right behind her.
She heard a bizarre keening noise and realized to her shame that it was
coming from her own lips.
"I'm sorry, Scully," Mulder continued, his voice so gentle. "I'm sorry I
ditched you this time."
Unable to help herself, she spun around, and there he was, standing in the
doorway to the balcony. He wore just a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and she
suddenly remembered she was wearing nothing but Skinner's thin shirt, but
couldn't seem to move to cover herself.
"I'm going insane," she breathed, her voice wavering.
Mulder nodded gently. "Yes."
She shook her head back and forth, slowly, never letting her eyes leave his
face.
"Mulder," she whispered, at a loss for any other words. "I miss you so much."
He stepped forward, reached out to touch her cheek and she gasped, for his
fingers were just as warm and smooth as she remembered them. "I know," he
answered. "I know."
"Skinner--" she began, but couldn't finish, only gestured wordlessly to
their feet, where his body lay.
Mulder's hand slid down to her shoulder, inside the enormous shirt, his
thumb making tiny caresses against her skin. He didn't answer her.
Scully's eyes brimmed with tears. "You're just in my head," she accused.
"Who you trying to convince?" he asked. A faint, familiar grin played
about his lips.
Scully dropped her eyes and shuddered, and Mulder stepped closer, pulling
her into his arms. One hand crept up to her hair, the other traced broad
circles over her back, and at last she started to cry. The gun dropped
from her hand onto the ground.
"Shhhhh," Mulder soothed, rocking slowly back and forth. "Shhhhh, Scully,
we don't have much time."
"I don't know what to do!" she whispered, open-mouthed against his shirt,
and this confession was larger than any she'd ever made.
"You'll figure it out," Mulder assured her. "You always do."
"Mulder, I didn't even figure out who killed you. I didn't--"
"Shhhhh," he insisted, pressing her closer. He felt so warm, so solid, so
real--he even smelled like she remembered Mulder smelling. She squeezed
her eyes shut and heard even the steady pounding of his heart.
Too soon, though, there was a loud pounding at the door, a loud policeman's
voice. "Open up in there!"
Mulder pulled back then, looked down at her with familiar hazel eyes.
"I don't want you to go," Scully breathed.
"I'm only in your head anyway," he assured her. He stooped down, and just
before he kissed her cheek he added, "Your head's not going anywhere."
She felt the cool pressure of his lips, the warm, firm grip of his hands on
her shoulders, a ghost kissing a crazy woman over her lover's dead body,
and then he was gone--she was alone with the pounding on the front door.
We All Fall Down
---------------------------------------------------
Another funeral. At least there weren't many left for Scully. Little Bo
Peep had lost her sheep but she knew exactly where to find them.
She thought of her necklace, six feet below the rough New England soil.
In this churchyard was a playground, and there she saw two little boys,
playing on a swing. The older pushed the younger, back and forth, back and
forth, and the younger tried to pump his legs in rhythm but couldn't get it
straight. His legs went out when the swing was at its lowest, went in at
the same place next time around, an unfaithful pendulum.
Children at play, innocent of the evil surrounding them, innocent of death.
They didn't know that the man inside the church was Walter Sergei Skinner;
they didn't know what that meant, to be Walter Sergei Skinner. The man who
killed men.
They didn't know what it meant to be Dana Scully, the woman who did the same.
_It's so easy,_ she thought. _So easy when you're young and the world is a
safe place. The nasty secrets of adults, the greed and power which beget
only more greed and power and never bring satisfaction or happiness--how do
we come to be trapped in this infinite loop when we know it's so simple to
break?_
She shook her head, turning away from the example of the children and
starting toward the church doors like all the other government-issue suits.
She was halfway there when her nose began to bleed again.
"Shit," she muttered, stopping and turning away from the door. She pulled
a handkerchief from her coat pocket, tried to cover up her nostrils.
Second round of chemo was in two weeks.
She saw him a moment later and her eyes narrowed. She hated in that moment
the cancer more than ever, hated how it prevented her from looking at all
menacing.
But he was only smiling at her around his Morley, smiling that placid,
flaccid smile he always smiled, and she wondered if she drew her gun now
whether God would forgive that too. Then she wondered if she cared.
"Agent Scully," the cigarette-smoking man said, closing the distance
between them. "I didn't expect to see you here."
Scully kept the handkerchief at her nose. "I don't see why not," she said
around its mass. "He was my friend."
"Or so you believed," the man said, still smiling.
"Fuck you," snarled Scully, surprising even herself.
"Perhaps we could make an arrangement," the smoking man suggested, offering
her a clean handkerchief. "Kill two birds with one stone, so to speak."
Scully didn't reach for the new tissue, but before she could respond, she
heard a child start to scream. They both turned toward the small
playground.
The older boy had pushed the younger boy straight off the swing and was
laughing now, saying something, taunting. All Scully heard was "baby."
The younger boy was kneeling on the dust in front of the still-rocking
swing, crying.
The smoking man leveled his innocous smile again at Scully and nodded.
"Consider the offer, Agent Scully. Consider the offer."
Scully turned on her heel and walked away, but she knew we all fall down.
Epilogue
---------------------------------------------------
Agent Jeremy Drake had always been a good judge of people, and he'd known
from the moment he met her that she was not someone he could trust, but
that she could give him answers. Would give him answers.
But he didn't know why.
Still, he was onto something here, something big. His stomach rumbled with
anxiety but he had the green assurance of a gun in his holster, a badge in
his pocket. He was going to nail the truth to the steps of Capitol Hill.
They met in the Watergate parking garage, just like always. She'd
signalled him that afternoon, by turning down the picture of his wife on
his desk. As always, he could barely see her above the trenchcoat that hid
all traces of a figure he suspected to be withered. She was old, he
guessed, but not as old as she looked.
"Here," she said, handing him a manilla envelope. "This is a case you'll
want to open."
He took the envelope between two cautious fingers. "I'm working on
something else right now," he told her.
"Well, you'll want to work on this," she said with a shrug. "The answer is
in the cards, and if you keep looking up you'll see what you're looking
for. Unless you trip, of course."
Drake frowned. He disliked her games. "Can I open it now?"
"No. Wait until I'm gone."
He heaved a sigh. "Why?" he asked. "If it's so dangerous, why are you
doing this? Why are you helping me?"
She leaned in close enough for him to smell her breath. "Because I used to
be you," she hissed, then gave a small self-deprecatory laugh and added,
"More or less."
Drake rolled his eyes. This routine was getting old and he'd risked his
life more than once. What was she risking, anyway? "You think these
cryptic 'clues' are helpful?" he demanded. "What the hell am I supposed to
do with this?"
"Think of it like a hockey game," she suggested with a twisted smile.
"What, I have to slip one past the goalie?"
"No," she answered, firm and cold. "You're not a player. You're the puck."
She turned on her heel to leave.
Drake's hand snapped out and clamped around her arm, spinning her back
around. "What the fuck does that mean?" he hissed. "Don't you walk away
from me. I'm not your pawn."
She blinked, slow and menacing like a cat. "No," she agreed. "You're not.
Chess analogies are wholly inappropriate."
She clasped her hand over his, and for a second he thought she meant to
comfort him, to confirm some sense of union he didn't feel, but then she
was lifting his hand, pushing it back into his own territory. Her grip
burned like hot steel, an electric claw.
Drake had always been a good judge of people. As he watched her walk away
from him, he saw in the line of her figure a woman who had withstood
plagues far darker than he could imagine. Why, then, was he following her?
End
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