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TITLE: More Than This (REVISED 23 Jan 2001)
AUTHOR: SpookyChick (xfspookychick@yahoo.com)

ARCHIVES: Just let me know where you put it.
RATING: NC-17 for language and a little sex.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. All the characters are CC's. The
phrase "bullpen melody" is Cara S.'s

SPOILERS: 8 YEARS OF MYTH-ARC SPOILERS from the Pilot
through next month's episode, DeadAlive.

KEYWORDS: Reunion. Mytharc. MSR. K/Marita. Angst/Character
Death (sort of). Mulder POV. Pre-colonization.

SUMMARY: My attempt to sort out the muddled canon,
addressing as many of the show's major myth-arc
plotlines as possible, through DeadAlive. Quite
a challenge to make sense of it, stick to the
canon, and keep it firmly pro-Mulder. SPOILER
WARNING: The one spoiler I was confused by was
whether Mulder will be washing ashore like Billy
Miles, or will be found somewhere else. So, for
this story I assume they'll both wash up along
the Carolina coastline.

AUTHOR'S Yes, it's me, from the XF authors interview
NOTES: project and the P1013 archive. Thought I'd try
my hand at fanfic. I would like to pursue this
plot (something to do for the March hiatus!)
if others are interested in reading. Please send
feedback! xfspookychick@yahoo.com



More Than This
By SpookyChick



I knew.

It was my choice to leave. There was no time left to stay.
But if I could have chosen one more moment with you, Scully,
I would have. Every time, I would choose you.

I remember our last night in my hotel room, when you were
already starting to feel it but didn't realize. When you
showed up at my door, pale and ill. The dizziness rolled off
you in waves. As I crawled into the bed to cradle you in my
arms, your nausea and misgiving stiffened your spine into an
angle so sharp it bit me. You spoke to me with your silence
and I told you the truth: "There has to be an end. There's
so much more than this." You spoke to me with your body, and
I told you again.

I gave you the truth because even then I knew. I filled you
with it, thrust it into you as far as I could reach; pressed
between your thighs and twined my fingers with yours and
drove truth as deeply into your soul as I could manage so
that you might... hold... onto... it...

And when you cried out, I heard the truth in your voice.
Then I knew that you would carry it while I had to be away.
And I prayed to a God who has never answered me, that I
could return in time.

There is so much more than this, Scully.

But first, there had to be an end. 

You sent Skinner to protect me, but he answers to another
agenda. Skinner is no longer his own man. You've seen his
blood thicken in the test tube, black with nanonites. You
would have remembered that, but your anxiety clouded your
skepticism. Skinner carries Krycek's lies as heavily as you
bear my truths. The deceit shrivels Skinner up inside a
little more each day. But your body slowly stretches to
accommodate truth. Your mind always has. Now your belly
grows, too.

So it's alright that you lost track of Skinner's divided
allegiance. I remembered. How could I forget, as his guilt
pounded into my conscience like a sledgehammer? Yet I knew
it didn't matter. That black-lunged bastard had misinformed
them all. Krycek and Marita sent Skinner ahead with me,
then followed us to Bellefleur to find the ship. Spender
told them it was their one chance to commandeer the
technology. He urged them to hurry before the ship repaired
itself. So Krycek thought he sent me to the Consortium's
first enemy, the black oil. He hoped I would find an alien
ship or be destroyed trying.

He could not know I planned to do both.

How did I know what Krycek intended? I saw him in my mind's
eye, a broken remnant of the Consortium, conferring with the
Devil as a nurse stood silent guard. And later, I saw the
gears turning in Krycek's brain, spinning faster than the
axle of the broken wheelchair at the bottom of the stairs.

Krycek is the Consortium now, Scully. They say what you
don't know can't hurt you. But what he doesn't know, will.

I saw him walk away from that old man's crumpled body
without even a pause. He pulled Marita roughly past the
scene of the crime, barely turning the corner before pushing
her up against the wall. He tasted her skin and I tasted
her. I felt arousal dampen her thighs even as her stomach
knotted in revulsion at fucking so near that monster's
corpse. He ripped her blouse apart, slid his hand under the
waistband of her panties, and took what he wanted. I smelled
her, I stroked her, I felt the heat of her, Scully... and I
grew so hard with wanting you.

