Title: GEFANGENER Author: aka "Jake" Rating: PG-13 for disturbing themes Classification: 590-Word alternate ending fic Spoilers: "Unruhe" Summary: Life imprisonment can take many forms. Disclaimer: These characters belong to Chris Carter, FOX and 1013 Productions. No copyright infringement intended. Authors Notes: This story was written in response to Haven's Scully Torture Challenge. Be forewarned -- it's not happy. GEFANGENER By aka "Jake" FBI data shows that ten of the twelve states without capital punishment have homicide rates below the national average. Opponents of the death penalty often cite that capital punishment is not a deterrent to murder, those executed are usually poor, and many innocent people have been wrongly sentenced to death. Tell it to someone who cares. Gerald Thomas Schnauz -- house painter, drywaller, murderer -- got lucky. He killed Alice Brandt in Traverse City, Michigan, and Michigan happens to be one of the twelve states without the death penalty. Special Agent Fox Mulder has not seen Gerry Schnauz since testifying at his trial. He isn't sympathetic to the fact that Schnauz is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, who, according to his court-appointed lawyer, belongs in Melvoin Psychiatric Hospital, not a maximum security prison. Fox Mulder wishes Gerry Schnauz had committed his crimes in one of the forty states that gas, electrocute or inject its serial killers. E. Michael McCann, a district attorney in Wisconsin -- another compassionate state without the death penalty -- prosecuted Jeffrey Dahmer, who murdered and dismembered seventeen boys and men, and ate the flesh of at least one of them. Despite the heinous nature of the crime, McCann was not dissuaded from his feelings about capital punishment. "To participate in the killing of another human being, it diminishes the respect for life. Period." Being a doctor, Special Agent Dana Scully might have agreed with him, had she not undergone a transorbital lobotomy at the hands of a madman in October of 1996. Gerry Schnauz kidnapped her, duct-taped her to a dentist chair, inserted a leucotome into her eye socket and proceeded to cut out her brain while she begged for mercy. Many aspects of Schnauz's crime haunt Agent Mulder. Scully was his partner. He stayed behind at the Traverse City Drug Store, while she went for the car, where she was abducted. He tried to locate her, but didn't arrive in time to save her. The worst part though, the thing that still gives him nightmares, is knowing that she understood exactly what was happening to her when Gerry Schnauz excised her mind. Which thoughts went first? Mulder wonders. Worse yet, which went last? The cases they were working on? The errands she was planning to run later in the day? Memories of her mother? Her brothers? Thoughts of him? Had she been hoping he would rescue her? Was she thinking of him at all? Was she disillusioned when he didn't burst through the door and stop Schnauz before it was too late? Mulder straightens a dying flower in a vase beside Scully's hospital bed. She is lying motionless on the pillows, a doll tucked into the crook of her arm and a vacant look in her eyes. Argue with me, he wishes. Prove me wrong. Tell me I'm crazy, Scully, so I can start to breath again. Physically she's right there in front of him, yet the Scully he knew vanished in a motorhome at the edge of a Michigan graveyard on an otherwise perfect autumn day. The sun appears balanced on the horizon outside her window. He bends over her and softly kisses her cheek. "See you tomorrow," he says, same as always. Sorrow sucker-punches him when she doesn't answer, although she hasn't uttered a word in nine years. Dana Katherine Scully is a permanent patient in Baltimore's Center for Long Term Care. Today 2,572 inmates are serving sentences of life without parole in the state of Michigan. One of them is Gerald Thomas Schnauz. - - - - - - Author's notes: I live in a state without capital punishment and I am not a proponent of the death penalty. Please do not write to me about your views on capital punishment. This was a piece of fiction, not an editorial comment. "Gefangener" is German for "prisoner."