From: DominoF16@aol.com To: upyours1013@rock.com Subject: New Story Date: Wednesday, January 27, 1999 8:42 PM Through Me Again by Dom Parker (Domino F16@aol.com) Category: A Rating: PG Disclaimer: They're not mine, but I have no life so I reserve the right to borrow them with impunity. If you want to sue me over it, then you're obviously a parasite/lawyer and since you need a client to give you the go- ahead on that (which no sane person would do) I'm not afraid of you anyway :-P Oh yeah, the lyrics to 'Calypso' at the end of this story are from the incredibly talented Suzanne Vega. Author's Note: Yes, ladies and gentleman, after venturing into the world of the happy ending (Hello 'Precious Things') I return to the angst fold. Dedication: Michele. Wow, go girl! Feedback: Yes. I'll pay you. Domino F16@aol.com * * * New beginnings. Life is full of them; I've seen more than my fair share. I think I've stopped counting how many times I've been reborn, though somehow I think that this last incarnation to rise from the ashes will be my last Phoenix impression. So it begins. With a desk in a basement with my name on plate, and again on the door leading to my dim domain. One of my less interesting and dramatic beginnings, though I suppose there's a sort of tragic drama to this one, if you're the type to look at it that way. It's certainly not on par with miraculous cancer remissions and vows of everlasting devotion and partnership. It wasn't as earth-shattering as a faith shaken and broken and then reforged again, or the continuation of a quest and a unity bonded by grim purpose and righteous resolve. Then again, I had stopped thinking of us as the last of the knights of Camelot so long ago that I've got to be incapable of that sort of melodrama anyway. Of course, this beginning began with an ending, as beginnings are want to do. He certainly didn't look any happier about it than I was when he came to me and asked me if he could leave. As if my permission was necessary to his moving on, as if I tethered him and kept him by my side and only the words from my mouth could set him free. I suppose that's not as absurd as it sounds once you think about it. Mulder and I exchanged souls long ago, knowing that neither of us cared for our own as much as we cared for the others. It made sense to give it over to the care of the one person who understood and cherished it more than life itself. I never had to worry about Mulder selling my soul, as I could have done many times over. Perhaps he did have to ask me for his back before he could leave me and give it to another. Yes, now that I think about it, he did the necessary thing, circumstances being what they were. Mulder fell in love. Of course, she wasn't me. There was no falling involved with our love. It was more like a slow decent into hell, while we held onto the only light either of us could find. By default, we picked each other. It seems that light doesn't travel as far into hell as Mulder and I made a practice of doing. No, she's definitely not me. She's tall and brunette with a quaint southern accent and easy smile. Her eyes are warm mocha, not ice blue, and even I can't fault him for preferring an adoring gaze over hooded intensity. Apparently he can fault himself, however. He looked torn and disgusted when he quietly whispered his desire to leave. I knew then what kind of power I had. One word from me could have bonded him to my side for the rest of our lives, and I even got the sense that part of him hoped I'd say the single word that would keep us from ending. At first his reluctance confused me. I couldn't imagine not jumping at a chance to end this symbiotic relationship we had in exchange for the warmth and comfort of real love. I knew Mulder thought of his love for me as being the real thing, but it so obviously *wasn't* that I only rarely indulged in fantasizing that we could find peace together. What we had was desperate and angry and codependent and sometimes ugly and sometimes deeply, darkly beautiful. Whatever it was, in any incarnation, I hadn't ever wanted it, so I suppose that was why I was so much more immune to it. Mulder, on the other hand, craved love and acceptance in any form and cherished and cultivated our twisted connection with all of his heart. He accepted the scraps from my table with frank appreciation and took simple joy in even the most cynical and jaded smirks I threw his way. I think I smiled at him twice and both times he acted as if he'd just received the crown jewels. He put me up on a pedestal and worshiped at my shrine and I accepted it all with poor grace and barely disguised irritation on most occasions. Oh, occasionally I was openly touched and grateful to him, but even that was a parody. We'd go through some soul-shattering, life-affirming, dramatic and tragic event and I'd follow him with all my soul in our common quest. Until I got over it and returned to the real world, where our job was all I knew and for the most part, just a job I clung to tenaciously because I didn't know how to quit anymore. We never ended, just cycled over and over again. I can't say I saw us ending when I first learned about Lilly. I was a little surprised that Mulder was dating, and while it twinged a little, it didn't really