"The Truth"
By Viridian5

RATING: PG.  Wait for Part II.
SPOILERS: almost every show but especially "Gethsemane," 
"Kitsunegari," "Emily," "The Pine Bluff Variant," and "Folie a 
Deux"
SUMMARY: The Truth is out there, but what is it?
DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere, as long as you ask me first.
FEEDBACK: Oh, yeah.  Please do.  I would really appreciate it.  
All feedback can be sent to Viridian5@aol.com
DISCLAIMERS: All things X-Files belong to Chris Carter, Ten 
Thirteen Productions, and 20th Century Fox.  No infringement 
intended.  Suing me would be a waste of time and a really mean 
thing to do.

================
"The Truth"
By Viridian5
================

"Are you comfortable?  I mean aside from the gag and restraints.  
Sorry.  Didn't think I had it in me, did you?  You're the one who 
usually kicks ass.  I don't think this will take too long.

"I'm sorry about the gag but I need to say everything I have to 
without interruptions about it being illogical or insane.  You're just 
going to have to listen for once.  I'm going to lay everything out 
for you, cut myself open with the scalpel and pin the layers aside 
so you can see what's inside.  I'm going to tell you the truth, 
Scully, and then I'm removing myself from the board.

"I've had a lot of time to think lately.  It's amazing how slowly 
time passes when you're strapped to a bed or kneeling with a gun 
to the back of your head.  I understand now, and I know what I 
have to do.

"You *are* working for the Conspiracy, Scully.  Maybe not 
directly, but you're helping them with their Plan B.  Plan B is 
subtler and far more insidious than Plan A, having you expose me 
as a dangerous lunatic, ever could be.

"Has anyone ever told you how hot you look when you glare like 
that?  Of course I'm sure you've heard it before.

"I'll get to Plan B after I give you some background.  Those first 
days when I opened the X-Files were the happiest of my 
misbegotten life.  I had successfully escaped Violent Crimes' 
attempt to use me until I broke.  Being their best profiler meant 
that I got assigned the most horrific, difficult cases, and they were 
all dire, a matter of life and death, so I never got any downtime.  
Can't solve it?  Give it to Spooky.  He'll solve anything.

"I looked at mutilated corpses everyday until even the children 
started to look like so much raw meat to me by day.  Yes, me, 
Scully.  Why do you think I look so sick when I'm standing in the 
morgue with you?  For a while I felt nothing at all.  I had to train 
myself against seeing life as cheap and against...  Well, I'll get to 
that.  At night every body looked like my sister.  

"I waded through the muck of the most devious, sick minds 
trolling this great country of ours, became them.  It became harder 
and harder to wash off the mental filth after we caught them.  I 
started to look at the people around me and evaluate them as 
possible victims.  I started to feel an irresistible urge to kill.  I 
would walk or drive by places and think what a great corpse 
disposal site they would make.  When I ordered a crew to excavate 
the site, I usually found out that someone had anticipated me.  I felt 
myself becoming a horrible amalgam of all the monsters I helped 
catch, and the nightmares kept getting worse.

"I begged to be transferred out, but they wouldn't let me go.  I was 
too good at what I did.  They would use me until I blew up or burnt 
out and then toss me into an institution somewhere.  What a shame.  
He was one of our best...

"The X-Files saved me, Scully.  Aside from giving me the chance 
to investigate Samantha's disappearance, they also gave me the 
hope of an assignment that wouldn't involve looking at mutilated 
bodies 24-7, and when I did, I wouldn't have to automatically 
assume that the perpetrator belonged to the same species as I did.

"I only had to ruin myself, throw away my reputation and pride.  
Given the alternative, it wasn't as difficult as I thought.  I went 
from Golden Boy Spooky Mulder to Crazy Spooky Mulder 
insanely wasting his talents on futile nutball cases no one else 
would touch.  'Spooky' finally became the obvious pejorative I'd 
always guessed it to actually be.  People yelled at or shunned me.  
It hurt at first.

"But something happened.  I started to smile for no reason.  I 
realized that I was happy.  I had nothing left to lose, nobody left 
that I felt I had to impress.  I had flipped off the whole world, and 
it felt like freedom. I felt the exhilaration of walking the high wire 
without a net.  I could be as reckless as I liked, because I didn't 
have any partners with me to get killed.  I only risked myself.  My 
partner hated me for leaving Violent Crimes; he saw me as his 
ticket to the top and couldn't understand why the rank and acclaim 
he needed so badly meant nothing to me.  You know he later died 
chasing it.

