Subject: NEW:  Abyss by Barbara Barnett 1/1
From: Barbara462@aol.com
Date: 29 Oct 1997 12:00:02 -0500

Abyss (1/1)
by Barbara Barnett
Rating:  PG
Category:  VA (no romance, but shipper-friendly)
Summary:  OK, so I'm hooked on trying to figure out what happened at Mulder's
apartment *that* night.  Was he suicidal, really?  We know he didn't die.
 But how close was he?  And then what?  No real answers (watch 11/2 for
those--yeah, right!).

Archive: as you wish, let me know if possible where,
Disclaimer:  standard....they're CC's creations (and DD/GA's, of course).  No
profit, no financial gain at all.

Feedback to Barbara462@aol.com

"Because they gave me this disease to make you believe."  The words echoed,
bled together, repeated in a pounding refrain.  Mulder tried ordering the
words to stop. 

 "Not even my own mind  listens to me", he thought ruefully.  He paced the
floor of his apartment, finally settling into the old green leather couch.
 His eyes focussed on the television, causing him to smile at the irony of
what he had coincidentaly switched on.  Carl Sagan, large as life, speaking
of the potential for extraterrestrial life forms.  Sagan, too, had wanted to
believe, and spent much of his career an exobiologist/astronomer pursuing the
search for extraterrestrial life.  A scientist, open to extreme possibility.
 But wasn't that almost a tautological statement.  A scientist *is* open to
extreme possibility.  Without that openness, no discoveries would ever have
been made.  The pursuit of the unexplained leads to new theories, eventually
new paradigms that turned science on its ear and changed the world.  It
wasn't crazy to pursue anomalies and try to understand them.  To assume that
known science could explain it all was simply arrogant.  Oh, Scully, he
thought, when did your passion die?

Her voice, having left him for a brief moment, now returned.  He raised his
hands to his eyes to rub the pain from them and was surprised to find tears.
 He knew what had to be done.  It was for the best.  If what Scully believes,
was, in fact, true, then what good was he to anyone now?  A tool in a game
unknowingly played for how long?  A tool *created* for the benefit of the
project.  Mulder understood with a clarity that stunned him, that *nothing*
he believed or thought or remembered was reliable.  All could be created.
 Even Samantha.  Maybe he didn't remember because it never happened.  Maybe
memories of Samantha had been implanted by Werber at the same time as
memories of her abduction.  

But wait, he thought, what about his parents?  Were they manipulated?  Were
they even his parents?  What was real?  Scully.  She is real.  She is the
only real thing...the only reliable thing.  Or is she an illusion too?  No.
 "They gave me this disease to make you believe."  No.  That wasn't right.
 Not to believe.  Believe in what?  How would that make him believe?  

"Oh Scully, I'm sorry.  I'm so very sorry."  He was pacing again.  Mulder's
eye caught his weapon sitting in its usual place atop his desk, the clip
removed.  He sighed heavily, understanding the moment for what it was.  He
picked up his microcassette recorder, hitting the record button.

"Scully, I know you will think what I have done is cowardly, and a sin
against everything you stand for.  But it is the only way.  In a way,
consider it an execution for my crimes, captial crimes that would otherwise
go unpunished.  For I have killed you, just as surely as if I had shot you
through the heart.  You as much as said so the last time we met.  

"Scully, please understand that I had no choice in this.  For me to go on
living, knowing what I know, what I believe to be the truth---what you have
convinced me is the truth, would be a living Hell.  If my life has been a
lie, a fabrication, how can I know who I even am?  If whoever has so
skillfully programmed me to believe what I have believed, perhaps they've
also programmed me to destroy those who I care for, those I love.  Certainly,
I've done that to you.  Perhaps, if there ever was a Samantha, I've killed
her as well...and that's what destroyed my family.  I frankly don't know.
 For me to  live would be a danger to you; a danger to all I love.  If by
dying, I can cease acting the pawn in a game with not rules, then it is a
noble, and not cowardly death that I die.

