Date: 11 May 1998 13:56:28 GMT From: XFBandit Subject: NEW: "Choices" by XFBandit MSR SRA "Choices" -1- ELEVEN YEARS. Like a magnet, I'm drawn back. Back again to the beginning, where it all started and where it all ended. I stand on the bluff, well out of sight. There's no way anyone can see me, and that's the way it has had to be for so long. Before, if I'd been spotted-- Game over. I shudder, thinking about what would have happened if I'd been spotted. I made promises, heartfelt, tear-stained, wracked-sob promises so long ago that I sometimes find it hard to remember the exact words even if I can't forget the absolute underlying meaning to those promises. If you're discovered, the deal is off. You have one chance to spare the life of the one you love. Don't fuck it up, they said, hard eyes and sneering mouths surrounding me. The only reason you're even being given this chance is because of your father's long and honorable service to the country. Anyone else, and this discussion wouldn't even be taking place. I glance at my watch, wondering when, hoping against hope that I'm right, that he'll appear soon, that I'll finally be able to- And then, I see him. -2- HE APPROACHES MY GRAVE SLOWLY, FLOWERS IN HAND. It's been a while since I've seen him. Almost but not quite a year, I think, doing the math in my head. The year has been hard for him. He looks older, a little heavier. But it's still him. Still Mulder. At first, they wanted him back in ISU. But I knew he'd never go. He left ISU, fleeing from the monsters that haunted his nightmares, and there was no way he'd go back after facing the monsters that we had...together. Side by side. Partners. Friends. More than that, once. Or almost, once. The potential was always there. We just never acted on it. Until now, we'd never had the chance. Circumstance, choices, needs, requirements all conspiring against us. From the very start. From the first day. I remember the first day, and the last day. The last day, more...because it seemed impossible that so much could have been happened so quickly. -3- HE TEACHES AT QUANTICO NOW. He's the expert on profiling, and so he gives talks to the New Recruit Training classes, he gives lectures to visiting police detectives from all across the country, all across the world. They all come to hear Mulder speak, to listen him wax poetic on the psychopathology of the sociopathic sexual sadists that still plague our world. And three times a year he visits my grave. My birthday, first. Always on my birthday. He leaves a single white rose on the headstone. He stands in front of it, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his trench coat. He stares at the smooth granite for the longest time and then he talks to it. I'm not sure what he says, but I have an idea. And then, a few months later, he shows up again. The anniversary of our first day together. It's touching, in a really morbid way. No flowers this time. He just stands, runs his hands over the lettering in my gravestone, speaks softly to the dirt that covers my casket, stands and leaves. And the third time he visits is the day of my death. A day I can't help remember now. -4- WE WERE IN THE OFFICE. A sideshow was being presented. I was leaning against the table that passes for my desk, my arms crossed over my chest, watching him move, listening with half an ear to his latest theory. It had all started to run together in my mind. I knew where he was going and how he was going to get there, but I knew that for Mulder, the journey was just as important as the destination so I let him ramble, instead spending the time guessing what he'd look like naked and sweaty and hungry and eager. It was a fun little pastime. Harmless, or so I thought. My head was cocked to the side, my lips pursed, staring at the long, lean lines of him when he stopped talking, turned to face me, pointed the projector's remote at me and said, "Will you PLEASE stop staring at my ass?" Embarrassed, I glanced away. Caught, I thought. Well and truly busted. "I wasn't," I offered lamely. He snorted, and I heard the remote plunk softly against his desk. I knew he was moving towards me. I didn't move. I couldn't. I was literally frozen in place. I felt so cold because I knew something was going to happen, something I'd wanted to happen for so long that it was almost a physical ache, a keening, burning need inside me that I'd long ago accepted would never be satisfied. Could never be satisfied, for so many thousands of reasons. It was dangerous. Stupid. Childish. Adolescent. Weak. And then he was there, in my space like he always was but somehow different this time, his fingers tracing the planes of my face, his touch gossamer light and maddeningly arousing. He lifts my face to his. I see it coming and I want to be somewhere else, anywhere else. He kisses me. The most amazing kiss I can ever imagine, ever hope for. I keep it with me every day now. Our one and only kiss. A perfect, pristine moment in time that will have to satisfy me for the rest of my life. He pulls back, waiting for permission to do more. I don't give it. I can't. I want to so bad it goes beyond being able to taste it. I want it with every particle of my being, down below the subatomic level. I swallow thickly, fighting to keep my face flat, neutral. He looks away for a minute, a muscle near his jaw twitching. I can almost hear