"I didn't care about risking myself.  I'd already gotten a second life 
I hadn't expected.  Why be greedy?

"Unable to touch me, the Conspiracy had to try another way.  So 
they sent you to debunk my work.  

"I tried so hard to send you screaming for the door that day, but 
you just kept meeting my sarcasm and sneers with bland 
politeness.  When you came to my room that one night and 
stripped down to your underwear, I thought, 'Ah-ha!  Here we go!  
Now I know for sure.'  But that wasn't it either.  I eventually 
realized that, despite all of my expectations and probably the 
Conspiracy's as well, you weren't a spy or saboteur.  When you 
didn't advance their agenda, they just sat back and let Plan B take 
effect.

"They knew I would start to care for you, and that the obsessive 
mindset that made me a good profiler would fixate me on you.  
*You* would be their leverage against me.  They could take you 
away and bring you back on a whim.  They could threaten your life 
and make my cooperation the price of a cure.

"You became so important to me so quickly.  I even enjoyed 
hearing you constantly disagree with me because it forced me to 
look at my theories, articulate them, and defend them.  I'm so used 
to my interstellar mental jumps that I often forget the steps I leapt 
over.  You forced me to go back and take a look.

"I fell in love with you.  I can say that now.  It won't matter soon 
anyway. 

"Then recently you began to push me away.  I figured that you 
blamed me for the cancer--I blame myself too--and, in a more 
charitable state of mind toward myself, thought that you distanced 
yourself to try to make the inevitable end easier for me.  Then you 
told me straight out: it *was* my fault.  I was getting you killed on 
a quest for something that had been a deluded lie from the very 
beginning.

"I kept trying to get you to transfer out of the X-Files for your own 
safety, but you kept refusing, so how is it all my fault?  Any 
sensible person would see it, but I haven't been sensible for years.  
I went behind your back to try to get you transferred out--stop 
looking at me like that--with every request denied.  The 
Conspiracy had things just the way they wanted them.

"I almost ate my gun that night.  Yeah, I never told you because I 
couldn't see any use in it.  It would change nothing.  Ironically, 
Kritschgau's call saved my life.

"I managed to get you your cure.  I know you're not entirely 
convinced that the new implant sent the cancer in remission, but I 
am.  I thought things would go back to the way they used to be.  I 
should have known better.

"During Emily's ordeal you didn't even want to look at me.  You 
supported Skinner against me during the Modell/Bowman fiasco 
and just turned away from me after you shot Linda Bowman.  You 
decided I was homicidally insane during the vampire case.  During 
my deep cover assignment you apparently decided that six years 
meant nothing, because you immediately pegged me as a traitor.  

"You alternate this cold disdain with an occasional warm affection 
that only throws me off balance.  You're never the same twice!  
I've been bleeding slowly for the last year.  

"But the worst, the thing that decided me, was being 
institutionalized.  You looked down at me and passed judgment.  
Insane.  I've worried about it ever since Samantha disappeared.  
I've had nightmares about being locked away, put down, ever since 
my near-breakdown while working Violent Crimes.  You and 
Skinner helped make that dream become a reality.  Well, thank you 
ever so kindly.

"You didn't even want to bother giving that body an autopsy, and 
that's your *job*.  When I was doped up and tied down, helplessly 
waiting in terror for that creature to kill me, I had the consolation 
of knowing that the people who were supposed to work with me 
had put me here.  You and Skinner. I couldn't even defend myself!
My body would keep walking around but I would be *dead*.   You 
should have seen what those zombies looked like...  Oh, no, you 
did see, didn't you?  You just didn't feel the need to share that with 
Skinner either.

"When you burst in and I saw the look on your face I *knew* you 
saw it too.  Oh, don't look at me like that.  You didn't have that 
my-God-someone's-in-your-room-trying-to-kill-you look, you had 
that my-God-what-the-hell-is-that-looming-over-your-bed look.  
But when Skinner asked you about it, you *lied,* about that and 
everything else.  You gave him just enough to get me out of 
restraints and no more.  All to protect your sense of what you want 
to believe is the truth! 

