Circle, Broken. An X Files story centering on Mulder by Glacis. Rated G. No copyright infringement intended. Spoilers through the episodes Sein
und Zeit and Closure.
Chilmarc hadn't changed
that much in twenty seven years. He'd been back a few times since his life had
been torn apart, but those visits were pit stops along the track. This was the
end of the race.
The furniture was still shrouded, and would be until the auction company
came in and cleared it out. The house was never really silent. There were too
many ghosts in his childhood home for anything as calm as silence. But he was
used to those voices, and they didn't drown out the sound of the water and the
wind any more.
Mulder stared out across the grass, to the beach and over the water. It
was a gray day, with the scant promise of sunshine in the cracks along the
clouds. He noticed the sunshine this time. That was an improvement.
Slow down and see the sunshine.
It could work as a motto. He needed something to replace the words that
had been his mantra for so long. She'd told him she'd come back someday, and
he'd said he wanted to believe it. Now he knew she wouldn't. He needed
something else to hold onto.
He shoved his hands deeper into his coat pockets and wandered down to
the beach. The breeze felt good on his face, blowing his hair into his eyes,
making his cheeks sting. Staring at the oblique shards of sunlight glancing on
the crests of the small waves, he let his sight sink below the surface and let
his thoughts drift. For the first time since he was a boy, he wasn't looking
over his shoulder. He wasn't looking for something he now knew he'd never find.
He wasn't avoiding his father's wrath, or his mother's disappointment.
He wasn't weighed down by the knowledge that he had failed, continued to fail,
would always fail. He'd been too late since he was nineteen years old, before
his search had even begun. He hadn't known it at the time, of course. But he
knew it now.
It was liberating.
A slight smile curved his lips, and he squinted as an unexpected shaft
of sunshine slanted across the water, momentarily dazzling him. There was a
feeling inside he hadn't had since grade school, deeper than he'd ever known.
It was as if there was a hole inside him, worn deeper with each passing year
until, at nearly forty, he'd become a hollow man. Now, that hole was filling
up.
With peace.
Reaching down, he scooped up a handful of sandy pebbles, fingers
absently turning them, knocking off the worst of the debris. Not thinking, not
analyzing, simply feeling, and rejoicing in that ability he thought he'd lost,
he skipped one of the pebbles across the surface of the water. It hit twice
before a wavelet swallowed it.
"Goodbye, Dad." Simple. To the point. His father had never been one for words, not
to him. To others, perhaps. The man Mulder knew had
been cold, and better than half dead before Mulder was
more than a boy. He should have known the old man would soon die when he'd been
greeted by a hug. His father didn't hug him. His father didn't hug anyone. He
still didn't know if his father had killed himself, or if Krycek
had killed him. In his saner moments, Mulder was certain Krycek
had done it.
But then, in his saner moments, he knew his mother had killed herself.
He just preferred to think it was a plot. It was much easier to think that
someone, or some group of someones, had taken her
life. It was more acceptable, made more sense. Maybe that was why he wanted to
blame Krycek for his Dad's death.
That, plus the fact that the Russian was a stone
cold killer.
Shrugging off his uncertainties about his father's death, his lingering
sadness over his mother's, and his ambivalence about his former partner, Mulder
rolled another pebble to his fingertips and sent it spinning flatly across the
top of the surf. Better. It skipped three times before plunging into a wave.
"'Bye, Mom." There were so many things she hadn't had time to say to him. She'd said
so. To his answering machine.
Just one of a thousand regrets.
Had she known that he loved her? Maybe. Maybe not. He hadn't been too sure himself. Since he'd lost
Samantha, since he'd been left behind, since he had the sneaking suspicion
she'd asked for her daughter to be spared and been heartbroken to be handed her
son ... he hadn't been too sure either of them loved the other. Duty, yes. Love was a tougher sell.
He had loved her more than he'd loved his father, he did know that.
"I love you," he said experimentally. It echoed. He didn't know if she
heard it.
He hoped she had.
Shaking off the sadness, his mind supplying the results of Scully's
autopsy and his mother's all-too-probable reaction to disease she'd found, he
took a deep breath. Not much left, really. Father, dead,
possibly suicide. Mother, dead, probably suicide.
Both desperately unhappy people by the time they'd done it, or had it done to
them, or whatever had happened. He didn't know. He never would.
A corner of his mind whispered to him that he didn't want to
know.
Another deep breath, and another pebble tossed.
