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it is a time of dark, dark despair
Okay, I am still here, but you don't want to know how badly I'm doing on wordcount.
Or maybe you do, if you need reassurance that somebody's worse off than you. But I'm not giving up; I still like the story (most of the time, anyway) and I've managed at least a few hundred words every day, although they're getting harder and less good.
But I did manage over two thousand words tonight, which are actually good enough that I'm not ashamed of them. Too bad they're random x-files fanfiction intead of novel.
Oh, what the hey! I'll post it anyway. I need to prove I can actually write, sometimes.
It starts-- well, when does it start? It starts 18,000 years ago when ice chases the black oil out. It starts when a ship crashes over Roswell, or when a little girl is taken from her brother, or when a vaccine is used prematurely by a desperate man in Antarctica, or when a rebel faction decides to make Earth its new battleground.
It starts in 2005, seven years early, when a hybrid clone co-opts a local cable channel in South Carolina to announce that humans are to surrender immediately to their overlords, or when an entirely separate cabal of shapeshifters gains control of the city of Akron, or when it's no longer impossible not to correlate the spread of the new variola strain with the new breed of bees, or when two dozen long-forgotten kidnap victims show up on a mountaintop in West Virgina with no memory of the past fifteen years.
But for Agent John Doggett, it really starts when Assistant Director Skinner pulls a postcard out of his desk. The front of it has a picture of a cheap motel somewhere in Oregon; the back a hastily-scribbled cell phone number in blue ink. Twelve hours later, Agents Mulder and Scully are being welcomed back to the FBI.
There's a task force, in the basement of the Pentagon. John and Monica and Mulder and Scully (and she had been Dana to him, but somehow it's "Mulder and Scully" now the way it always was before he came along), are there as the resident experts, and this should be Mulder's vindication, his victory, but there's no victory here at all. They still don't want to listen to him, and Mulder still ends up stalking out of the meeting in anger and leaves Scully rolling her eyes and tapping a pen against the table. And Mulder doesn't really have any more answers than the rest of them, anyway.
It doesn't get any better any faster. Mulder won't take his badge back, won't even visit the old office in the basement. But they aren't based there anymore anyway; there's a command center now. Mulder doesn't go there either; he spends most of his time in frantic motion all over DC, and then someone will come across him muttering vacantly to himself in the lobby of the National Archives or an alley in Georgetown.
There's a rumor that he's gone crazy, maybe psychic again. There's a rumor that he talks to dead people.
Actually, that one's not so much a rumor after he and Monica get Scully alone down in the office one day.
"Is he -- all right?" Monica asks gently, and John looks up from one of the old striped files. He doesn't expect to find anything new, but it's something to keep busy with, and it feels old, and familiar in his arms, back in the days when the strangeness that hovered around Mulder had been something he could just deal with and tuck away in its proper drawer afterward. He'd been wondering too but it hadn't seemed right for him to ask; partly, of course, because he's always been convinced that Mulder was very far from all right.
"What? Mulder's fine," Scully says, which is as believeable as that word ever is, from her. "I guess you have to be used to it-- It's just the way he's always been, when he can't find the answers he needs. Only he has trouble remembering to try to act normal these days, because we haven't been around real live people so much lately. He's used to mostly talking to dead people and they don't get as uptight about social graces."
John stops pretending he's not listening and stares at her. Monica just puts that same old look of graceful curiosity on her face.
"Oh yeah, he talks to dead people. Did I forget to mention that?" Scully has let her hair grow out; it's halfway down her back, stick-straight and dull and maybe even a little gray already, and she looks years younger than she did when she left. She'd taken her badge back but she's wearing jeans and sweatshirts to work and doesn't even give lip service to proper procedure; she's changed as much as Mulder did, wherever they've been the past few years, but the same years have made her looser and more natural. Easier to relate to, for every degree that Mulder is less. Like someone who's been getting laid regularly, he doesn't think. He could never put this new Scully up on a pedestal to worship, but he almost thinks he likes her better. The old Scully would never have dared to say that sentence with quite the same curl of wicked humor in her eyes.
It reassures him. Monica, too. "Okay, they were always freaky-weird," she tells him over pizza in bed that night. "This is just a different sort of freaky-weird. If it weren't that the world's ending I'd say it's that they've learned to be happy, but I think it's just that they've healed, inside, together."