"My sense of self-preservation finally kicked back in.  I've had 
enough of you and Skinner.  I tried to work within the system but 
the system kept either kicking me in the ass and telling me to turn 
the other cheek or asking me to bend over and grab my ankles.  My 
ass is sore, Scully, and I'm tired of it all.

"I'm resigning from the FBI and taking my search private.  
Government connections have been more of a hindrance than a 
help lately, anyway.  If anyone has any problems with me leaving, 
they can still kill me.  I'd prefer a quick death to what I'm getting 
now.

"I've thrown it all away and walked before.  Now I'm doing it 
again while I'm still alive and fairly sane.

"I left a time-delayed message for Skinner.  When he gets here to 
untie you and find my letter of resignation, I'll be long gone.  I 
don't think he has access to the bugs in this office.  I hope you like 
your next assignment, Scully."  Mulder looked at her sadly for a 
long moment then left without another look back.

When Skinner arrived five minutes later and removed her gag, her 
first question was: "Have they picked him up yet?"

Skinner nodded.  "He put up even more of a fight this time, but 
they tranquilized him."

"Sir, I don't know how longer they can keep doing these selective 
memory wipes on him before his neurons wear out.  His mind is 
already starting to fray around the edges.  It's obvious.  Can't we 
just let him go this time?"

"Pity, Dana?" he asked as he untied her from the chair.

"If we just used his talents it wouldn't be so bad--I mean, but do 
we have to torture him too?  That implanted memory about his 
sister's disappearance has warped his whole life."

"That memory keeps him with us longer than he would stay 
otherwise.  No one else can do the job better.  

"I screwed up on the last case; I should have trusted his instincts.  I 
mean, that *is* why we keep him.  It was just like you say though; 
I've watched him become more and more unstable and couldn't 
trust him.  He's too good an investigator not to notice the 
inconsistencies in his memories."

"This gets worse every time, and the list of his traumas keeps 
growing longer."

"The war will start soon and decide everything.  Hold out a while 
longer, Agent Scully."

Scully left with a haunted look similar to Mulder's.  In three hours 
he would wake up with another head injury, left side again, in a 
hospital with his partner at his side.  This wipe would hopefully 
see him through the end of the crisis.

Global security would always be more important than the welfare 
of one man no matter how talented, but Skinner didn't have to like 
it.  As he left the basement office, Skinner mentally prepared 
himself to start the whole farce all over again.

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

Once he was wheeled into a room of bright lights, anonymous 
doctors, sharp instruments, and needles, Mulder started to 
remember the all the other times he had been here.  Terror stalked 
him even through the drugs that dimmed his mind.  Straps and a 
head and neck clamp kept him completely immobile, and the drugs 
made it hard to coordinate his own body, but he tried to fight.  To 
no avail.

He had a terror of being kept motionless and of bright white lights 
for as long as he could remember.  Aside from his phobias striking 
him, he knew what the doctors intended to do from dim memories 
that became clearer the longer he thought about them.  They would 
rape his mind *again*.

As one of the doctors prepared to fit the anesthetic gas mask over 
his mouth and nose that would put him under, Mulder realized that 
tears ran down his face and that he was too doped up to hold them 
back.  The total loss of self-control made everything even worse.

"No... please... not again..."  His voice came out small, the words 
slurred.

At the last moment the doctor turned away.  Mulder heard noises 
fill the room but couldn't move anything other than his eyes to try 
to look.  He finally recognized some of the sounds as being 
"silenced" gunshots.  A burst of red bloomed on the nearest 
doctor's chest before he fell out of Mulder's vision.  Silence fell.

Mulder waited breathlessly and told himself that his eyes teared 
from the bright light shining directly in his face.  He heard 
someone walking through the room with the occasional sound of 
something being kicked aside.  Finally the person stopped beside 
Mulder's gurney.  

Mulder tried to identify the person, but the light had left spangles 
in his vision.  He could only see a human shape in shadow with 
bright stars moving across it.

"This is a sight I'll take with me to the grave.  Are you still with 
us, Mulder?"  The voice's owner stroked Mulder's hair.

"Krycek?" Mulder slurred as he recognized the voice and his 
vision started to clear.  "What--"

Krycek grinned.  "I'm getting you out of here.  Then, once you're 
sober, I'm going to give you what you've spent years begging for." 
Krycek smirked.  "Well, one thing.  The truth, Mulder.  Finally."


*********************THE END************************