his thoughts. When he looks back at me there's something behind his eyes. If I look hard enough, I can almost see his heart breaking. I straighten and reach for my briefcase and jacket. I need to be gone from that place before I turn back to Mulder and divest him of his clothes in record time and devour every single inch of him on the floor of our office. Our bugged office. We suspected, but I found out that evening that even our most paranoid fantasies weren't close to the truth. -5- I WAS HOME, wondering how we were going to handle the next day, and all the tomorrow's after that. I knew that if Mulder kissed me again like that I wouldn't be able to control myself. I didn't want to control myself. I wanted to lose myself with him, discover who I could be rather than the boring, staid, uptight little pris that I had been for so long. I wanted to be born anew under his touch. I wanted what I could never have, like most children. The knock surprised me and I flinched, thinking that he had come here to apologize or beg. Either would be torture. Both would have been horrific. I looked through the door. It wasn't Mulder. It was Skinner. I opened the door and saw his hand coming up, a small bottle. Pepper Spray, I remember thinking. And then...blackness. -6- Remembering: HOURS LATER, I COME TO. I'm in what appears to be a jail cell. Concrete and steel; I've always been on the other side, though. Except when Mulder was in Russia. But those were metaphorical bars. These are the real things. I glance around. A video camera, high in one corner, out of reach. It's softly glowing red light tells me everything I need to know. Skinner had come to my apartment, sprayed something in my face, and now...this. He comes about an hour later. He stands with his hands on his hips, an expression I can't read on his face. "You broke the rules," he finally says. I remain silent, waiting. "You have no idea the trouble you're in, do you?" he asks. I shake my head, waiting I remember thinking that as long as I was behind that locked cell door, I wasn't going to do anything to anger him. I'd listen, wait and plan. He reads me like a book. "I have had to pull every single string I've ever had and a few that I had to find in order to...do this," he says, spreading his arms, indicating the cell. "Why?" I ask. He holds his hand out and someone hands him a thick envelope. He opens it and then begins talking. Telling me everything. All of it. The secrets. The lies. The reasons behind it all. He has facts, figures, photographs. In twenty minutes it's all clear. Why we've been diverted from the truth, Mulder and I. Why Melissa was killed. Why Samantha was taken. Why this man, this Skinner, has been, if not at the center of it, close enough to have been one of them. And, hating it, swallowing my bile, I admit it. They're right. It's what has to be done. There can be no other choice. "Why can't we tell him?" I ask. "If he...if he read this, he would understand. He would agree." Unspoken is my final plea: I could make him understand. Skinner shakes his head. "He would never go for it. You know it, I know it. He's too paranoid, for one. For another, his own agenda is so damn important that he'd never agree to keep this quiet. And this is too important to risk on one man." I nod. Hating it, I agree. "Now what?" He unlocks the cell door with a key on a ring with twelve of its brothers. Escorting me down the hall, he turns us left, right, left again and then we enter what can only be an autopsy bay. There's a body on the slab, covered by a sheet. By the shape, I can tell it's a woman. "You've been out for two days. Mulder is going insane. He's sure you've been taken by them." I cock an eyebrow. "Tomorrow, this will be discovered," Skinner says, whipping the sheet back. I look down at the body and feel my world spin out of control. My own face stares back at me. There's a gaping chest wound over the left breast. Whomever it really is, they died instantly. "Who?" I ask. "A former operative. She contracted terminal cancer." He sees the look on my face and shakes his head. "Not that kind. Pancreatic cancer. She agreed to this ruse if we agreed to take care of her husband and two children. She's your exact height, weight, everything. A plastic surgeon did the rest." I glance down and smile on the inside. It was almost perfect. There's one thing missing. My mole. I cover it with makeup for reasons that I've long forgotten, but they forgot as well. Please, Mulder, I think. Notice it. When you're called to ID the body, notice that it's not me. "What's the program?" I ask. "You vanish," Skinner said simply. "New name, new identity. New career. We'll set you up anywhere you want to go." "No," I say, shaking my head. "You don't understand," Skinner says softly, turning me to face him. "Your mother, your brothers, your sisters-in-law, your nieces and nephews. All of them. Gone. Like that." His snapping fingers sound like gunshots in that tiny, cold room. "If you don't cooperate, they will kill all of them. They are not fooling, Dana." "Why not him?" I ask. If they kill Mulder, there'll be no need to kill anyone else. "We need him," Skinner said softly. "His...quest...is useful at times. It helps us in certain ways that I'm not at liberty to discuss." I nod, understanding. "Let's do it," I say. -7- I HAD NO CHOICE. So much happened in the next ten years. All