Title: Everest (1/1) Author: RocketMan >lebontrager@iname.com< Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to CC,1013, and Fox. No fringe is intended. Summary:::Angst, Mulder variety, a kind of dream reflection. Dedication::Notes::This is for Jon Krakauer, author of "Into Thin Air", a wonderful and sorrowful account of a true ascent of Mount Everest. I may not understand the drive to climb the world's tallest peak, but I do know of the need to write, to provide a catharsis. I hope he finds peace. ~~~~ Everest ~~~~ He was on top of the world, at the pinnacle of man's existence, overlooking forever as it snowed down on Tibet and Nepal. He was on Mount Everest, at its peak, breathing like an old man, numb and discouraged and frightened. There was nothing left to do but go back down. He took no pictures, framed no elegant quotes in his mind, left no momentos of his ascent for future explorers. He left. But he started back down the opposite way he'd come up, going down the North Face instead of the South. It registered somewhere that this was not the way he'd come up, but it seemed wrong to backtrack, wrong to simply stand at the top and then turn around and go back the way he'd come. God had put this mountain in front of him not for him to climb up and then back down, but to climb over. Over. He probably could have gone around it, skirted its enormity and breadth, done the wise thing and ignored it all together. He should have continued on with life, built solid foundations somewhere besides this mountain, allowing maybe for a small twinge now and again as he glimpsed the horizon and saw it's towering massiveness. But it should not have gripped him so. It should not have determined the course of his entire being in such a way that the huge loss of life while ascending meant a great deal, and yet did not stop him. But as he looked back at the peak, he realized that Scully had not come up with him, had not found her way to the top. He thought for a frantic, chilling moment that she was dead. That his mountain seeking quest had ended her life. The furious wind knocked him flat and he slid a few meters down his back on treacherous ice. Coming to a halting stop against a frozen rock, he rolled to a sitting position. He looked down into unknown territory and then back up, debating. There was still more to go, more of the mountain to discover, to explore, to reveal to the world. There were secrets and niches that no one had set foot in, and he longed to conquer this mountain, longed to expose it to the world. But there was Scully, back behind him somewhere, refusing to climb up with him. In a moment of breathlessness, he made his decision. He shoved a boot into the ice, his cleat-like crampons digging into it to give him purchase. He started back for the summit, and then made his way down the mountain's South Face. Scully was back there somewhere, and although he had made it to the peak himself, he could not continue on without her. He needed her rationality to temper his wildness, to keep him making the right decisions. He needed her to make it all worth it. ~~~~ Mulder woke slowly, the ice and wind dissoloving slowly into a couch and coffee table. He shivered and yanked his blanket tighter around him, hunkering deepered into the recesses of his makeshift bed. The dream haunted him, infused his every memory with the pictures of Scully clad in his parka, out in the frozen wastes of Antarctica, both of them slowly dying. There was Mount Everest, his entire journey chillingly summed up in the race to the summit. And her frostbitten cheeks, a harsh reminder that death walked with them. He wondered if he fell back asleep whether or not he'd find her there, on his mountain, struggling to climb after him, or simply sitting down on a ledge somewhere after having given up in the entire thing's futility. And he wondered whether or not he should just come down the mountain, give up his race against death, and lead them both to safety. Go be a doctor. It echoed again within his bones, in that core gut of him that was never wrong, that was always predicting horrible outcomes. He stood slowly, pulling the blanket from around his shoulders, remembering the deaths, the horrible vainity he's displayed in thinking that such a death could mean something. He reached for the phone, dialed a familiar number. It was 1:45 in the morning, her phone ringing loudly, like a warning. Go be a doctor. The mountain wasn't something he was being forced to climb, not at all. It didn't exist in the entirety of the world. There were other places. There was Hawaii, and its volcanoes, there was California and its earthquakes, there was the Midwest and its floods. He could find something safer to scale, something more reasonable. Everyone was going to die eventually. But he didn't have to make it a worthless death. It didn't have to be while climbing Mount Everest. She picked up, clearing her throat of sleep. "Scully," he began, the pictures clear in his head. "Mm. Mulder," she muttered, and he could hear her flop back down in the bed, could almost see her eyes open. "Scully. I. . " He stopped, glimpsing the mountain in the distance, the receeding peak beckoning. "Mulder, are you all right?" He was silent, shutting his eyes to the image of the world spread below him as he rested on the top. "Mulder, I'm here. I'm right here." she said softly. He needed those words, needed that voice, that comfort. "Mulder, either talk or let me sleep." He nodded and felt the slap of wind across his face, the threat of a storm in the air, and the wondrous thrill of beating the world. "Never mind. Good night Scully." He hung up the phone. There was no coming down once he started for the top. He'd found her again, found her struggling forward just as he struggled forward. Remembering the death, the accidents and mistakes and blunders, he resolved to be more careful this time. He would just have to be more careful. He'd get her to the top, the all inspiring climax, and take her down the other side. Together they'd show the world their Mount Everest. ~~~~ end adios RM