After the farce of a season finale, I have decided to write my summer fanfic
as if the episode never happened. Hence, this takes place two days after
Demons, and I promise it contains no snow-covered mountainsides.

DISCLAIMER: Mulder, Scully, etc. belong to Chris Carter and Ten Thirteen
Productions. I'm making no money from this, so am reduced to eating Ramen
noodles five nights a week, while I sit in front of my computer, blinking
like a mole in sudden light....

SPOILERS: Demons, obviously. Also some references to Talitha Cumi,
Anasazi, Blessing Way, and One Breath

CLASSIFICATION: SA

RATING: PG-13

SUMMARY: Mulder finally makes the connection between Cancerman and his father.

Smoke and Mirrors (1/1)
by Rebecca Rusnak

He had always been tall for his age, but this man towered over him, making
him feel like a child of five. Smoke billowed around the man's head,
obscuring his features. Red light strobed suddenly, highlighting the man's
thin lips. "You're a little spy."

"Fox!" He turned around and Samantha's scared eyes bored into him.

"Samantha," he breathed, then the blue fire flashed and she was gone. He
whirled around, accusatory words dying on his lips as he watched the man
embrace his sister, his hand gently cupping the back of her head.

The colors flared again, then faded to black, and he couldn't see her
anymore, either his sister or the smoking man. "Samantha!" he cried,
reaching for her, but his hands closed on empty air. "Samantha!"

His own voice rang in his ears as he fell back limply on the couch,
breathing heavily. His head rolled back and his eyes closed, shutting out
the image of his sister in another man's arms. Then he jerked upright, his
brow furrowing slightly.

The pillow was wet.

Mulder reached up and turned on the light on the end table next to the
couch. He reached for the pillow and pressed his fingers into the wetness.
They came away red.

He was bleeding again. With a shaking hand he touched the wound on his
forehead. Crimson stained his fingertips and as he watched a drop roll down
his finger toward his palm.

Oh, shit.

Sighing, Mulder got up and headed for his bathroom. He winced as the bright
lights snapped on, and when his eyes had adjusted to the light, took a look
at himself. Blood dripped down his forehead, and had matted into his hair.
For a moment he only stared at the wound, at the bright blood--a red badge
of his desperation, his stupidity.

<This is not the way to the truth, Mulder>

Scully's words, spoken to him at a time when he was doubting everything,
unsure of what was reality. Uncertain which memories were his and which
were planted in his head.

But the one thing he had never doubted was Scully's presence.

She had been the only thing keeping him sane that horrible night, the only
thing preventing him from unloading his weapon into his head in a desperate
attempt to stop the pain. And she had been there over the next two days
while he lay in a Rhode Island hospital, strapped down so that he could not
hurt himself during the worst of his seizures. And finally she had brought
him home this very evening, reluctantly leaving for her own apartment; her
disbelief in the face of his assurances that he was okay had been obvious.

But she had left him, and now he was alone in his bathroom at 3:00 in the
morning, wiping away the blood from a wound that stubbornly refused to heal
over.

Mulder frowned at his reflection in the mirror. An official reprimand from
Skinner this afternoon, and an order to stay home the rest of this week, and
all of the next. It was nothing but what he deserved, and even then there
were those who would say he had gotten off lightly.

He was one of them.

He sighed again and left the bathroom, snapping off the light as he went.
He was almost to the couch when the seizure hit. Sharp agony pierced his
skull, wringing a cry from him as he dropped to his knees. Bright lights
flashed, and he closed his eyes tightly against their intensity.

His closed eyelids couldn't keep out the images parading across his mind's
eye, however, and he watched again helplessly, a twelve-year old child and
an adult man, all at the same time.

<"Not Samantha!" his mother cried...she beat her fists against the man's
chest..."You're a little spy".....his father shut the door in his
face...smoke billowed everywhere....blue and red lights flashed and the door
rattled...."Fox, I'm afraid".....his father gave him that digusted
look...the man held Samantha close, her head bowing to his chest...>

Mulder woke to find himself on the floor in front of his couch. His head
was throbbing mercilessly, and he merely lay there, too drained to attempt
getting up. Scully would kill him herself if she knew he was still having
black-outs, but he had been unable to face lying in the hospital for one
more day.

A fragment of the memory came back to him: the man who had held Samantha.
The same man who had called him a spy, who had argued with both his parents,
who had held his mother tightly and stared into her eyes.

The man he had accused his mother of adultery with.

<How far back did it go?>

Moving cautiously, Mulder sat up. His headache flared briefly, then
subsided. He sat heavily on the couch and dropped his head into his hands.

If only he could remember.

He sat still for a time, trying to remember, wracking his brain, almost
daring one of the seizures to come on. But there was nothing. Nothing but
the yelling, and his sister's scared face.

And that man.

Mulder raised his head suddenly, eyes wide with discovery. The photograph.

