Title: From Here
Author: AnubisLM
Email: AnubisLM@aol.com
Rating: R
Disclaimer: No, none of them are mine. Satisfied?
Spoilers: Biogenesis
Distribution: Well, when you let something go-- blah, blah, put it anywhere.
Summary: Something about despair, I think.
From Here
By AnubisLM
I wish I had just listened.
I wish I had heard the warnings. There were so many warnings: the subtle ones, the
unsubtle ones, the ones that were fucking two by fours in my arrogant fucking face. If I
had just paid goddamn attention to one, just one, of them, would I be here now?
I know it would be different, I just know it would be different.
One of the few free survivors has his big old Ford Explorer sitting by the banks of the
river, and is staring at the remains of a city I don't know what city at this point and I don't
fucking want to know what city. It's too much to think about. But he's sitting on a ratty
old blanket, and hugging his two kids, cute kids, maybe eight and ten, and he's bawling
his eyes out, holding them and rocking. And here I am, alone and feeling sorry for myself,
and it's all my own fucking fault.
"Angie," the music from the truck blares, "Angie-- when will those clouds all disappear?
Angie, Angie-- where will it lead us from here?"
I look at the empty passenger seat of my FBI Taurus and nearly throw up. I'm a fucking
coward, this entire mess is my fucking fault, and I'm just watching. God damn it all to
hell, where I belong. All Mulders should go to hell, and I'm no exception.
It happened before Scully came back from Africa, while I was still in my cell, where I
knew in my head that she had gone. The sky fell down and I was Chicken Little, hearing it
all in my demented skull and not being able to do anything because I was wearing a little
white paper gown in a little white padded cell. At least the nurse had the human decency to
leave the door open, the day before it really went to hell. I ran. I fucking ran my ass to any
safe haven in a storm, and this was not just any storm.
Skinner did his best-- God, I can't bear to think of Skinner, the last time I saw him, getting
it up the ass from Alex Krycek, who was leering at us all with the false cheer of the
damned. He had known, more than any other person had, I think, what it was going to be
when it came, but he had been powerfully. Skinner had stared at me with dull, dead eyes,
and told me to get a car with his compliments and get the hell out of town for good.
"You can't say we're satisfied," Mick Jagger yowls. "Angie, oh Angie-- you can't say we
never tried-- Angie, you're beautiful, but ain't it time we said goodbye?"
We tried. God, we tried, we never stopped trying, and it came out to nothing in the end. I
know in the very core of my being that Scully spent those last days of her life as she knew
it trying to get back to Washington to do something. And something numbs in me when I
say the last days of her life. I have no proof she's dead or alive. I have no proof, period,
of fucking anything in these days, these last and horrible days of the human race.
But what can I think? Either she's dead, or she's worse than dead. The fuckers did some
ungodly things to Africa, where human life sprang, to make sure it no life came up from
that source ever again. In those days, those early days, we still had CNN and a few other
news sources at the time. Now--
Well, we find out what we can. I'm a little luckier than most. The ships transmit cellphone
signals all right. Of course, there's no one to call, no one to get news from, since Skinner
got dropped while I was talking to him. I don't know what happened. I heard one shot,
and a few groans, and then nothing.
If only I had connected the dots. He could still be alive today. My mother could still be
alive. Samantha wouldn't be staring back at me in the form of a thousand mindless drones,
forever eight-years-old and in braids, smiling mindlessly An average based on zeros,
something tries to connect in my brain. The new human race, an average based on zeros,
we don't want any frowning, frowning is the first touch of God on a child's forehead.
Where is that from?
"With no loving in our souls, and no money in our coats--"
Scully frowned a lot. I remember that. But wasn't God always with her? He had the
kindness to take her before we all went to hell for good, not like me or this man at the
riverbank. We are left to witness the end of days, an exquisite torture by any standard.
"Daddy, I want Mommy," the younger kid says. "Where did Mommy go?"
The guy looks at the kid, and opens his mouth. But no sounds come out. He just shakes
his head and trembles. It's fairly obvious to me that mommy didn't make it. And the kid,
after a minute, starts yowling at the top of its lungs. And at the rivers of Babylon, there we
sit down and weep, remembering Zion.
I think I could bear it if it weren't for Scully.