"Scully, the only regret I have is the thought of abandoning you now. The
timing sucks.   I suspect that your cancer has gotten worse over the past
several weeks, although I know you would deny it.  I've tried to reach you,
to talk to you about it; to be strong for you; to lend you my strenghth when
you'd let me.  But you've grown so distant lately, I doubt I've done you much
good.  Perhaps there was a time, my....um...Sc..Scully, when...when I...even
only yesterday.  But I feel now that I've even managed to destroy that.
 Know, Scully, that I will always believe in you, in your strength, your
character and your ethics.  I know that recent events have caused you to no
longer believe in me, and, in a way, makes what I must do a bit easier.
 That, and believing that my death will remove any reason *they* have to
control you.  Go to Skinner, let him help you.  He knows how to contact the
men who hold the secret to your cure.  Please do that one favor for me.  Let
them help you, so that I may rest.  Scully, I....there are...things I want to
say to you....that I've wanted to say to you for....but...Please, Scully,
just have a good life, be well and forget you'd ever come across the X-files.
 If I die knowing that you will do these few things for me, I will die a good
death, a death not in vain, exchanged willingly for a life spent mired in
it."

Hands shaking, he placed the recorder on the desk, not bothering to turn it
off.  He exchanged the recorder for his weapon, picking up the clip and
snapping it into place.  Mulder closed his eyes, bringing the gun's barrel to
his right temple, waiting, and in the final analysis, unable to pull the
trigger.  Mulder collapsed to floor, sobbing.   He cried for Scully, for his
cowardice, for his father, Melissa, for his own wasted life.  He wept for an
hour, it seemed, falling asleep, exhausted, spent.

After the third set of knocks,  Scully removed Mulder's key from her pocket.
 She had sensed that something was terribly wrong hours before.  She'd been
trying his phone for hours, all night and through the day, when Mulder had
not shown up for work.  Her sense of fear grew, peaking when, upon arriving
at his apartment building, she spotted his car parked in its usual space.

"Mulder?"  She opened the door, hearing only the sound of the television
coming from the living room.  The sight of Mulder shook her.  He was sitting,
back against his coffee table asleep, weapon in hand.  She went to him,
gently shaking his shoulder.  "Mulder?"  

He jumped, instinctively aiming his weapon at the sound, but then the voice
registering in his sleep-fogged brain, untensed, lowering the gun, placing it
on the floor.  "Mulder, what are you doing on the floor?"  She closed her
eyes at the sudden realization of just exactly what had happened.  An image
of Mulder, gun to his head, flashed through her head.  

Mulder cleared, remembering.  Remembering everything.  It was something he
had *no* desire to discuss with Scully.  He stood, brushing by her and toward
the bathroom.  "Mulder?"  A demand this time.  He had nothing to say to her.
 He emerged moments later, refusing to meet her questioning gaze.  She
continued to watch him, her eyes boring into him.  Finally he spoke.  

"What is it that you want me to say, Scully?"  The words were bitter, moreso
than he had intended.  "How can I respond to the charge of my complicity in
your disease?  Guilty.  Go home, Scully.  It's over.  I'm only surprised it's
taken four, excuse me, five years.  You were right.  Is that what you want me
to say?  Is that why you've come over?  So, now I've said it.  You were
right.  See?  I said it again."  He lifted his eyes to the ceiling, turning
toward her for the first time.  His eyes glistened with anger, sorrow, hurt.

"Mulder, I...I'm sorry."

"Sorry?  For what?  What have you done that requires an apology to me?"  He
laughed.  An anguished and rueful laugh, spat out with a shake of his head.
 "It is *I* Scully, that should be apologizing to you.  Oh, and I have."  His
eyes fell on the microcassette recorder.  "It's all there.  My sincere
apology; my regrets humbly recorded; my final request.  Only, once again I
lacked the courage of my convictions.  Once again I failed.  So, Scully, I'm
prepared to do the next best thing.  I'm giving up.  I'm done.  It's over.
 Only this time, Scully, I won't be swayed to stay."

"this time?"  Mulder's words frightened her.  She struggled to stay in
control of her voice.

