below . the . moon

Title: Becoming Judas
Author: darkstar (clone347@aol.com)
Rating: strong pg-13
Classification: see part one
Disclaimer: see part seven
Summary: see part one
warning: character death

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becoming judas 8/12
darkstar
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The sunset was a prettily colored lie painted in reds and purples and golds like a mask to hide the decay surrounding them. Everyone else in the camp was in the mess hall, eating and fighting over spilled soup and other "important" matters that suddenly had lost their significance.

Well, almost everyone.

She sat alone in front of the barbed wire fence, her fingers curled around the wire as she gazed on the outside world with unabashed longing. So he wasn't the only one without an appetite. Trader had said she came here to think, to be alone.

"Hey," he said, wondering if that was what she wanted now, if he was intruding. "Am I interrupting something ?"

"Only my thoughts," Scully said, turning towards him with something that used to be a smile but now he couldn't tell what it was. "Sit down."

He did, settling on the ground beside her. Her face was bland as she watched the sun die, but Mulder could read sadness in the tiny lines and wrinkles of her forehead. In her eyes. Something told him it was not his conversation to start, so he merely sat and shared in her silence until she turned to him again.

"How long have we been here?"

"A little over two months."

"Two months." She shook her head. "Who could have thought that we'd lose lifetimes that quickly? Everything feels old now, worn out." Scully looked at him. "It's what dying feels like."

"You're not going to die Scully." <Not if I sell my soul, my truth, the only other thing I care about.>

Her laugh was flavored bitter like arsenic. "Do you want to know what he did to me ?" Scully was tired of holding back, and it was so easy to tell him now that she knew she would descend one level lower into hell and he would not ever see her again after she did. She didn't want to leave in a lie.

"If you want to tell me," Now that he was confronted with the knowledge he had sought, Mulder wasn't sure if he wanted to hear it. If he could hear it.

"He wanted my mind," she said. "The implant that I depend on for life also works against me. It lets Them into my thoughts."

He didn't have to ask who "They" were. The same people who offered him freedom.

"I didn't let him have it. Pavlov tried to take the information by force, tried to pull it away from my mind. He said if I fought back it would destroy me." She blinked to hold back the tears that pricked at her eyelids. "I had to fight. I couldn't just let him inside me..." the thought made her stomach quiver with nausea even now. "So I stopped him. I kept him from getting to the answers he wanted, but he was right." Her voice died away, and she took a deep breath before telling him the empty truth.

"I can't remember, Mulder. I can't remember anything past the night we were captured. I see images of us, of what we were before, but they vanish when I try to touch them, when I try to bring them back. Now, when I need them most of all, they aren't there."

"Did he take them?" Mulder spoke in calm measured tones that hid the struggle within him. Align with such a monster of his own free will? Betray thousands to their deaths?

Save her life?

"No." Scully held her chin a little higher at the fresh memory. "I destroyed them to keep him away."

"No you didn't. You hid them, and they're still in hiding, but I refuse to believe that they're gone. If you wanted to, you could find them."

"I can't Mulder!" Her eyes were a little wild as they looked from him to the sunset to him again. "I've tried and there's nothing left but this black hole that sucks everything about me inside."

"Scully, you can do anything if you want it badly enough. Close your eyes."

"I don't want to do this," She couldn't go back, couldn't visit the places defiled by Pavlov's presence. He didn't what he was asking. "I can't-" Her protest stopped as his hands closed around hers, his touch as warm as his voice.

"You won't be alone."

Taking a deep breath, Scully let her eyelids droop shut, finding herself standing in the dark wasteland of her thoughts. Her memories lay around her, some in twisted fragments, some in broken pictures. She didn't know where to begin.

"There's too many of them." she told Mulder. "I'll never put them back together."

"Don't concentrate on all of them. Focus on the important memories and all the others will come together on our own. What did I say to you when we first met ?"

She tried to grasp the thought and pull it free of the rubble, but it wouldn't budge. "I don't know."

"Think, Scully. Concentrate."

Scully tried again, biting her lip as she trailed deeper and deeper into thought. This time the thought moved, almost coming free but slipping away at the end. "I'm trying..." She made one desperate grab for it, and the images came together into the collage of memory.

<Sorry, nobody down here but the FBI's most unwanted>

<"Einstein's Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation." Now that's a credential, rewriting Einstein.>

A smile began at the far corner of her mouth and worked it's way to the other side as other memories began to appear out of the rubble.