Monica's loosened him up, too. He hadn't even noticed the change until Scully was back and she'd caught him folding an interoffice memo into an origami spaceship, and raised one of her old Scully eyebrows at him. It seems wrong, after the last frantic time five years ago when they'd been depending on each others' pain as their one rock-solid foundation, that they've somehow all ended up in happy-ever-after. If it weren't that the world is ending anyway, he'd find it suspicious.
Oh, right, the world is ending. He ought to be worrying about that full-time, but somehow, since Mulder's arrived, they've dumped the responsibility for it back on his shoulders. It's his pet issue, he'll with it, seems to be the completely unspoken consensus, even while everyone's frantically pretending to make progress on their own. Most of the task force treat him like some sort of trained monkey, who will eventually miraculously produce the complete works of Shakespeare if they mistreat him enough, and John knows it's unfair, he knows he can't realistically expect Mulder to pull a miracle solution out of thin air. But he still finds himself murmuring in the dark of night that it'll be all right, Mulder will come up with something.
Everyone's put their pressure on Mulder, and the only one who can take any of it off him is Scully. He's slowly melting down and she's going to boil over soon, having to keep the lid on for his sake. So no, it would be an exaggeration to say they're happy. If only the world wasn't ending. But John doesn't have any more damned solution than they do, and he knows it.
Everything comes to a head at the next full meeting. They're gathered around an oval table, dark wood with anachronistic ashtrays recessed into it, in a windowless basement room, as if they were trying to be cliche, old powerful men and young impatient ones and people who have simply been living with the end for so many years that it's part of the way they move. Even Marita Covarrubias is there, having crawled out of the cracks in the plaster with the last few pathetic scraps of the Syndicate; maybe the smoky dark room was their idea, a bow to tradition.
Not that they've had much to add to the effort. The vast conspiracy they'd geared themselves to fight was simply gone, evaporated like the gossamer web it was. If this was a serious coordinated effort the battle would have been lost as soon as it began, but it's not. Now that they've turned all their information over to the official authorities an actual picture is coming clear of what has been going on out there. Marita, who still probably knows more than anyone else about what's actually happens, gets the honor of summarizing the new theory: that the aliens started withdrawing from Earth soon after Mulder pumped a mothership full of Earth-made vaccine.
"They don't think like we do, in terms of risk and strategy. They will sacrifice individuals and even societies cheaply and easily. But the idea of something that could threaten the oil itself, the them that made them, it was completely beyond imagining. It was if the natives on Hispaniola had suddenly hit the Santa Maria with an H-bomb. And humans might have kept trying even against those odds, but the aliens simply aren't capable of taking that kind of risk."
So the events of the next few years had actually been a chaotic and half-hearted withdrawal, the fizzling out of thousands' of years worth of plans, the rebels scenting blood in the water and adding their own dose of confusion and destruction to things. And then this year, the forces which were still on Earth had come to the belated realization that they had simply been abandoned, war materié:l left behind on the battlefield, and they'd assimilated human enough to start lashing out in return, each cell or laboratory trying for its own bit of power and revenge.
'So what it comes down to," Deputy Director Skinner says, ineffably tired, "Is that there's not going to be any decisive victory here. There's no power generator to blow up or goverment to surrender to us. We're in an extended mopping-up action, and each threat is going to have to be dealt with as it comes, as long as they keep coming." John can see in his eyes that he no longer seriously expects that to happen in his lifetime.
"What that means," one of the CIA men says flatly, "Is that we're dead. We haven't managed to sucessfully take out one threat, much less all of them--"
"We're making progress fighting the viruses--"
"Until a new set shows up. We're just damn lucky that none of the slasher varieties have appeared yet--"
"Magnetite--"
"That will never be a viable tactical weapon--"
The room threatens to break out in a babel again, until Director Kersh silences them by sheer force of personality. "What it means is that we're damn lucky Agent Mulder managed to take out the main threat. We have a fighting chance now, people, and we're going to take it."
Half the table turns to stare at Mulder, who gives them nothing but a blank stare, until Marita looks up with her fierce dead eyes and draws their attention away. "We knew from the beginning that we can't fight them with normal tactics. They know everyhing about our capabilities-- physical, technological, strategic-- everything we can do they can counter. They're literally millenia ahead of anything we have. They *designed* most of what we have."
