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Title: More Than This Summary: My attempt to sort out the muddled canon, addressing as many of the show's major myth-arc plotlines as possible, through DeadAlive. Quite a challenge to make sense of it, stick to the canon, and keep it firmly pro-Mulder. Author's Yes, it's me, from the XF authors interview notes: project and the P1013 archive. Thought I'd try my hand at fanfic. I would like to pursue this plot (something to do for the March hiatus!) if others are interested in reading. I knew. It was my choice to leave. There was no time left to stay. But if I could have chosen one more moment with you, Scully, I would have. Every time, I would choose you. I remember our last night in my hotel room, when you were already starting to feel it but didn't realize. When you showed up at my door, pale and ill. The dizziness rolled off you in waves. As I crawled into the bed to cradle you in my arms, your nausea and misgiving stiffened your spine into an angle so sharp it bit me. You spoke to me with your silence and I told you the truth: "There has to be an end. There's so much more than this." You spoke to me with your body, and I told you again. I gave you the truth because even then I knew. I filled you with it, thrust it into you as far as I could reach; pressed between your thighs and twined my fingers with yours and drove truth as deeply into your soul as I could manage so that you might... hold... onto... it... And when you cried out, I heard the truth in your voice. Then I knew that you would carry it while I had to be away. And I prayed to a God who has never answered me, that I could return in time. There is so much more than this, Scully. But first, there had to be an end. You sent Skinner to protect me, but he answers to another agenda. Skinner is no longer his own man. You've seen his blood thicken in the test tube, black with nanonites. You would have remembered that, but your anxiety clouded your skepticism. Skinner carries Krycek's lies as heavily as you bear my truths. The deceit shrivels Skinner up inside a little more each day. But your body slowly stretches to accommodate truth. Your mind always has. Now your belly grows, too. So it's all right that you lost track of Skinner's divided allegiance. I remembered. How could I forget, as his guilt pounded into my conscience like a sledgehammer? Yet I knew it didn't matter. That black-lunged bastard had misinformed them all Krycek and Marita sent Skinner ahead with me, then followed us to Bellefleur to find the ship. Spender told them it was their one chance to commandeer the technology. He urged them to hurry before the ship repaired itself. So Krycek thought he sent me to the Consortium's first enemy, the black oil. He hoped I would find an alien ship or be destroyed trying. He could not know I planned to do both. How did I know what Krycek intended? I saw him in my mind's eye, a broken remnant of the Consortium, conferring with the Devil as a nurse stood silent guard. And later, I saw the gears turning in Krycek's brain, spinning faster than the axle of the broken wheelchair at the bottom of the stairs. Krycek is the Consortium now, Scully. They say what you don't know can't hurt you. But what he doesn't know, will. I saw him walk away from that old man's crumpled body without even a pause. He pulled Marita roughly past the scene of the crime, barely turning the corner before pushing her up against the wall. He tasted her skin and I tasted her. I felt arousal dampen her thighs even as her stomach knotted in revulsion at fucking so near that monster's corpse. He ripped her blouse apart, slid his hand under the waistband of her panties, and took what he wanted. I smelled her, I stroked her, I felt the heat of her, Scully... and I grew so hard with wanting you. He fucked her and so I fucked her... but every time, I would choose you. Krycek never stopped plotting. He kept one eye on her lips... her stiff nipples... her flushed skin... he even closed that one eye when sensation crashed over him. But his other eye was always open, watching around the corner for any sign of life. Krycek can't even recognize life when he is shoving it up against a wall and fucking it. He has dead eyes. Now, so do I. There is so much more than this. And it's coming. But first, there had to be an end. In fact, there were many endings this year, Scully. You recognized them as well as I. The last splinter of the original Consortium died with the Cigarette-Smoking Man. I found my sister. You found Daniel. Then we let them go. We abandoned fear and pretense, and finally found each other. You wondered how I saw Samantha in the starlight. I could see her, finally, because the truth had begun to grow inside my brain. It showed up on MRIs as a cancerous mass. You know this, because you've seen the rest of my medical files now. Agent Doggett read the embarrassment on your face as you wondered whether it was true, whether I'd been dying without saying a word. Of course I had. What is cancer, Scully? You're a doctor, you know this. Cancer is just cell growth beyond the rate a human body can manage. Once upon a time, you ran the PCRs for Gibson Praise yourself. His anomalous brain function is sustained by his genes He is the truth we sought, Scully. And you knew I found it - you flew across the world and back to save me from my own extinction. They say you can suppress the truth, but you can't kill it. Neither could we. And how could I even try? This is what I've always sought. So when the truth - the cancer, the virus, whatever you want to call it - welled up in me again, I knew it was time. As my transformation