<They're shutting us down.>

<Mulder, the only lie here is the one you continue to believe !>

< If I can save you, then let me.>

<Mulder, they have divided us.>

<You're quitting ?>

<There's really no reason left for me to stay.... anymore.>

<You've saved me, Scully.....You've kept me honest and made me whole.>

<Scully....>

<Something's wrong.>

<They're burying this Scully ! They're just going to dig a new hole and cover it up.>

The last image faded away into a darkness no longer empty nor frightening and Scully opened her eyes to peer straight into Mulder's worried gaze. "You remember, don't you ?" he said, the tension around his eyes relaxing to see her relief.

"I remember." Her smile faded as the present came back into her mind. "For all the good it does."

"How can you say that ?" Now that she was herself again, her walls were going back up rapidly.

"In a few days, I'll be gone and we'll never see each other again. What good can the past do now ?"

"Scully, you just said-"

She pulled away from him, anger coloring her voice red as she thought of what the future held in store. "I know what I said! The past is gone, and it should have stayed buried. This is my future Mulder!" She brushed her hair aside and tilted her head so the burn on her neck was visible. "Let me face it on my own terms."

"No!" It was his turn for frustration now, unable to understand why she wouldn't let herself feel at all, why she had to be such a machine. Around others yes, he could see why, but not now. Not around him. "When are you going to cut this granite statue crap and let yourself be human for once ?"

The impact of his words hit home with a vengeance. She faltered around excuses and reasons she could give him, but instead honesty took over and tumbled out of her mouth in a voice husky with barely contained tears.

"I can't be human. I'm a slave."

"Don't even say that." He reached up and brushed her hair out of her face. "He doesn't own you yet. He never will." <Not if I do the right thing by making the wrong choice.>

Her hands reached around the back of her neck, unclasping the gold chain to her necklace. She let it dangle from her fingers, the cross shining in the light, and then took his hand. "Keep this for me." she said, placing it in his palm and then closing her fingers around it. "Wear it and know my thoughts will stay here even when my body doesn't."

"I can't accept this."

"Please," Her hand tightened around his.

Mulder sighed. There was no way he could refuse her now. He placed the cross in his pocket and smiled at her. "Ok. I'll keep it but only until we see each other again."

"What makes you think we will?"

"What makes you think we won't?"

She didn't answer, and he could see her looking at the last dying embers of sunset, the colors reflected in her eyes. "I've forgotten what the sunset really looks like. The barbed wire makes it all so ugly."

He wrapped his arms around her mainly to relieve the ache in his own chest as well as the pain in her voice. Either decision would be fatal to him- for he knew that once he joined the enemy he would never see her again. Never touch her, never hold her.

"I want to give you the sun," he said.

Scully turned, surprised again by his simple intensity, to see his eyes fastened on her the same way he had looked at her that night in solitary. Like she was an ocean and he was drowning in her. Another freshly discovered memory of another time standing in a hallway when the impossible had almost happened. Like it was happening now.

His hands hovered around her arms, gentle in a way that was paralyzing. Before she could move or think or breathe he was bending toward her, his eyes telling her his one intent. Closer....and closer... she couldn't move away even though she should.... but why should she? She wanted it to happen so badly, her forces of logic waited to kick in until the second before their lips met.

"No." She pushed him back, rising to her feet at the same time. She couldn't focus on his face, couldn't bear the questions that his expression of confusion was asking her. "We can't. Not when I'll never see you again."

With that she turned and nearly ran into the blue darkness of evening, reminding herself again why she couldn't let him kiss her. As far as she could tell, it was the same reason she couldn't let herself cry.

It would require her to feel.

Mulder tried to ignore the hurt that had returned to his chest with the thought of what almost happened. The two words seemed to define their relationship. Almost happened but never quite. The familiar electricity that came from being close to her had intensified to a point near pain. When would the "almost" no longer be necessary?

Not for a very long time, he was afraid, because she was right. She would never see him again. But not because out of any reason she had given. He had come to a decision on Pavlov's offer. The only decision there was to make.

He would turn Judas.

It was the only way to save her.

*************

"Are you sure of your answer?"

Pavlov sounded thoroughly contented and Mulder felt thoroughly nauseaous. He stood in the warden's office, trying not to listen to the accusations of his conscience. <Traitor....how do you like the fit of the word? You will betray thousands to their deaths for the life of one woman...> The voices could hiss and rail on him all they wanted too. The breath of one memory was enough to shaken his waning resolve.