"So what's the point then?" someone mutters rebelliously. They're all tired and depressed and about one more piece of bad news away from broken. They've spent too long losing and grinding away and wandering around the city not being able to actually *do* anything, because the people who have taken action are all very dead, and not slowly fretting themselves away in meetings.
"The point is that one unexpected, unpredictable factor saved the world. And we're going to find another one," Kersh repeats. Scully is looking one step away from walking out herself, and John finds himself agreeing with the idea. These meetings are usually bad, but not this bad. Something is going to have to give soon or they'll be destroying themselves from sheer frustration. Right now the room's gone silent again; they're like a group of sulky children who've been called out for complaining.
Agent Conyers, formerly counterterrorism, breaks a silence with a snort. "Yeah, well, too bad Agent Mulder wasted all the rest of his unexpected and unpredictable with the bureau looking after liver-eating mutants and fluke-men and witches on the PTA instead of --"
Scully stands up, white, and John and Monica are ready to back her up, but Mulder doesn't seem to have noticed. He's staring at the man-- no, two feet above his head and to the right-- and talking very quietly, as if to himself.
"Wasted? Not wasted. Leonard? God . . . God put him here for a purpose. A purpose, Scully!" He's looking at her now, and his eyes are shining. He grabs his notebook and Scully's wrist and stands up . "C'mon, Dr. Spooky, we've got work to do." He pulls her toward the door.
"Mulder?" Scully says. She looks dazed and confused but happy. He's obviously had a breakthrough. The rest of the table are staring at him with vary degrees of disbelief. Monica puts her hand over John's.
Skinner stares at him, lip twitching in amusement. "Mulder? Did you have something you wanted to say?"
"No, sir." He glances down at the table. "I need to do some research, though. The meeting was pretty much over, right? You didn't have anything planned for today except a few more rounds of angst and recrimination?"
"No, I don't suppose we did." Skinner is openly grinning now. It's the first time he's smiled in days.
Mulder smiles back. "Great! Wonderful! Excellent! I'll see you in your office tomorrow morning."
And that ends that meeting.
Except, of course, for a few more rounds of confusion and recriminations, but John and Monica play tic-tac-toe through most of it.
Chapter 2: 1-5-05
John goes to work early, still ringing with the excitement of Mulder's outburst yesterday. He gets there to find that Monica's been there before him.
She's sitting on his desk in the airy new office, showing off her legs under a tailored blue suit, and thumbing through an old x-file. When she saw him she drops the folder she's reading, grins and him, and hops down. "C'mon! You have got to see this!"
So he follows her back downstairs and then on down to the basement, the old office that barely has room for both his desk and Monica's, and has been mostly abandoned since the coming of the aliens moved them upstairs with the rest of the task force.
Now, there's lights spilling out of the open door, and two voice snapping back and forth.
"Shhh," Monica says, finger to her lips. "I think they've been down here ever since the meeting yesterday."
Mulder is sitting at John's desk with his feet up and his eyes closed, calling out case numbers. Scully's pulling files out of the cabinets and stacking them beside him on the desk.
"Um, guys?" John says. "All the files that mention the aliens or the conspiracy have been compiled upstairs--"
"That's why we're down here," Mulder says, looking smug. "We've been spending to much time worrying about aliens, instead of what we should have been looking for. Scully, you have the notes? Skinner's probably getting impatient"
Scully rolls her eyes at him good-naturedly. "Mulder, Skinner ran out of patience with you years ago. And I don't know if *anything* will be enough to convince him this is a good idea-- but we're probably as ready as we'll get."
Mulder swings his feet down and stands up. "Don't worry about our good A.D. He'll fall in. Agent Doggett, Agent Reyes, you coming? Might as well only go over it once."
Skinner is sitting calmly behind his desk when they get there. Only someone who'd been working with him as long as they had would be able to sense the nervousness and excitement running through him, he picks up a pencil and narrows his eyes at Mulder. "Okay, Mr. Mulder, what is this amazing idea you ran out of the meeting over?"