He fucked her and so I fucked her... but every time, I would
choose you. 

Krycek never stopped plotting. He kept one eye on her
lips... her stiff nipples... her flushed skin... he even
closed that one eye when sensation crashed over him. But his
other eye was always open, watching around the corner for
any sign of life. Krycek can't even recognize life when he
is shoving it up against a wall and fucking it. He has dead
eyes.

Now, so do I.

~ ~

There is so much more than this. And it's coming.

But first, there had to be an end.

In fact, there were many endings this year, Scully. You
recognized them as well as I.

The last splinter of the original Consortium died with the
Cigarette-Smoking Man.

I found my sister. You found Daniel. Then we let them go.

We abandoned fear and pretense, and finally found each
other.

You wondered how I saw Samantha in the starlight. I could
see her, finally, because the truth had begun to grow inside
my brain. It showed up on MRIs as a cancerous mass. You know
this, because you've seen the rest of my medical files now.

Agent Doggett read the embarrassment on your face as you
wondered whether it was true, whether I'd been dying without
saying a word.

Of course I had.

What is cancer, Scully? You're a doctor, you know this.
Cancer is just cell growth beyond the rate a human body can
manage. Once upon a time, you ran the PCRs for Gibson Praise
yourself. His anomalous brain function is sustained by his
genes. He is the truth we sought, Scully. And you knew I
found it - you flew across the world and back to save me
from my own extinction. 

They say you can suppress the truth, but you can't kill it.
Neither could we. And how could I even try? This is what
I've always sought. So when the truth - the cancer, the
virus, whatever you want to call it - welled up in me again,
I knew it was time. As my transformation progressed, I
became like Gibson. I could hear others' thoughts - I could
even see through their eyes. There was a crucial difference,
though. Gibson Praise may be "more human than human,"
Scully, but I am only a man.

And you made me so glad of that, Scully: to be a man with
you. For you. We had our own ending this year. An end to the
seven-year dance we did, stepping so carefully around one
another to the beat of a bullpen melody. A millennium ended
- as if our calendar meant anything to the rest of the
cosmos - and finally, we began. With just one kiss, and a
promise of so much more. Slowly, carefully, we circled
closer, finding our embrace that night after Daniel's
recovery. Seeing Daniel again - that was an ending for you,
Scully. I could feel it as you slumped next to me on the
sofa, see it in your dreams before I woke you gently and led
you to my bed.

So many endings, Scully. But the one that counted most was
yet to come. A grand sacrifice was demanded. I went back
to Bellefleur to make that offering. I stepped into the
truth with my eyes wide open.

There had to be an end, Scully.

So I reveled in the truth as it grew inside my skull,
crowding out my life.

So I went into the woods, to rendezvous with fate.



So I died.

~ ~

You sent Skinner with me. Krycek and Marita followed. You
all thought we went to find the black oil. There were no
fires, no burned bodies, just disappearances. So the reality
did not even occur to you: I went to join the resistance.
The faceless rebels you saw on Skyland Mountain, Scully -
that's who I went to meet.

The headstone was a ruse. Anyone who investigated needed to
believe that the tumor was killing me. No one could know -
lest the black oil discover - that I have never been more
alive. Of course my body is dead. You saw the effect the
wreckage in Africa had on my health - this time was no
different. They fixed my body, Scully - that's what Gibson
saw in the desert. But they could only do so much. I am
only a man. So now that I'm back, I can live and see and
hear, like Gibson. But for the time I was gone, the distance
I had to go... my anatomy just couldn't keep pace with my
journey of mind. So - like Billy Miles, like many of the
abductees - my body was dumped in the ocean so that it would
not be discovered too soon.

Not before I was finished dying. Not before I was finished
organizing our rebellion.

~ ~

There is so much more than this. It's approaching faster now.

But first, there had to be an end. 