He didn't care how much blood stained his hands as long as it wasn't hers. "Yes," He said, meeting each of the three men in front of him in the eye. "I am." Pavlov was smiling broadly in contrast to the mild disappointment mixed with pleasure on the Cigarette- Smoking Man's face. Mastof was different. He seemed almost saddened by the betrayal. <You and me both....> he thought.

"You do understand that you will never see her again. She will be told that you are dead, and from the moment of your release you are to do nothing to convince her otherwise."

"I can accept that. Just let her go."

"Not so fast." Pavlov seemed to be the spokesman, and he handed Mulder a piece of paper covered with writing and a pen. "This is your statement of allegiance to the New Order. Once you sign it, you have publicly stated your devotion to us and your sworn hatred for the resistance."

Mulder glanced down at the paper, knowing full well what it was. <A bill of sale...> he mused. <Pay to the order of Fox Mulder one human life in exchange for his soul and the lives of any others who stand in our way.>

He couldn't do it. There were too many others, too many innocents that would die if he pulled a Benedict Arnold now.

The Cigarette-Smoking Man caught his eye, and Mulder could read the smug satisfaction easily. Either way the man won- he would own Mulder or he would own Scully. <Own her....>

The thought moved Mulder's hand across the paper, signing his name to the statement in bold letters. By far he preferred losing himself. The ink came out black but it was almost a surprise that they didn't make him sign it in blood.

"Very good." Pavlov picked up the paper, examining it, and then placed it in a folder. "I will personally take it to Headquarters when I return tomorrow. I estimate it will take me a week, prehaps, to obtain the pardons and bring them back here."

"If you are lying to me," Mulder said. "if I find that any harm has come to her, I will kill you. And don't think I don't know how."

"I am fully aware of your capabilites," Pavlov said. "That's why I hired you."

Mulder felt his spine stiffen but let the hate build inside. It would be better to hate, because it was the only thing hot enough to burn up guilt. The Smoking Man was staring at him again, and Mulder turned the fire to ice long enough to meet his gaze.

"What are you staring at, old man?"

"I was just thinking what a waste it will be to turn a lovely body like Scully's out into the world without even once-"

He never finished. Mulder was on him before the next words left his mouth, shoving him up against the wall. "You'll never touch her." he growled, wishing he could choke the smile off the man's face. "Never."

"Now Mulder," Pavlov's hand rested on his shoulder, pulling him away. "You should treat your superiors better. This is no way to get ahead."

The Cigarette Man stepped out of Mulder's now slack hold, his hands shaking slightly as he lit a fresh cigarette. "Don't over estimate the strength of your position," he told Mulder. "She can be found, you know. She can still be killed."

Leaving the last words to hang as a threat, he turned and followed Pavlov out of the room, a trail of white smoke in his wake.

"Do you know what you're doing?" Mastof said, walking across the room. "When I said cooperate, I meant with the interrogations. I never said to join up with the freaks."

"I did what I had to." Mulder said. "Now I need one last favor."

"Anything short of a hole in the fence."

"I need you to get a letter delivered for me. Before Pavlov gets back."

"Ok. To anyone in particular?"

Mulder nodded. "His name is Walter Skinner."

*************

The week was the shortest of his life. Oh, there were long moments, like the times he would wonder if his letter had reached Skinner, if the man was still alive to reach. He could still sleep, if only to escape from the guilt that hounded him during the day. When he was around her, Mulder could almost forget the fact that he had betrayed everything he used to hold so dear. The idealistic young crusader who thought he could save the world by lunch was dead.

Or maybe he had died a long time ago and this was just his funeral.

He tried every way he knew to tell Scully goodbye without actually telling her. Mostly he didn't tell her. When she wondered why she hadn't been transferred, he painted a scenario that made Mastof the hero who had refused to approve her paperwork. He seemed to have a natural aptitude for lying. Wouldn't Pavlov be pleased.

Thursday night brought slightly better news. Mastof called him into his office and handed him Skinner's reply to his letter. The former AD was suspicious of a trap, but said he trusted Mulder's judgment and would be there by Friday.