Mulder dropped a sheet of notebook paper on the desk. Skinner skimmed it, and raised his eyebrows. "Mulder, this is just a list of names and case numbers. Linda Bowman, Henry Weems, Cecil L'Ively, Holman Hardt, Eddie van Blundht, Peter Oswald, Tommy Conlon. . . these are old X-files."
"Exactly," Mulder said, looking far too pleased with himself. "We've been going about this all wrong. Get it? Anything that comes from our science, or their science, we can't win, because they had it first, and they understand it better than we do. But this--" he gestured at the paper. "All these people we found on the X-Files, that we weren't even looking for, that they let us waste time on to distract us from the Plan, they're the real answer. The ones which we can't explain and fall way outside the understanding of the others, too, I'd stake the world on it. That's why Gibson was such a danger. They can do what nobody else can. We're in a no-win situation, but these people can change the rules of the game."
"Mulder," Skinner said slowly, "What exactly are you proposing?"
Mulder cocked his head. "Leonard Betts gave me the answer yesterday. His mother knew. They were born for a reason, we've found them for a reason. Nothing happens without a reason, Director, and this planet makes its own protections. We need to gather as many paranormal talents, which are *not* associated with the extraterrestrials, train them, and let them be our defense."
"Mulder, are you trying to suggest we create some kind of legion of super-heroes?"
"It's not as unlikely as Mulder makes it sound, Sir," Scully says. "We've seen that individual humans, and even hybrids, can defeat the enemy by working *outside* their paradigms of thought. I've seen some of these people in action, and they have abilities which are unexplainable, illogical, and often unbelievable. I think it could make a difference, Sir. Even a few decisive victories could turn the tide, if they create hope, and a group of highly visible--" Scully makes a face, "Superheroes, for lack of a better term, could do that, I believe."
John doesn't want to say what he's thinking, but as usual Monica gets there before him. "I think it's a good idea, Sir. As outrageous as it sounds, it just might work."
"It can't make things any worse," John finds himself saying in agreement. "I say we give it a try, sir. The problem is finding these people, and convincing them to help-- a lot of them aren't the most stable folks I've met."
"That is an understatement, considering half of them are in prison for murder." Skinner sighs. It's a very familiar, and the first time John heard it directed at him instead of Mulder he knew he'd never be able to quit the X-files. "Do you realize what you're asking me, Mulder? Even just trying to pitch-- this-- to the others? It's-- it's ludicrous! It's like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon!"
Scully looks like she's about to speak, but Mulder stops her with a gesture. He's staring at Skinner with the eerie expression that everyone's gottne familiar with since he came back. "Have you cracked the passphrase, yet, sir?"
Skinner's startled; John's just confused. "What?"
"The other passphrase on the palm pilot, the one that lets you access the special programming."
"How the *hell* do you know about that, Mulder?" he asks, his voice low and dangerous.
"Alex told me," Mulder said, cocking his head. "He didn't think you'd have gotten it by now, and I quote, 'Too damn paranoid to ask for help, and too damn proud to figure it out on his own.' But he knew what was coming, too, and nanotech can do a lot of things other than block arteries. He gave me the phrase, and I think you'll find some very interesting subroutines behind the security block."
Skinner looks like he has no idea how to react to this, and the whole thing is over John's head. Scully's staring at Mulder in disbelief, and looks like she can't decide whether to hit him or kiss him. And Monica, of course, is quietly taking everything in. Finally Skinner makes a little moan of defeat.
"Fine, Mulder, you win. I'll bring this up today at the meeting. But you have to promise me that there will be *no* capes or spandex involved."
Part 3:
Druid Hill Sanitarium hasn't changed since the last time John was there a few months ago. It's still white and clean and quiet and so very, very well-intentioned. The maniacs don't escape from here, they're released on good behavior.
The section John and Mulder are heading for is slightly less unnerving, at least, or perhaps it's just that he's more familiar with it. He strides down the hall, Mulder following bemused in his wake, until they get to the white-painted door with a pencil drawing of Batman taped to it, and "Tommy's Room" printed underneath in a careful hand. John glances at Mulder, and knocks.
Tommy opens the door, grinning, and John pulls him into a hug. "Hey, Tommy," he says.
"John! Dr. Ferris said you would be coming by. Come on in." He ushers them into his room. It's as homelike as a high-security asylum can get; the walls are covered with brightly-colored posters, two televisions are blaring and a video game is paused on the PC, headphones laid beside it, half-a-dozen comics books and an box of colored pencils scattered over the carefully made bed.
