From: AnubisLM <anubislm@aol.com>
Date: 25 Mar 2000 05:32:09 GMT
Subject: NEW: Shadows of Ashes by Anubis (1/1)

Title: Shadows of Ashes
Author: Anubis
E-Mail: AnubisLM@aol.com
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: The X-Files, Smoking Man, Mulder and Scully are the 
property of Carter et al at 1013.  No infringement is intended, no 
profit was made.
Category: V
Keywords: None
Spoilers: En Ami
Distribution: anywhere.
Summary: Is the price of betrayal calculable?


Shadows of Ashes
By Anubis

I've made only two mistakes in my life.  The second mistake was
using Dana Scully to get the alien genetics data from Cobra.

Regret is an unfamiliar emotion for me.  I learned a lifetime or
two ago that it gains you nothing, and may cost you a great deal if
it slows your reflexes, or causes you to pause at just the wrong
moment.  Regret wastes time in a life of far too few hours.  So, 
I long since gave it up.

And yet, here I sit in the near dark of this room, the fire burning 
quietly, a glass of excellent burgundy in my hand, and I cannot bring
myself to celebrate my victory.  I am adrift in unfamiliar seas--lost
in the strange sensation that something eluded me when I wasn't 
looking.  Except that I am quite sure I never turned my gaze away. 

I sit here with the disk that has answers beyond any imagined 
questions.  I sit here knowing that a danger has been eliminated--
that stupid scientist is no longer likely to suddenly fall prey to
his guilty conscience.  God spare me all such idealistic fools.  
Do they truly imagine that mankind is wise enough to handle these 
sorts of secrets?  

Did Cobra ever really believe that he could save  the world?  Perhaps
he did.  It is, ultimately, of no consequence.   He is dead and I 
have the data.

Loose ends have been neatly tied up. My erstwhile assistant is also 
quite dead.  There was a certain satisfaction in putting a bullet in
his precise if unimaginative little brain.  He must have expected 
it.  Or, maybe he didn't.  He followed his orders, and undoubtedly 
thought he would receive his just reward.  In his profession, a swift
and almost painless death might be reward enough.  It is of no 
matter--he was simply one more foot soldier lost in the grander 
cause.  

And yet, and yet...tonight I do not feel that familiar glow of 
accomplishment.  That sure sense of knowledge of my own superiority.
I am still convinced of my rightness, and I understand my pivotal 
role in the game better than ever, but there is something lacking 
tonight.

The fire sparks and pops--another fire amid so many others.  

I have burned papers and I have burned cities.  Ashes and cinders
are the shadows I leave behind me.  Nothing transforms or destroys 
quite the way flames do, and yet, strangely, I have walked through 
all those flames, and the soot has left no permanent mark on me.  
I have, over the years, become grayer perhaps.  But so have we all.
It is only the process of aging.

Staring at these particular flames, on this night, it comes to me
that perhaps I miscalculated.  I touched Dana with the flame of 
betrayal, and I fear I have marred her.  I did not mean to.

Everyone has their price.  Everyone can be bought.  You simply have
to raise the stakes high enough, put pressure on the right parts 
of a person's soul, and you can own them. Anyone can be owned.  
Offer even a righteous man the chance to save the world in return
for the "victimless crime" of a small personal betrayal, and 
eventually you will have him.  And there are very few truly 
righteous men left.

I had her.  For a brief moment I held her in the palm of my hand and
then I let her go.  Or perhaps she left of her own accord--suddenly
awake to the mistake she made.  It does not matter how she left.  
What matters is that she came at all.  That she allowed herself to 
be bought, however temporarily.

I needed her to come with me.  I needed her unwitting help to win 
this round of the game, to gain this one more prize.  I have to 
confess that I also wanted her to come with me.  Wanted to affirm
for myself that I could buy her, that I understood her well enough
to offer her the asking price of her soul. And although she got 
me what I needed, I am startled to realize that I regret it.  

She is corrupted now.  I found the pressure point of her heart, and
I pushed at it until she snapped.  She came with me to an undefined
location.  She had to place her trust in me. She lied to her 
partner.  She broke the rules.  And although she is no stranger to
rule-breaking, this was different.  This had the scent of the 
forbidden, the taint of evil, and still she followed me.

They will not be the same after this.  One of the gifts I gave Dana
on this strange journey was my insight into her heart--her inability
to love Mulder fully, even though it seems only too plain to me that
her soul is crying out for her to do just that.  She believes she 
is incapable of withstanding the force of that passion, I think.  
She is, of course, wrong.  If she manages to realize her error some
day, it will change them both.

