title: Solitary Wake
author: Spooky
email: ddwake1@netcom.ca
keyword: post-JTS
disclaimer: I'll put them away when I'm done, Ma. Honest!

Summary: Mulder mourns.
 

Solitary Wake

He slugs the whiskey back, barely feeling the burn now. He's
thrown caution to the wind to have this solitary wake. It's been
months since he's dared be so visible. Not by choice, and he
wonders anew if he's made the right decision.

The small article from the Post seems to be burning its way
into his chest from his shirt pocket. It resides there, neatly
folded beside a photo of his family. His family. It still seems
strange to say it, since he hasn't properly had a family since he
was twelve, but it fills his soul in a way he hadn't realized
he'd missed.

He senses there is much more to the story than the
newspaper's few lines -- but its salient fact remains. His
friends are dead.

The depth of the Gunmen-sized hole they've left behind stuns
him. He'd sat in his cheap, rented room too numb for tears. On
top of the grief he still feels for leaving Scully and William, it
had just been too much. And so he'd come to mourn his losses
in this seedy bar. The Gunmen would have appreciated the
venue.

He's tempted to contact Scully: send her an email, or dare all
and call her -- hear her voice. Sob his loneliness and grief on
her figurative shoulder. Or better yet, arrive at her door, sweep
her into his arms and assuage their sorrow in each other's
embrace. He wants that with a hunger that leaves him
trembling. But he does not dare. He'd decided, painfully, after
the debacle at the quarry, that he had to sever all ties to her.
They'd ease up on their surveillance, he'd hoped, if it was
clear he wasn't in contact with her.

It's been difficult though, so difficult. He spends his days and
nights with them in his head -- tries to imagine how his son
has grown, tries to envision each milestone. He holds entire
conversations with Scully, watching eagerly for her quirking
brow. Even after all this time, he still turns around, expecting
her to be beside him. His hands feel empty and useless when
they're not at her back to guide her. Has he kept his family
safe by leaving, or simply left them undefended?

He signals the bartender for another round, willing the
suspicious wetness in his eyes away. I will not wallow, he
repeats silently to himself. No matter that he's been torn from
his family; no matter that he's lost three of his dearest friends --
the only ones who hadn't eventually bailed on moody
Spooky Mulder, hunter of aliens and things that go bump in
the night. They'd been his best friends too, until Scully had
come along. Still, there were things he had been able to do
with the guys that he could never have done with Scully -- he
almost smiles to think of her rolling her eyes at all night poker,
hours-long games of Doom, debating the merits of various
porn queens with Frohike. He's missed all that in his exile,
more than he'd ever expected. It hits him now that Scully is
really the only friend he has left. Skinner is more of an ally
than a friend -- somehow he can't see inviting the Skinman
over for cheesesteaks and conspiracy theories.

He smiles slightly as the barkeep finally materializes with his
drink. He thinks back on their inauspicious beginning -- the
uptight FCC PR bureaucrat who secretly wanted to live up to
his name and two paranoid purveyors of black market cable
seduced into delving into government conspiracy. Somehow
their natural antipathy had blossomed into an enduring
friendship and a devotion to the truth. Add one slightly lunatic
FBI agent into the mix.....

He muses that he might never have sought his own answers if
he hadn't met the Gunmen. Somehow their story, rather than
sounding ridiculous, had stirred something within him.
Coupled with the odd nightmares he'd been having of his
sister's disappearance, he'd been motivated to undergo
hypnotic regression. And the rest, as they say, is history.

It's egotistical he knows, to think things might have been
different had he stayed -- that he might have somehow been
able to change the outcome. Still, the thought is there, burning
its way around his heart as the whiskey burns his throat. Once
again, he's failed to protect those he cares about.

What the hell is he doing here, anyway?

Haven't he and Scully learned by now that they are better
together than they are apart? His instincts tell him that he
should be there with her and their son -- his intellect tells him
he needs to keep his distance.

He wishes his intellect would take a hike.

Every time he leaves, it seems, his world ends up shifting in
indefinable ways. He'd gone for months to find his partner
pregnant with his child and his work taken over by another.
Now he's left again and the three most stalwart friends he's
ever had are gone.

And he wasn't there to say goodbye.

He wonders if the world will ever stop shifting like sand
beneath his feet -- if he'll ever again feel like he's standing on
solid ground.

He wonders if the people he cares about will ever stop leaving
him.

He knows that Scully must be hurting as much as he is; the
unlikely trio of misfits had become her friends as much as his.
Frohike's "she's hot" comment can still make him smile. For
all his affected lechery, Mulder has always privately believed
that the littlest Gunman had the biggest heart. He'll even miss
the little toad's crush on Scully. And Langly -- what is there to
say about the hippy who'd missed the 60s? the perpetual
adolescent? And the nappy Byers -- the one who smoothed the
rough edges, and gave the three what respectability they could
claim. Yet despite their differences, where one was, the others
were never far behind.

He wonders if he and Scully will be doomed to spending their
lives apart, uniting only by infrequent chance, as Byers and
Suzanne Modeski had been fated to do. Would the chemist
ever know what had happened to Byers? Would Scully ever
know if something happened to him, or would she wait for
him, forever expecting him to return home?

He'll miss the Gunmen for their ability to hack their way into
any database, negate any security. Their unabashed
subversiveness. He remembers fondly their escapades -- the
times he'd lured the three out of their bunker to do some funky
poaching. They'd been good friends and loyal, never
hesitating to help his quest, whether it meant hacking DoD
databases or risking their lives breaking into government
facilities. He closes his eyes a moment, wishing he'd dared go
to the funeral. Arlington National Cemetery no less. He hadn't
known Skinner respected them that much -- for it must have
been Skinner who pulled the strings on that. It almost amused
him to think of his subversive anti-government friends among
all that spit and polish. If the dead walked, Arlington  might
never be the same. It was well-deserved though, no question.
In their own odd-ball way, the Gunmen had been patriots --
wanting only for their country's government to live up to their
love of it.

All they had ever wanted was to make a difference. And they
had. Mulder raises his glass in a silent salute to unseen
comrades -- perhaps they hadn't saved the world, but they
*had* saved a tiny corner of it. And he can live with that.

Finis