Summary: This is a between-the-lines Patient X story but encompasses the tone
of season5 in general and deals with the issues raised about the characters this season. It is a sequel to Suspension of Belief, recently posted.

Archive: Anywhere, but please let me know.

Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit...just feedback.

The devastation of Fox Mulder continued into the winter, destroying first from within and only much later seeping outward through his pores so as to become more generally noticeable. Still he did not speak of it to her.

She had told him she would be there for him. When he was ready. It was a big assumption, the "when." Mulder didn't believe he would ever be ready. So, instead he allowed the disillusionment to eat away at him, a slowly acting acid. Until Patient X. Until a conference at MIT, where he so shocked his fellow experts with his strident and cynical remarks, he was practically booed from the dais. And then it hit the newspapers. And she saw. And she knew. And she finally understood the true depth of his pain.

At first she thought he was not being serious. "Just having a little fun, Mulder?" Mulder knew at that moment, he had been right not to confide in her that evening in his apartment. Her cold glare. Mulder had flinched inwardly, keeping his eyes dispassionate, equally cold.

"Do I look like I'm having fun?" Flatly stated, an invitation to try to understand. Not immediately taking the bait, she glared back at this perceived sarcasm.

"No, actually, you look constipated." His own sarcasm an invitation to push back. She was baiting him. In actuality, she was supremely worried about him. The life had gone out of his eyes, which now reflected nothing. She knew something was festering in him, in her...between them. It needed to explode. It needed the energy of a heated debate to provide the necessary environment for catharsis. A catharsis they both needed. And soon.

She watched him, observed his doodling on the newspaper. Watched with the cool eye of a professional. He was too calm. His words: someone else's. The man seated across the desk from Scully was no longer Mulder. It was a shell, an automaton with a blank expression and empty eyes.

Scully's voice wavered, trembling as she glanced through Cassandra Spender's medical file, noting with alarm the similarities to her own experience. How had Mulder not seen that? "Agent Spender wants you not to talk to his mother again..." Unable to finish the sentence as Mulder interrupted, abruptly rising and striding quickly to the door.

"Wish granted." He was gone.

Night fell on DC. And not so far away, people were herded to a mountaintop in northern Virginia. And in suburban DC Virigina. Alexandria, Virginia, on Hegel Street, Fox Mulder sat at his desk in his darkened apartment. He checked his cell phone, turning the power off. It was a night like so many others had been during the course of the last several months.

Mulder unholstered his FBI-issue handgun, placing it on the desk in front of him. He pulled the tie from his shirt collar, letting it drift aimlessly to the ground: a kindred spirit. Switching on a microcassette recorder, he settled back against the chair.

"It all makes a certain kind of sense now, in the light of enlightenment. The glare of the spotlight turned full force upon the too-convenient scenarios created for my benefit, and those like myself, who find it easier to believe the lie. I had been raised to believe in the benevolence of government by and for the people. A Jeffersonian ideal at home in the Camelot of Martha's Vineyard, among the political scholars who lived within its tranquillity. It is a bitter to have one's idealism snapped away. Usually it happens. Usually at the age of 21 or so; certainly by the time one has progressed through the ivory towers of academia through post-graduate study, dissertation defenses and intradepartmental squabblings, meant, I'm certain to prepare the young idealist for the more cynical world outside. Somehow, I'd managed to escape that aspect of my education, so when it hit, it hit hard. And try as I might, Scully, I can't seem to fight it. I hear the words coming from my mouth. Do I sound as bitter to you as I do to myself?

If I hadn't before, I surely understood then, at that moment. That second. 'The same people who are behind the hoax gave me cancer to make you believe.' Why would they do that, Scully? Why?

I haven't been able to tell you this, Scully, because I know it will put you in an awkward position...no, no.that's not the reason. I'm just a coward. I couldn't deal with it, Scully. Knowing. Understanding, finally, after all these years. After all it had cost: your sister, my father. God, Scully, how could I have been...been so fucking blind." Mulder drew a breath, pausing the recorder, momentarily. He stared out to the street below, smiling ruefully at the life that went on out there, as foreign to him as life on Mars, as elusive if not moreso. He hit the record button again.

By that night, Samantha barely even registered anymore. Had she been part of the lie, as Kritschgau had said. Had she even existed? I wondered about that briefly, and assumed, as I cradled my weapon in my hand, that she was probably dead, if she ever existed at all.

But now you're cancer is in remission. Mission accomplished. And now I deal with it every night, Scully. I am a man with no past, no future, a cypher, a ghost. My heart shattered like so many shards of glass that every once in a while embed into my lungs, it seems, leaving me unable to breathe even in the fresh air of late winter. My soul withered. I have nothing left to give. Nothing left to fight for. Nothing to believe in. I've thought about revenge, but it's not in my makeup to relish it for long.

I talk a good game, trying to convince the other fools, who like myself have lived the deluded existence of passionate belief in a fantasy, but my heart isn't it. No one believed me before; still noone believes me. I am a crusader without a sword; without a shield. Ain't even got a damn horse. Hell of a crusader." Pause. Compose yourself, Mulder. Just hang on and finish the damn thing. It's not much longer. He egged himself on. A runner on a marathon, finally the wire in sight.

Record on. "She rejected me Scully. She could give a flying...*she* has a
family. Children. Isn't it an ironic bit of humor? Joke's on me. God,
Scully, how could I have been so supremely ignorant, such a fool, so...And for
what? For whom? And in the whole screwed up process of my life, such as it was, I've only succeeded in harming you. You, who, at one time, at least, believed in me. In my integrity, my intuition...my search for truth, justice and the American way. Just call me SuperMulder." Pause. The recorder fell on the table as Mulder buried his head in his arms as sobs wracked his body.

He stopped himself, struggling to regain control. He defiantly picked up the recorder, hitting the record.

"And so, Scully, it comes down to this: I've already seen how you've begun to recover. My strong, gentle Scully, rebounding from death's door. You deserve a life. One unsullied by an association with me. You deserve to earn a reputation in the FBI as a hero, not the wet nurse to the agency's biggest fool. You deserve everything. And if I had it to give to you I gladly would.

I've always vowed that I would lay down my life for you. And so it is. My final act, not one of courage but of logic. My life for yours. Hate me or not for this act of seeming cowardice, of my not dealing with the psychological traumas dealt me; or remember me for a less selfish act, wherein I give you the gift of a life. Either way, we both win.

I've often wondered, Scully, if you and I could have ever." Pause. No. Dammit, Mulder. Don't do this to her. Don't leave her wondering about your motives, with regrets or guilt. Mulder rewound the tape to the beginning. Gazing at his weapon, wondering yet if he had the courage to actually do it. Now that there were no obstacles, no unfinished business.

Mulder was startled from the silence by the ringing of his phone. Instinct won over emotion. "Mulder."

"It's Skinner. There's been a mass death at Skyland Mountain. Meet Agent Scully over there ASAP." Shit. Skyland mountain. He couldn't leave her to face that place alone. There would be time later to finish. He pulled on his professional demeanor, grinding the heels of his palms into his eyes, refocusing. He checked his cell phone, turning the power on as he exited the dark apartment, into the brightness of the building hallway.

the end!