War for the World Wheel Fic (fndm)
Pairing: M/S implied, M/K gen
Disclaimer: The X-files belong to 21st Century Fox, 1013 Productions, and Chris Carter. No money is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: On the anniversary of the final stand, Mulder shares his annual day of mourning with a seemingly unlikely companion.
Warning: Brief mention of character death.
Note: I haven't written X-Files fic in years and I think the rustiness shows. I also took a few liberties; my apologies in advance.
June 21, 2020
10:13 am
June twenty-first, traditionally the first day of summer and the longest day of the year. I know Mulder's been out here since midnight, sitting in this very same position and staring out at the very same point of exactly nothing. I know he'll continue to do so until midnight again.
Those first few hours, though, he'd just as soon kill you as look at you. It's not safe to come near him until the sun's had a few hours to rise. I made that mistake the first year when Scully reluctantly sent for me. Bad mistakes, I've made a few, but that wasn't one I was going to repeat. There was no mistake the second year.
"Bad mistakes, we have made a few," he says out of nowhere, and I hate when he does that. Mulder's always been in my head in way or another, but this telepathy didn't start until after. I've had a few years to get used to it but that doesn't make it any less eerie.
"I--"
"--hate it when I do that," he says. "I know."
He's talking now. This is new. Aside from the first year when I stood to leave and he said, "Don't go," he's spent his days here in silence, never giving the slightest indication he's aware someone else is here beside him. Though it's hardly difficult to guess what this is about, this single day of mourning he allows himself, replete with self-flagellation and punishment for failures both real and imagined, I'd rather not know the specifics. Inside Mulder's head is high up on my list of places I'd never want to be.
"It's not a bed of roses," he says.
---
4:02 pm
As long as I've known him, Mulder's always had an excess of energy. If it wasn't his favorite I'm-bored-and-I-miss-Scully pencil game in the office, then it was the innumerable nights I spent on surveillance, watching him quote mindless movie after mindless movie, or after that, the inordinate amount of time he spent bashing my head into the nearest wall or handcuffing me to the nearest inanimate object for no good reason. From what I understand, things haven't changed that much now, either. He spends his time playing games with Melissa, taking Frohike to the court, and making sure that Scully still loves him and isn't going to leave him. He's never been still, and that's what makes these days so unnerving. At times it's easy to forget that this normalcy is just an illusion, that Mulder's got Melissa instead of William, that he goes one-on-one with Frohike instead of Skinner, that Scully is safe only because Doggett is dead. But at times it's just as easy to remember, and that's where the danger lies.
Mulder's stillness affords me the opportunity to study him, something I've spent an inordinate amount of time at. Perhaps that's why it's so strange to look into a face that's almost no different from the one I first encountered years ago, and no one's yet figured out why aging for those from the central resistance cell has come to a virtual standstill. It's just as strange to look into a mirror see that the same face has been looking back at me for far too long, a young face and a real arm hanging from my shoulder. But I spend more time looking at Mulder than I do myself and perhaps that's why I find it so jarring. He's nearly the same aside from a nearly imperceptible graying at the temples, but it's not even gray, really, because colors are a little different now. It's more blue than gray, the clouds more yellow than white, the leaves more brown than green. It's subtle and hard to notice if you don't know what they looked like before. In a few years no one will and I find something nearly heartbreaking about that. It's a ridiculous thought, however, and though I know our work and losses have earned us a certain amount of sentimentality, I'll never feel comfortable taking mine.
Some have more of a right to it than others, because some have lost more, others less. I didn't lose much at all, but that's what happens when you don't have anything left to lose. It's not freedom, exactly, but it's something.
---
8:14 pm
I can feel Scully's eyes burning a hole in my back. She hates that I'm here, hates that it's me and not her Mulder turns to on these days. Some things never change and her dislike and distrust for me are among them. And while she'd always been right in her assessment of me, she's right no longer. After all, we're here and not dead and that's precisely how it wasn't supposed to be. If it hadn't been for me, everything would've gone according to plan. I didn't so much save the world as just fuck up someone else's plans to destroy it, but there's never been any room for salvation or redemption with the Scullys. And that's just fine with me; I've never wanted any of that. I think the fact that she's withholding something I don't even care to have is what drives her mad.
I don't know why it's me and not her. I could hazard guesses, but I've never been a guessing man. It doesn't matter the reason; the end result is the same. Mulder and I have been in this together from the beginning, and we'll be in it together right up the end. And I do wonder when that will be. Every day I wonder.
Dusk is just starting to settle in. It's my--
"--favorite time of day," he says, something that might be akin to a smile in his voice. "I never expected you to get romantic in your old age."
Hearing that phrase from a man who looks the same at fifty-nine as he did at thirty-nine is unpleasant, to say the least, but that doesn't make him any less right. Dusk comes and takes away just enough of the light so that everything looks the way it used to. It's easy to pretend that the last few years haven't happened.
"But they have. We're here and they're not."
I don't know who he's thinking about when he says this. It could be any number of people. He who has the most to lose always loses the most. It's hardly profound, but--
"--it's true."
I want to say I'm sorry, but I have no idea how.
"Don't," he says.
---
11:46 pm
I don't know exactly why he does this, but I'm glad it's almost over. The living have no business spending time with the dead: the more you do, the easier it is to become confused about which you are. But there's no one left to fight, so perhaps that's why he fights the ghosts. He'll never stop fighting. It must be exhausting in a way I can't even imagine.
He's whispering beside me, something that might be a prayer in a language I don't recognize. I don't know who it's for or what it says, but I do know that it affords him enough peace to get through another year. We'll do this all over again soon enough, and for an interminable number of years after that.
Sometimes it doesn't feel like we've won. Then I think of the alternative and what a loss would have meant. Then I look at Mulder and wonder about the endless shades of gray between winning and losing. There really isn't an answer.
"Thank you," he says. Just like that it's over, Mulder rising and heading back to the house. I don't leave. I sit in the same position and stare out at the same point of nothing, waiting for the sun to rise just to see if it will.
-----
We Are The Champions, Queen
I've paid my dues
Time after time
I've done my sentence
But committed no crime
And bad mistakes
I've made a few
I've had my share of sand
Kicked in my face
But I've come through
And I need to go on and on and on and on
We are the champions - my friend
And we'll keep on fighting till the end
We are the champions
We are the champions
No time for losers
'Cause we are the champions of the world
I've taken my bows
And my curtain calls
You've bought me fame and fortune
And everything that goes with it
I thank you all
But it's been no bed of roses no pleasant cruises
I consider it a challenge before the whole human race
And I ain't gonna lose
And I need to go on and on and on and on
We are the champions - my friend
And we'll keep on fighting till the end
We are the champions
We are the champions
No time for losers
'Cause we are the champions
We are the champions - my friend
And we'll keep on fighting till the end
We are the champions
We are the champions
No time for losers
'Cause we are the champions
We are the champions
We are the champions
No time for losers
'Cause we are the champions