by Livia Balaban
Rated PG-13 (language, violence) = V, SA, SkA, some death.
Spoilers: Requiem
Summary: There will be no time to mourn.
Somehow it has become Wednesday already.
He is functioning on pure adrenaline now. After forty-eight hours of uninterrupted calls, visits and strategizing, fortressed in his office, he should be exhausted.
Maybe he is. But he doesn't have the luxury of time or introspection now. He has to see her. He has to be brave enough to look into her eyes and say the words to her. He can't tell her this over the telephone.
He doesn't know how he'll do it.
Over the past two decades, he has stoically informed over a half-dozen families of their intimate losses. This one is different. This one is incomplete.
This one is personal.
The car in front of his slows down to an intolerable crawl. This won't do. He leans on his horn, convinced somehow that the dire urgency of his mission can be conveyed through the long, blaring wail. The driver flips him off. He swears and contemplates ramming the car with his own.
It's intolerably hot. Sweat trickles across his head and down the back of his right ear, filling in the narrow gap between the tender cartilage and the stiff wire of the glasses. It feels awful, sticky, confining, but he makes no move to correct it. He is driving. He must concentrate. He must go faster.
The driver ahead of him could be traveling at mach two and it wouldn't be fast enough. There is so little time left, and she deserves every minute she can get. If it wasn't for the cost of Monday's misfortune, she would already know. He would be able to call and tell her. She would be at the hospital already. But not now, not with her daughter missing. It's too much loss in one blow. He can't drop this bomb from a distance.
Drive, he commands. Drive, you callous motherfucker. Just fucking drive. The world is ending.
He was responsible for her disappearance, for both abductions, really, so he should be the one to inform her of the return. One life regained and lost while another goes on missing.
There is nowhere to put his Bureau sedan. Two vehicles have already double parked on her narrow street. He pulls into an alley past her building. Another automobile blocks his way. He doesn't care. He pulls in beside it, blocking the alley, stumbling over the rear bumper of the other car as he tries to run around it.
When he pulls himself upright, he sees - through his own spectacled reflection in the rear window - a shock of short brown hair peeking over the top of the back seat. He stops dead. He can barely breathe. The head is askew, unmoving. This is what he's feared.
Two days and nights, two interminable days and nights, desperate to reach him, willing to make any deal for the baby if only he could put things right.
He moves around to the side of the vehicle. Through the side window, he can see into the rear of the car. Short brown hair, black suit jacket. Blood everywhere. Stiff. Shit.
Then something worse, so much worse.
No. Please, no.
God, no.
Fuck, no.
No...
No.
His knees buckle at the sight, the horrible, impossible sight. The little form lying inert beside the traitor's carcass, head at an unnatural angle, the tiny neck unmistakably broken. Dead. Both dead. This can't be happening. Not now.
They're all screwed. It's over.
He wonders how much she can take. How much can she take before it breaks her?
Does it really matter now?
It's the end for all of them, spattered in deep red on yellow fleece. Their hope lies dead, rotting, in the back of that cruddy, bloody sedan.
He runs toward her building, storms inside, barrels up the stairs to her landing. She is leaving with Krycek. He shakes his head in confusion.
"Why the hell should I trust you?" she asks her escort angrily.
"I know where she is, Scully. I'll take you to her. We both want the same thing now." Krycek's voice, Krycek's gun in her side.
Skinner understands and approaches. Scully halts, eyes darting between the two men.
"I need to speak with you, Agent Scully." He pleads with her silently to understand the danger she is courting.
She turns toward the man who holds her and asks for a moment.
"Let's go," Krycek's voice croaks.
He can feel his urgency pouring out. He must calm down. He will blow his only chance if he is too eager.
Scully turns her attention to her Assistant Director, to his panting, frantic form, and nods. "I just need a moment, Krycek. We'll be right back." Krycek's head nods tensely.
Skinner walks with her into her apartment and closes her door.
He keeps his voice low. Their only chance is to feign ignorance. "He's a shape-shifter, Scully. Krycek's dead. I just found his body in a car down the block."
She stares at him blankly. She knows. Find Krycek and they find the child.
"Scully, that thing in the hall is an alien. How do we kill it? Do you know?"
She is mute, paralyzed, barely breathing.
"Scully, help me stop this."
Finally she blinks. Her mouth opens, but no sound emerges. He is afraid.
"Scully, please."
She whispers, obviously terrified of the sounds emerging from her own mouth. "The baby?"
He hangs his head, closes his eyes, and slowly shakes his head. It is too much to bear. It will break her. They're all lost. The world is ending.
He hears nothing. He looks up.
She is still there, blank again. He has to do something, or he will succumb to the futility. He has to tell her. The kidnapping was bad enough. But this, exacerbated by his own news...
