"Sober" by Tool, from Undertow

The glass reflects scattered shards of light, bouncing off the translucent liquid and misshapen ice cubes. Mulder stirs the drink more than he sips it, stares into it as though it could solve his problems.

Or, failing that, as if it could show the reflection of a man who did not just flee the hospital room where his long-lost sister, his only little sister, is sitting with eyes glazed over, gaunt and wasted away and all alone. Does this make him a coward, he wonders? How could he have run? He could barely stand.

And he came here, to drink it all away, just like dear old Daddy.

Smoke wafts through a smoky room, gray washing over a background of gray. "Is this seat taken?"

Mulder's lips move in permutations of expletives, but all that comes out is the predictable growl of, "What are you doing here?"

The older man ignores him. "Scotch, on the rocks," he says to the bartender in a sharp mockery of cordiality. In almost the same breath, he announces, "You didn't used to drink, did you, Mr. Mulder?"

"Circumstances change." His voice falls flat. This is a public place. None of his threats will carry weight, and without threats he has no idea how to proceed in a conversation with this man.

The second drink arrives. Mulder is still staring dully into his own. "You're looking more and more like your father every day, Fox."

Rage is enough to melt the ice. How dare he invoke the name of the man he killed?

Still, the voice goes on, as if they were two ordinary men, conversing, in a bar. "It's a pity he didn't live long enough to see his daughter return. Then again, perhaps it's for the best."

Can't react. Can't give in to anger. Can't jump up from his seat and pound the son-of-a-bitch's face in.

Mulder can't do anything but sit there, watch and try to match the man's calmness as he takes another drag of his cigarette, then stubs it into the overflowing ashtray. He notices that the smoker has yet to touch his drink.

"How is Samantha?"

Mulder shakes his head slowly. "Why do you want to know?"

The smoking man reaches into his jacket for a new cigarette. "I'm sure you can guess the answer to that by now."

Mulder is suddenly cold. There's something wrong. The devil is sitting less than a foot away from him, haloed by a cloud of smoke, and in a universe that made sense, the room would have been in flames. But instead, he is shivering, and the devil's face is the same transparent non-color as the ice cubes in his drink.

He looks away. He doesn't have the strength to stare the smoker down. And something tells him that the older man doesn't have the strength, either.

Not today.

Mulder looks at his watch. He has been gone for almost two hours. He knows he should return to the hospital.

Samantha is important. More important than this, than his vendetta, than all the injustice in the world.

"Excuse me," he says.

"Certainly." The smoking man sounds almost friendly.

Mulder drains the rest of his drink in one swig. It burns on the way down, a cold burn, but one that reminds him that he still lives, that there is a world outside of the hazy, smoky dreamworld of the bar. He slams the glass down on the counter.

The smoker's eyes tilt lazily towards him, regarding him with a predator's cool disinterest. He extinguishes his cigarette, barely touched, into the younger man's abandoned glass. Mulder's last impression of the bar is not the saddened slump of a man too weary to fight anymore, but of the small circle of ash spreading deeper into a frozen surface, gnawing a dark tunnel through the shards of ice.

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