**

From "Brick" by Ben Folds Five:


Now that I have found someone
I'm feeling more alone
Than I ever have before

She's a brick and I'm falling slowly
Off the coast and I'm headed nowhere
She's a brick and I'm falling slowly

**


Light arcs through a pane of glass and a pain of soul.
Mulder presses his finger against his lips, tasting the salty
stream that has coalesced around it, and reaches a shaky
hand toward the picture. Ink on paper is all he has left of
her, but he has to let it go. The futility of the moment nags
at the corners of his mind, but the viscous barrier of his
emotions has long since numbed him to reason.

The world is shrinking, collapsing in on him, and this is the
last pillar keeping it in place.

He stands and holds the image, trying to absorb every
detail. Red and blue and smooth ivory white. A smile from
beyond that pierces his chest and plunges deep. A single
drop of water falls on the glass, warping the face beneath.
Mulder hooks a thumb under the edge of his shirt and soaks
up the liquid.

He stares at the unfulfilled promise before him. Words
from the past have crept into his brain and lodged there, re-
circulating in the recently deserted space. The void she left
behind. Mulder has worked to decipher the message they
contained since the day he heard them.

He sits down on his couch and pulls a comforter around his
shoulders. Her blanket. Her mother had delivered it to his
apartment because he could not bear to go to Scully's house
again. He wraps himself in the warmth and the smell of her,
holding the picture tight against his aching chest. The
inevitable parade of memories creeps into his mind.

**

It had been some time after their encounter with the man
claiming to be able to see the future demise of others. They
were resting on her bed in a hotel room, ignoring the
rumble of passing semi trucks outside the walls. Mulder
mentioned his fortune to Scully as a joke. The incredible,
pathetic nature of the prediction was amusing at the time.
The man foresaw an embarrassing death for Mulder, but
when he told her about it, she did not laugh.

**

"He told me something very curious, too, Mulder. It does at
least prove that he was a hoax."

Her unconvincing tone was accompanied by a squeeze of
his hand that sent shivers up his spine.

"You know what he told me?" She searched him with her
eyes, a deadly serious expression on her face.

"I'm not the clairvoyant one," Mulder retorted. "He is."

**

Mulder gulps down a sob, wishing he had not made any
smart-ass comment. His shoulders shudder beneath the
comforter as the conversation bleeds from his memory.

**

"When I asked him how I die, he said, 'You don't.'"

**

Her azure eyes had conveyed a startling sense of
fascination and fear, but she never mentioned the subject
again.

"You don't."

Mulder swallows hard and clenches his teeth together until
they begin to hurt. He lowers his head in deference to the
inevitable, to the cold, absolute nature of the universe. He
has unraveled the puzzle of that statement, but the process
has cost him everything.

**

At first he was angry. It was the ultimate ditch. She had
abandoned him, left him to slowly erode in her wake, and
the pain was impossible to hide. He tried to go back to
work for a while, not because she asked him to, but because
there did not seem to be any other option. The office only
stirred up the ghost of her, though, and everyone who
passed by him in the hallways could not look him in the
eye. His boss was the only person who would meet his
gaze. Even so, Skinner's customarily stern visage revealed
pity and helplessness. Mulder simply could not take it any
longer and put himself on extended leave.

He went home that day, puked for an hour, followed by
three hours of dry heaves, and woke up the next morning
with his face resting on the toilet seat. He rinsed the acid
out of his mouth and moved to the couch, sitting in the
silence of his apartment. The words "she doesn't die"
played over and over inside his head. He began to breathe
the words to the beat of a primal biological rhythm.

Over and over.

"She doesn't die."

He rocked back and forth slightly. What could it have
meant? Of course she died. Everyone dies. But he could not
shake his vivid memories of her, memories that hounded
his every move. Finally, he stopped rocking and held still
for a moment, the words of Clyde Bruckman echoing
around him. The rage of his shattered heart rose up hot and
angry in his throat until he could do nothing but scream.

"YOU BASTARD! YOU FUCKING IDIOT! YOU LIED!
SHE DID DIE!"

The pain of unwept tears constricted the back of his throat.

"She left me."

He stayed there for a long time, afraid to analyze anything
in too much detail. He was scared of what else he might
find. There had to be an answer. This was his battle, the
fight that he owed her. Finally, one entity came to the fore
of his thoughts: cancer. It had chased her away from him
much sooner than either of them deserved. Her cancer was
now consuming his soul. That was where the answer must
lie.

The soft glow of the computer monitor lit his darkened
room. He needed details. The doctors had explained the
basics to him when she was first diagnosed, but there had to
be more. The medical database included definitions,
descriptions of cell transformation, and lists of various
causes, but one word stood out among the rest. Suddenly,
the room seemed much, much colder.

[Immortalization]

He clicked on the link.

[The process by which certain cells become cancerous. An
external influence or genetic mutation can suppress the
cell's contact inhibition, allowing it to grow unchecked.
Such a cell will not undergo normal programmed cell
death, and thus becomes immortalized.]

Mulder blinked slowly in the dim light. Bruckman was
right, after all. Scully had become immortal.

