The story, A HARD DECISION, has some angst, but I don't know how to rate it. It's another one of those stories, that consider what could have happened to Samantha. A HARD DECISION by Luandra bughunt@dk-online.dk ---------------------------------- Disclaimer: The characters of "The X-Files" and the rights belong to FOX network, Ten Thirteen Productions, and Chris Carter and not to me. I'm just borrowing them for my vivid imagination. Questions, comments, praise, flames, criticizm, etc, is very welcome at the above address. Enjoy. :-) (By the way, since I'm not a native English-speaker, there could be some glitches in the grammar. Please bear with me on that one. Thank you.) ----------------------------------- Silence had been a part of his life for so long, he actually welcomed the acute threat to his life. Not that the threat hadn't been there all along. It was just more visible now than it had ever been before. He filled his glass with scotch for the umpteenth time, angered that it didn't make him drunk. Just sad. All the years wasted. All the hatred he had earned. Mostly from his son. With a heavy sigh, he closed his eyes, then returned to starring out the window at the car parked across the road. He knew they were coming for him. He knew his time grew shorter by the minute. The things he needed to take care of, needed to be taken care of now. While he was still able to. He set the glass down on the window sill and went to get his coat and his car keys. Actually he was in no condition to drive, but he didn't much care about the rules of the common world any more. They didn't apply to him, he felt. He'd been above the law -- or perhaps beneath it -- for so long, he didn't count on it any more. The laws made by men who did everything they could to break them again. The car door closed on its own and he started the engine up, knowing that those watching him would follow. He also knew that they knew where he was going. But they didn't know everything. He had managed to keep one secret to himself. With eyes that burned from too little sleep and too much grief, he drove the distance to the abandoned house without looking. He knew the route by heart. His one time friend and now worst enemy had once come to see him while he was in the house as he had come to his home today. He had demanded to know what he was doing in a house that was abandoned. He went there to think, he had said then. The silence and the smell of rotting wood and decay made him feel at home, he had said. His former friend had left again and never looked back. And now he was going there again. For the last time, he knew. But still it was good to be cautious, to make those that followed believe he didn't know they were there. He stopped the engine and let the car roll to a stop just in front of the house. For a long while he sat there, looking in at the house, then glanced in the rear view mirror to see that the other car had stopped a bit further down the street. With a half-hearted smile he got out of the car and went into the house. He paced through it, repeating the old routine, waiting to see if they would come and check on him, but they didn't. After almost an hour he went down to the basement. The old closet with its dank-smelling clothes stood where it had always stood. He walked up to it, opened one door and cautiously pushed the clothes aside. One tap on the rear wall of the closet was enough to open the secret passage way behind. But you had to know where to press. The wooden door swung open, revealing the long, winding passage way beyond. He stepped through the closet and into the passage way after closing the closet door behind him and pushing the clothes back where they belonged. Then he closed the secret door and headed down the dank-smelling passage, walking for a long time before he reached the end of it and another door. He tapped on it and it too swung open for him. Beyond the door there was light and music. The soft voice of a woman singing along on a tune from a radio reached his ears and made him smile faintly. Knowing that this would be the last time he made this journey, he stepped through and closed the second door behind him. "Runaway train never coming back..." she sang on, found she had forgotten the words and started humming along instead. "Samantha!" A woman in her late twenties turned, looking up at the man who had just entered her basement room. "Dad," she said, her face brightening. "You came. I was starting to get worried." Bill Mulder stepped up to his daughter, put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her forehead. "I always come, don't I?" he said with a smile. "Yes, you always do. So, what's on for today?" "Samantha, my time is running short here. I won't be coming back," he told his daughter, knowing that he had prepared her for this from day one. Samantha's expression sagged a little, but she