Title: To Finish the Game Author: Muldersfan_xf@yahoo.com Rating: PG Spoilers: General season eight knowledge; Three Words; The Unnatural Category: VA Disclaimer: If I owned him, he would never be treated so poorly. However, the real honor belongs to David Duchovny, and the rest of the folks at 1013. Archiving: Go ahead; just let me know first. Summary: Everything is different after you're dead. He's just now learning that. Author's Notes: At the end *** He awakens in the middle of the night, sitting bolt upright in bed, fingers squeezing the flannel sheets until his knuckles are white. His breath comes in gasps, sweat beading on his forehead, and he squeezes his eyes shut and prays that he can hold on till morning. It is moments like this, in the deepest of night, from the weightless panorama of his dreams, that the memories return. Stark. Vivid. Real. His apartment consists of moving shadows. The moonlight brings no comfort; only an eerie glow that reminds him of the ship's cavernous interior. He's taken to walking around at night, learning his way around the apartment again. Lights bother him at this hour, bright lights, so he chooses to feel his way until his eyes adjust. His mind flits from thought to thought, trying to settle on something neutral, something safe. He can't think of Scully. She is as strange and as alien as everything else. This reality is a frightening one. Sometimes he feels he must be dreaming. Sometimes he thinks he's woken up back in the life that he remembers. But everything is different after you're dead. He's just now learning that. Once in awhile he thinks the apartment smells like death. It's a crazy thought, nonsensical, because he didn't die here. But it does. He'll catch a whiff of frozen, rotting flesh, six feet underground, mixed with formaldehyde, floating from some distant corner of the room. It terrifies him; makes his mouth dry up and his hands go numb. He stands stock still, breathing heavily, until he can hear and feel the familiar beating of his heart. I'm alive, he thinks. I'maliveI'maliveI'malive. He's never been too keen on corpses, and the idea of actually being one - sometimes it just makes him queasy. Scully has told him he wasn't really dead. Not quite. She says to try to think of it as emerging from a coma. And on the surface, that is slightly more comforting. He is no longer alone in his experience. But one flash of a coffin, of suffocating darkness, within his mind, and the feelings roar back, strong and terrifying. And he knows it doesn't matter - dead, alive, they're just semantics. The fact of the matter is, he was buried. Buried and cold and surrounded by hundreds of graves. And he knows there is no distinction among coffins. A cemetary does not discriminate. Fire is no longer his greatest fear. *** It is easier for him to block the memories in the daytime. Sun streams through his window and he surprises himself by scrubbing vigorously at the windows and floors, making everything gleam until not one speck of dust remains in his once-abandoned apartment. He rearranges his desk drawers and his nightstand, tossing out the stuff he no longer needs or wants. He's always been something of a pack rat, but somehow that doesn't matter anymore. If it's junk, he wants it gone. Scully stops by and eyes the clean apartment, the air fresheners plugged into every outlet, but says nothing. She is Scully version 2.0, her coat not quite closing over her bulging stomach, her cheeks just slightly rounder than he's used to. Her hands are still soft and lemon scented, though, when she reaches out for him. And despite her changing shape, she still fits comfortably into his arms. She's not hugged him since he returned, and he finds he has to blink away tears as he returns her embrace. He was never really a crying kind of guy. But of all of them, he has changed the most. He can think of no kind way to break the news to them - that he isn't the Fox Mulder they know and remember. But it's all too much. He can't deal with that now - not on top of everything else. And - like many things these days - he finds it hard to care. They'll find out eventually. *** He showers three, four times a day now. He has to get the smell of death off of him. It's ground into his skin, seeping out of his pores and into the clothes he wears, the sheets he sleeps on. Fresh-smelling laundry piles up on his leather couch, consisting mostly of t-shirts, sweats, bedsheets and bath towels. The machine in his building is out of order, so he lugs heavy garbage bags down the street through the dismal spring afternoons. The owner of the Laundromat has ceased to be wary of him, but smiles at him in that strained way that he remembers giving to mental patients. His jacket pockets are heavy with quarters. He always stops and buys three or four different newspapers on his way home. Like he'll be making up for all the time he lost if he memorizes the news of today. It gives him something to do, however, even though he isn't as restless as he remembers himself being. Ever since his attempt at spreading knowledge of the impending invasion failed, his outlook is bleak. Kersh wants him off the X-files for good. Her reasons may be different, but he has a feeling Scully does as well. *** The midnight terrors begin to fade, but the numbness remains. His words are clipped when he speaks, and sometimes he finds himself trying to control his temper. The psychologist he is informs him that he has distanced himself from the experience. It becomes Scully's voice, telling him he should seek help. He logs onto the internet and refreshes his memory on post-traumatic stress disorder; its causes and its symptoms, and how to treat it. The words blur in front of his straining eyes. He wonders if it's a side effect of being dead, or if he's just getting old. Regardless, he now needs his glasses for any kind of reading. *** It is as though he has no place in this new reality. He's the puzzle piece that was broken or bent in such a way that it just doesn't quite fit anymore. A year ago, he'd been so