He went to his desk and pulled out the bottom drawer, the one that held junk
nobody would ever think to go through, and sifted through the various odds
and ends until he found what he was looking for.

The men all held themselves stiffly, none of them smiling, except for one,
the man Mulder had called Deep Throat. This younger version of the man he
had known held a faint smile on his lips, a sharp contrast to the frowns of
the other men.

Some of them he could name: his father, of course. Victor Klemper. One
man bore a resemblance to the English gentleman he had spoken to in
Klemper's greenhouse, on a summer day two years ago. But the rest of the
men were strangers, mysteries.

Except...Mulder caught his breath in sudden recognition. The man on the
extreme left was the man from his memories.

<You know who. The man who worked with my father>

Well here was the proof. His father and the man were standing next to each
other in a photograph, and while photos could be faked, Mulder could think
of no reason to doubt the authenticity of this one.

He was still staring at the picture when the pain hit, and he dropped the
picture to clutch his head. The floor beckoned, and he fell, colored
lightning streaking across his vision.

The flashes of memory were the same ones as before, only this time there was
a subtle difference. Older, childhood memories were intermingled with more
recent ones.

<"Fox!" his sister called....smoke wreathed the young face....a black man in
the back yard of that same house, "Surely you were aware they knew each
other?"....a black and white photograph of a group of men..."You're a little
spy"..."Bill was never an opponent of the Project; in fact, he authorized
it"...a man held his sister oh-so-tenderly..."I knew your mother since
before you were born, Fox"....Smoke wreathed an older, lined face....a
photograph of a man and his mother arguing in that back yard...his sister
reached for him, "Fox!">

With a deep groan Mulder rolled over. His eyes opened as something crinkled
beneath his arm, and through bleary eyes he gazed at the photograph from 1972.

The man on the left in that picture, the man next to his father, the man in
his memory, Mulder knew who it was now.

Sudden panic rose up in his chest, and his breathing quickened. <Please,
God, no> Ignorance was preferable to this shattering pain in his soul, to
this horror that chilled his blood, sending raw agony through his heart as
it tried to pump the ice that had been his life's blood only moments before.

<How far back did it go?>

His father was in this picture, oh yes, but maybe all these years he had
been looking at the wrong man.

<I came to see your mother. How is she?>

A scream was building in his throat, and in another minute he would not be
able to swallow it back. It couldn't be true, it couldn't...

<I knew your mother since before you were born, Fox>

<Who is my father?>

The look of outrage on his mother's face had been matched only by the guilt.

A tearing sob escaped him, and he curled up on the floor, his arms wrapped
around his ribs, as thought to keep himself from flying apart. The picture
fluttered to the floor, unnoticed.

Not true, not true. Except that it was. How else would *he* have known
about his father? Why else would he visit his mother, dying from a stroke
*he* had caused?

Why else would Mulder remember him from his childhood?

<You told me that when they took Samantha it was because you had to make a
choice, but that's not how it happened. It wasn't your choice to make>

Then whose choice had it been?

The scream was still there, a growing pressure in his throat that couldn't
be ignored much longer.

The light flashed behind his eyes, and he waited, dreading the memories that
would come this time, but the images never came. No mental pictures, but now
he could smell smoke, hanging thick and heavy in the air. Could see the
smoke, billowing around the young man in the summerhouse. Saw that same
man, twenty-three years later, blowing smoke at himself, that oddly light
voice, "Don't try and threaten me, Mulder. I've watched presidents die."

Oh, God. It *was* him. The man from his past was the man he hated most in
this life, the man who he had almost killed twice.

<Why her and not me?>

The question that was the story of his life.

<I like you>

He couldn't choke back his screams anymore, and their cruel echoes followed
him down as he spiraled into blackness.

**************************
The report was nearly done, and Scully sighed as the knock sounded at her
door. Just five more minutes, she thought irritably, five more minutes and I
would have been finished.

She glanced at her watch. 8:15 in the evening. Only one person would
bother to visit without calling.

"Mulder," she breathed, as she opened the door. He looked terrible. He
stood with his head down, his shoulders slumped. His clothes were rumpled,
as if he had slept in them, and dark stubble dotted the lower half of his
face. His hair stood up wildly, and his eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, as
if he had been crying for hours.

"Come on in," she said hurriedly, pulling at his arm, bringing him inside
the apartment. He moved slowly, dazedly, and she saw then the crusted blood
on his forehead.

"Mulder, what is it?" she asked, her brow furrowed in concern.

He finally raised his head and she sucked in her breath. Oh, God, his
eyes... Her heart broke at the pain she saw there. His mouth worked, but
nothing came out.

"It's okay," she said gently, taking his arm again and leading him forward
to sit on the couch. "Take your time."

He nodded and closed his eyes, and when he opened them they glistened with
tears. "I have something to tell you, Scully," he said.

*************************

The End