maintain a perfect hold on her feelings. "Not already," she pleaded. "Yes, my dear. The time has come. I want you to do what we discussed. Go find your brother. I will talk to him before..." He hesitated, then sighed. "Anyway, I will try to tell him all, but you must go to him only when you think it's safe. I may not manage to tell him." Bill Mulder suddenly felt very old. His greatest achievement in all this craziness he had participated in had been to keep his daughter safe. He had bargained for her safety and eventually won. A hard won price, granted, because he couldn't let his son or his wife in on it. They had to believe that Samantha had been abducted. Helen had hated him for it because she had believed that he had chosen between his children and eventually had managed to loose them both. Already back then his son had started his relentless search for his sister, the inevitable outcome of all this insanity. If he had known then how much it would have hurt the family, he would have taken them all away. Fled somewhere where they could have had a reasonable life. But as things had turned out, he had been forced to act quickly and that had meant breaking two hearts on the way. His own heart had been broken the minute he had realized the price the Consortium was expecting him to pay for his wish to pull out. They wanted him to pay a dear price to keep him quiet. But what they didn't know then and still didn't know was that he knew them. He had talked to them, begging them to deliver his daughter somewhere else. For whatever reasons they lived by, they had agreed and had done as he had asked them to do. No questions asked. So Samantha had been taken by the aliens, but she had been delivered to a couple devoted to them and not to the Consortium. The aliens had then let the Consortium know that they had decided to keep the girl. Bill's little girl was safe, but his wife and his son weren't. In order to keep up the illusion and to keep them safe, Bill Mulder had distanced himself from his son and his wife, using the only means he had not to disclose to them that Samantha was safe. Only years later had he truly realized what it had done to those two. The coldness he had surrounded himself with had hurt Fox more than he had been willing to admit and when he had realized what he had done, it was to late and also too dangerous to amend it. "Dad?" Samantha interrupted his reverie. "What am I supposed to do when you're gone?" Bill Mulder sat down on an old couch and smiled up at this woman. His little girl. "You'll get by. You and your brother are a lot alike. As soon as you think it's safe, you will go to Fox and tell him everything. Get him acquainted with your friends," he said, not meaning the couple who had taken the girl in and treated her as their own. "Only then will he be safe with the knowledge that you have." Samantha nodded and sat down next to him. "I know that, dad. And I would never jeopardize Fox. You know that. But, what will happen to you?" She knew the answer to that. The aliens had helped her understand a lot of things in the beginning. She had been terrified of them at first, but had later learned of their good intentions. "You don't have to ask that question, do you?" he asked and she shook her head sadly. "Listen to me, sweetie. I have hurt your brother more than I can possibly imagine. I want you to go to him when you can and I want you to tell him that I loved you both very much. Tell him why I had to do the things I did. Why I had to distance myself from him. I never meant to hurt him and I didn't blame him for your disappearance. He seems to think I did." A little smile broke through all the sadness on her face. "Fox always was irrational," she said. "I will do that, dad. You know I will. And Fox will avenge your death. Once he knows the truth." "Yes, princess. And that is why you must make sure he's safe before you tell him any of this. If you think he's in jeopardy, don't tell him anything. Don't go to him unless the attention is off him. Remember that. No matter how long it takes." Bill pulled her close, hugging her hard. "I'll remember," she whispered in a thick voice, then pulled back to plant a kiss on his cheek. "I love you, dad." "I love you, too, princess. Please forgive me for all the hurt I've caused all of you," Bill replied and got up again. He again kissed her forehead, gave her another hug as she rose too and vanished back the way he'd come. "I forgive you, dad. I will never hold this against you," Samantha whispered, tears streaming down her face. With another long look at the secret door, she went back upstairs into a world where she was known as Lucy Parker. Bill again stood in his living room, starring out the window at the street and the dark car. He briefly recalled his conversation with his former friend this morning. It was time to warn Fox. It was time, because