by Livia Balaban
180-Word Self-Imposed Challenge: Mulder Suicide
He'd seen it happen through his living room window.
And after nine days, eleven hours, and forty-eight minutes, he'd played it over in his mind a hundred thousand times.
He'd decided the moment he watched her casket lower into the damp ground. Closing his eyes in inexpressible grief, lowering his head in hopelessness, his course clarified.
And now, with one finger twisting nervously in the thin gold chain about his neck, he was ready. Suddenly lucid, he liberated his finger, gently placing the tiny cross flat against the skin at the base of his throat.
Maybe that's where he'd aim. The place that formed the words he'd used to hurt her, the place where now only a simple 't' of gold remained.
Or maybe into his mouth. His big, goddamned mouth that suggested she go take a walk to cool down.
The mouth that sent her away to die.
He lifted the gun to his lips, lost forever to a hope of sweet lingering over hers, and as they moistened with the last of his tears, he pulled the trigger.
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End.
180-Word Self-Imposed Challenge: Krycek's Sexual Orientation
I honestly don't understand how this whole thing started.
It was a kiss. A brotherly thing, a Judas kiss, like The Godfather, you know?
But that fucking Mulder took it all out of context.
He started blabbing, to really well-placed people, that I was some kind of leather boy. For fuck's sake.
Scully too, says she could have sworn she saw me giving her the eye once over some rotting carcass she was slicing and dicing. I'm so fucking sick of this shit.
Listen, all of you: I have absolutely no interest in the ass of Fox Mulder, okay? And that hard little bitch Scully is even less appealing. Although I'll admit a passing interest in Marita. But that was a purely isolated incident.
Look, when you spend day and night on the run, toting weapons and taking orders, you don't really have time for relationships. And I'm not a one- night-stand kind of guy. Surprised? Yeah, well fuck you.
So here it is in black and white: I don't have sex. Okay?
Now shut the fuck up about me already.
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End.
180-Word Self-Imposed Challenge: Samantha's Fate - Version 1
It's time.
I knock, and she answers. She is lovely, lovelier even up close.
"I need to see Agent Mulder," I say, biting my lip and quivering.
She turns to the figure on her sofa, calling to him. And he is here.
"Do I know you?" Those fragile eyes, that brittle forhead. Can't he see it in me?
"Yes, but you'd likely not recognize me. They changed my face when I was sixteen. So I wouldn't resemble the clones."
He gapes in fear.
"It's time, Fox. To do what I've had to do for nearly a year. I knew it and I held off - I didn't know how."
Scully retreats, giving him space to invite me into her home.
"It's true, Fox. There's so little to say: Fiddleheads, swampwater ..."
Tears stream as he remembers these trifles, searching my eyes and finding the truth. "Samantha..."
"I'm sorry, Fox, it's time."
He lowers his head, sorrowfully. "I know."
He hears, but does not see the shot that kills his partner.
Or the one that ends his own life.
Or mine.
=====
End.
180-Word Self-Imposed Challenge: Samantha's Fate - Version 2
I have always known it would be cold and impersonal.
I knew the moment I received word about Jeff.
I hadn't been there but I knew, I could see the sonofabitch holding the gun, aiming, saying something melodramatic and pithy, and pulling the trigger.
Pulling the fucking trigger. On his own son. The legitimate one.
So it's no surprise to find him here, in my home, his gun again directed toward his child. All that's left is to plead for my husband and brother, and wait for the melodramatic, pithy statement.
And the shot.
I don't want to die this way. I don't deserve to. I kept my mouth shut. I stayed away, despite my overwhelming love and fear for my brother. I sacrificed my own happiness to protect him.
I didn't break the rules. I obeyed them, for his sake.
"Maxwell and Fox?"
"They're safe."
Scant comfort, but comfort nonetheless.
"Your knowledge is dangerous, Samantha. I'm sorry."
Like hell you are. Just do it already. Don't you understand the waiting is the horror?
He understands, and does it swiftly.
=====
End.
180-Word Self-Imposed Challenge: Samantha's Fate - Version 3
I have never been this happy in my life, and I'm including that perfect day at the beach when I was seven.
She is so beautiful, so happy, so free from fear and anger.
She runs to her mother, who smiles, scooping her up from the grass, planting soft, warm kisses on her brow.
"Down!
Her mother laughs and deposits her lightly on the grass again.
