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"If you had just a minute to breathe
And they granted you one final wish
Would you ask for something
Like another chance...?"
-Traffic
FALL, 1995
ARLINGTON, VA
He had come to the cemetery empty-handed. He was not the maudlin or sentimental sort, and flowers on graves struck him as an exercise in futility on the part of the successful living to remember the failed dead, and he preferred to remember the dead by not repeating their mistakes.
When his time came to die, he told himself, it would not be at the hands of another. He would not relinquish his fate to another.
He knew about the names he was called. The names no longer hurt him. Insults no longer affected him. He stood proof against the things that would pain most, hardened and shielded by his power.
The wind curled a tendril of smoke around the man, the haze a grey cloak about his face, concealing emotions that never showed. The deep grey topcoat covered a similar suit, a neat, nondescript garment. Nobody would ever pick him out of a crowd. He was unremarkable, to look at him.
The man stood still and silent, his eyes fixed on the tombstone. Another man who had died at the hands of the operatives of the "star chamber" behind the American government. Another man who'd given up his life in the name of principle. Far easier to take a coward's death, take a ridiculous chance and fail spectacularly than to make an effort to work from the inside out.
He shook his head. Another damned waste. The man had tossed his life away for Fox Mulder, and the ungrateful bastard didn't even have the courtesy to respect that sacrifice. No, of course not. Mulder was a brilliant, spoiled child.
He liked that about Mulder--the younger Mulder, that was. The elder Mulder was dead now, he reminded himself, and only one of any consequence remained... well, only one on *this* world, at any rate.
Mulder had done this. He might as well have pulled the trigger. He and his Senator ally had somehow led astray a good link in the chain of command. The one called Deep Throat was dead now, and the man watched the grave with cold, dead eyes.
A failure, he told himself. An underestimation of just what he was dealing with. That underestimation led Mulder to believe those same things. Mulder thinks he can win against us.
The man shook his head again, sadly, crushing the cigarette under a wing-tip. Kill him now, he'd told Krycek, and you turn one man's belief into a crusade. Kill him and he becomes a martyr. Kill him, and Mulder wins.
He knew those words to be true, and yet, some part of him almost regretted them. Watching Mulder die... ah, but then, who would he have left to dance the dance, who would remain to oppose him? Who would enter the chess game?
The spatulate fingers capture the cigarette pack in his pocket. He opens it, retrieves another, and touched the lighter's flame to its end. He enjoys watching the smoke curl, the flame touching the tip of the cylinder, burning it.
He smoked cigarettes, knowing full well what sorts of chemicals and additives were used on the American tobacco crops. He didn't care. That was the part that Mulder had yet to fathom... why the one he called Cancer Man didn't care if he lived or died.
He mused to himself, the boy knows so little of who and what I am. He knows so damned little of the things he fights.
He didn't smile. Despite the image he'd taken pains to manufacture, he did not enjoy watching others suffer. He did not revel in the misery of humanity. Far from it. He had, in some ways, given over his whole being to the greater good. The things he did, he told himself, were necessary things. If the truth were known, the world would fall into a panic. The years of hard work required to bring the better part of the world's nations into the Digital Age would be lost.
Still, at times, he questioned himself. At moments like this one, when he knew his duty but took no pleasure in its execution, he questioned his sanity and his beliefs.
At times, Fox Mulder even made his adversary's belief waver, and that was the terrifying part of the young agent's power--he had the power to make others believe. The more time passed, the more convinced the man became that Mulder would either gain great power or die in infamy as a crackpot... but whether spectacular success or spectacular failure was the end result, Special Agent Fox Mulder would never live a normal life with normal goals and achievements. No... he was a rare sort that led the minds and hearts of thousands, the sort that proclaimed truth and dared others to follow in his wake.
Left to his self-appointed crusade, Fox Mulder would save the world, or damn it... and neither could be allowed. A status quo needed to be maintained. The truth would free no one, and would harm the careful veneer of silence that had been woven around the conspiracy of lies by men like this one for hundreds of years.
His hand moved, raising the cigarette to his mouth.
Mulder, he mused with great fascination, a worthy adversary for a man who hadn't expected to face another capable opponent before his death. Most men were sheep, beneath all their posturings, once challenged. Mulder was not.
He exhaled a long plume of smoke and watched it dissipate in the evening air, reflecting on his enemy, one of the few men he might someday consider an equal... if either of them survived so long.
There is a Quixotic quality to Mulder, he observed. He'll tilt at the unlikeliest of windmills until the day when he happens to actually topple one... and he's come close, so close. Even he does not know his own strength.
And then, he added to himself, eyes still studying to tombstone, there is Dana Scully. She might have wound up buried in this very cemetery, had he not decided to spare her. She'd fought so hard not to get caught up in Mulder's spellbinding belief, and yet, she found herself wanting to believe right alongside her partner.
None had suspected she might be so open to suggestion when she was assigned to the X-Files--quite the opposite. But now... now she was proving herself a formidable woman... she'd even garnered enough respect that he now took her far more seriously than before.
She was a strong woman, a brilliant woman. A doctor who'd garnered respect in an organization where the power was mostly held by white males. She balanced Mulder, strangely, her skepticism and his belief fueling one another's fires. One would attempt to prove to prove the other wrong, and make discoveries.
There is strength in partnership... but there is weakness, too. For all of Mulder's insight, he could not see that Dana Scully was a liability in the long run. She was a handle. When Mulder needed to be pushed, anyone who could take Scully from him could push him.
The man chuckles humorlessly and takes a final inhale from the cigarette, dropping it to the ground and grinding it out with his shoe. There is no amusement in his duty. There is no room for other hearts, other minds, in his own belief.
For a moment, he wonders if he made the wrong choice, but he shakes the thought away, refusing to accept its potential validity. There was no room in his personal philosophy for doubt. There was no time for exploring other possibilities. Still, he wondered. At the end of it all, would he be nothing more than a drifting cloud of smoke, lost on the horizon...?
The wind ruffled his hair. He drew his topcoat around him and left the cemetery, silent and alone, as always. No wife, no family, no friends, no children. Some power...
Had he another chance, he knows with terrible certainty, he might have made another choice.