he had no more time. He knew that. Before going to the phone, he filled his glass again and sipped the scotch while he dialed a number he had dialed very few times over the years. "Mulder." He smiled at the sound of that voice. "Fox. This is your father. I need to see you right away," he said, not knowing if his son would come. "Where are you?" Fox wanted to know. This time, there would be no harsh reply. "I'm at home. How soon can you get here?" he asked. His son hesitated for a while. "Fox, it's important," he urged him, hoping that Fox would understand. "I'm on my way," Fox responded and hung up. Bill sighed with relief. He would have a chance to tell Fox what he needed to know. There would be some kind of closure to all this before he died. And if he didn't manage to tell his son all, he knew that someone else would. He settled in to wait, his heart aching from more reasons than one. Some time later, the door bell rang. Bill got up and went to answer the door, smiling when he saw his son. "Fox," he said needlessly. "Dad," Fox replied. Bill took his hand, then pulled him into an embrace, hugging him for a moment. Another of those things he had done far too little of. Fox leaned back, starring at him in slight surprise. "What is it, Dad?" he wanted to know. "Come in," Bill replied and closed and locked the front door behind them. They went into the living room and sat down, Fox on the sofa and Bill on a chair. For a long moment, Bill sat there, starring ahead of himself. It was much harder to say what he had to say, now that he was face to face with Fox. After a while, he sighed deeply. Where to begin? "It's so clear now," he finally said. "Simple." He shook his head. "It was so complicated then. The choices that needed to be made." He realized that this made little or no sense to his son. "What choices?" Fox asked. Bill met his eyes for a moment. "You're a smart boy, Fox," he then said and got up slowly to look out the window. "Smarter than I ever was." God, it was hard to tell him. So hard, he almost regretted having called him. Fox sighed. "About what?" His tone sounded slightly exasperated. Bill turned to face him again. "Your politics are your own. You've never thrown in," he said. "The minute you do that, their doctrines become yours and you can be held responsible." It would be so much easier if Fox knew what he was talking about. "You're talking about your work at the State Department." Halfway a question and halfway a statement. Bill felt the urge to laugh for a moment. It passed quickly. "You're going to hear things," he went on. "You're going to hear the words. -- And they'll come to make sense to you." Fox starred at him, obviously aware of that he was going to tell him something important. "What words?" he wanted to know. Bill heaved a deep breath and let it out slowly. "The merchandise," he finally said and almost cringed at the look in his son's eyes. Fox got up to put a hand on his shoulder and Bill found that it had been easier to endure the hurt and the hatred than the pity he saw there now. His heart began to hurt literally. "Look, I... ahem... I've been taking some medication," he started, knowing that he needed his pills if he wanted to avoid a heart attack. All of this was becoming too much for him now. "You'll have to excuse me for a moment." He broke away from his son and quickly went to the bath room, closing the door behind him. For a second, he looked at his reflection in the mirror, cursing himself silently for being so weak. Wouldn't it have been easier to say it straight out? To tell his son what he knew as quickly as he could? With a slight shake of the head he opened the wall mirror and got pill bottle. He closed the mirror cabinet again, opened the bottle and shook two pills out in his hand. Then he looked up and saw the young man reflected in the mirror. So that was how it was going to happen? He turned and faced the muzzle of a gun. The young man wasted no time. He simply pulled the trigger and was off again. Bill crashed to the floor, feeling the world waver around him while he heard his son calling for him somewhere far away. Then Fox was leaning over him. "Oh Dad," he said, tears rising in his eyes. All Bill could manage were two words. Two words he had wanted to say to Fox for so long, it had to be the last words he said. "Forgive me," he managed, then darkness descended over him forever. On the other side of town, a young woman sat in her car, waiting. She knew she would feel his death. And when it came, she jerked. Tears rose in her hazel eyes as she brushed her hair back behind one ear, started the engine and drove off. Soon, she would contact her brother and then things would change. Those who had done this to her family would pay. Especially the Cigarette Smoking Man. He would have to pay the most. All in the name of her father and the entire human race. THE END?