progressed, I became like Gibson I could hear others' thoughts - I could even see through their eyes. There was a crucial difference, though. Gibson Praise may be "more human than human," Scully, but I am only a man. And you made me so glad of that, Scully: to be a man with you. For you. We had our own ending this year. An end to the seven-year dance we did, stepping so carefully around one another to the beat of a bullpen melody. A millennium ended - as if our calendar meant anything to the rest of the cosmos - and finally, we began. With just one kiss, and a promise of so much more. Slowly, carefully, we circled closer, finding our embrace that night after Daniel's recovery. Seeing Daniel again - that was an ending for you, Scully. I could feel it as you slumped next to me on the sofa, see it in your dreams before I woke you gently and led you to my bed. So many endings, Scully. But the one that counted most was yet to come. A grand sacrifice was demanded. I went back to Bellefleur to make that offering. I stepped into the truth with my eyes wide open. There had to be an end, Scully. So I reveled in the truth as it grew inside my skull, crowding out my life. So I went into the woods, to rendezvous with fate. So I died. You sent Skinner with me. Krycek and Marita followed. You all thought we went to find the black oil. There were no fires, no burned bodies, just disappearances. So the reality did not even occur to you: I went to join the resistance. The faceless rebels you saw on Skyland Mountain, Scully - that's who I went to meet. The headstone was a ruse Anyone who investigated needed to believe that the tumor was killing me. No one could know - lest the black oil discover - that I have never been more alive Of course my body is dead You saw the effect the wreckage in Africa had on my health - this time was no different They fixed my body, Scully - that's what Gibson saw in the desert. But they could only do so much. I am only a man. So now that I'm back, I can live and see and hear, like Gibson But for the time I was gone, the distance I had to go... my anatomy just couldn't keep pace with my journey of mind So - like Billy Miles, like many of the abductees - my body was dumped in the ocean so that it would not be discovered too soon. Not before I was finished dying. Not before I was finished organizing our rebellion. There is so much more than this. It's approaching faster now. But first, there had to be an end. So for the truth - for you, Scully - I died. Now I'm back. As you stare down at my dead body, I can hear your anguish. Ah, Scully, I love you beyond all measure. If not for your presence, this starched-white hospital room might suffocate me. It too closely resembles my recent coffin with its blank, cold walls You watch my corpse heal in horrified relief, wondering why my abduction turned out so differently from your own. That, I can tell you. As I said, I hear people's thoughts. Krycek is frantic to know where I have been, because he needs to know what's coming next He never worried before, because he helped to abscond you - and the others - for the Consortium's research Your violators... Penny's, Cassandra's... were all too human Krycek remembers you all, rooms of swollen bellies rising under white sheets; but where I have been, he does not know. So he is afraid. You and I knew enough evil of the Consortium's work that we might never have brought ourselves to ally with them. But since the Consortium burned, we did not have to choose The rebels became our only alternative. This was the only way, Scully. I am healing quickly now. The ice-blue of the Carolina waters has faded from my skin. My body is no longer bloated, and my emaciation gradually eases as you sit by my bed and spoon me bland hospital fare. I am learning to use my tongue again - once black and shriveled - to swallow. And finally, to speak. You listen to my stories with disbelief stamped across your porcelain features. Yet you cannot explain my disappearance; my death; let alone my life, after spending four months buried beneath a headstone I picked out myself. And so you gesture helplessly, open your mouth to object and close it again - and again, and again - burbling like a fish out of water. And we are, Scully. We are far out of our depth. I have been to the sky and forgotten how to swim. Forgotten how to breathe. So you've got to remember for both of us. "Mulder." You cut to the heart of the story, with the one question that you can always remember to ask. The question that, I must sheepishly confess, seems to apply no matter what the situation: "Why didn't you tell me?" This... this is the key. So listen closely, Scully. This is what all will soon know I couldn't tell you, Scully, because you are what must be protected. Yes, I have the fingers of the truth spreading through my brain, and Gibson has them. But you've had them, too. The cancer, Scully. How could you have missed it? Your beautiful, analytical mind has been so busy trying to fill my place in the X-Files. Ever since you were partnered with Agent Doggett, you've tried to "think the way Mulder would think." You missed the forest for the trees. When you looked at my MRIs, didn't they seem familiar? You saw the same sort of cancer in your own scans four years ago. You were experimented on by the same men who ripped apart my family when I was a child. We have both been exposed to the vaccine. To the virus. Every time your nose bled, my heart bled, too. Now I know that was the truth growing in you. It was a price we had to pay. And the chip in your neck - used to experiment on you, to hurt you, eventually to save you - that was the