So for the truth - for you, Scully - I died.



Now I'm back.

~ ~

As you stare down at my dead body, I can hear your anguish.
Ah, Scully, I love you beyond all measure. If not for your
presence, this starched-white hospital room might suffocate
me. It too closely resembles my recent coffin with its
blank, cold walls. You watch my corpse heal in horrified
relief, wondering why my abduction turned out so differently
from your own. That, I can tell you.

As I said, I hear people's thoughts. Krycek is frantic to
know where I have been, because he needs to know what's
coming next. He never worried before, because he helped to
abscond you - and the others - for the Consortium's
research. Your violators... Penny's, Cassandra's... were
all too human. Krycek remembers you all, rooms of swollen
bellies rising under white sheets; but where I have been,
he does not know. So he is afraid.

You and I knew enough evil of the Consortium's work that we
might never have brought ourselves to ally with them. But
since the Consortium burned, we did not have to choose. The
rebels became our only alternative.

This was the only way, Scully.

~ ~

I am healing quickly now. The ice-blue of the Carolina
waters has faded from my skin. My body is no longer bloated,
and my emaciation gradually eases as you sit by my bed and
spoon me bland hospital fare. I am learning to use my tongue
again - once black and shriveled - to swallow. And finally,
to speak.

You listen to my stories with disbelief stamped across your
porcelain features. Yet you cannot explain my disappearance;
my death; let alone my life, after spending four months
buried beneath a headstone I picked out myself. And so you
gesture helplessly, open your mouth to object and close it
again - and again, and again - burbling like a fish out of
water.

And we are, Scully. We are far out of our depth. I have been
to the sky and forgotten how to swim. Forgotten how to
breathe. So you've got to remember for both of us.

"Mulder."

You cut to the heart of the story, with the one question
that you can always remember to ask. The question that, I
must sheepishly confess, seems to apply no matter what the
situation:

"Why didn't you tell me?"

This... this is the key. So listen closely, Scully. This is
what all will soon know. I couldn't tell you, Scully,
because you are what must be protected.

Yes, I have the fingers of the truth spreading through my
brain, and Gibson has them. But you've had them, too.

The cancer, Scully.

How could you have missed it? Your beautiful, analytical
mind has been so busy trying to fill my place in the X-Files.
Ever since you were partnered with Agent Doggett, you've
tried to "think the way Mulder would think." You missed the
forest for the trees. 

When you looked at my MRIs, didn't they seem familiar? You
saw the same sort of cancer in your own scans four years ago.
You were experimented on by the same men who ripped apart my
family when I was a child. We have both been exposed to the
vaccine. To the virus. Every time your nose bled, my heart
bled, too. Now I know that was the truth growing in you.
It was a price we had to pay.

And the chip in your neck - used to experiment on you, to
hurt you, eventually to save you - that was the Consortium
trying to manipulate the truth. Just like they always did.
Cancer Man was always trying to control the truth.

"Cancer" Man. How fitting.

They say you can suppress the truth, Scully, but you can't
kill it. Neither could he. The truth is the cancer, is the
virus, is the vaccine, is so much... more than this...



And it's here.

~ ~

As I speak, she is reassured. Her reassurance bolsters
her analysis. She asks sharper questions.

"Fine. Say Gibson Praise is genetically different from you
and me, Mulder. But what would account for the difference
between your cancer and mine? Yours... killed you..."

She pauses, a silent tear rolling down her cheek. This is
not the Agent Scully I met eight years ago. This woman is so
much more.

"...but mine is gone. Or at least in remission, the tumor
shrunken to a size where it doesn't register on my MRIs. So
if this cancer is the vaccinated human body's manifestation
of the alien virus, where is mine?

"You say the truth is growing in you, Mulder. But nothing's
growing in..."

She freezes.

And even if I could not hear her thoughts, I could read in
her eyes as it all comes crashing together. The abductions.
The experiments. The cancers.

The pregnancy.

The truth.

Yes, I have the fingers of the truth spreading through my
brain, and Gibson has them. But we are male, Scully, and you
are something we will never be.

