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"...Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay in my heart of heart
As I do thee..."
Hamlet, III.ii
When the fuck had he become Horatio? he wondered to himself.
This wasn't supposed to be the way it happened. No, this wasn't remotely close to the way the scenes were initially scripted.
This was his melodrama. His tragedy. So why did he suddenly feel like a secondary character? Shoved to the side -- helplessly watching as events overtook other players?
Furiously pacing around his apartment, Mulder tried to remember how it had all come to this point.
***************
In the beginning it had been so clear. He was Hamlet -- only instead of a Foully Murdered Father, he had a Foully Abducted Sister. Fratricide/Regicide vs. Alien Abduction? Well, there was such a thing as stretching a comparison, but the essentials held up.
He was Hamlet. Dark, brooding, seemingly mad, but all the while working toward justice and restoring missing honor.
When Scully had been assigned to the X-files it had seemed obvious that she was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern rolled into one. Arriving in the guise of friendliness and helpfulness -- all the while the unwitting, or perhaps witting pawn of the darker forces at the court of the Bureau.
He had never counted on the fact that on that day he had actually found his Horatio. A true, loyal friend. A level-headed presence in the midst of the madness and machinations that surrounded them. She became his touchstone, his salvation.
Her very being allowed him to plot and scheme -- to go off on wild chases for the truth. Knowing that when he returned to the Keep that Scully would be there -- a steady beacon in the night. A quiet word of welcome.
He'd always known that she was no Ophelia. No maid likely to lose her wits or her bearings in the sea changes and calamities of life. He loved Scully -- this he also knew. But he refused to quantify or categorize that love. It just was. "Words, words, words" could add no more to it.
The intrigue and betrayals that had become their daily fare were fittingly dramatic for the drama in which he envisioned himself.
All the characters were there in their various guises. Deep Throat and X -- sometimes acting as Old Hamlet's Ghosts. Revealing just enough information to spur him to action, never enough information to get him all the way to the truth. Leaving riddles and half-understood clues in their wakes.
The Cigarette Smoking Man. Clearly he was Claudius. Clearly the center of villainy and treachery. Besides, as Hamlet, if he was going to have one focal point for his rage, if he was going to kill one person, it had to be that SOB.
Krycek had shown up trying to be a replacement Horatio. Mulder had never given that possibility a second's thought. He'd thought, however, that maybe Ratboy was the actual Rosencrantz and Guildenstern -- easily beguiled and double-crossed. He'd underestimated him. These days he wasn't sure where the traitor fit in his personal cast of characters. But it bore some consideration.
Skinner was hard to figure. He'd initially dismissed Skinner as a Polonius -- another bumbling bureaucrat who thought and acted in platitudes. Lately though, the man had shown some surprising strengths, and Mulder was beginning to wonder if maybe Skinner was a second Horatio of sorts, or maybe even a Fortinbras.
Oxford had taught Mulder a thing or two about Shakespeare. He knew that the tragic hero almost invariably dies at the end of the play. But, truth be told, that had never bothered him much.
He knew there would be a price to pay for the Truth. For Samantha. His life really seemed a fairly trivial offering for that. Anyway, he'd always wondered what the Hell Hamlet would have done if he'd lived after killing Claudius.
And, Mulder thought to himself, with a certain grim humor, he'd just fucking *hate* to see the paperwork that would have to be filed for Uncovering the Truth, although he didn't doubt for a minute that the forms existed somewhere.... Death seemed a comparative mercy.
Lately it had occurred to him that when he died in a blaze of glory, Scully would be left, like Horatio, to mourn. But he also thought that there should be someone left behind to tell his story, and Scully was the person to do it right. She had accepted his causes as her own -- she would write the history well. It was typically selfish of him to ask that of her -- expect it really -- but after all this time, what was one more favor?
Anyway, anyone who got too close to Hamlet ended up scarred, mad or dead, and Scully deserved better than that. She deserved better than him.
He realized that it was partly the desire to keep Scully from that "undiscovered country" that had made him run off without her all those times.
But, goddamn it! It looked like some other force had decided that she would get there first. NO!
It just wasn't right. *He* couldn't tell her story with adequate grace. He didn't even think he knew the full truth about her yet. The enigmatic Dr. Scully.
The perfect Dr. Scully.
The perfect Dr. Scully who was now dying of a perfectly untreatable cancer.
Ever since that awful day when she'd stood in that Oncology ward and calmly delivered her own death sentence in that dispassionate manner of hers that drove him wild, but that he needed so badly, he'd been like fucking Horatio. He'd been pacing around, waiting for the final duel, knowing that the poisoned rapier had already hit home.
Fuck! There might be "special providence in the fall of a sparrow," but Scully was no sparrow, and he really didn't think providence had anything to do with it. He'd be damned if he would sit around waiting for someone to hand him rosemary for remembrance.
It was time to reclaim his role.
He refused to be trapped by a script. Endings could always be re-written. It was time for a new author. There was no time to be or not to be. There was only time for now, for is, for being.
Skinner had told him that if that black lunged son of a bitch knew the answers then Mulder could know them, too.
He'd found some of the answers in that fertility clinic. There was dramatic irony for you. A fertility clinic that masked a human/alien hybrid cloning project that had left dozens of women barren. Jesus, sometimes he wondered who was scripting his life these days.
It was time for a new author. Time for new answers.
He stopped his pacing long enough to find his cell phone.
"Lone Gunmen."
Hamlet's error had been in allowing himself to be manipulated into that final, rigged duel.
"It's me. Turn off the tape."
Mulder knew he'd already let them manipulate him far more than he should have.
"It's off."
It was time for a change of venue. A new plot.
"Boys, I'm going to need some help...."
The rest would not be silence.
END