"Did she mention-- ah--" John waves half-heartedly at his companion, who is still standing in the door, cataloging the room and probably working up a profile of its inhabitant in his head. Or, for all John knows, talking to the boy's dead mother.
He steps forwad at John's words, though, and offers Tommy his hand. "Mulder," he says with a half-smile.
Tommy accepts gravely. "I'm Tommy Conlon. I guess you know all about me." He shoves a couple of comic books off the bed and sinks into his desk chair. "Sit down, make yourself comfortable."
Mulder folds himself up on the floor, so John takes the bed. "Listen, Tommy," he says. "I know it's been a long time since I've seen you. I've gotta apologize. I know it's been lonely since Anthony left."
"Hey, no sweat," Tommy says. "I know you guys've been busy. I watch a lot of television news. He gestures at the televisions: One of them is tuned to a rerun of Smallville, the other's on CNN and is showing footage of an evacuation somewhere in the Midwest, while a commentator talks about how the US government is working full-time to contain the threat.
Mulder raises his eyebrows. "Anthony ?"
"Anthony Fogleman. He's been helping Tommy learn to control his abilities," John says. "He had similar powers, but they developed much more gradually than Tommy's."
"Yeah, and he's much better at not killing people with them. It was John's idea," Tommy says. "He's helped me a lot too."
"Tommy, you're not going to kill anyone accidentally either," John says firmly. "You're not a scared little boy any more. Dr. Ferris has said it would be safe for you to leave the sanitarium whenever you think you're ready."
Tommy shrugged. "And if that's really true, and I'm safe, why isn't my dad here with you guys?"
John felt his heart twist. "You know he only wants what's best for you, Tommy."
"Yeah, I know," Tommy says. "That's why he gave the hospital custody and moved to Tennessee." Before John can respond, Tommy changes the subject. "So what's up? I know you didn't just stop in to say hi-- you're supposed to be out there, fighting the real monsters."
tbc
Part 4 (snippet):
Mulder gives a half-turn to show off the cloak, which somehow avoids catching on any of the underbrush. "The Wrath of God? I think I'm starting to like this kid, Doggett."
"Since when do you read comics?" John asks as they're interrupted by the sound of Scully over the audio link.
"Mulder? John? The feed went funny for a second, are you three doing okay out there?"
John reaches for his mike, but it seems to have turned into something sleek and silvery and Mulder gets his on first.
"Hey, Scully," Mulder says cheerfully, "In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape our sight. Let those who worship evil's might beware our power--"
John has gotten his communicator working meanwhile and cuts him off. "Yeah, we're fine, Scully, Monica. Tommy was just testing out some tactics, must have interfered with the signal."
"All right. Well, report back when you're about to move in," Monica says.
"Will do. Doggett out." He clicks it off, and without stopping to think, stows it away in his own uniform. Mulder's watching him. "Why does Scully put up with you, again?" John asks rhetorically.
"Must be my charm," Mulder says with a grin, tucking his plam away beside his communicator and setting off after Tommy into the forest. "C'mon, the night's only going to get blacker."
Or maybe you do, if you need reassurance that somebody's worse off than you. But I'm not giving up; I still like the story (most of the time, anyway) and I've managed at least a few hundred words every day, although they're getting harder and less good.
But I did manage over two thousand words tonight, which are actually good enough that I'm not ashamed of them. Too bad they're random x-files fanfiction intead of novel.
Oh, what the hey! I'll post it anyway. I need to prove I can actually write, sometimes.
It starts-- well, when does it start? It starts 18,000 years ago when ice chases the black oil out. It starts when a ship crashes over Roswell, or when a little girl is taken from her brother, or when a vaccine is used prematurely by a desperate man in Antarctica, or when a rebel faction decides to make Earth its new battleground.
It starts in 2005, seven years early, when a hybrid clone co-opts a local cable channel in South Carolina to announce that humans are to surrender immediately to their overlords, or when an entirely separate cabal of shapeshifters gains control of the city of Akron, or when it's no longer impossible not to correlate the spread of the new variola strain with the new breed of bees, or when two dozen long-forgotten kidnap victims show up on a mountaintop in West Virgina with no memory of the past fifteen years.