I think I could bear it if it weren't my own damn fault I was here. I should have known. I
should have stopped it! And now, I should be fighting the inevitable. Better to perish in a
righteous cause than die of starvation or of slavery, right? If only Scully was here, I think
I could do it.
Thoughts try to penetrate the dark, tangled despair of my remaining mind. I can still fight,
if I want. And Scully could still be alive. I clutch onto this last hope of a thought like the
Little Match Girl to her grandmother and imagine it out in my mind.
She didn't die. She was on the last cattle boat out of Africa, some kindhearted man gave
her his place on an airplane, she willed herself into the air and flew across the Atlantic. But
she did make it out of Africa alive. She did, because Scully can do anything. I always
knew that she could.
I continue spinning myself hope, believing that it's possible. Upon arriving in DC, when
she saw it trashed, she began to walk. She's walking the post-apocalyptic countryside,
alone. I can almost see her do it, and I will her on, trying with all that she is to find me.
Because she knows the way out of this mess, and we can stop it right here right now--
"All the dreams we held so close seemed to all go up in smoke-- let me whisper in your ear-
- oh, Angie, Angie-- where will it lead us from here?"
I can make up for my mistakes.
I can give back to the world what I stole from them. A little bit at least, but it all depends on
Scully's walk, Scully walking from wherever she is to wherever I am. And I know she
can find me. Like I said, she has powers beyond that of mortal men.
I get out of the car now, and look up at the trees, which are dying, and the grass, which is
dying, and look up into the sky, which is free from the shadow of ships. I am safe here.
For the moment.
The guy on the riverbank stares at me, wearing a suit and tie in days like this. He probably
thinks I'm one of them. He even pulls the kids away, before I can say a word about it.
Better safe than sorry in a world like this, the world that I let happen.
I admit, the guilt is eating me inside out a little too heartily, but that's life. I deserve to feel
this way, like the world collapsed because I failed to press the right button, even if
sometimes I wonder what exactly I could have done except for scream, like Chicken Little,
that the sky was indeed falling, and it wasn't gonna be fucking pretty.
"Everywhere I look I see your eyes--"
I need Scully. I need her to explain the world to me, and tell me it's all right, that
something can or can't be done, but that it would be done. Right now, I'm immobilized by
numbness and grief. If I only had the last month back, oh God! The last six weeks! I
could have done it all different. I could have--
"FOX WILLIAM MULDER!" a bullhorn roars. I turn and stare. It's a huge fucking tank,
one that used to belong to the USA, when there was a USA, when there was order. Now
it's theirs. Now, a man I vaguely recognize hops out of the tank and walks up to me,
weaponless, arms thrown out.
"That's me," I reply. "Where is she?"
"Good God, Agent Mulder," the man says, and I can't place his face, but he was one of
them, and he's been rewarded by the devil, I can tell. "Are you still worried about Agent
Scully?"
"Where is she? What did you do with her?" I ask. "Is she dead? Did you kill her?"
The man laughs. "Dead or alive, I don't know what happened to Agent Scully. It doesn't
matter, either," he says. "We have a warrant for your immediate execution as an enemy of
the state, Agent Mulder."
"Why do you need a warrant?" I ask.
"We don't," he says, laughing again. "Still worried about that Scully woman. As if it could
make any difference."
I spit in his face. Scully made all the difference in my life. Even now, when I look into this
man's face and see the next and last five minutes of my life written very large upon it. But
she's not here. And I think, now, that I'm glad, as two of the man's flunkies grab me and
restrain me.
"Oh, Angie, don't you weep-- all your kisses still taste sweet--"
And as I stare at the men and not-men pulling me away from the riverbank, their eyes
portents of death as sure as the ides of March, I don't think of dying. I knew before I was
born that I was going to die. Who escapes the inevitable?
I think of Scully instead, Scully safe from all of this, and from me, and it gives me courage
to be shoved to my knees. I feel the barrel of the gun against my temple, and I hear the
click of the gun being cocked. I even hear the blast, but that's not the last thing I hear as I
slump to the ground, dead. I hear the last strains of the song, and remember red hair and
blue eyes. And all is well.
"Angie, Angie, they can't say we never tried--"
END
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We are not who we are.
AnubisLM@aol.com
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