Then Friday came and rumors of Pavlov's return preceded the two guards who came to get him in late afternoon. Scully didn't ask where he was going. Mulder guessed she thought it was another routine interrogation. He knew she never dreamed this would be the last time she saw him. At the same time he wondered how she would act if she did. Or if she knew that Skinner was waiting outside the gate with the rest of the visitors.

"How long will you be gone ?" she said, not even looking up from what was left of her lunch.

"I don't know." The ache in his chest was back, and it took Mulder a minute to get it down where he could still breathe. Over his shoulder he could see the guards waiting expectantly. "Scully I...." She looked up at him just as he remembered what he couldn't tell her.

"Goodbye." He brushed a chaste kiss on her forehead, and even before her surprise could fully set in he was halfway across the yard, walking so fast even the guards had trouble keeping up.

************

"Mulder, how very nice to see you again." Pavlov reached out his hand to shake Mulder's but lowered it when it was coldly ignored.

"Do you have the pardons?"

"Right here." Pavlov handed Mulder a manilla folder containing multiple copies of the same two documents, one bearing his name and one with Scully's. "But before we got down to that I wanted to show you one of the many benefits of choosing the right side. I believe you've been looking for your sister for quite some time now."

"Are you gonna pull her out of a hat or something?" Mulder asked, not bothering to mask any degree of his open saracasm.

"No." He opened the door that led to the hallway outside the warden's office and knocked on the secretary's door. "Samantha, come here for a moment. I need you to meet someone."

Mulder had to scramble in order to pick his jaw off the floor before Pavlov turned around again, followed into the room by the young woman Mulder had been so positive was a clone. From the look on her face, she was just as surprised as he was. Ever the showman, Pavlov closed the door behind them and then gesture towards Mulder with a flourish.

"Samantha Mulder, meet your older brother Fox."

The surprise turned to out and out shock like someone had dropped a bomb in her lap with one second left on the timer. The response was so genuine, in fact, that Mulder found himself believing it really was her before he remembered the other clone who had pretended with such skill.

"You're a clone." he said. "Just like all the others."

"Fox?" his words didn't seem to register with her. "You were him....he was you....you're alive?"

Mulder forced himself to ignore her again, turning instead to Pavlov. "What kind of trick are you trying to pull? I'm right where you want me- enough of the mind games!"

"This is no game, Mulder. She's the real thing. I told you we could give you what you want." Pavlov looked from Samantha's back to him and then walked to the door, motioning for Mastof to follow him. "We'll let you two make up for lost time then finish our deal later."

The door shut a minute later and Mulder found himself alone in the room with whoever she was, clone or sister, still the object of her amazement.

"Are you really my brother?" she asked, breathless as if she wasn't convinced either.

"That all depends," Mulder crossed the room until he stood beside her. "On whether or not you're my sister."

"How could you even ask a thing like that?"

Mulder shook his head and tried to think. So far he responses had seemed real, but then again so had the others- the first who had been traded for Scully and the second who had met him in a diner with a story of a normal life. "I've been fooled twice before. I don't have the stomach for that again."

"Clones?" she asked, her eyes widening. "That's what they cloned me for?"

"Among other things." He stared at her keenly for a second, trying to find some crack in her story. "If you're really Samantha, you'll have a scar on your left shoulder-"

"From where I fell off a rope swing when I was six." She nodded, the dawnings of a smile brightening her face. "Dad blamed you for it because you were pushing me." Her words came out faster as the excitment in her tone rose. She pulled aside the collar of her shirt. "Look."

He wasn't one hundred percent in touch with reality by the time he saw the white mass of scar tissue running in a thin line over the bone. He ran his fingers over the scar, almost expecting it to come off in his hands. It was impossible to believe that after all these years he was here, and she was here, and this wasn't a dream or a hallucination or anything else but reality. Reality wasn't supposed to be this wonderful.

"Sam?" he whispered, a staggering wave of mingled emotions keeping him from talking any louder.

A second later they were in each others arms. She was crying, and Mulder felt the tell-tale wetness of tears on his cheeks as well. <She's alive. She's alive. This is what I've always dreamed about.>

"What happened to you ?" he asked after they had embraced, eager to find the answer to the question he had spent his life asking.

She sat down in a chair beside the warden's desk, and Mulder did the same, unable to take his eyes off her. "They told me you died, that night." Through the film of tears covering her eyes and her voice, Samantha smiled at him. "I never believed it. Not even during the tests." Her words faltered a little at the memory. "After they were...finished....I was sent to some kind of laboratory. I think I was about eleven then. I kept asking when I could go home, but by then I knew they would never let me out."