But for Agent John Doggett, it really starts when Assistant Director Skinner pulls a postcard out of his desk. The front of it has a picture of a cheap motel somewhere in Oregon; the back a hastily-scribbled cell phone number in blue ink. Twelve hours later, Agents Mulder and Scully are being welcomed back to the FBI.
There's a task force, in the basement of the Pentagon. John and Monica and Mulder and Scully (and she had been Dana to him, but somehow it's "Mulder and Scully" now the way it always was before he came along), are there as the resident experts, and this should be Mulder's vindication, his victory, but there's no victory here at all. They still don't want to listen to him, and Mulder still ends up stalking out of the meeting in anger and leaves Scully rolling her eyes and tapping a pen against the table. And Mulder doesn't really have any more answers than the rest of them, anyway.
It doesn't get any better any faster. Mulder won't take his badge back, won't even visit the old office in the basement. But they aren't based there anymore anyway; there's a command center now. Mulder doesn't go there either; he spends most of his time in frantic motion all over DC, and then someone will come across him muttering vacantly to himself in the lobby of the National Archives or an alley in Georgetown.
There's a rumor that he's gone crazy, maybe psychic again. There's a rumor that he talks to dead people.
Actually, that one's not so much a rumor after he and Monica get Scully alone down in the office one day.
"Is he -- all right?" Monica asks gently, and John looks up from one of the old striped files. He doesn't expect to find anything new, but it's something to keep busy with, and it feels old, and familiar in his arms, back in the days when the strangeness that hovered around Mulder had been something he could just deal with and tuck away in its proper drawer afterward. He'd been wondering too but it hadn't seemed right for him to ask; partly, of course, because he's always been convinced that Mulder was very far from all right.
"What? Mulder's fine," Scully says, which is as believeable as that word ever is, from her. "I guess you have to be used to it-- It's just the way he's always been, when he can't find the answers he needs. Only he has trouble remembering to try to act normal these days, because we haven't been around real live people so much lately. He's used to mostly talking to dead people and they don't get as uptight about social graces."
John stops pretending he's not listening and stares at her. Monica just puts that same old look of graceful curiosity on her face.
"Oh yeah, he talks to dead people. Did I forget to mention that?" Scully has let her hair grow out; it's halfway down her back, stick-straight and dull and maybe even a little gray already, and she looks years younger than she did when she left. She'd taken her badge back but she's wearing jeans and sweatshirts to work and doesn't even give lip service to proper procedure; she's changed as much as Mulder did, wherever they've been the past few years, but the same years have made her looser and more natural. Easier to relate to, for every degree that Mulder is less. Like someone who's been getting laid regularly, he doesn't think. He could never put this new Scully up on a pedestal to worship, but he almost thinks he likes her better. The old Scully would never have dared to say that sentence with quite the same curl of wicked humor in her eyes.
It reassures him. Monica, too. "Okay, they were always freaky-weird," she tells him over pizza in bed that night. "This is just a different sort of freaky-weird. If it weren't that the world's ending I'd say it's that they've learned to be happy, but I think it's just that they've healed, inside, together."
Monica's loosened him up, too. He hadn't even noticed the change until Scully was back and she'd caught him folding an interoffice memo into an origami spaceship, and raised one of her old Scully eyebrows at him. It seems wrong, after the last frantic time five years ago when they'd been depending on each others' pain as their one rock-solid foundation, that they've somehow all ended up in happy-ever-after. If it weren't that the world is ending anyway, he'd find it suspicious.
Oh, right, the world is ending. He ought to be worrying about that full-time, but somehow, since Mulder's arrived, they've dumped the responsibility for it back on his shoulders. It's his pet issue, he'll with it, seems to be the completely unspoken consensus, even while everyone's frantically pretending to make progress on their own. Most of the task force treat him like some sort of trained monkey, who will eventually miraculously produce the complete works of Shakespeare if they mistreat him enough, and John knows it's unfair, he knows he can't realistically expect Mulder to pull a miracle solution out of thin air. But he still finds himself murmuring in the dark of night that it'll be all right, Mulder will come up with something.
