From: Amatia Date: Sat, 6 Mar 1999 17:47:58 -0600 (CST) Subject: "Avatar" Series, Part Four: "The Avatar of Consequence" (1/1) by (spoilers/disclaimers/etc in first story) ******** "The trembling finger of a woman Goes down the list of casualties On the evening of the first snow. The house is cold and the list is long. All our names are included." - Charles Simic, "War" "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed on the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned, The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand...." - W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming" ******** "Avatar" Series, Part Four: "The Avatar of Consequence" by Amatia Southwestern Canada August, 2008 I gave up any life I had in the year before Colonization when my father shot me in the basement of the J.Edgar Hoover building. I've spent the last nine years secluded in a cabin in Northern Washington state, my only contact with the outside world coming in occasional visits from the man who'd found me in the basement, Alex Krycek. By ocassional, I mean maybe once every six months, and he stopped coming after four years. I assumed he'd been captured by one of the patrols. Years spent alone do things to a man, things that are unspeakable. It gives a man too much time to think about all the things he's done wrong, every humiliating moment of his life, everything he would have done differently. Things he would change if he could just go back in time. If I could go back, I wouldn't have gone to work for my father. I doubt I'd even be an FBI agent. I wouldn't know who Fox Mulder was, or who my father was, and I'd be all the better for it. I'd believe my mother and all her crazy stories, of which most turned out to be true... But then again, they say that altering the past irrevocably alters the present, and with it the future. In the present, I was still confined to the medbay here in the underground complex. Dr. Scully had been worried about infection in my arm, so I was on an antibiotic drip for a day or two. She was sitting across the room at her desk, pen poised above a sheaf of papers, but not touching. Her eyes were focused on me, and I met her gaze. "You okay, Dr. Scully?" I asked. "Yeah, Jeff, I'm fine. Just kind of staring off into space. Didn't mean to focus at you." "It's all right. Haven't had anyone other than Alex look at me in the past five years, it's nice to see a different face." I could tell she wanted to know what had happened, how I had survived what had been meant to be a fatal gunshot wound. "You want to know, don't you?" "If you'll tell me." Scully got up from the desk, and dragged over a chair so it was next to my bed. "You got five more years of freedom than the rest of us." I looked into her eyes, which like most of the people who were underground, held a permanent sadness, and a constant tiredness. "Have you ever been alone, really alone, with just yourself and what's left of nature, for months on end? It's not freedom, because you end up playing jailer to yourself." "But you didn't have the constant worry that you were going to get sent to a work camp..." her voice trailed off as I shook my head. "I did. Alex may have been the only person I saw, but he knew what was going on as well as anyone, and he told me. He told me everything, even things that I would have been better off not knowing." "When was the last time you saw him?" "Almost four years ago. Long before the patrol found me." I sat up as much as I could, leaning against the wall. Scully's eyes narrowed a bit, but she didn't discourage me. "I assumed that he'd been caught, probably put on trial for what he'd done." "From what I've heard, he wasn't put on trial. Only Diana was. He's a wanted man." She reached up to rub her forehead. "There were warrants out for him, Diana, and Marita Covarrubias. And if we all hadn't thought you were dead, there'd be a warrant out for you." "What I did was wrong." I'd had years to think about it, and it was undeniable. "But you know the price I paid to get out of it." Scully didn't beat around the bush. "You died." "My father shot me. My. Own. Father." I turned my head away from her questioning eyes, ashamed. But her hand found my uninjured one, and squeezed. "Jeff...I know that you and I didn't have the best relationship at the Bureau, but I want for us to be friends." "You want to play counsellor, Dana," I replied, bitterness edging my voice. I turned my eyes back on her. "You still think that I'm a weasel." She shook her head, long red hair swaying. "No." I cut her off. "I think it's true." "Why are you so negative, Jeff?" she asked, her voice quiet. "Because everything I once believed in has betrayed me," I replied. Her hand had still not released mine, and she squeezed tightly. "I won't betray you. I can't betray you, there's no one to betray you to. If I turn you in, I turn us all in. Most of us were professionals, there's warrants out on us because we abandoned our posts. You have to trust me, Jeff. Have you forgotten what happened right before you were shot? You finally began to believe." She stood up, letting go of my hand. "I know that you don't want to trust anyone - " There was a knock on the door, interrupting her. "Hold that thought." I sighed and closed my eyes as she went to open the door. "Hi Paul," I heard her say. "How can I help you?" Paul murmured