This one arced high in the air before plopping into a calm spot in the water.
Sunlight sparkled in the droplets displaced by its passing. Tiny rainbows broke
for an instant over the gray of the water before disappearing into memory.
Much like his sister.
He smiled at the thought of her, gone so long now, only so recently
discovered to be truly gone. The clones he'd found had been so young because
she'd been so young; the older clones were whispers of what might have been.
He'd seen the truth on that dark hillside in
She'd looked so happy.
Mulder scattered the last of the pebbles in a wide-flung spray,
startling a few stray gulls and splashing water in all directions. It was over.
They were gone, to a better place, or to oblivion, it didn't really matter. He
could lay it down, he could walk away. It was over.
Scuffling at the sand with the toe of one boot, he reconsidered that
thought. It wasn't really over. True, his personal grail had been uncovered,
wondered at, wrapped tightly and put away. But the shadows weren't gone. The
shades of the past were threatening the future, if what he'd seen and experienced
were anything to go by ... and if he could trust anything Alex Krycek said. He wasn't sure why, but he had a strong idea
in this case he could. The Russian rat was nothing if not concerned with his
own self-preservation, and their last meeting had held a clear warning.
The pool of calm within him strengthened him as he contemplated what was
to come. The X Files had been a means to an end, and continued to fascinate
him, but their best use now was as a cover. He would continue his
investigations, Scully at his side, Krycek fighting
from the other side of the shadows, other trusted allies like Skinner and the
Gunmen joining their efforts together. The past was gone. It was time to look
to the future, and the war that lay ahead.
He dusted the last of the sand from his palm, staring out at the water
one final time. Random thoughts slid through his mind. Images of Scully,
questions about how long she would be willing and able to continue the fight,
warmth at his trust for her and reliance on her, sadness for the pain she'd had
to go through, resignation at the pain still ahead for all of them. A mental
tally of the very few people he could honestly trust, and how far that trust
extended before other pressures in their lives would cause them to buckle.
Skinner, caught between so many rocks it was a wonder he wasn't already
crushed, rock-steady himself, decent and determined beneath all the layers
within and around him. Frohicke, flanked by Byers and
Langley, sometimes childlike in their enthusiasm, but dedicated perhaps even
beyond his own level of sacrifice to their vision of the future. Krycek, who his brain told him to shoot and his instincts
told him to trust, at least as long as his ex-partner was in sight. Perhaps
their best hope for actually winning the war, with his contacts on all sides of
the conflict, and the clear knowledge that survival was the only thing worth
fighting for ... and the only thing Mulder was completely certain of about Krycek. The entire earth might go up in flames, but Krycek would survive it.
Mulder found himself laughing aloud at his thoughts. It was a hell of a
crew to take into battle, but they were already in it, and they were the best
he had. The only allies he had. It wasn't a fight he could win, or even
wage, alone. Knowing for the first time that he was committed to that fight,
with no other distractions, he realized the good guys might actually have a
chance to make it through alive.
He shook his head at his thoughts, turning from the water and heading
back toward the house. The mental image of Skinner and Krycek
side by side in white hats was enough to set him laughing uncontrollably, and
he had too much work to do to spend all afternoon rolling on the beach laughing
his head off. He'd come here for a reason -- set the house to rights and say
goodbye to his ghosts -- and it was time to finish up and head back home. To the real war. They had a fighting chance now. And he was
going to make sure they took it.
For the first time in a very long time, he was looking forward to the
future.
She stared out through the barred windows at the rolling sand dunes
outside the clinic walls. This was a part of White Sands no one else ever saw
-- no one but the doctors, the aliens, and the men in the blue suits who looked
at her and looked through her. The sand looked blue in the moonlight. A memory
flashed through her mind, worn nearly transparent with years, drugs, and pain. A beach, rockier than this sand, with water, nowhere to be found in
this part of
Fox.
She smiled to herself, dreamily, eyes a little empty, as she stared out
at the sand. One day her big brother would find her. He'd rescue her. He'd hurt
the people who had hurt her for so long. He'd take her home, and she'd be safe
again. The door opened behind her, but she didn't hear it. All she heard was
his voice, screaming her name.
Samantha!
And her own promise to return to him.
Hands caught her by the arms, pulled her to the examination table,
forced her flat, strapped her down. The needle
descended and she didn't bother screaming. It was an old pain.
Almost as old as the memory.
Still, she believed. She always would.
fin