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Chapter Ten: Barrel of a Gun
Do you mean this horny creep
Set upon weary feet
Who looks in need of sleep
That doesn't come
This twisted, tortured mess
This bed of sinfulness
Who's longing for some rest
And feeling numbWhat do you expect to be?
What is it you want?
Whatever you've planned for me
I'm not the oneA vicious appetite
It visits me each night
And won't be satisfied
Won't be denied
An unbearable pain
A beating in my brain
That leaves the mark of cain
Right here insideWhat am I supposed to do?
When everything that I've done
Is leading me to conclude
I'm not the oneWhatever I've done
I've been staring
Down the barrel of a gun
Whatever I've done
I've been staring
Down the barrel of a gun
Whatever I've doneIs there something you need from me?
Are you having your fun?
I never agreed to be
Your Holy OneWhatever I've done
I've been staring
Down the barrel of a gun
Whatever I've done
I've been staring
Down the barrel of a gun
Whatever I've done
I've been staring
Down the barrel of a gun~Depeche Mode
We cured Scully's cancer. We put that thing back in her neck. We probably just sacrificed her in the long run to more of their tests, to abduction by our military and their doctors, in order to "save" her in the short run. Still... Something beneath my ribs came alive again. Something stirred awake, inexplicable since I felt sure we were all ultimately doomed if we didn't wake up to the truth, Scully included. But seeing her eyes light up once more, seeing her lips curve into a genuine smile... She made me think maybe... Maybe we'd pull through this, too. Maybe there was another side.
Even though living with the rats was harder than it looked. I'd come to know that I was living with them every day I walked through the doors of the Hoover building one more time. I felt a grudging...well, maybe it was something approaching respect for Krycek's adaptability. I was finding the whole process more than a little disgusting. It took a certain skill to uphold the facade. To pretend I wasn't trying to bust the system from the inside. And really, I wasn't that good at pretending. It was a miracle that I was still alive considering how many dirty agents and directors walked the halls above my head.
I wondered how he ever learned to live under any of the circumstances he found himself in.
I wondered if he knew. If Krycek had been used as well or if he was one of the ones orchestrating my ignorance. I supposed it no longer mattered. He was dead. Or worse. So was my truth. It was time to let it all go. It was time to focus on what was left. Scully was here. She was healthy once more. I had so much to be grateful for. I should be so very grateful.
We had our shitty cases and our good ones. I tried not to think about my deception and the fact that my work held significantly less interest for me now. I focused on Scully's returning vigor. I forgave her when she didn't trust me, didn't believe me, didn't back me up. I was lucky to have her. Lucky she wasn't in some hospital bed, ashen and barely breathing. Because of me. I was lucky.
We investigated our killer tree roots, homicidal artificial intelligence, and vampires. I was becoming more and more comfortable with the dearth my lack of alien-related cases left. I even took my first vacation in ages. Memphis was hot and muggy, and Graceland was smaller than it looks on TV. Still, it was a welcome reprieve from all that relief I was supposed to feel every morning walking into the basement office and seeing Scully's face. I sampled the local barbeque, and when I laid down in my motel bed at night, I put on headphones and listened to Elvis croon, "You make me so lonely, baby. I get so lonely. I get so lonely, I could die."
When I got asked to sit on a panel at a lecturers' forum on abductee phenomenae, I felt a perverse glee, a bemusement at the ironic curve in the road my karma had taken. Sure, I'd sit in. Sure, I'd make vociferous testimony. It'd be my pleasure. They were thrilled to have me. Until, on the day of the discussion, I actually opened my mouth and spoke.
"All this conjecture, the 'ontological shock' that you speak of, for which we are so ill-equipped, is not only false but dangerous. This woman presents no good or credible testimony apart from the feel-good message that she promotes."
It wasn't exactly what they expected or wanted to hear from me. As I sat there and watched their faces while I spoke, exhibiting everything from dumb-struck incomprehension to stunned indignation to something that even resembled revulsion, I had to wonder if my insistence on my new belief had as much to do with the facts as it had to do with my need to constantly disappoint absolutely everyone at all times, no matter which side or theory they aligned themselves with. I was becoming laughable even to myself.
"You think she's lying?" somebody asked incredulously.
"No, I don't think she's lying," I said. And then I told them the truth, knowing that they couldn't see inside my guts to how they were twisting, couldn't see the revulsion I held for myself, the sickness I felt at my own gullability. "I think that if you prepare people well enough to believe a lie, they will believe it as if it were true. And if you tell them a really big lie, like there are aliens from outer space, much more than a small one, they will believe it. And if you suggest to them these aliens are doing bad things to them, the power of that suggestion will be to make people believe that certain psychopathologies and neuroses that they're suffering from can now be attributed to that."
I told them how the truth had liberated me. I half believed it. My mind was liberated. As was my life. I was no longer tied down to a lie, committing all of my time and energy to a corrupt government's busy work. I was free. I found it interesting how...disappointing...true freedom felt. I wondered why it didn't feel better. Why it actually felt like utter shit.
