Title: Long Time Coming Author: RocketMan lebontrager@harding.edu Disclaimer: Belongs to CC, 1013, Fox. The song at beginning is "Breathe In Me" by Michael W. Smith, a wonderful poet. This in no way goes with "I'll Be Around" Distribute: go ahead, make my day Rating: PG13 Content Warning: Character dies Spoiler: everything fourth season Summary: What I hope really didn't happen during Gethsemane when Mulder was crying, but had to do a story on. Sigh....I've been sucked in by the powers that be.....not *Them*.....to write something about Geth. Too good to pass up. In the darkness of false hopes and shattered illusions, Fox Mulder sat quietly on the only comfort he had, and a partly bitter one at that. The leather couch, site of nightmares and revelations, of deaths and hopes, of lies and truths. And once more, Fox Mulder was seeking the couch's solace; it's lonely reassurance that some things are only made for one. One person to handle the problems and one person to be hurt by those problems. He should have listened to its warning long ago. He didn't need a partner, partners only got in the way, only tangled up your heart until you were bound hand and foot and unable to deal with anything without hurting your significant other. Problems he had wer made for one, yet he'd pulled her into them and he was being punished for it, by punishing her. It was his fault. He knew with facts and proof it was his fault - she had said as much. If Scully finally believed in something, who was he to say it wasn't true? Who was he not to believe? All was a lie. All he'd ever believed in with any certainty had been arranged to make him purport the government's lie. The very thing he'd fought so hard against, was the thing she believed he encouraged. What hurt the most? He couldn't tell. It all became one continuing cycle. It was a tie between her refusal to believe him, only what another stranger had said that sounded better, or her willingness to believe the cancer was his fault. It was his fault. He had secretly dreaded she'd think that, but when she hadn't, when she had given him her trust and asked for his support in the hospital, he had thought it was over. No more pain on the guilt level. But she believed. She believed he was being made to believe a lie. She believed that his life was engineered around a lie. She believed that he was the major player and she was only a pawn used to make tham believe. But he had the horrible, gut wrenching feeling, she was right. She was right. The 1972 conference on the existence of extraterrestrial life was running and he could only think that it had all been carefully played out. The informants, the suspicious leads, the whole freaking thing. He'd been led around on a string in order to keep the sane people from figuring out what was going on. Oh......gods....he'd been used. Used like a rag to mop up their spills. And he'd been so used, he had hurt other people doing it. He had killed her. He was killing her. And she believed he was killing her. There was no Samantha, there was no Truth. Only lies on top of lies, on top of lies. Century old lies passed down through the generations and he had helped pass them right along. Oh.....gods......he had helped them! *He* had *helped* them. Helped them kill her with that lie. In believing the lie, he had sealed and signed her death sentence. "Scully," he moaned, in half whisper, tears finally falling. The truth would not save her. The truth was a tangled web of deceit that he had helped to create. She was given cancer in order to maintain that lie. His lie. But if he were to not believe? If he were to give up all the lies and find the real truth? Oh....she'd still die. It was too late. Because he couldn't see clearly anymore. Truth was false and lies were turht and lies were everywhere. He couldn't sort them out. He didn't know what to believe, he didn't know what he believed even now, but that she believed and not in him. He couldn't even believe in her. She believed he had killed her. He felt dead inside at the thought. Hollowed out and broken in pieces, a shell of a man, of a Believer. With the life so calmly snuffed out of him, he had nothing to light it again. No Scully. Oh....he needed her to breathe life into his dried out lungs. He needed her force of strength in him to remind him of good. Of truth. But she no longer had that to give, and he had already taken so much. If he were gone, she'd be left alone, right? This had all come about because of him. If he were not here to influence, to lie to, they'd let her live right? They wouldn't......wouldn't let her die.......Cancer Man had said he liked her..........she won't die......no death. And if he were gone, he wouldn't have to look in her eyes every day and see the disbelief in him, the hurt and the pain of it all. She no longer needed him. He could not go on without her; he needed the life giving oxygen she had so freely offered before. She just didn't have any more to give. The gun was in his hands before he even realized what he was contemplating. All it would take was one clean shot, dead on impact, painful as hell but he might as well get used to it and he deserved it. For believing the lie, for allowing them to use him and his not even seeing it. All the information, the secret meetings, close encounters, to let him get close to his personal truth - lie - then snatch it away. He could still save her. She'd identify his body and see his tears and know he at least didn't mean to kill her, that he was trying to fix it. The more he thought, the deader he felt. The less living he felt. Like with her open acceptance of something completely against him she had sucked the life from him. She was anti-Mulder, the complete and total opposite and anti. Anti-Mulder. Not Mulder, Ex-Mulder, X out Mulder. She was his life. Maybe she had the power to save him. Maybe she'd come back and breathe life into him again. Hopes mingled with tears and he forcefully shook his head. He put the barrel to his head, intent that he would be a man about his death, and little back, so she could recognize his face when she came, and see the tear tracks. Recognize his face......the face of her destroyer, her savior.......he closed his eyes. Death had been a long time in coming. End. Adios RocketMan forgive me, i don't want him dead, but couldn't resist.... ='''-(