Everyone's put their pressure on Mulder, and the only one who can take any of it off him is Scully. He's slowly melting down and she's going to boil over soon, having to keep the lid on for his sake. So no, it would be an exaggeration to say they're happy. If only the world wasn't ending. But John doesn't have any more damned solution than they do, and he knows it.
Everything comes to a head at the next full meeting. They're gathered around an oval table, dark wood with anachronistic ashtrays recessed into it, in a windowless basement room, as if they were trying to be cliche, old powerful men and young impatient ones and people who have simply been living with the end for so many years that it's part of the way they move. Even Marita Covarrubias is there, having crawled out of the cracks in the plaster with the last few pathetic scraps of the Syndicate; maybe the smoky dark room was their idea, a bow to tradition.
Not that they've had much to add to the effort. The vast conspiracy they'd geared themselves to fight was simply gone, evaporated like the gossamer web it was. If this was a serious coordinated effort the battle would have been lost as soon as it began, but it's not. Now that they've turned all their information over to the official authorities an actual picture is coming clear of what has been going on out there. Marita, who still probably knows more than anyone else about what's actually happens, gets the honor of summarizing the new theory: that the aliens started withdrawing from Earth soon after Mulder pumped a mothership full of Earth-made vaccine.
"They don't think like we do, in terms of risk and strategy. They will sacrifice individuals and even societies cheaply and easily. But the idea of something that could threaten the oil itself, the them that made them, it was completely beyond imagining. It was if the natives on Hispaniola had suddenly hit the Santa Maria with an H-bomb. And humans might have kept trying even against those odds, but the aliens simply aren't capable of taking that kind of risk."
So the events of the next few years had actually been a chaotic and half-hearted withdrawal, the fizzling out of thousands' of years worth of plans, the rebels scenting blood in the water and adding their own dose of confusion and destruction to things. And then this year, the forces which were still on Earth had come to the belated realization that they had simply been abandoned, war materié:l left behind on the battlefield, and they'd assimilated human enough to start lashing out in return, each cell or laboratory trying for its own bit of power and revenge.
'So what it comes down to," Deputy Director Skinner says, ineffably tired, "Is that there's not going to be any decisive victory here. There's no power generator to blow up or goverment to surrender to us. We're in an extended mopping-up action, and each threat is going to have to be dealt with as it comes, as long as they keep coming." John can see in his eyes that he no longer seriously expects that to happen in his lifetime.
"What that means," one of the CIA men says flatly, "Is that we're dead. We haven't managed to sucessfully take out one threat, much less all of them--"
"We're making progress fighting the viruses--"
"Until a new set shows up. We're just damn lucky that none of the slasher varieties have appeared yet--"
"Magnetite--"
"That will never be a viable tactical weapon--"
The room threatens to break out in a babel again, until Director Kersh silences them by sheer force of personality. "What it means is that we're damn lucky Agent Mulder managed to take out the main threat. We have a fighting chance now, people, and we're going to take it."
Half the table turns to stare at Mulder, who gives them nothing but a blank stare, until Marita looks up with her fierce dead eyes and draws their attention away. "We knew from the beginning that we can't fight them with normal tactics. They know everyhing about our capabilities-- physical, technological, strategic-- everything we can do they can counter. They're literally millenia ahead of anything we have. They *designed* most of what we have."
"So what's the point then?" someone mutters rebelliously. They're all tired and depressed and about one more piece of bad news away from broken. They've spent too long losing and grinding away and wandering around the city not being able to actually *do* anything, because the people who have taken action are all very dead, and not slowly fretting themselves away in meetings.
"The point is that one unexpected, unpredictable factor saved the world. And we're going to find another one," Kersh repeats. Scully is looking one step away from walking out herself, and John finds himself agreeing with the idea. These meetings are usually bad, but not this bad. Something is going to have to give soon or they'll be destroying themselves from sheer frustration. Right now the room's gone silent again; they're like a group of sulky children who've been called out for complaining.
Agent Conyers, formerly counterterrorism, breaks a silence with a snort. "Yeah, well, too bad Agent Mulder wasted all the rest of his unexpected and unpredictable with the bureau looking after liver-eating mutants and fluke-men and witches on the PTA instead of --"
Scully stands up, white, and John and Monica are ready to back her up, but Mulder doesn't seem to have noticed. He's staring at the man-- no, two feet above his head and to the right-- and talking very quietly, as if to himself.