bother me. It's been a long time since I've felt as if I had anything emotionally to invest in anyone and a 'someone else' stopped the longing looks and whisper-soft sighs Mulder threw my way. I didn't want those, they made everything more complex, and I've been too tired to do complex for a very long time now. Lilly was a break from Mulder's emotionally needy side and I didn't see her as more, even when he began to shake his mantle of the tragic hero he's worn since I've known him and adopt the glow of the truly happy. He stopped requesting out-of-town assignments, and while we weren't as effective as we had once been, I didn't really care about that either. Stupidly enough, I was shocked when he came to me to tell me he wanted to have a real life: get married, have kids, get a "grown-up" job. And then he asked me to let him go. I almost waved him away with irritation, told him that he could do whatever he wanted and why the hell was he asking me for? I almost told him to go find his grown-up job and be happy and I came a hair's breadth from surpressing the block of ice lodged in my chest and turning back to the folder in front of me---cutting out the emotion like I have for years and running on the numb setting which, other than anger, is the one I do best. I would have, except I realized for the first time that I loved him, and I owed him more than that. I owed him a clean break, and if it broke me in the process than so be it. I remembered the brand on my back, the snake eating it's tail. Some see it as the symbol for eternity, but I had chosen it as the symbol of the path Mulder and I had traveled from almost the beginning. What I wear is the symbol of ultimate destruction. An oroborous...continuing as it is, the snake will eventually devour itself...if it lets go, it ceases to be what it is. It will be destroyed, whichever path it chooses. No matter what I said now, I would destroy myself...either by continuing or letting go. I froze, and knew for once that I had say something, commit to something with him other than a common journey. 'Stay'. I wouldn't have had to make any declarations, or promises. I wouldn't have had to give reasons or justifications---just one simple word and we would have gone on like we'd always been. And we would both be destroyed. Of course I didn't say it. This time, I had to *give* him something. I had to do more than stay by his side and call that a gift in itself. So I said the only thing I could. "Go, Mulder. Be happy, you deserve it more than anyone I know." For some reason, that seemed to sadden him more and he reached out, tucking my hair behind my left ear. "I loved you, you know," he said softly, running his thumb over my cheek. "I know," I smiled wistfully and gently removed his hand, placing it back at his side. "Did you ever love me?" I knew why he had to ask, but there's a reason I've always hated good-byes and this was it. That ripping away of something you've always counted on without realizing it. "Not like that," I lied and reaching up on tiptoes, brushed my mouth lightly over his. "You should go." He said something in a choked voice...something about two week notices, and I turned him firmly down. We both knew why that couldn't happen, though our reasons were different. I watched Mulder walk away, and then I went to his desk and began to sort it out, clean it of his things, placing personal belongings in a box to send to him. When I was finished, for some reason I'm not entirely clear on, I took off the necklace I've worn every day since I was fifteen and placed it carefully into the bottom of the box. Something to remember me by. It wasn't the real reason, but it was good enough. Skinner gave me the X-Files without a fight, conceded to my desire not to be assigned a partner. My reasons for refusing to work with anyone had nothing to do with Mulder, which was the only reason I think that Skinner agreed. Another Krycek would be far more dangerous to me than working with temporary back-up and we both knew it. Three months ago I received an invitation to Mulder's wedding. I didn't go; I was in Montana, investigating a group of identical entomologists who died mysterious deaths and poisoned several people with their toxic, green blood. Today I saw him and his wife at the supermarket. They didn't see me and I left without saying hello. For some reason, seeing him made me think of the necklace. Somehow, just watching them together I knew that he had it tucked away in one of those drawers everyone has for keepsakes. Put away from their daily life, reminders of people and times, tombs for old ghosts. I wondered if I was a ghost, and knew immediately that I was. Even if I'm not one of his, I'm certainly one of mine---it's a different existence than I saw for myself, but it's mine. He's learning to live and I suppose in my own way, I am too. I let him go, and I think it was my last beginning. * * * My name is Calypso I have let him go In the dawn he sails away To be gone forever more And the waves will take him in again But he'll know their ways now I will stand upon the shore With a clean heart And my song in the wind The sand will sting my feet And the sky will burn It's a lonely time ahead I do not ask him to return I let him go I let him go