"A conspiracy, wrapped in a plot, inside a government agenda," I warned them. And that dark truth, in that moment, felt nothing even close to liberating.
And then I met Patient-X.
"Fox Mulder," she said to me like an aunt who loved me even though I hadn't visited in ages. I was sick to death of anybody presuming to think they knew me.
You don't know the first thing about me....
"Hi," I replied, the dread clear in my voice.
She told me I was her hero. I remembered six months ago, holding my gun to that man's head in the apartment above mine and pulling the trigger. I remembered how the Strageo board shook and how I froze and only watched as my sister disappeared out of my life. I realized Patient-X, Cassandra, whatever, was nothing more than a misguided groupie. Stupid, really, to have ever believed in me. Stupid like I used to be.
She talked about Duane Barry. Goddamned Duane Barry. How I was the only one who believed him. The only one snowed, I couldn't help but think. The one who he trusted only to get a bullet in the chest for that trust. And my preoccupation with, my naivity about his story, his abduction, my memories of my sister...all of it, had allowed them to take her. Scully was taken and given cancer because I was stupid enough to let it happen.
"You might not like me as much as you like that story," was all I said. All I could stand to say, lest it all come pouring out my mouth.
She started talking about a time of war and stress among the different races of alien. Greens vs. Greys maybe? It was worse than ridiculous.
"I will be summoned to a place, just like Duane Barry," she told me.
"The man you're talking about died because of what he believed in. He died in a room after I'd been interrogating him, after he received a visit from some men from our government." Some men. One man. It didn't matter. I let him do it. I let them do all of it.
"I'm sure the government's involved. They just, they don't want us to know about it all," she said, making whatever I said, whatever arguement I had to the contrary, work for her...continuing to believe the lie no matter what, to maintain her own illusion at all costs.
"Cassandra," I said wearily. "There was a time when I would've believed what you're saying without a doubt."
She interrupted me vehemently. "There is no doubt, Mr. Mulder."
And for a moment, gone was the smiling, feel-good sycophant, and I felt a rush of power from her. For a split second, I missed my faith. I felt hers and I knew its power and I mourned that in myself.
She continued. "I know what I've experienced. I...I have been through the terror and the tests more times than I can count. I have had an unborn fetus taken from me." Her voice shook, her hand going to her belly. "But they're not here for the reasons that you might think. They're here to deliver a message. Except..."
She looked down, like she was listening to them speak to her. I felt the disgust come back in a wave, watching her do that, watching her belief paint her as such a freak. She went on and it was all I could do to keep listening. "Something has gone wrong. There are...there are other forces at work. They're going to be calling me. I can feel it. And you, of all people, need to know about this because you're the one that can do something."
I ignored the fire that burned in my chest. "I'm not," I said. And then because it was all that there was left to do, I walked out, leaving her there to figure the harsh truth out for herself.
...........
I nodded, and they pulled the chicken wire tight over his skinny body. I watched from above, his struggles to free himself as it cut into his flesh. The men backed away, and I waited until they'd cleared the room. Then I nodded again.
Even from the observation room, high above the slabs, I saw his eyes widen as the valve opened, the noise it made in the dark recesses of the pipes echoing off the stone. And then it poured down on him, covering his face, choking him. I released my hand from the fist I hadn't realized I'd made.
When it was done and his eyes were swimming with it, I nodded to my left and the man in the surgical mask nodded back and left the room. There wasn't much time now. I took a deep breath and let it out.
I got him on board the ship just hours later. We were long gone from Tunguska, Siberia even, when they realized what I'd done. I had It. I had what I needed. I felt a sick exhilaration tighten my stomach as I looked at It.
"I've brought you water," I said. "Can you hear me? If you can hear me...I need you to nod your head."
The head lolled slowly back on the boy's shoulders, revealing sewn shut and blood-encrusted eyes. I took a deep breath and began to dab his forehead with a cool wet cloth.
"I'm going to take good care of you."
I flashed on myself, face mashed up against cold tile while it made a home in me, took over my mind and body, and then left me in the hole. Then screaming, tied to the hospital bed finally, the wound infected, the bandanges peeling off the grotesque stump...the pain. All because of It. On behalf of It.
I smiled down at the boy tremulously, blinking, knowing he couldn't see, couldn't hear. Knowing, though, that the Cancer could hear me. It could hear just fine. And it was trapped in the boy's weakened, beaten, sewn body. Trapped in a dark hole like I had been. I wondered if it felt fear.
They'd get on their knees to me now. With what I had...I could fucking enslave them.
I threw the cloth down and left the room.
To Be Continued...
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Series Name: History
Title: History, Chapter 10: Barrel of a Gun
Author: Sage Fyre [email/website]
Details: Series | NC-17 | 11k | 06/17/07
Pairings: Mulder/Krycek
Category: Drama, Angst
Summary: See previous.
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