sure, for the first time, of his place in the world. He was a partner, a lover, a crusader on a quest. Now, he just goes through the motions. He goes to the office, but it's not really his. He reads through old files obsessively, looking for details he may have once missed, but it isn't like before. He can't run it by Skinner; can't launch an investigation. Skinner isn't even his boss anymore. And the AD has changed as well. There is a defeat in his brown eyes; a weariness that Mulder does not like. He looks older now. He looks his years. Another sign that time has been passing, passing him by. *** Out of a morbid sense of curiosity, he goes to the public library and looks up his own obituary. It is surprisingly short and to the point - although, perhaps not really surprisingly at all, since the life he led was not exactly filled with relatives and acquaintances who would mourn his passing. Nevertheless, one phrase jumps out at him, making his breath catch in his throat. *Seeker of Truth; Torch-Bearer for Humanity; Beloved of those whose Lives he has Touched.* For Mulder, is a surreal moment, reading the thoughts of those who believed him to be lost to them forever. He is humbled and strangely hopeful at the meanings revealed. He has thought his quest to be over; his ultimate purpose meaningless in the end. But here before him, a small yet gratifying indication that his work was understood and even treasured by those closest to him. And that maybe, just maybe, the journey isn't quite completed yet. *** It is on one of his evening walks through the neighborhood, a vague attempt to reconnect with the life he once knew, that he finds himself at the ballpark where he once taught Scully to play baseball. He remembers that night clearly. The way the moon lit the baseball field like some sort of silvery lunar landscape. The way the floodlights reflected off her hair; off the metal of the fence. The smell of spring, of freshly cut grass. The crack of the bat against the ball. Her laughter, and the swell of emotion inside him as he held her close. He stands now behind that chainlink fence, fingers wrapped around the wire, staring at the empty ballfield. And as he stands there remembering, picturing that surreal night in his mind's eye - as the sun sinks below the horizon, and the stars appear one by one - he realizes something akin to a revelation. Amidst all the chaos, and all the change, this ballfield has withstood the effects of time. It is now as it was then. The bleachers, the floodlights... the fence and the trees and the bases - they are the same. With all that he'd been through... it was as though the precious memory he held in his mind had stood waiting here, motionless in time and space, for them to return, and finish their game. *** He tells her he needs to talk, and she arrives within minutes. Her face is flushed; her pupils dilated with worry. She manuevers herself through the doorway, and he helps her to the couch, where she sits with her eyes focused on him. She is beautiful, his partner, his Scully. It's as if the life inside of her has expanded outward, making her once weary eyes bright and shining, her once fading hair rich and vibrant in color. He feels the tears again, but this time he doesn't bother to blink them away. He sinks to his knees and lays his head in her lap, his hands motionless on the couch on either side of her. Her hands go to his hair, stroking awkwardly, as though she doesn't quite know what else to do with them. He explains to her that he may be alive, but he's forgotten how to live. Sometimes he thinks he's forgotten how to care. Fox Mulder, always empathetic, has ceased to feel. She needs to be there for him. Yet, she also needs to let him move forward at his own pace. Can she do that for him? Anything, she says. Anything. He isn't sure, but he thinks he sees a glimmer of guilt in her watery eyes. This conversation, two weeks in coming, is bittersweet, but desperately needed. And he discovers that beneath the foreign swell of her belly; beneath the awkwardness in her behavior whenever he is near, she is the same strong person he remembers - and was beginning to think he'd lost. After she leaves that night, he shuts and locks the door behind her, and wanders through the apartment, turning off lights and straightening cushions. He pauses at his desk, sliding open the top right-hand drawer and pulling out the folder that sits on top. Inside is the single item he lifted from Scully's apartment the day before. He turns toward the window, and holds it up, studying it in the moonlight. They have yet to discuss the miracle in the photograph in his hand. He can just barely make out the head, and one little arm, reaching upward. He has never seen an ultrasound of a baby before. For some reason this comforts him. It is an experience solely relegated to this life, to this 'after' version of himself. He knows there will be more of those to come. And at the same time, he doesn't want to let go of what came before. But as he remembers the ballfield, he realizes that maybe he doesn't have to. At the open window he lingers, allowing the warm breeze to wash over him, feathering through his hair. Summer is coming. Long days and clear nights; sunshine and cookouts and the Fourth of July. And baseball fields at midnight, filled with the laughter and hope of those who have sacrificed so much - and those who refuse to give in. He didn't get to experience the last summer. He thinks maybe he'd like to be around for this one. *** fini *** Author's Notes: I decided that if I read another story where Mulder is portrayed as some sort of villain instead of a *victim*, in the wake of Three Words, I was going to tear my hair out. Instead, I wrote this. It may not be very good, but it's a tribute to the man who is now living the impossible. There are miracles beyond those which happen to Scully, and there are more emotions than any of us will ever know when one is through an ordeal the likes of which Mulder experienced. *Thanks to my friends and my sister, for reading*