TITLE: From Here 
AUTHOR: Anubis
DISCLAIMER: No, none of them are mine. Satisfied?
RATING: R
SPOILERS: Biogenesis
SUMMARY: Something about despair, I think.
DISTRIBUTION: Well, when you let something go-- blah, blah, put it
anywhere.
EMAIL: AnubisLM@aol.com


I wish I had just listened.

I wish I had heard the warnings. There were so many warnings: the subtle
ones, the unsubtle ones, the ones that were fucking two by fours in my
arrogant fucking face. If I had just paid goddamn attention to one, just
one, of them, would I be here now? 

I know it would be different, I just know it would be different.

One of the few free survivors has his big old Ford Explorer sitting by the
banks of the river, and is staring at the remains of a city I don't know
what city at this point and I don't fucking want to know what city. It's
too much to think about. But he's sitting on a ratty old blanket, and
hugging his two kids, cute kids, maybe eight and ten, and he's bawling his
eyes out, holding them and rocking. And here I am, alone and feeling sorry
for myself, and it's all my own fucking fault.

"Angie," the music from the truck blares, "Angie-- when will those clouds
all disappear? Angie, Angie-- where will it lead us from here?"

I look at the empty passenger seat of my FBI Taurus and nearly throw up.
I'm a fucking coward, this entire mess is my fucking fault, and I'm just
watching. God damn it all to hell, where I belong. All Mulders should go
to hell, and I'm no exception.

It happened before Scully came back from Africa, while I was still in my
cell, where I knew in my head that she had gone. The sky fell down 
and I was Chicken Little, hearing it all in my demented skull and not
being able to do anything because I was wearing a little white paper gown
in a little white padded cell. At least the nurse had the human decency to
leave the door open, the day before it really went to hell. I ran. I
fucking ran my ass to any safe haven in a storm, and this was not just any
storm.

Skinner did his best-- God, I can't bear to think of Skinner, the last
time I saw him, getting it up the ass from Alex Krycek, who was leering at
us all with the false cheer of the damned. He had known, more than any
other person had, I think, what it was going to be when it came, but he
had been powerfully. Skinner had stared at me with dull, dead eyes, and
told me to get a car with his compliments and get the hell out of town for
good.

"You can't say we're satisfied," Mick Jagger yowls. "Angie, oh Angie-- you
can't say we never tried-- Angie, you're beautiful, but ain't it time we
said goodbye?"

We tried. God, we tried, we never stopped trying, and it came out to
nothing in the end. I know in the very core of my being that Scully spent
those last days of her life as she knew it trying to get back to
Washington to do something. And something numbs in me when I say the last
days of her life. I have no proof she's dead or alive. I have no proof,
period, of fucking anything in these days, these last and horrible days of
the human race. 

But what can I think? Either she's dead, or she's worse than dead. The
fuckers did some ungodly things to Africa, where human life sprang, to
make sure it no life came up from that source ever again. In those days,
those early days, we still had CNN and a few other news sources at the
time. Now--

Well, we find out what we can. I'm a little luckier than most. The ships
transmit cellphone signals all right. Of course, there's no one to call,
no one to get news from, since Skinner got dropped while I was talking to
him. I don't know what happened. I heard one shot, and a few 
groans, and then nothing.

If only I had connected the dots. He could still be alive today. My mother
could still be alive. Samantha wouldn't be staring back at me in the form
of a thousand mindless drones, forever eight-years-old and in braids,
smiling mindlessly An average based on zeros, something tries to connect
in my brain. The new human race, an average based on zeros, we don't want
any frowning, frowning is the first touch of God on a child's forehead.
Where is that from?

"With no loving in our souls, and no money in our coats--"

Scully frowned a lot. I remember that. But wasn't God always with her? He
had the kindness to take her before we all went to hell for good, not like
me or this man at the riverbank. We are left to witness the end of days,
an exquisite torture by any standard.

"Daddy, I want Mommy," the younger kid says. "Where did Mommy go?"

The guy looks at the kid, and opens his mouth. But no sounds come out. He
just shakes his head and trembles. It's fairly obvious to me that mommy
didn't make it. And the kid, after a minute, starts yowling at the top of
its lungs. And at the rivers of Babylon, there we sit down and weep,
remembering Zion.

