From: atr48@iname.com
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1999 18:41:14 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Forsaken 1/1

Title: Forsaken

Author: Teagan Riley

Classification: MulderAngst

Summary: Mulder thinks about his relationship with his father.

Disclaimer: I play well with others, and I like to share other people's
toys in the big sandbox of life, so, Chris, I hope you don't mind that I
have momentarily borrowed your Mulder and your plot.  I don't own them,
and I know it, so please oh, please oh, please don't sue me! Thank you!

Distribution: Anywhere as long as the header and content remain the same
and intact and I'm notified.

Forsaken 1/1
*****************************

Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachtani?

Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?

	I cry this silently as I thumb through the faded photo album.  It
is all I have left to remind me that once, a long time ago, we were a
happy family. Anguish chokes me as I see the fore-shadowings of the past
in the too-bright smile of my mother, the innocent face of my sister, my
clear eyed gaze and my father's incongruently troubled face. I study the
picture intently, knowing that were I to flip the page, I would find
another family entirely.  That bright smile would be replaced by a
haggard, drawn look, that innocent face would be forever lost, that clear
eyed gaze would be shadowed by sorrow and guilt as it is to this day and
my father would be a mere imitation of the stern but severly concerned man
on this page. This page holds the only evidence that the Mulders were ever
this happy, and though I must turn the page, I am loathe to let go.
	Steeling myself against a rush of sorrow, I slowly turn it,
leaving that happy family behind.  The tragedy of the Mulders unfolds
before me, in these pictures that I have so meticulously preserved. I
often wonder why I feel this need to have these photographs when I have an
eiditic mind, why I saved them when I saw my mother moving to throw them
away.  Perhaps it is so I could sit here, as I am now, and torture myself
by watching it happen all over again in the faces captured here, in these
images. It's there, in those haunted eyes staring up at me out of my own
face.  It's in the perpetually brittle expression my mother wears here, in
the guilty and wary nuances of my father's visage. My father: the man I
both hated and loved, revered and abhorred, adored and despised.  God, the
man I modeled myself after, even though I didn't see it until it was too
late and I'd become just as driven as he had been. I pushed and pushed and
pushed myself to be like him, even while I swore to!
 myself that I wouldn't.  I wanted so much to please him.  He always
managed to reduce me to a vulnerable and frightened twelve year old
boy,even after I joined the FBI.
	Sorrow and regret flood through me as I realize that the first
time he truly made an attempt to close the old wound, he was killed. I
wish I could have known him better... I wish I was could be sure of his
character, sure enough that I wouldn't be here right now, contemplating
whether or not he was a villian of the same magnitude of the men who have
made themselves my adversaries. Once again, my soul keens loudly into the
straining silence, 'Father, why did you leave me?' I feel as though I am a
half-fledged bird, orphaned in a sea of vipers.  I look into his eyes,
frozen into an affected smile for the camera, a smile that doesn't mask
the pain wearing him down.  I look into his eyes, and wonder if I should
believe the stranger who tells me that my father was a key player in these
heinous crimes against humanity,or if I should hold tightly to the
conviction that he was incapable of such treachery.  He was not the best
of men, I know from experience.  Would the best of men al! low their sons
to take upon themselves the guilt that lies squarely upon their own
shoulders? Would the best of men strike their child? But, despite that,
can I believe that my father was a killer? A monster able to torture and
murder thousands of people? The glossy photograph of my father cannot
answer these questions, just as I cannot. Wanting to escape that
unflinching stare and these still lives of my past, I close the book.  I
can hear my childhood memories withdraw with a resounding thud.
	The words ring out in my head once again, in those impeccably
cultured tones, "Your father, Mr. Mulder, knew of these experiments....and
more..." The deceptions and lies and half truthes are so deep and so
intricate that I cannot tell whether to believe this tale or not...For the
first time in years, I DON'T want to believe... I can't believe this, if I
do, then what else must I believe? That my mother knew and was party to
all of these terrible things as well? Perhaps that Samantha was taken with
my father's knowledge? That it was his CHOICE to have her taken? Was
Samantha turned into one of those twisted carcasses that I found in New
Mexico? Is she out there somewhere in a hidden boxcar as well?  No.  This
I cannot, will not believe.
	My father has been dead for months,but I've never really felt his
absence until now....Until I couldn't look into his eyes and hear his
voice as he refuted these claims.  The irony of it is, I was the one they
framed for killing him, and now I'm the one that yearns for his presence.
	I cannot help but think that although only now tangibly gone, my
father has been gone for years.  He left me the moment he chose the path
that brought him in contact with these..men. He forgot about me, he forgot
about Samantha, he forgot about my mother.  He left us then, and though
he's dead now, it's as though he's finally acknowledged with his death the
truth of his departure. His body recognized it as it failed, and finally
gave voice to it as he exhaled that terminal breath. He retreated further
down that dark path with every stern look, every harsh word, every
opportunity to praise that he passed by.  My father has been dead for
years, even though he was buried recently.  He left me willingly, and as
my intellect and my heart war over this question before me, my soul cries
out:

Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachtani?