TITLE: ROAD'S END AUTHOR: aka "Jake" SPOILER WARNING: Season 8 (prior to This Is Not Happening), Sein und Zeit, Closure, Emily RATING: PG-13 (R if you're sensitive to sexual suggestion) CLASSIFICATION: V, MSR SUMMARY: "Mulder, where did you go?" "End of the road." Disclaimer: Do these characters really all belong to Chris Carter, FOX and 1013 Productions? If so, no copyright infringement intended. Entertainment, yes. Profit, no. Author's notes: This short story is not based on spoilers –- I don't read them. It's just one possibility of many for an end to Season 8. Hanky alert, if you're easily moved. ROAD'S END (1/1) By aka "Jake" "I want to believe so badly in a truth beyond our own, hidden and obscured from all but the most sensitive eyes, in the endless procession of souls, in what cannot and will not be destroyed. I want to believe we are unaware of God's eternal recompense and sadness, that we cannot see His truth, that that which is born still lives and cannot be buried in the cold earth, but only waits to be born again at God's behest...where in ancient starlight we lay in repose." –- Fox Mulder in Closure - - - - - - - ...a long and winding road...we hit a bump...took a wrong turn...dead ended. The hazards of traveling. Short trip today. Hospital to apartment. Margaret Scully at the wheel, daughter Dana in the passenger seat (jounced and cringing), newborn baby all but lost in his padded car seat. The baby sleeps. Mrs. Scully gnaws at her lip. Dana just wants to be home. "I can stay with you for a few days if you like," Maggie offers. She smiles, but her lips are frayed and her cheeks pucker with worrisome lines. Brows peak beneath a crown of badgered hair. She always appears worn, but solid, like a granite breakwater. "I'll be fine. *We'll* be fine," Dana corrects herself. Disenchanted eyes slide to the back seat. The baby's mouth quibbles in his sleep; he broods in his dreams. What does a one-day-old infant think about anyway? Maybe he wonders why his mother's heartbeat no longer thrums in his ears. "I know you'll be fine, honey. But I want to stay anyway." Maggie's cheeks are going to shatter. "I've waited a long time to get my hands on that grandbaby. You wouldn't want to deny a new grandmother, would you?" Dana shakes her head; she's already lost this fight, although it isn't really a fight, it just seems that everything's a battle these days. The days themselves have become combat zones in which her sanity brawls for some semblance of control: Fear on the front lines, Hope taking cover in the trenches, Faith all but lost, missing in action -- like the father of her new child. Dana picks her way through a minefield of despair everyday and wonders when she will be blown to bits. "Did you call Skinner?" she asks her mother. "Yes." "And Doggett?" "Yes." "And--" "Yes, I called Fox's three writer friends." Fox. (He prefers Mulder.) He is no fox. It isn't in him to deceive, trick, hoodwink, fool, con. He is the antithesis of foxy; he wants only the truth. But like a fox, the hounds have hunted and trapped him. Dana imagines him in a nightmarish place. Hurt. In pain. She shakes away the image and watches her apartment loom into view. A short trip today. No hazards, although this apartment is a heinous destination to bring a baby. Full of ghosts and malevolence. * * * Maggie heats water for tea and unpacks a bag of groceries while Dana tucks the baby into his crib, positioned at the foot of her own bed. The bedroom smells of Lysol and fabric softener. Dana's hesitant to leave her son alone in the makeshift nursery; danger loiters around the crib's bars. Not ordinary hazards, like diaper rash and fevers and choking on itsy-bitsy toy parts, but real, honest-to-goodness devils and ghouls. Not to mention misplaced souls. (Melissa and Donnie Pfaster died in almost the exact same spot, a few shaky footsteps beyond this very room.) Invisible phantoms raise gooseflesh on Dana's arms, so she slips another blanket over her son's tiny shoulders and rests her palm on his chest to feel it rise and fall and rise and fall. Does the baby's father hover somewhere nearby? *You can't see a ghost and still hope to find her alive. Both things can't be true.* Mulder's words. Sacramento. Amber Lynn LaPierre. Dana has seen Mulder's ghost three times since he disappeared in Bellefleur. She tries to explain away his spectral visitations as nightmares, but she's not altogether convinced she was asleep at the time. The teakettle whistles. Dana kisses her son (cheek like a nectarine warmed by sunshine) and abandons him to the room's ruthless memories. Her mom waits with a steamy cup of Earl Grey. Everything appears so normal. "I know you told me not to go overboard, Dana, but I couldn't resist. I bought the baby two more sleepers and the cutest little jogging suit." "He doesn't jog, Mom." Dana sips her tea. Despite the mug, jailed in her palms, full of aromatic English tea, her fingertips smell like her baby and they feel utterly empty. "I saw Mulder." Her words steam from tea-kissed lips. Maggie's eyes round. Gray, watery orbs, full of love and astonishment. "What? Where?" "Standing over the baby's crib." "Just now?" "No. Two days ago." "Dana..." A chapped hand with squared off nails covers Dana's. These are both practical women and they don't believe in specters. Most of the time. However, believing in an apparition is preferable to accepting Mulder's mortality, and even these practical women are willing to entertain atypical notions in this instance. Transmigration of the soul. Out of body experience. Bilocation. It is Mulder's bailiwick, after all. (*You can't see a ghost and still hope...*) "He was there." "Dana, you're tired." "Yes, Mom, I'm tired, but he was there." Maggie removes her hand. "Did he say anything?" She stiffens her shoulders as if she's already dismissed the possibility but asks anyway, for convention's sake. "He said not to worry; he can protect our son." "What did he mean by that?" "I don't know." "You must have been dreaming, honey." "I was awake." A tremor vibrates the tea in her mug. Then, as she often does, Dana capitulates and surrenders to science, to more sensible explanations. "Maybe you're right. I must have been dreaming. Or hallucinating. I haven't been sleeping well." * * * Walk-ins. Old souls looking for new homes. They live in starlight. At least, in Harold Piller's hallucinogenic universe they do. He believed these spiritual saviors stepped in and took Amber Lynn LaPierre from her bed to protect her soul from the great harm it would have suffered had she lived. Mulder, too, came to believe in Harold's theory of spiritual intervention. Why not? It was comforting and Mulder was weary, grieving for his mother, his sister, his family. Alone (except for Scully). Harold's conjecture wrapped him the same way a favorite blanket cocoons a frightened child. It was an easier pill to swallow than those god-awful words Samantha scrawled in her diary. *No more. No more tests. No more questions. I'm getting out of here and not turning back. Tonight. Tonight I'm going to run far, far away. I can't let them catch me. They'll kill me if they do. Running for my life, for the rest of my life.* Only fourteen. Samantha was just a little girl, stolen from her family. Dana and Maggie have finished their tea and Maggie rinses the cups under scalding hot water. Dana is certain she hears the baby wail. The gushing tap hammers the sink. And Maggie is talking, something about Bill Jr.'s childhood sleeping habits. Maybe Dana only imagines the baby's cry. She excuses herself to check him. She's nervous. On edge. Maggie scrubs the mugs with every ounce of strength she possesses. In the bedroom, in the crib, the baby sleeps. Ethereal lashes drape plump cheeks. His nose whistles a bit as he breathes. His head is the size of a small melon and Dana imagines the cantaloupe she split Thursday morning only to find the flesh bruised with rot. She slipped the overripe fruit and its greasy pulp into the trash. * * * Two-seventeen a.m. The baby demands to be fed and Dana's breasts ache with each of his cries. She fumbles through the half-dark to rescue him from his hunger, letting his howl and the feeble nightlight guide her to him. Satisfying his want is her only preoccupation at the moment. She lifts him from his crib, nuzzles the crease of his neck, damp with his effort and misery. His lips suckle even before she lifts the hem of her milk-stained T-shirt to put him to her breast. He latches on, greedy, and they both are relieved. Bringing him back to her own bed for the rest of the night, she thinks what harm can it do? Once doesn't form a habit, and so what if it did? The bed is larger than she has ever needed, with the exception of a few blissful nights (and wondrous afternoons) when Mulder sprawled across its expanse, shrinking her share but giving back far more than he ever took. On those occasions, held within Mulder's naked embrace, she played hooky...from work, from worry. Golden-limbed, heavy with heat, he pinned her beneath him, sheltered her with his trust, scalded her with passion. He aroused a crazy urgency in her, leached pleas from her lungs. She spread her thighs and arched her back. He sank into her. They saturated the room with their sighs. The universe thawed. At some point, two cells converged and sparked to life -- an ordinary enough event, but seemingly impossible in this case. Two pronuclei came into contact to form a new nucleus, containing both male and female elements. Like magic. The blastosphere split, divided, followed an ancient set of instructions and, voila, created something altogether unique. Unity wrought severance, severance wrought unity. A chicken and egg kind of thing. The baby's sucking peters out. His lips cling to her raw nipple, but his tongue is calm. Four satisfied eyes droop (*we lay in repose*). Drowsy, Dana's chin dips to her chest and the pull of gravity startles her. Snapped awake, she checks her baby. Oh my God! He lays sprawled in her lap with his head peeled open, his brain exposed. He's alive but unconscious. Fissures, convolutions –- underdeveloped and fragile. A chunk of his mind is missing, hacked away. Butchered. She has dissected adult brains on her autopsy table, but never any so young and small as this. Never one with so few memories. Her heart batters at her sanity. She blinks and the mutilation is gone. The baby is fine, sleeping boneless in her arms, pink and whole. * * * "Want me to help with those dishes, sweetie?" Maggie asks. "No, go ahead to church. You're going to be late." "I don't have to go." "I'll be fine." How many times has she repeated these words? Maggie squeezes her daughter's arm, kisses her cheek. "I'll say a prayer for you," she promises. "If you go by Ruby's Bakery, bring me back a Danish. Something full of calories." Dana swirls soap into the sink while her mother slips out the door. Bubbles billow beneath the streaming tap. A scrap of scrambled egg floats from a plate and disappears into the foam -- a rubbery life raft at the base of Niagara Falls. Inadequate and ill-fated. Dishes washed and rinsed, Dana leaves them to air dry. Not a peep out of her son for more than an hour. It's almost feeding time; her breasts