Pain hit him with physical force, and he doubled over,
choking on the vile nature of the irony. He felt like the butt
of an incredibly cruel cosmic joke. His muscles shook with
fury, but there was no way for him to fully express the ire
that boiled inside him. She had left him with nothing but a
punch line and a longing for completion which he would
never have.

**

Time seemed to crawl to a halt after that, like amber
hardening on a tree. Anger gave way to sadness, which
became regret, and eventually, Mulder was completely
numb. He still loved her too much. Too many times he
heard someone who sounded a bit like her or glimpsed a
dash of red hair in a crowd, only to have the illusion
dissolve before him. He tried to compensate. He tried to
keep himself from slipping away.

He would go out in the warm rain, hold his hands up, and
let the water embrace him as Scully once did. He ordered
from their favorite Chinese restaurant and listened to her
favorite songs. Everything he did only drew him deeper
into hopelessness, into the darkness from which she called.
He became more desperate as the numbness took hold.

He tried to stimulate his mind with her books and pictures
and incite his body with nameless, faceless sex, but nothing
could reach his soul. Only Scully. No one else could make
him feel alive, it seemed.

**

Mulder breathes deeply, trying to counter a wave of
dizziness and nausea. After a few minutes, he looks at the
picture in his hands one last time and slips it out of the
frame. He sets the empty frame on the kitchen counter,
amongst several others. The photograph is gently tucked
into a folder. Mulder grabs his trench coat off of the rack
and pushes his hands through the sleeves. He feels like he
is trying to swim through syrup. Every movement is tedious
and exhausting. He has to keep going, though, so he takes
the folder with him and closes the door of his apartment.

**

There are not many people wandering around the building
when he arrives. It is far too early. Time passes differently
when you do not sleep.

Mulder averts his face from a couple of agents from the
bullpen as he makes his way to the elevator. He rides it to
the basement and unlocks the office door. The musty smell
of old papers inundates his senses. Familiar. Home.

This is the right place, not the apartment where he spent
most of his time living his life in pathetic solitude. This is
where she knew him best. Where they became a team.
Where they became one.

Mulder opens the folder and lifts the first picture of her
from the top of the stack. He places a light kiss on it and
lays it on the desk. The next photo goes beside it, and the
next, each in their turn until he has covered the desk with
copies of her image. He carefully rearranges a couple of
wayward pictures, leaving a bare spot the size of his hand
on the desktop. He smiles at the sense of completion in his
display of love. This is the way he wants to remember her.

Mulder reaches beneath his coat and pulls out his service
weapon. The cold, hard steel feels reassuring in his hand,
but he lays it on the reserved place on the desk, along with
his badge. He will leave without looking back. He knows
every piece of furniture, every last item in his mind. No
need to look. Just like with Scully, he has the landscape
memorized.

As Mulder steps away from the desk, and he feels what is
left of his spirit staying behind. He closes and locks the
door before heading back to the parking garage. He has one
stop to make on the way home.

**

"Good morning, Mr. Mulder!"

It's Mrs. Buckley, the elderly lady in Number 46. She gets
up at the crack of dawn every morning, but Mulder hardly
ever sees her. He wonders why it had to happen today.

"Mmmornin'."

He nods and rushes by her. His throat is burned raw now,
and he can barely speak. The paper of his rather large
brown bag rustles as he shifts his grip, searching for his
keys. He finds them and promptly opens the door.

The room is dark and cold. All of the lights are off, and he
does not bother to turn them on. The streaks of sun coming
through the blinds are enough. He hangs up his coat and
sets the bag down on the coffee table.

First, he pops the phone cord out of the wall jack. He does
not want interruptions. He needs complete silence. The
fishtank in the corner has been empty for weeks, and the
refrigerator is already defrosted and unplugged. The only
sound is his ragged breathing and the soft thumping of his
shoes on the floor. Mulder closes the blinds completely and
unfolds a metal chair that he had leaned against the wall. It
goes under the kitchen's entrance frame. The ceiling has
been knocked out in one place, revealing a 4"x6" beam. He
grabs his brown paper bag with a shaky hand, but then he
pauses. He almost forgot something.

The letter with the bent corner sits atop his television. He
tucks it into the breast pocket on his shirt, every word of it
burned upon his heart. It is a life reduced to ink on paper.
Soon enough, he knows, he will be nothing more. There
will be a small block of text deep inside the newspaper, to
which no one will pay any notice.

Ink on paper and a premonition.

Scully was wrong.

Clyde Bruckman was not a hoax.

Mulder shakes, silent tears sliding down his face. This is
his only hope of finding Scully. His only hope of saving
himself.

"You're not leaving me again, Scully. Never."

Mulder climbs atop the chair, swaying slightly on its
uneven legs.

He closes his eyes, urging the last drops of water to fall,
and opens them again.

He reaches into the brown paper bag.

Six feet of three-quarter-inch cotton rope.

Twelve fluid ounces of baby oil.

One clear plastic dry-cleaning bag.

Two lives and one love reduced to ink on paper.

The X-Files and related entities belong to Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox. I write only for the profit of feedback, not money.