She runs to her father, who waits, crouched and ready to lift his beautiful little girl up into the air for a wide, wild spin. She giggles. Her father smiles broadly.
I am crying, and cannot cease.
There was only one way I would be satisfied in never holding him again, looking into his soulful eyes, finding my strength. To see him happy; a husband, father - a good father, not pained and accusatory like ours.
I will always love him, need his strength and protection every day, and I will miss him.
But this is the moment. He has outgrown his need for me. I can finally let him go.
He is happy.
=====
End.
180-Word Self-Imposed Challenge: Samantha's Fate - Version 4
I didn't believe her, and who could blame me?
This wasn't the first one. She looked, spoke like the other. Why should she be any different?
She wept, she missed me. She was ordered to stay away. If she got close they would have killed us. Me, Mom, her. Later, when she married and Scully entered my life, the threats expanded to include them as well.
Five lives bound up in one lie.
And now a new lie. That she is my sister. I look into her unblinking Hazel gaze, and shake my head. Fool me twice, shame on me.
She appeared offended. Aw. Go back to your petri dish and leave me the hell alone.
She left, and I drank.
The next morning, a little cooler arrived, filled with fiddlehead greens. And I fell apart.
Mom used to make them, knowing Samantha would be the only one to eat them.
A note: "These aren't for you. Call me and I'll come over and relieve you of them. Dinner on Saturday?"
I wept and called. She came.
My sister's alive.
=====
End.
180-Word Self-Imposed Challenge: Samantha's Fate - Version 5
I'm so tired of answering their questions.
"No, sir, no problem. Tell me where, when and how, and it's as good as done."
Kiss the ass, take the order, find the location, take the shot. It's a simple, uncluttered life.
"Yes, sir, he will disappear."
When I'm bored, I leave the rifle at home. The pistol, the knife, whatever. Because the weapon I possess between these two ears is a heluvalot more powerful than anything I can acquire through those clandestine outfitters.
"No, sir, I wasn't followed."
Years of target practice and laboratory experiments, years of perfectly empty sex with perfectly awful people. Sometimes in exchange for information or trust, but mostly just to get off.
I'm not a complicated person.
They're unconvinced.
"Yes, sir, no problem. You want him gone, he's gone. No sir, no conflict."
None. Haven't seen Fox since I was eight. They said he never asked about me, so - to hell with him.
And when I set up shop, aim my weapon, and fire, it isn't personal. Just another job.
Just another casualty of war.
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180-Word Self-Imposed Challenge: Skinner/Fowley
He knew it the moment she'd sauntered in, a model on a catwalk - her hips leading the way, long legs forcing swaying strides. The fire in her eyes, her sideswept smirk. She wanted information again.
"C'mon, Walter," she sighed, locking the A.D.'s door behind her. "I'm hungry."
"Not interested," he rumbled, stepping back to accommodate her acquisition of his space.
"Not interested?" Smirking again, perched on the edge of his desk, she unfastened his belt in one motion.
"No," he responded, unbuttoning his shirt, exposing a broad expanse of muscled chest.
"Mmmm, definitely not interested," she purred, slipping him out of pants and briefs, brushing her hand against his powerful erection.
"I won't give you what you want, Diana," he growled, shoving her skirt upwards, pushing inside her with powerful grace.
"You always give me what I want, Walter."
<Not today. Today I get what *I* want.> "No deal. No information." The tendons in his neck strained with exertion and pleasure.
She gathered her ragged breath. "Next time, Walter."
He shook his head in dissent.
She smiled. "Next time."
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End.
180-Word Self-Imposed Challenge: Make CSM Remotely Likeable
"You're not eating enough."
"Lay off."
He sighed, releasing twenty-seven years of patience and concern in a single billow of smoke.
"All you want is someone healthy enough for the next hit."
He fingered his cigarette, inhaling the nicotine in a soothing embrace. He was weary.
It's hard to be reviled, especially by your own children. Especially when your own acts of selflessness had the power to create a veil of safety for your species.
No one ever said preserving the human race would be easy - on his life or his heart.
"You have to keep your weight up."
She glared at him. "I don't have to do anything."
How could he explain to her today something he had so miserably failed to communicate for the last nearly-three decades? How could she understand from his simple words and unconcealed concern that he agreed to do it all because the thought of her destruction caused him indescribable suffering?
"There is one thing you *must* do, Samantha." He raised his eyes sorrowfully, stunning her with his undisguised pain.
"You must survive."
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End.