Consortium trying to manipulate the truth Just like they always did. Cancer Man was always trying to control the truth. "Cancer" Man. How fitting. They say you can suppress the truth, Scully, but you can't kill it. Neither could he. The truth is the cancer, is the virus, is the vaccine, is so much... more than this... And it's here. As I speak, she is reassured. Her reassurance bolsters her analysis. She asks sharper questions. "Fine. Say Gibson Praise is genetically different from you and me, Mulder. But what would account for the difference between your cancer and mine? Yours... killed you..." She pauses, a silent tear rolling down her cheek. This is not the Agent Scully I met eight years ago. This woman is so much more. "...but mine is gone. Or at least in remission, the tumor shrunken to a size where it doesn't register on my MRIs. So if this cancer is the vaccinated human body's manifestation of the alien virus, where is mine? "You say the truth is growing in you, Mulder. But nothing's growing in..." She freezes. And even if I could not hear her thoughts, I could read in her eyes as it all comes crashing together. The abductions. The experiments. The cancers. The pregnancy. The truth. Yes, I have the fingers of the truth spreading through my brain, and Gibson has them. But we are male, Scully, and you are something we will never be. You are the truth. The truth is in your mind, in your womb... and I know you, Scully. The truth is in your heart. You sputter, horror and denial doing battle in the bluest eyes I've ever seen. Denial wins out. "The ultrasounds are normal. And the amniotic fluid samples... I checked everything, Mulder. This is a just a baby. Our baby." "Scully, you were barren. When we made love... I'd like to think I was good, but I'm not THAT good, Scully. Much as I'd like to take credit." She starts to smile but remembers what I am suggesting. "Scully..." I am morbidly serious. Even I have not thought everything through beforehand. If the truth brought Scully to the brink of death, and delivered me beyond it, then our child... "How do you think you conceived?" I ask her. "I... I... They must have missed a few eggs, Mulder. Of hundreds, surely they could have missed one. One is all it took, Mulder." Perhaps. It seems implausible, after all this time... but then, my whole life is an implausibility. As is hers, since she met me. They don't call me "Spooky" for nothing. "That's what I thought of when they told me in the hospital. Right before Skinner came to tell me you were gone. It was the only thing I could come up with, but it makes sense." Yes, I remember, Scully. I saw your face, that slow wash of anxiety and reverence stealing across your features as you confided in Skinner: "I'm pregnant." "It's the only rational explanation, Mulder." Well, THAT's true. Giving up on argument for the moment, I reach out to trace the curve of her belly with my fingertips. She gasps a little, a sharp intake of breath. It has been so long since I touched her that flames of electricity spark between us. She bends forward, curling her fingers around the metal rail of the bed. Her lips brush mine: a homecoming kiss for a dead man who lives. I open my eyes, and her gaze bores into mine, willing me to abandon my latest crazy theory, to be reassured. For a moment, I am. Then the heat of her is too much to bear, and I part my lips to taste her, to feel the cool slide of her tongue against mine. The second our hearts meet in our mouths, I know. I knew when I went to Oregon. I knew when I went to the woods. And most of all, I knew when I decided not to explain to Scully. Because if I said a single word, she'd know. She knows. Scully carries her womb easily now, her fading concern for me lightened by her delight in motherhood. Her scientific mind blots out the magnitude of the future that grows within her She asks no more questions about the black oil, about the resistance, about my cancer in remission and my body back from the dead. I am still on medical leave from the Bureau, and she has taken unpaid personal leave that will soon become maternity leave. Funny to call it "leave," though, because we will not be going back. I saw Agent Doggett working with Scully in the months I was gone. He is a capable man, if rather close-minded. Now that Scully is on leave, he has been joined on the X-Files with an Agent Monica Reyes, a specialist in the occult from the Bureau's New Orleans office. As one might guess from her expertise, she is more open to the paranormal than her partner I sense her frustration at his skepticism in their investigations. I can sympathize. I sense that Agents Doggett and Reyes will be allies in the coming confrontation. Krycek and Marita are loose cannons, and I cannot read where they will fall. Skinner's heart would be in the right place if only Krycek did not hold it in his hands. So they all are mysteries. Even Scully and our... child? ...are veiled to me. Gibson and I are only prophets. We have sight, but there is much we cannot anticipate Scully is different. There is so much more than this. It's about to arrive. And Scully knows. End MORE Author's notes: Thanks to Peggy, who encouraged me to write fanfic - even though this was not at all what she had in mind. Thanks to the many amazing 'philes I have met reading, archiving, and interviewing - most especially my Season 7 girls Megan and Michele. And thanks also to CC and DD, without whose waffling on contracts, characters, and commercial interests these 97 zillion loose plot lines might never have been started. (I'm - mostly - kidding, guys, don't flame me to death.)
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