"Oh, of course, how would you know.  It's not something I'm terribly proud
of.  I'd resigned before, given it up.  Actually the circumstances were
uncannily similar.  You dying...dying because of me.  Me, yet again helpless
to do anything about it.  I could have killed him then, Scully.  I should
have killed him then...maybe now you....But I couldn't bring myself to become
*one of them*.  I'd fancied myself too noble, to pure of soul."  Another
bitter laugh.  "Can you imagine?  How arrogant.  Thinking I could even aspire
to being a player when all I've been is a Hell of an effective pawn.  I
decided then that I'd rather quit the bureau than become one of *them*.
 Skinner talked me out of it.  Told me a sad story.  Almost made me cry."

Scully had only heard rumors about that time.  Mulder had never spoken of it
before.

"But not this time.  It's only by being out of the game entirely that there's
any hope of helping you."

"Is that what this is about, Mulder?  Helping me?  How can you help me
by...."  She gestured around the room, unable to utter the words trying to
emerge.  Anger built quickly within her small frame.  She took a deep breath.
 "How dare you, Mulder.  How dare you think of leaving me.  Now, when I need
you so desperately.  How dare you think of abandoning me.  Putting me
though....oh God, Mulder...how could you."  The horror of what might have
been hit her with a fury.  She stormed to the other side of the room, blankly
looking out the window.

Mulder padded quietly to her standing directly behind her, his voice a
whisper.  "Don't you see, Scully?  It's the only way.  If i'm no longer a
threat, then how can they deny you the cure to this disease?"

"What are you saying, Mulder?  That I'm not as formidable a threat as you?"

"That's not what I'm saying.  You know that.  You'd have accomplished the
task they'd sent you to me for in the first place.  Destroying me."  She
whipped around, nearly knocking him down in the process.

"Is that what you think, even now?"  Anger glowed in her eyes.

"No, of course not.  But you could convice them.  Could have convinced them.
 It's all on the tape, and I'd rather not...."

"And if there *is* no cure?"

"It's their disease, their weapon.  They wouldn't unleash it without a cure.
 What if one of them was afflicted.  It has to be a possibility they've
thought of.  You know that.  They're nothing if not thorough."

"Mulder, your'e clouding the issue here.  You almost killed yourself.  We
need to talk about that.  This is *not* something I...we...can ignore.  You,
of all people, understand that."

He looked away, ashamed.   "But I didn't, did I?"  His voice was soft.
 "Scully, I'm not suicidal, not really.  Don't you think that if I'd really
meant to, I'd have pulled the trigger.  My life had just been turned upside
down.  First Kritschgau tells me that my life has been one lie after the
other.  Then you... "

"I'm sorry, Mulder.  Oh God, how could I have said those things to you.  Here
I've accused you of abandoning me when I most need you, and I did the same
thing to you.  You needed me then, Mulder, not to drive the dagger in deeper
but to help you, to support you, to be with you.  And I punished you.  If
Kritscgau pushed you to the edge, I was waiting, ready to push you over.
 You've always been there for me Mulder, when it counted, and when it counted
for you...when it could have been...been the difference between...I withdrew.
 I'm sorry."

Mulder shook his head gently, silently fogiving her.  He drew her into his
arms, rocking her gently.  Scully looked up into his eyes, seeing the
forgiveness there.  "Damn, we're a sorry pair, Agent Scully.  So what now?"
 She reached up, pressing her thumb against his cheek, wiping away a tear
that threatend his nose.  An intimate act that sent a shiver down Mulders'
spine.  His eyes closed involuntarily.  Almost on instinct, his lips moved
toward the thumb, kissing it gently.  

Scully's eyes looked inquiringly at him, just as his eyes opened.  He looked
quickly away, embarrased at the moment just past.  Scully, tingling at the
almost erotic sensation of Mulder's gentle, chaste kiss, drew Mulder's face
gently back toward hers, willing him to look deep in her eyes to see...to
understand...to know.  

"I guess, Mulder, that after what you've just told me, you must die."  The
words were said with a grin, sly, and barely there.    Her intonation
electrified him, sensitised his nerve endings with anticipation.  His nerve
endings were not dissapointed.  Her kiss was not chaste.  "...But not without
a proper farewell."  He returned the kiss with a passion equal to hers, five
years of tension falling away as an old rotted curtain. 

Zeee end...and (i promise) my last post-geth vignette!

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