are heavy with his breakfast. She drifts to the bedroom, unable to go too long without touching his cheeks, his fingers, his feathery hair. Searching for Mulder in his face. She leans into the crib, draws back the blanket. The baby is gone. Oh, God, the baby is gone! An oval of warmth marks his place on the mattress, but no frantic search of his tiny crib reveals his whereabouts. "Scully?" Jesus! She jumps at the sound of Mulder's voice. He haunts the bedroom's back corner, cradling his son against one shoulder. The baby nestles in his father's neck. "There has to be an end," he whispers. "Mulder...?" An arm's length away, after all these months. His fingertips massage circles into the baby's shoulder blades. The infant is lost behind Mulder's large hands. "It's not worth it, Scully." "What are you talking about?" "This child was born to serve an agenda." Familiar words. Spoken in a hall of a San Diego hospital three years ago. Watching Emily die. What does he mean to do? Does he intend to kill their son? "No, Mulder." "I have a chance to stop it." Her own words thrown back at her. Her own terrible decision exhumed. She chose her daughter's death over the child's continued torment. "No, Mulder, please..." "I can protect his soul." "No...don't..." "He'll never suffer." (The way Emily suffered.) "Please, don't take him. I can't...I can't lose two children." Tears clot her eyes and her world swims. "I can't lose them and you." "You saw it, Scully. Last night. Like Billie LaPierre. Like Kathy Lee Tencate. The precognitive image of our dead child. A horrible vision, foretelling his fate, the fate he will most certainly meet at the hands of our enemies. A violent fate that isn't meant to be...and that I won't allow. He's too vulnerable here." Her life is draining out of her. Her lungs stall and her heart shrieks. This isn't happening. This isn't happening! She wants to rip the baby from Mulder's gentle grasp. She gropes for her child but her hands fall onto nothing. No pulse courses through the veins in Mulder's arms. No heat pours from his skin. Although she stands less than a step away, she cannot smell the familiar scent of him. He is not there, not in any real or physical sense. He's no more than a reflection. He is starlight. "Scully, he'll be safe, protected." "No." She can't stop her tears. Her heart cracks. "He'll be in a better place." "No! Mulder, don't, please, don't. I can't...I can't--" "You have to let go, Scully." "How can you do this? How can you--?" "We *both* have to let go." His voice is seed on the wind. He loves her enough to do this terrible, right thing. He loves his child enough to forsake his own soul mate. "Sometimes victory is the absence of defeat...no matter what the sacrifice. Scully, you know I would never do anything to purposely hurt him or you." "Then don't do this!" "The alternative is far worse." His lips tickle the crown of his baby's head. Tender and sympathetic and devoted. Ripe with adoration. "You have to trust me, Scully." Words he has uttered time and again. She has come to trust no other; she has done nothing but trust him for years. Her purpose has been and will always be to honor the strength of his beliefs. His opacity ebbs. He is intangible. She has nothing to hang on to. "Mulder, please!" Panic chokes her. Her unfilled arms are more than she can bear. "Take me, too...take me with you." "I can't. Our son and I make this journey alone, Scully. For now, this isn't your path." "No! Please! Don't leave me..." Oh God, oh God, she can see right through him, his immortality is translucent. He is so beautiful. Her heart ruptures with the certainty she will never look upon this man again. He is leaving her and taking their son and she's supposed to believe it's for the best. But she doesn't want to say goodbye. She wants to hold him, hold them, and grow old together and watch his back and raise their child and, and, and, and...it's so goddamn awfully unfair. "Scully." He strokes her cheek and for the last time her skin tingles beneath his caress. "Life is not blotted out so completely. That which is born still lives and only waits to be born again at God's behest. We are ancient souls. We travel in starlight and you and I and our son will travel together soon enough." He shimmers, glitters like the starry heavens. He is but pinpricks; he is the cosmos. "The road you and I have traveled, Scully...our road has come to an end." * * * "Honey, I brought Danish. Sweetheart?" Maggie trails through the apartment, bakery bag in hand, hunting for her daughter. She finds Dana alone, hunched in the middle of her outsized bed. Hugging her knees, for lack of anything else. The baby's crib yawns, empty. "Honey?" Dana's head wags. She's been crying. Blown to bits. Shattered like the windshield of a wrecked car. "Mulder took him, Mom." "What do you mean?" "He took the baby." "Took the baby where?" Dana's fiery eyes turn ceiling-ward, ready to accept the truly incredible, to find destiny written somewhere in the sky. At this hour, the stars are invisible to her, but she knows they are there. They have always been there and she finally believes. "To a safer place, Mom. To wait." - - - - - - - "It begins where it ends, in nothingness. A nightmare born from deepest fears, coming to me unguarded. Whispering images unlocked from time and distance. A soul unbound -- touched by others but never held. On a course charted by some unseen hand. The journey ahead promising no more than my past reflecting back upon me. Until at last, I reach the end. Facing a truth I can no longer deny. Alone, as ever." –-Dana Scully in Emily THE END