"How long did you stay there?"

"My whole life. The scientists there became my family. They taught me and cared for me. Even though I knew what they were, and who they stood for, they were good people. I have nothing against them."

"So they let you go ?"

"No, not exactly. When colonization started, we were attacked."

"Attacked?"

"Yes. From what I could learn, they were supposed to be working with the colonists. But they weren't. They were trying to finish the last stages of a vaccine or something meant to prevent all this. I was injected with it. All of us there were. When the colonists found out, the laboratory was destroyed, as well as everyone in it."

"But you survived." He had a hard time feeling sympathy for the people who held her captive for so long.

"I escaped during the confusion to find that the world had fallen apart. I expected to find you, Dad and Mom waiting for me just like nothing had happened. Instead I found a smoking heap of debris where the house used to be, and a shallow grave with Mom's name on it." She looked up at him. "Do you know where Dad is?"

"He's dead too." Mulder broke the news as gently as possible. "We can talk about it later."

"I did the only thing I could do. I fought back. I joined a cell of the resistance and killed as many of them as I could before I was captured." Samantha held up her wrist, showing him the charcoal numbers seared into her skin. "Since they knew about my training, they let me work as secretary in exchange for better food and a room of my own. I was to have no contact with other prisoners, due to the things that I knew from my time in the laboratory."

She reached out and wrapped her fingers through his. "When you walked in that door, I was so postive it was you, but then you said you didn't know me and I wasn't sure anymore. I was young when they took me, Fox. I barely remembered what you looked like."

"The important thing is that you're here. Now." He managed to give her a full fledged smile. "We can start making up for lost time."

Samantha smiled at him in a way that he knew without a shadow of doubt was truly hers and not a replica. "So tell me. How have you spent your life?"

For the next two hours, he told her in as much detail as possible, about the X-files. About his search for her. About Scully. He ended the story with their capture. No need to tell her he had become one of the people she hated so much.

"To think." she said when he was finished, "We were so close all along." She shook her head then met his eyes in a question. "Why didn't you give up? Why did you keep looking when Mom and even Dad didn't?"

"I believed you were alive. I didn't have proof, or logic, or reason to back me up. I just knew."

"You kept me going, you know." Her grip tightened on his hand and her voice was soft like cotton when she spoke. "All those nights I was alone and wondering if anyone remembered me. If anyone cared. I would think about you, and know that you would never give up on me."

Mulder put his arms around her again, feeling her body solid and real against his, not the vapor he feared would vanish at his touch. "I never gave up, Sam. Not even when I wanted to."

He let the burden of speech drop to his side and simply indulged in the luxury of holding his sister, something he never thought he would do in this life. Minuted passed, slowly and sweetly like candy drops on the tongue, and then the door opened.

"Now isn't this sweet." Mulder looked up to see Pavlov walk through the door. He stepped in front of Samantha without fully realizing he did so until he looked down at his feet and saw he had moved. Instinct told him to protect her from Pavlov's evil even though the creature had been the one to reunite them. "As much as I to break up the family reunion," he said to Samantha. "I need to speak to dear old Fox for a moment."

A small sigh left her body as her fingers released him. Their hands had been joined so long, Mulder was surprised the flesh hadn't grown together. Already he missed her. After so long apart, her presence was addictive like the sweetest drug.

"I"ll be right back," he said, squeezing her hand one last time.

She smiled at him. "I won't be going anywhere. Not this time."

"I know." He returned her smile before settling into the mask of stone that he wore in front of Pavlov as he walked into the hall. He shut the door behind him, but saw no sign of the alien. "Pavlov? You called me out here for a game of hide and seek?"

"Not at all." He appeared at the doorway of Samantha's office. "I just thought you might appreciate the view out the window."

Mulder walked into the room and over to the large window in the far wall. It looked down on the courtyard, a smaller version of the one he had seen in Mastof's office. As his eyes scanned the yard, he noticed something out of place.

Four guards were standing at attention around one prisoner, a short woman with brown hair turning reddish in places. Scully. Mulder's gaze flew to the fence to see Skinner's tall form waiting expectantly. Even from this distance he could see the tenseness in his boss's shoulders. The stage was set, but the play hadn't started yet. No one was moving.

"You're releasing her."

