From: eponine119 Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 17:32:41 -0700 Subject: NEW: Bulding a Mystery II [1/1] Disclaimer: The X Files, its characters and situations belong to Chris Carter, 1013 and Fox, not me. Author's note: This is a sequel to Building a Mystery. Please let me know what you think, if you know whose speaking and what she's speaking about, and how you feel about that. I'm thinking of writing a third story...opinions? Oh, and please, play "guess the episode" and let me know if what I was thinking made it through. ______________________ Building a Mystery II by eponine119 eponine119@att.net August 26, 1997 ______________________ I have to tell him. I have waited too long already. He is willing to give his life to remember the lies. He is trying to die for a truth he feels is unknowable. He has asked for unspeakable thing to be done to his body and mind - what sort of a soul do they reflect? He is broken. It is much too late for me to fix him. I cannot turn my back on my brother. Not when he needs me so much, when his every action begs for me. Every decision I have made, every conscious act of my life, has belonged to them. I lived to please the men who would have destroyed my life. My career, my friends, even my very name were chosen to illicit their approval. To further their project. Their goals. Fox, you must believe I've suffered badly. Every smile, glance and wince betrays your guilt. I must make you believe none of this was ever your fault. I must make you see I am no worse for their machinations. The explanation would take as many years as it has been. I must find the words to say. An ever-pleasing daughter learns, early on, the way to find the perfect words, to voice in the properly soothing tones just what everyone wants to hear. I cannot tell you what you want to hear, Fox. I will not lie to you. What you want to hear changes with the flux of each breath, the firing of every new thought. It happens as quickly as your eyes can change color. Do you want to hear your sister was happy? I was. Do you want to hear that she loves and misses you? I do. You want to hear she's suffered. You want to hear she's dead. You want to feed your self serving guilt. This is why I have said nothing. You cannot face that darkness within yourself. Unable. Unwilling. That darkness is within me as well. I must meet your eyes and tell you I've been in league with them from the beginning. They are your mortal enemies because they took me. Yet it is only because they have me that you are alive. It's never occurred to you how much easier your death would be? I am willing to give it up for you, Fox. If you forgive me. If. Forgiveness will require special words, a special touch. You will never forgive me for your life wasted. If it were my fault, I would never forgive myself. Your partner was here, Fox, did you know? While you were off forcing the issue, she came white-lipped to see me. She would not meet my eyes. Facing her own death, the only thing she feared was yours. I had nothing to tell her. She's an interesting woman, Fox. Cold and strong with fire unignited, much like the steel pistol in her hand. She is as I am, as I might have become. She is damaged, just as you are. I made her promise to call me when she found you. A woman's promise. To my surprise, she did. Everyone needs a confessor. Remember that. If you are quiet and listen, there is nothing you can't hear. Your questions have brought you little success. She told me what you'd done. Calmly and without the anger or fear I had seen when you were lost to her. She didn't ask why I care. She needs someone to listen to her, Fox. Anyone at all. It's come to that. She told me she loves you. Not in so many words. I can't picture the two of you together. I've heard all the tales. I've seen you both, but the image will not come to mind. I'd like to see you together. It is not a sense of family I seek. She told me - already I knew - that at one time you chose her over "Samantha." Samantha, that shining ideal in your mind. The archetypical lost child. Now you choose "Samantha" over her, your life and your sanity. There is so much you should know. I know everything about you, Fox. Everything. My father told me. Everything he didn't say. Your partner told me how Mother slapped you for insinuating he was not our father. I pity her. Her regrets and her choices. But more for the choices that were made for her. The man she loved and his relentlessness. Your partner and our mother are so alike - do you see it? Do you ever see anything but the thoughts in your own mind? For that matter, does anyone? He is not our father, Fox. Not the man you pity and fear and revile. He has been a second father for me, for his own reasons. You must have wondered why our father could not look you in the eye. You found your guilt in that and a hundred false moves. It was his guilt you were seeing. All those nights Mother cried. All those nights you cried. He knew exactly where I was. That I was cared for, that I was well. A week never went by that I didn't see him. I was his girl, and he raised me. Not only did you lose a sister, but a father. A family. The innocent sort of love of childhood. Your life? You keep trying. This is not the story you want to hear. You want to hear exactly what *she* told you, the one who came. She wasn't me. Even if she had been, you still would have disliked her. And she told you what you wanted to hear... I was still a young girl when I was returned. I had amnesia. I don't remember how long I was gone. A kindly old couple who lived in the woods found me wandering in my nightgown and took me into their home. They couldn't have children of their own, so they loved me like a daughter. Till Pa got so sick, and Ma followed him the next winter... I work at the United Nations. A position that takes, above all, connections. Who do you imagine those connections are to? You found me by chance. Luck, or tragedy - I'll never know. The photos were disconcerting. Giving them to you was my first solitary act. He gave them to me when I went to visit Mother. You tried to take one of the Others to her. You were right that it would help. She doesn't remember now, but she knew me. Women are intuitive; we can see the things you can't. You might ask your partner about that one day. I knew about the Others, but I'd never seen them. It was disconcerting - odd - to see a photograph full of how I was and how they are now. So many... And to know. Perhaps it is why I've altered my appearance. I am the only one of me, regardless of the Others. I am the Prime. The first. I will be individual. Original. None of them will be blonde, or have my name. None of them will know the things I know. You want to know the things I know. You think you want to know. It would disappoint you, Fox. If you are disillusioned now... The phone has been in my hand so long it is making an agitated, disconnected sound. What are the words? "Agent Mulder -" "Mulder -" "Fox -" How to begin? It will only disappoint you. Maybe I will not tell you. That would be too easy. The time for this has long since passed. -end- eponine119@att.net