I think I could bear it if it weren't for Scully.

I think I could bear it if it weren't my own damn fault I was here. I
should have known. I should have stopped it! And now, I should be fighting
the inevitable. Better to perish in a righteous cause than die of
starvation or of slavery, right? If only Scully was here, I think I could
do it.

Thoughts try to penetrate the dark, tangled despair of my remaining mind.
I can still fight, if I want. And Scully could still be alive. I clutch
onto this last hope of a thought like the Little Match Girl to her
grandmother and imagine it out in my mind.

She didn't die. She was on the last cattle boat out of Africa, some
kindhearted man gave her his place on an airplane, she willed herself into
the air and flew across the Atlantic. But she did make it out of Africa
alive. She did, because Scully can do anything. I always knew that she
could.

I continue spinning myself hope, believing that it's possible. Upon
arriving in DC, when she saw it trashed, she began to walk. She's walking
the post-apocalyptic countryside, alone. I can almost see her do it, and I
will her on, trying with all that she is to find me. Because she knows the
way out of this mess, and we can stop it right here right now--

"All the dreams we held so close seemed to all go up in smoke-- let me
whisper in your ear-- oh, Angie, Angie-- where will it lead us from here?"

I can make up for my mistakes.

I can give back to the world what I stole from them. A little bit at
least, but it all depends on Scully's walk, Scully walking from wherever
she is to wherever I am. And I know she can find me. Like I said, she has
powers beyond that of mortal men.

I get out of the car now, and look up at the trees, which are dying, and
the grass, which is dying, and look up into the sky, which is free from
the shadow of ships. I am safe here. For the moment.

The guy on the riverbank stares at me, wearing a suit and tie in days like
this. He probably thinks I'm one of them. He even pulls the kids away,
before I can say a word about it. Better safe than sorry in a world like
this, the world that I let happen.

I admit, the guilt is eating me inside out a little too heartily, but
that's life. I deserve to feel this way, like the world collapsed because
I failed to press the right button, even if sometimes I wonder what
exactly I could have done except for scream, like Chicken Little, that the
sky was indeed falling, and it wasn't gonna be fucking pretty.

"Everywhere I look I see your eyes--"

I need Scully. I need her to explain the world to me, and tell me it's all
right, that something can or can't be done, but that it would be done.
Right now, I'm immobilized by numbness and grief. If I only had the last
month back, oh God! The last six weeks! I could have done it all
different. I could have--

"FOX WILLIAM MULDER!" a bullhorn roars. I turn and stare. It's a huge
fucking tank, one that used to belong to the USA, when there was a USA,
when there was order. Now it's theirs. Now, a man I vaguely recognize hops
out of the tank and walks up to me, weaponless, arms thrown out.

"That's me," I reply. "Where is she?"

"Good God, Agent Mulder," the man says, and I can't place his face, but he
was one of them, and he's been rewarded by the devil, I can tell. "Are you
still worried about Agent Scully?"

"Where is she? What did you do with her?" I ask. "Is she dead? Did you
kill her?"

The man laughs. "Dead or alive, I don't know what happened to Agent
Scully. It doesn't matter, either," he says. "We have a warrant for your
immediate execution as an enemy of the state, Agent Mulder."

"Why do you need a warrant?" I ask.

"We don't," he says, laughing again. "Still worried about that Scully
woman. As if it could make any difference."

I spit in his face. Scully made all the difference in my life. Even now,
when I look into this man's face and see the next and last five minutes of
my life written very large upon it. But she's not here. And I think, now,
that I'm glad, as two of the man's flunkies grab me and restrain me.

"Oh, Angie, don't you weep-- all your kisses still taste sweet--"

And as I stare at the men and not-men pulling me away from the riverbank,
their eyes portents of death as sure as the ides of March, I don't think
of dying. I knew before I was born that I was going to die. Who escapes
the inevitable?

I think of Scully instead, Scully safe from all of this, and from me, and
it gives me courage to be shoved to my knees. I feel the barrel of the gun
against my temple, and I hear the click of the gun being cocked. I even
hear the blast, but that's not the last thing I hear as I slump to the
ground, dead. I hear the last strains of the song, and remember red hair
and blue eyes. And all is well.

"Angie, Angie, they can't say we never tried--"

END
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Anubis