"Not quite yet." In confusion Mulder turned to see the man pointing a silenced 9 mm in dead center line with his heart. "We have one more item of business to attend to."

"Wait a minute....you're going to shoot me *after* I've done what you want?"

Pavlov laughed the same way he had during the slave auction. "No, Mulder. The gun is for you. Go ahead, take it. It's your weapon of choice from now on. You will treat it like your best friend....your lover even."

Suspicion beginning to cloud over the back of his mind, Mulder took the weapon from his hand, his fingers automatically closing around the familiar steel. It had been a while since he had held a weapon of this type but shooting a gun was like riding a bike. Once you learned, it was with you forever.

"Why the silencer?"

"Because you're going to use it."

"Tell me I get to shoot you."

Pavlov laughed again. "Come now, Mulder, we both know how pitifully ineffectual bullet are against us. You'll only end up hurting yourself."

"So what do I have to do?"

"To truly validate your pardons, and your statement of allegiance, you have to pass a test to prove your loyalty. It's a ritual each Enforcer must go through before truly becoming one of us." He paused and eyed Mulder. "Each must give up something he holds close to his heart."

Mulder's mind came to a screeching halt as he came to the horrifying conclusion the minute before Pavlov could tell him.

"You want me to shoot my sister."

*************

The sentence was near blasphemy to his ears. Is that what they were asking him to do? Destroy the thing, the person, that had driven him into who he was? The very core of his belief systems?

"Yes." Pavlov's voice was deadly serious, the hiss becoming more prominent. "She is to be executed for crimes against the state. Her work and the work of her colleagues on a vaccine can not be tolerated."

"Why me?" he asked. "Why not any of the other stooges around here?"

"Because this is your test. Shoot her and I will know that your loyalty is with us. The moment her body hits the floor, I will give the order to release Scully."

"And what if I refuse?"

"If you refuse," he held up another document. "I have the signed authorization orders for her to become the immediate possesion of the man who purchased her. You hadn't forgotten about that, had you ?"

<Slimy little son of a...> "No." Mulder snapped his own thought with his voice. "I haven't." His tone sounded dead even to his own ears. <Ask me to do anything. Ask me to kill anyone. But not her.>

"You might want to look outside the window again. Then decide where your priorities really are."

His eyes tumbled through the glass to land on Scully. Her face was confused, alert, but a tiny bit hopeful. If Samantha was his soul, she was his heart. And now he was asked to tear out one so that the other might survive.

Which one would it be?

He clicked the safety off the gun, detaching his mind from the thing he used to call his humanity as he walked towards the door. Pavlov walked after him. "Where do you think you're coming ?"

"With you, naturally." Pavlov told him. "There has to be a witness."

As his words sunk in, the last hope Mulder had for deceiving them and saving a life crumbled into dust and slipped through his fingers. His heart beat slowly, as if it were wearing down as his feet carried him back to the door of Mastof's office. He paused a moment, staring at the doorknob, then back at Pavlov.

"You will pay for this," he said, his voice low with promise.

"No time for cliches now." Pavlov said cooly. "Time is running out. I suggest you make your decision."

Memories of Samantha and Scully collided in painful conflict inside his head. <I've forgotten what the sunset looks like...>

Scully's whisper died away with the last of his thoughts as Pavlov's voice demanded action. Opening his eyes and slamming the door on his rational mind, Mulder turned the doorknob and walked into the death chamber.

"You're back," she rose to her feet when she saw him, a glowing smile on her face and in her eyes. "What'd he want?"

Speech was impossible. His throat was too tight, and even breath was a labored chore. All he could do was stare at her while his soul bent under the weight of pain like nothing he had felt before. She was alive, the beautiful young woman Mulder knew he would find.

He never imagined he would kill her. Even now, as his hand brought the gun up to bore an invisible line through her forehead, he wasn't sure if he could.

Her smile vanished and her face was blanched white as waves of disbelief doused the glow in her eyes. "Fox.....what is this?" The beginnings of tears tugged at the back of her voice. Mulder wished he could cry. That he felt enough to be able to.

His finger began to tighten on the trigger, when a possible way of escape dawned in his mind. His arm turned inward until the nozzle of the gun was a cold kiss on his temple. Death was better than the choice he had to make. And far less agonizing.

"Shoot yourself and they both die." Pavolv's voice methodically slashed his hope into dying pieces. "Time's up Mulder. Pull the trigger or put the gun down."