He will say it. He will find a way to tell her and she will know. There is nothing he can do except offer her the truth and trust her to do the right thing. Trust her to survive.
For however long they have now.
"I'm sorry. I just found them both." He can't bring himself to say the words. Her daughter is dead. The world is ending. He will be practical. "That *thing* outside, Scully, it did this. Help me."
She is still dazed, mute, but she turns to her desk and from the top drawer she withdraws a narrow cylinder of steel. When she presses a small latch on the side, a short spike emerges. Neither of them flinch.
Her voice is clear and low, menacing, chilling. "At the very base of its neck. All the way in, hard." Her eyes are unblinking. "I'll do it myself."
"No," he rasps. "There's something you need to do." He can do this. He can tell her the rest. "I'll take care of this. You get down to the ICU at GMH. I got a call about a half-hour ago about a John Doe matching Mulder's description. I got a scan and it's him. Go."
She doesn't move. She stares at him sullenly. She has seen through him. "What aren't you telling me?" Her voice has turned flat, dead. He feels the dread flowing between his gut and her eyes.
He doesn't want to tell her. He doesn't want to be the messenger of all this. He is the angel of death. He is a traitor. He wants it all to end. It will end. It's all going down, and it's going down wrong. It wasn't supposed to end like this. He can't find the words.
"Tell me." Her voice is a harsh whisper.
He submits, knowing he cannot stop it now. Time is tumbling ahead of them, ruthless and absolute.
"He's in a coma. They don't expect him to make it through the night." His voice breaks on this last word. Too much pain. Too much too quickly, too much at once. He pleads with her. "Go."
She blinks once and hands him the spike with surgical crispness. "Don't breathe the fumes."
He retracts the sharp tip completely and slips it into his pocket. He nods and follows obediently in her deliberate wake. When the door opens and they return to the hallway, the Krycek face is wary.
"Let's go, Krycek," she commands. He hears the death in her voice. "Skinner is coming with us." She walks ahead of them.
"Just you," the creature insists, but Skinner is quick and strong. He has a massive, powerful arm around the monster's shoulders and the instrument in his ready hand before the beast can fight.
Scully keeps walking. She doesn't look back.
The creature recoils at the click of the spike as it springs from its sleeve. A moment later, four inches of razor-sharp steel are buried between what would be two vertebrae. Good. The sagging form slumps to its knees on the floor. Die, you stinking piece of shit. Skinner removes the spike and covers his nose and mouth. The creature falls over. Motherfucker.
Scully is gone.
He kicks the monster to its back, and its lifeless form lies shifting on the floor, the hard wood sizzling beneath its punctured neck. In moments, its face has changed. In moments, its face is huge and contorted, hideous in death. He prefers Krycek's face on the thing.
He stumbles back, dropping the weapon, dropping the hand protecting his lungs, and slams helplessly against the wall. His eyes fill with tears, surely the effect of the corrosive vapor, he tells himself.
Nothing gained. It's still over.
He still can't stop it. It's still going to happen. There's nothing he can do except take this one miserable life. He should have been able to do so much more, he thinks as his knees give up their struggle to keep him upright and he slides down to the floor. He should have been able to purchase more with those two good lives lost. All he can do now is kill in retaliation.
He buries his face in his hands, buries his hands against his knees, and breathes through the filter of damp, cramped fingers. It's all he can do. He sits. His body is suddenly exhausted. He can't rise. He doesn't have the strength.
With what's left of his waning energy, he lifts his head, pulls out his phone, and calls for assistance. The DCPD, the coroner's office. Three bodies. Three deaths.
He sits.
It's over. They've lost.
That child was a danger, poison to those fucking creatures. No one could keep her safe. It was pointless to think he could protect her. Mulder is the only chance to create another genetic messiah, and it's too late for him.
Scully's strength was the source of his own optimism. She is empty now. So is he.
The world is ending. They are coming. It will be soon. The executions are nearly complete.
When too much time passes and no one arrives, he heaves his tired body from the floor and steps over the corpse on his way out of the building. The air is heavy, oppressive.
He squints into the setting sun. The car is gone. He is not surprised.
He drags himself into the building, but he knows what he will find when he arrives at her landing.
The body is gone. Only a burned-out crater in the floorboards tells the tale of what has occurred here. A dark empty puddle, impossible to hide so quickly. It is all the evidence that remains.
She will have nothing to bury. In all likelihood, they will take Mulder's body as well, once it gives up the fight. He doubts it will still be there come morning.
And it is still going down. Their only hopes lie dead and dying.
He stands immobile before her door, looking down at the black, burned wood. This will be them.
He closes his eyes. The acid-etched pit is too small to swallow him, he despairs.
They've already won. They've already lost.
There will be no time to mourn.
=====
End.
Thanks to: M. Sebasky, SE Parsons, Nikki, and Alicia. Corporate funding by YesVirginia.