You are the truth.

The truth is in your mind, in your womb... and I know you,
Scully. The truth is in your heart.

You sputter, horror and denial doing battle in the bluest
eyes I've ever seen.

Denial wins out.

"The ultrasounds are normal. And the amniotic fluid
samples... I checked everything, Mulder. This is a just a
baby. Our baby."

"Scully, you were barren. When we made love... I'd like to
think I was good, but I'm not THAT good, Scully. Much as I'd
like to take credit."

She starts to smile but remembers what I am suggesting.

"Scully..."

I am morbidly serious. Even I have not thought everything
through beforehand. If the truth brought Scully to the brink
of death, and delivered me beyond it, then our child...

"How do you think you conceived?" I ask her.

"I... I... They must have missed a few eggs, Mulder. Of
hundreds, surely they could have missed one. One is all it
took, Mulder."

Perhaps. It seems implausible, after all this time... but
then, my whole life is an implausibility. As is hers, since
she met me. They don't call me "Spooky" for nothing.

"That's what I thought of when they told me in the hospital.
Right before Skinner came to tell me you were gone. It was
the only thing I could come up with, but it makes sense."

Yes, I remember, Scully. I saw your face, that slow wash of
anxiety and reverence stealing across your features as you
confided in Skinner: "I'm pregnant."

"It's the only rational explanation, Mulder."

Well, THAT'S true.

Giving up on argument for the moment, I reach out to trace
the curve of her belly with my fingertips. She gasps a
little, a sharp intake of breath. It has been so long since
I touched her that flames of electricity spark between us.

She bends forward, curling her fingers around the metal rail
of the bed. Her lips brush mine: a homecoming kiss for a
dead man who lives. I open my eyes, and her gaze bores into
mine, willing me to abandon my latest crazy theory, to be
reassured.

For a moment, I am.

Then the heat of her is too much to bear, and I part my lips
to taste her, to feel the cool slide of her tongue against
mine. The second our hearts meet in our mouths, I know.

I knew when I went to Oregon.

I knew when I went to the woods.

And most of all,
I knew when I decided not to explain to Scully.
Because if I said a single word, she'd know.



She knows.

~ ~

Scully carries her womb easily now, her fading concern for
me lightened by her delight in motherhood. Her scientific
mind blots out the magnitude of the future that grows within
her. She asks no more questions about the black oil, about
the resistance, about my cancer in remission and my body
back from the dead. I am still on medical leave from the
Bureau, and she has taken unpaid personal leave that will
soon become maternity leave. Funny to call it "leave,"
though, because we will not be going back.

I saw Agent Doggett working with Scully in the months I was
gone. He is a capable man, if rather close-minded. Now that
Scully is on leave, he has been joined on the X-Files with
an Agent Monica Reyes, a specialist in the occult from the
Bureau's New Orleans office. As one might guess from her
expertise, she is more open to the paranormal than her
partner. I sense her frustration at his skepticism in
their investigations.

I can sympathize.

I sense that Agents Doggett and Reyes will be allies in the
coming confrontation. Krycek and Marita are loose cannons,
and I cannot read where they will fall. Skinner's heart
would be in the right place if only Krycek did not hold it
in his hands. So they all are mysteries. Even Scully and
our... child? ...are veiled to me.

Gibson and I are only prophets. We have sight, but there is
much we cannot anticipate. Scully is different.


There is so much more than this. It's about to arrive.


And Scully knows.

~ ~

END "More Than This"
Completed 22 January 2001

Feedback me! xfspookychick@yahoo.com

MORE AUTHOR'S NOTES: Thanks to Peggy, who encouraged me to
write fanfic - even though this was not at all what she had
in mind. Thanks to the many amazing 'philes I have met
reading, archiving, and interviewing - most especially my
Season 7 girls Megan and Michele. And thanks also to CC and
DD, without whose waffling on contracts, characters, and
commercial interests these 97 zillion loose plot lines might
never have been started. (I'm - mostly - kidding, guys,
don't flame me to death.)