"Fox....please...." Samantha held her hands out to him, her voice pleading with him. "Don't do this...."

A surpreme effort freed his vocal cords enough to edge two words around the pain. "I"m sorry....."

He may be stone on the outside but he was screaming in his mind, begging her to forgive him. Mulder turned the gun toward her in a slow arch, lining the barrel up with the center of her heart. Death would be quick and she would feel no pain. His fingers struggled against the command to pull the trigger, but finally they began to tighten.

The crack of the gunshot couldn't quite drown her scream as the bullet shattered her rib cage then cut her dying breath short as it landed in her heart.

Her eyes were frozen open, wide with utter disbelief and betrayal, carved a path into his, forever searing the image into his mind as she reached her hand out toward him then crumpled lifeless on the floor. Death was a quick and skilled gardener, and the red rose of blood was already beginning to blossom over her chest.

The ghost of his soul passed more quietly, slipping from his body to hover around her fallen form like he wished he could. The tears he couldn't shed before blinded his vision as he turned toward Pavlov, his voice shaking with rage. His hand was deadly still.

"I will !kill! you for this !" he shouted, his fingers eager this time to pull the trigger.

"Shoot me later." Pavlov said, motioning toward the window. "But before you pass out from the toxins in my blood after you do, I was thinking you would at least want to watch her leave."

His words were bitterly true, and the gun fell limply to Mulder's side as he staggered like he had been the one shot over to the window. Halfway there, something squished under his foot. He looked down to see a puddle of blood under his shoe trailing from the body.

Samantha's blood.

Mulder had to tear his eyes away by force as he leaned against the window, wiping the blur of tears away from his eyes so he could see. Yes, the guards were walking. Scully kept looking back toward the buildings, and he wondered if she had heard the gunshot.

*************

Not for the first time, she tried to guess where they were taking her. Toward the fence? A cold chill snaked around the base of her spine. Was she to be executed? Mulder was nowhere to be found. The gunshot had frightened her- it came from the building the guards had taken him in to. The very thought that he could be dead sent the chill through the rest of her body as well.

When she looked up she saw two things at the same time that made her jaw drop. One, they were heading toward the gate, and it was opening. Two, there was a certain bald man waiting outside that she thought she would never see again.

"What's going on?" she demanded of the guards, the need to know surpassing all caution. "Where are you taking me?"

The leader turned around, his eyes hard and his voice curt. "You've been pardoned."

Her legs stopped working and she stood in the middle of the courtyard, staring at the man in disbelief. "Pardoned...." she echoed, the meaning of the words making her knees uncharacteristically weak. No more wire, no more beatings, no more pain.

No more Mulder

"What about Mulder?" she asked. "Has he been pardoned too?"

"You will not ask questions. You will come with us." The guard reached for her arm, but she pulled away.

"Not until I know what happened to him!"

"I'm sorry m'am, but my orders are to take you outside the gate and that's what I'm going to do." Two of the other guards grabbed her arms just above the elbows, practically lifting her off the ground and dragging her toward the gate.

"Let me go!" she shouted, struggling and kicking against them. "I want to stay here! I'm not sorry for what I did- if you let me go I'll just do it again and *kill more of you*!"

They were stronger than she was, and they forced her kicking and screaming every step of the way towards freedom.

Outside the gate, they abruptly let go of her, shoving her into the dirt. Scully scrambled to get up, attempting to charge back into the prison before the gate could close, but someone grabbed her arm, keeping her away from the thing she hated most and loved more....

"Agent Scully." A familiar gruff voice caught her ear and she turned to see Walter Skinner standing behind her, his hand holding her back. "Don't."

"I can't leave! Mulder's still in there!" she tried to pull away. "You don't understand-"

"I'm afraid I do." The serious tone of his voice made her stop and listen. "Agent Mulder is dead. He exchanged his life for your freedom."

"Oh dear God....no..." Horror mingled with disbelief to freeze her will to fight. "The gunshot....." The truth crashed down on her with such a force that the world tumbled down around her, burying her in the ruins of oblivion.

Mulder watched her crumple to the ground, and his muscles ached to run and pick her up, but instead it was Skinner's arms that gathered her from the dirt. He knew Skinner would go along with the story he had asked him to tell Scully. That he would take her somewhere safe. Somewhere not even Mulder himself knew about. As Skinner walked, carrying Scully away from the camp there was no doubt in his mind that he had done the right thing.