something in response, but I couldn't make it out. Scully's footsteps clicked across the room, and I heard the squeak of the cabinet hinges, then the sound of pills being shaken from a bottle. "If it gets worse, you come back, okay?" He murmured something, and I heard Scully lock the door behind him. "Don't tell me you're asleep," she said to me. I opened one eye. "No. What was wrong with him?" "Migrane. Stress, I think." She sat back down next to me, and I opened my other eye. "Now. I was - " "In the middle of chewing me out," I said, cutting her off. Then I gave her a tired smile. "I'm sorry I sound so negative. Guess I'm making up for five years of not arguing with anyone." Scully smiled back. "It's okay, Jeff." "No, it's selfish of me." I chuckled dryly to myself. "You know, when I woke up and saw your face, I thought I was dead. I'd given up thinking that anyone I used to know was still alive." Hating myself for needing comfort, I took hold of her hand. "Thank you for fixing my arm." "It's what I do," she replied. "I didn't even notice that it was you until after your arm was in the cast. I was too worried about the fact that there was tissue damage. Does it hurt?" "Not really. It's kind of a dull ache, a little itchy." Scully nodded. "That's not uncommon. Bruises okay?" "Other than being a nasty color, I think they're fine." The bruises that covered the majority of my body had gone from purple to an ugly yellow-green. "Will I have scars from the cuts on my stomach?" "More than likely, but nothing really noticable. Your arm will be the worst." I wiggled into a more comfortable position. "Dr. Scully..." "Dana," she cut in. "Have you seen Agent Mulder since Colonization?" She looked away from me for a moment. "No. He disappeared right after I went to the Institute for Anatomy and Pathology, from what I heard. We've had people here that say they've seen him, but it was years ago." She made a futile gesture, and said, "There's nothing you or I nor anyone can do about it. More than likely he's no longer alive." "But he's resourceful, he wouldn't get caught easily." "Jeff, I've heard horror stories about what They've done to catch people that go against Them. And the way They execute people...They hung Diana Fowley, did you know that?" "Alex said she'd been caught." "If They caught Mulder, he'd be crucified." "Then They would make a martyr out of him." Scully sighed, closing her eyes. "He never wanted to be a martyr. He just wanted to find the truth." I looked at her for a long moment. "You look about as tired as I felt wandering through the wilderness." I looked up at the clock mounted on the wall. "It's twenty-four hundred hours. Both of us should be asleep." "Hey, I'm the doctor," she chuckled, but it was slightly muffled by a yawn she couldn't prevent. "I guess you're right." She stood up, quickly checked the one other patient's monitor. "I don't know about this guy...he's been unconscious for four days. But at least he's breathing, and his pulse is normal." She switched off the light on her desk, shoved her papers in the drawer, and headed for the door. "I'll see you in the morning." "Good night." "Night, Jeff." She left medbay, hitting the main light switch as she went, and I was left in darkness, alone with my thoughts, and the unconscious guy twenty feet away. I laid back in the bed, unable to close my eyes in the blackness off the room. I hadn't told her that Krycek had been twelve steps behind my father, that I'd only been bleeding for ten seconds when he came into the room, swearing in Russian. I remember him wrapping my chest in towels, and I remember the sight of my blood, red on his hands, but nothing past that until I'd woken up in the cabin, a scream dying on my lips. He'd stayed only long enough for me to recouperate so that I could take care of myself. "It's too dangerous for both of us to be here," he'd said, trying to come up with a reason why he was leaving me. It was a bittersweet goodbye from the man who'd saved my life, an unwilling embrace, a few words of Russian in my ear, and wearing the leather jacket that I've never seen him without, he'd disappeared into the summer sun. Left alone in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, I'd turned to writing, everything I could remember about my life, people I'd known, hoping that at least some record would surive documenting the things that had happened. My only news of Colonization had come from Krycek's infrequent visits, and a small radio that he'd left by accident. I still don't know exactly how it happened, but I doubt that anyone else does either. Nine years spent alone, hardly any contact with another human being. I could never come up with a reason why Krycek kept coming back. There were enough supplies to last me well into the next decade, and every time he came he brought more. He brought little tidbits of information about Colonization, occasionally a word about where he'd heard Mulder was. Never news about Scully, my father, Diana, or anyone else I used to know. Just Mulder. He told me once that he thought Mulder was the cornerstone of the whole underground resistance movement, that if there were a way to break free of the Colonists, Mulder would be the on to find it. He seemed to think that Mulder was the only person who could save the world. violinst@pitnet.net Site X - http://personal.pitnet.net/london