It is of little consequence if she does, though.  Knowing her and 
Mulder as I do, I think they'll bury this incident deep beneath 
their respective surfaces.  It will lie there, a mutant, dormant seed
that will spring to life some fine day--distorted recollections of 
betrayals and lies.  Never mind that she tried to communicate with 
him; he, after all, received none of those tapes.  Never mind that 
she acted for what she thought would be the good of mankind.  Later,
all they will remember is that she ran from him, and he did not, 
could not follow.

Were I different man, I might imagine that this incident will 
actually bring them closer.  But I am an old realist.  And I know
the ways of solitary hearts. 

I have marked Dana Scully - changed her in ways that are invisible
to the naked eye, but the marks of which she will see in the mirror
of her soul.  For a brief moment she sympathized with the devil.  
A brief moment of communion over fine food and excellent wine.  
Surrounded by carefully muted ambiance, wearing the dress I had 
selected for her, she believed me.  She believed in me.  It is not
something she does lightly, and it will be hard for her to go back.

From now on, she will be forced to consider me a little differently.
The next time I approach her, and there will be a next time, she 
will have to stop and think before she turns on her heel and walks 
away.  She can no longer regard me in just the two dimensions of 
good and evil.  She will have to think of me as...human.  As a man
who is torn by complex motives.  As someone who is lonely.

Much of what I told her was true, of course, to an extent.  I served
her the truth liberally mixed with lies, the same potent cocktail I
have used to keep Mulder intoxicated for years.  The chips and the 
technology on that disk do have the power to eradicate human disease.
But, of course, they can also be used to cause all disease.  Any 
disease. Any time, anywhere.  It is unimaginable power, even to me,
who can imagine a great deal of power.

With the broadcast of a few simple commands, I could cause an Ebola 
outbreak in Manhattan.  Typhoid Fever could sweep Los Angeles.  
Instantly.  It is a horrendous, god-like power.  It is...tempting. 

With this technology I would have more than enough of a bargaining 
chip to begin rebuilding it all.  To begin amassing the sort of 
power and control that matter.  A few well-placed words to 
appropriate government officials, a well-placed demonstration or
two, and there is literally nothing I couldn't command.

And yet, the strangest revelation is that I told the truth in the 
one instance where she probably most suspects me of trying to 
manipulate her.  I am a lonely man.  It surprised me to hear those
words coming out of my mouth.  It was not, in fact, what I had 
intended to say.  But hearing those words,  I understood that, 
for the first time in more years than I can remember, I was 
speaking the unvarnished truth.

Her eyes are....well, metaphors fail me.  Suffice it say that I 
have never really doubted why it is that Mulder has kept her so 
closely by his side all this time.  But now I understand a different
dimension to his need for her.  It is not simply that she is a 
flame.  It is such a cliche, and yet apt.  She is warm, 
compassionate, true.  What I saw in her face when I unthinkingly
revealed my soul is that she is, at her core, a true doctor, a 
healer.

I found myself on my feet, blindly striding out of the restaurant, 
ostensibly to smoke a cigarette, but in truth to get away from her.
To get away from what I was trying to make her into.

I have come close to owning the world, in my own small way.  I have
consorted with the true masters of the shadows. I have seen them 
die.  I know the hidden levers of secrets and power.  I have come 
to see that there is nothing that cannot and may not be used for 
the ends of power.

But I made a mistake.  I should not have brought Scully into this.
Not like this.  Not now.  There is little time left, and there 
should be, at the end, something left untouched.  It should have 
been her.

So, I find myself standing on the dock, tossing the disk into the 
water.  A tribute to a healer.  I am drowning the promised cure, but
I am also obliterating unbelievable destruction. Perhaps it is not 
exactly redemption, but maybe it makes me slightly less of who she 
thinks I am.  

She will not ever know of this gesture, of course, but
that makes it more worthwhile.  True nobility is always humble.

Walking back into the house, I push my hands deep in my pockets, an
early spring chill in the air causing a faint shiver to wrack me. 
An unexpected object catches my fingers--it is the envelope with the
tape that she tried to mail Mulder from that gas station.  I had 
forgotten that I had taken it from Guenther's coat pocket before I
pushed him into the river.  I wondered why he had kept it, instead
of simply destroying it.  I wonder, now, why I have kept it.

Perhaps, on my way back to town tomorrow, I will pass a mailbox....

FIN

We are not who we are...


What keeps you going isn't some fine destination 
but just the road you're on, and the fact that you
know how to drive.
            - Barbara Kingsolver