But as he turned around to watch two guards drag Samantha's body from the room, a smear of blood trailing after her, the question remained how he was going to live with himself.

Or if he even could.

*************

Night came but sleep, kept a wary distance as if it was too ashamed to associate with him. He couldn't even stand to be around himself. If there was any way short of suicide he could leave his body, he would be the first one to run. Pavlov had warned him that if Mulder killed himself, Scully would follow him on his journey into the last great adventure.

Now he was the recluse, using Scully's release as an excuse to get away from Trader, from questions he couldn't answer and pity he didn't want. Once, the darkness of evening was a refuge for him. Now it was a prison, filled with voices and images and accusations. The past was never easy to let go.

His steps took him far and away from the buildings that made up the nucleus of the camp, into the section partitioned off as a final resting ground for the many who couldn't stand up to the rigors of life. And for one murdered woman. <Murder....> The one line he had never crossed, not even where it would have been deserved. An almost forgotten night when he walked that line sprang into his mind, pictures of his gun and Scully in a coma and the ever smug Smoking Man.

Yeah well now the man had him right in the palm of his sooty little hand, where he wanted him all along. If he had pulled the trigger and crossed the line then would this have been spared? Mulder wondered how he acquired a perversion of the Midas touch- turning everything around him and everyone not to gold, but into death and despair.

Scully had survived it but only by leaving him. His eyes swept the night sky, knowing that somewhere under the blanket of stars she was out there, heading towards the better life she had always wanted. Skinner would take good care of her, but contact by proxy wasn't the same as watching over her himself. Yet he was taking care of her, the only way he knew how.

The cascade of thoughts came to a stop as his gaze fell back to earth, particularly to the mound of dirt smoothed in a fresh grave at the end of the rows and rows of white crosses. It was a bleak, desolate place, not at all where he would have wanted her to spend her eternal slumber. Mulder knew he had no right to be here, that the killer could not seek comfort from the slain, but it was impossible to stay away.

"After you were taken, I had a hard time believing anything good or pure or noble could exists in this world." He didn't know if she could hear him as he talked, but she had to know. "Now I find more and more that I want the believe in the existence of a life after this one, if only for the slim chance that there you could find it possible to forgive me."

<But would you?> he mused silently. <Or would you turn your face away, unable to gaze at the monster I have become?>

"But then I harbor the most serious of doubts that would would even meet in the hereafter, for you would be a part of the bright and beautiful place Scully believes in so much. And as for me...well I will spend eternity in a dark empty place that cannot be any lonelier than this shell of life, or any more painful than this private hell I am burning in."

The night refused to answer him, watching his grief in silent condemnation. Mulder looked up again at the wasteland outside the wire, then his gaze hung up on the wire itself. Black, wicked looking lengths of spikes and razor wire, choking life and strangling hope. It was a symbol, he realized, of the men who specialized in just those things. The true murderers of Samantha. His mind barely struggled as the forces of overwhelming rage killed off logic and better judgment.

He attacked the wire. Mulder threw himself at the fence, feeling the teeth of the barbs and spikes tear greedily at the tender flesh of his arms and face. <This is for Samantha....> He slammed his body up against the fence again and again.

He wholeheartedly threw himself into the pain, screaming his anger to the stars and the ghosts as he charged again and again into the tangle of wire, almost as if he could batter it down himself and be free.

He was battered down first, collapsing at long last in a heap of torn flesh on the loose dirt of her grave. Finally the sobs ripped loose in great gasps that wracked his body. "I'm sorry, Sam. I'm sorry." The words became his mantra, repeated over and over in a bid for absolution that wasn't there. When his eyes finally opened, a glint of gold caught his glance, and he realized it was Scully's cross, that somehow it had fallen out of his pocket in the confusion.

Mulder picked it up, staring at it a long moment before clenching it in his fists like he was holding his life in his hands. In many ways he was. He stayed that way for a long time, until sheer exhaustion closed his eyes and opened his hand.

The cross lay gittering under the heavens, a fallen star of gold smeared by a mix of dirt and blood and tears.

*************

I can't see nothing, nothing, round here.
You catch me if I'm falling,
You catch me if I'm falling.
Will you catch me cause I'm falling down on you ?
I said I'm under the gun, around here.
And I can't see nothing, nothing, around here.

*************

to be continued... part 9