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Mulder winced as the painful memories flooded
his mind. He didn’t want to continue.
“Go on,” Deriksen urged.
“No. I can’t.”
“Sure you can,” the doctor insisted, as if
it were the easiest thing to do in the universe. “Go on.”
BLAM! The gun went off and Scully fell
to the floor. Mulder could feel his heart pounding in his throat. He reached
her body and felt for a pulse. Blood was swarming around her head and down
towards the rest of her corpse.
Footsteps.
He swirled around and looked up to see
Linda Bowman approaching him. She had a gun. Mulder took Scully’s gun and
pointed it at Bowman. “I’m gonna kill you!”
“Please don’t make me say any more. Please.”
“If you want to get better, you have to face
this tragedy and deal with it. You can’t let yourself dwell on the past.
You’ll feel better once you’ve told the whole story,” he assured Mulder.
“Continue.”
He took a deep breath.
“Don’t listen to her, Mulder.”
Confusion overwhelmed his anger momentarily.
“What?”
“It’s me. You were right about her. Linda
Bowman is pushing you.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Anger settled back in.
“I’m Scully. Linda’s right behind you,
she’s telling you I’m her.”
He looked behind him. The only thing there
was Scully lying in a pool of blood. “You killed her!”
“Mulder, I’m Scully,” she insisted patiently.
“I’m not dead. She wants you to shoot me. She knows you’ll never forgive
yourself.”
“Shut up!” he shouted.
“Listen to me!”
“Shut up!” he repeated.
“Your mother is Tina, your sister is Samantha!”
“Shut up!”
“Modell warned you. Don’t play her game.”
A figure rose behind him. Bowman fired
her gun. As a reflex, and out of utter surprise, Mulder fired his own weapon.
Just before his bullet hit Bowman, she changed. Into Scully.
“NO!” he exclaimed in terror. He looked
behind him. Linda Bowman’s injured body had replaced Scully’s dead one.
And then there was the body in front of him.
He ran to her and knelt beside her. “Scully...”
“Mulder...” she whispered. “He warned you...”
Her body stiffened and went cold.
“I killed her...” he murmured in shock.
“I killed her...” Strangely, he felt no pain in the depths of his heart,
no intense sadness, as he thought he would. He felt calm, more than anything.
No emotion. No tears ran from his face. He took out his phone and dialed
a number. He walked over to Bowman. She was smiling.
“I won.”
Two words. Two words that made him want
to bash her head in.
“Yes, I’d like an ambulance to 214 Channel
Avenue.”
And still no tears.
“That’s it?” the doctor said, sounding more
or less disappointed.
“I can lie, if it’ll entertain you better.”
“But what happened after that?”
Mulder sighed and twisted in the straight-jacket.
“The ambulance came and pronounced her officially dead, though I could
have told them that myself. Skinner, my boss you could say, found out that
I had shot her, but knew that it was an accident. After a ton of paperwork
and interrogations, I was allowed to stay at the Bureau, but was assigned
to a position that wouldn’t require too much work with firearms.”
“Mister Mulder? A moment of your time,
please? I need you to take a look at something for me.”
“Shove it up your ass.”
The young agent blinked in surprise and
disdain. “That was hardly called for.”
“Leave me alone. I didn’t murder her.”
“What? What are you talking about? Murder
who?”
Mulder took a few slow steps toward the
agent. The younger man took an equal amount of steps back. “I see how you
all look at me... Your eyes are always staring at me... Judging me...”
“Agent Mulder... sir... maybe I should
get back to work. I’m sure I can figure this out for myself.” A cautious
glint of fear touched his eyes.
“You’re always talking about me behind
my back. All of you. You wouldn’t have dared if she were still alive...”
“Goodbye, Agent Mulder.” He turned and
walked quickly down the hall, away from him.
“I guess Scully’s death affected me more than
I realized. People said I was being extremely irrational and sometimes
I would throw fits of rage, breaking things. I kinda attacked a few people
in the hall if they looked at me funny-”
Their eyes bore holes through his spine
and made him cold. They all knew he had done it. He had held the gun that
killed one of their own. One with red hair.
“WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?!” he bellowed
suddenly. The halls echoed with the sound of his voice. He barely recognized
it. It didn’t sound very much like him.
Skinner approached him carefully from an
adjoining hall. “Agent Mulder, just relax.”
“Oh, no, that’s what they want. For me
to relax. They’ll win if I let my guard down. I’M READY FOR YOU, YOU SONS
OF BITCHES!!”
“Agent Mulder! Stop that. Now... Have you
slept at all?”
More eyes. Accusing him. But it wasn’t
his fault. He turned to see a man -an older agent- looking at him. “You
think I did it, don’t you...”
“Um... Pardon?” The papers he held in his
arms began to crumple as he shifted uncomfortably.
“Yes, I did it,” Mulder whispered loudly.
“But it was an accident. I didn’t know it was her...”
“Okay...”
“But you think I did it on PURPOSE, DON’T
YOU?!”
“No...”
“DON'T LIE TO ME!!!” Mulder’s fist connected
with the agent’s face. And half a dozen men leapt forward to hold Mulder
at bay.
“-and it all went downhill from there. Needless
to say, I was fired from the FBI and was locked up for a trial. They decided
I had gone crazy and put me in this thing-” He twisted in the jacket again.
“-to keep me from hurting myself. And here I am talking to your ugly face.”
Deriksen smiled sweetly. “Yes, here you are...”
He looked down at his notes again. “It says that you’ve been talking to
yourself in your cell?”
“I wasn’t talking to myself.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. To... Scully?”
No answer.
“I see. What do you talk about?”
No answer.
“I’m getting the feeling that this is as far
as we’re going to get in this little session today. Maybe you would feel
more comfortable in your cell?”
“It’s better than here,” he said quietly.
Deriksen nodded, as if he expected nothing
less than the answer he was given. “Alright, then.” He opened the door
and let the guards in. “See you next week, Mr. Mulder.” The two guards
pulled Mulder to his feet and exited. The doctor sat down and smiled.
The door opened once more and a whisp of smoke
drifted by the doctor’s head. “Our friend has just lost all credibility,”
Deriksen reported.
“This run-in with... Linda Bowman, was it?...
has proved to be very convenient,” he said smugly in his stuffy voice.
He took another suck from his cigarrette and exhaled the smoke. “It would
appear she has rid us of our one real threat.” He turned to leave. “Make
sure he is never released.”
“Yes, sir.” He smiled again, reached into
his coat pocket, and pulled out a pack of cigarrettes. He pulled one out
and lit it for himself.
Mulder was shoved into his padded cell. Glaring
back toward the doorway, he sighed and sat down, wishing he had enough
use of his arms to show the guards the bird. After a while, he finally
got bored enough to lie down and desperately try to sleep.
Time passed. Mulder wasn’t sure how long it
was, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple hours. He lay awake,
thinking.
“Mulder?” a familiar voice called.
He shot up and looked around. No one was there.
“Mulder? It’s me,” it called again.
“Scully?” His heart thumped in his chest.
“I’m here.”
A long pause.
“Scully... I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
He blinked. “For killing you.” Finally, at
long last, tears built up in his eyes.
“I’m sorry too.”
Silence for a moment.
“So Mulder?”
“What?”
“What happened with Linda Bowman? ...What
happened with the X-Files?”
“...I lost.”
END