of it behind the scenes, sub rosa, where no one could see it. Not even Mulder. As hard as he looked, he could never find it. And finally, four months ago, it was over. The American public, the world...never knew how close they came to total annihilation. But the men Skinner worked for did their jobs. They protected us. At an incredible cost. A viscous war fought high in space. Most of it, ironically, on the dark side of the moon, outside the ability of anyone to point a telescope at the sky and discover the truth. But it was over now. The invaders, defeated. Skinner, now the Director, came to me in Butte last month. "It's over," he'd said. I asked the question with my eyes. "Yes," he said. "You can go to him and tell him. I'm retiring. It's over." He'd left me there. -8- TIME TO END IT, I THINK. I come down off the bluff, walking slowly, knowing that he's going to stand there for another hour or two. I stop a hundred yards away, thinking. What am I going to say? What will he say? He'll hate me. But at least... At least he'll know I'm alive. And maybe that will be enough. I've let my hair regain it's natural color. Defying all logic, even at forty-four, it's still red, not a single strand of gray. My face is older now, more lines, more miles. I'm hoping that he'll see what he once saw when he looks at me. I start walking again. I'm twenty yards away when he speaks. "I knew it wasn't you," he says softly. I freeze. He turns to face me. There is no expression on his face. "No mole," he explains. I close my eyes, smiling. I knew he'd figure it out. "Should you be here?" he asks. I nod. "It's over," I explain. He looks up at the sky and then back at me. I nod. "Six months ago," I say. "Darkside." "They said it was a containment explosion. That the colony never had a chance." "They fought down to the last two," I say. "We came within two human beings of...oblivion." "What happened to them?" he asks, meaning the two nameless men who won humanity's battle. "Oxygen generators faulted. The shuttle...no launch window. No time." He nods. "Hell of a way to go." I look away. "They vented their suits to space. Rather than slowly dying. They..." I make a vague motion with my hand. "Painless." I don't bother telling him that the feeling of your blood boiling off was probably anything but painless. "When did you figure it out?" I ask. "When they found the body, your mother asked me to identify it. I went there and saw the...monster...they had created. A perfect copy, except for that...mole. "I knew it wasn't you, but I didn't know why they wanted me to believe it was you so badly. At first, I thought you were in on it, that you were one of them, that you had decided to leave me when I kissed you because you couldn't keep perspective anymore. That it had all been a ruse, a plan, a black operation. Everything. Your cancer, everything. "Very quietly over the next two years I checked you out. From top to bottom. I talked to high school teachers, college roommates, old boyfriends. Everyone. There were no gaps, Scully. No way for you to have had the time to become corrupt as they were. "That left..." He looks away, then back, finishing it. "Sacrifice." That word had never entered my mind in eleven years. "And that's when I realized you were alive. It was a short jump from there to figure out why they had...taken you. And so I decided to wait." He swallows loudly. "To wait for you to come back to me." I step closer. "Samantha?" he croaked. I sigh. "Gone," I say, looking up. "Alive?" he asks. I nod. "After a fashion." "Will she ever...return?" I shake my head. "In the last battle, we destroyed their ability to cross the distances needed. She will be dead a thousand years before they'll be able to return." "How...how did they?" "Two ships," I said. "Breeder vessels. Entire generations are born, live and die during transit. Several hundred years from there to here, even approaching lightspeed." "I was right," he says. I nod. "Yes, Mulder, you were right. They were here. They took your sister. As the ship was leaving moon orbit with your sister aboard, the Darkside base managed to fire a particle weapon, damaging their navigation and propulsion. They managed to get up to speed, but they'll have to use all of it to get back." "She's gone," Mulder said, looking up. I have nothing to say to this. "I never forgot you," he whispers. "I know," I say. "I've been watching over you, from a distance." "How long?" he asks. "Seven years." He smiles. "I knew it. I could feel you." I purse my lips, letting him have his fantasy. He senses my disbelief. "Japan," he says. "At Narita. I saw you duck behind the newspaper stand." I gasp. He's right. I was there. I was sure he'd seen me, but my vanity had demanded that he would have rushed over to embrace me or punch me. I never would have imagined that he would have had the fortitude to ignore me. "Now what?" I ask. He holds out his hand. I take it. "Scully," he whispers, "I never stopped loving you. Not for a moment. Now...now that it's over...I want to be with you." I nod. "I have a place...a house. In Montana." He accepts this. "Long winters, fireplace, bearskin rug..." "I haven't...with anyone...since..." I smile again. "Neither have I, Mulder." His smile is almost shy. "Can we try that kiss again?" THE END --- XFBandit (Edward "Red" Burke) XFBandit@aol.com What a cat do on it's day off?