"Wasted? Not wasted. Leonard? God . . . God put him here for a purpose. A purpose, Scully!" He's looking at her now, and his eyes are shining. He grabs his notebook and Scully's wrist and stands up . "C'mon, Dr. Spooky, we've got work to do." He pulls her toward the door.
"Mulder?" Scully says. She looks dazed and confused but happy. He's obviously had a breakthrough. The rest of the table are staring at him with vary degrees of disbelief. Monica puts her hand over John's.
Skinner stares at him, lip twitching in amusement. "Mulder? Did you have something you wanted to say?"
"No, sir." He glances down at the table. "I need to do some research, though. The meeting was pretty much over, right? You didn't have anything planned for today except a few more rounds of angst and recrimination?"
"No, I don't suppose we did." Skinner is openly grinning now. It's the first time he's smiled in days.
Mulder smiles back. "Great! Wonderful! Excellent! I'll see you in your office tomorrow morning."
And that ends that meeting.
Except, of course, for a few more rounds of confusion and recriminations, but John and Monica play tic-tac-toe through most of it.
Chapter 2: 1-5-05
John goes to work early, still ringing with the excitement of Mulder's outburst yesterday. He gets there to find that Monica's been there before him.
She's sitting on his desk in the airy new office, showing off her legs under a tailored blue suit, and thumbing through an old x-file. When she saw him she drops the folder she's reading, grins and him, and hops down. "C'mon! You have got to see this!"
So he follows her back downstairs and then on down to the basement, the old office that barely has room for both his desk and Monica's, and has been mostly abandoned since the coming of the aliens moved them upstairs with the rest of the task force.
Now, there's lights spilling out of the open door, and two voice snapping back and forth.
"Shhh," Monica says, finger to her lips. "I think they've been down here ever since the meeting yesterday."
Mulder is sitting at John's desk with his feet up and his eyes closed, calling out case numbers. Scully's pulling files out of the cabinets and stacking them beside him on the desk.
"Um, guys?" John says. "All the files that mention the aliens or the conspiracy have been compiled upstairs--"
"That's why we're down here," Mulder says, looking smug. "We've been spending to much time worrying about aliens, instead of what we should have been looking for. Scully, you have the notes? Skinner's probably getting impatient"
Scully rolls her eyes at him good-naturedly. "Mulder, Skinner ran out of patience with you years ago. And I don't know if *anything* will be enough to convince him this is a good idea-- but we're probably as ready as we'll get."
Mulder swings his feet down and stands up. "Don't worry about our good A.D. He'll fall in. Agent Doggett, Agent Reyes, you coming? Might as well only go over it once."
Skinner is sitting calmly behind his desk when they get there. Only someone who'd been working with him as long as they had would be able to sense the nervousness and excitement running through him, he picks up a pencil and narrows his eyes at Mulder. "Okay, Mr. Mulder, what is this amazing idea you ran out of the meeting over?"
Mulder dropped a sheet of notebook paper on the desk. Skinner skimmed it, and raised his eyebrows. "Mulder, this is just a list of names and case numbers. Linda Bowman, Henry Weems, Cecil L'Ively, Holman Hardt, Eddie van Blundht, Peter Oswald, Tommy Conlon. . . these are old X-files."
"Exactly," Mulder said, looking far too pleased with himself. "We've been going about this all wrong. Get it? Anything that comes from our science, or their science, we can't win, because they had it first, and they understand it better than we do. But this--" he gestured at the paper. "All these people we found on the X-Files, that we weren't even looking for, that they let us waste time on to distract us from the Plan, they're the real answer. The ones which we can't explain and fall way outside the understanding of the others, too, I'd stake the world on it. That's why Gibson was such a danger. They can do what nobody else can. We're in a no-win situation, but these people can change the rules of the game."
"Mulder," Skinner said slowly, "What exactly are you proposing?"
Mulder cocked his head. "Leonard Betts gave me the answer yesterday. His mother knew. They were born for a reason, we've found them for a reason. Nothing happens without a reason, Director, and this planet makes its own protections. We need to gather as many paranormal talents, which are *not* associated with the extraterrestrials, train them, and let them be our defense."
"Mulder, are you trying to suggest we create some kind of legion of super-heroes?"
"It's not as unlikely as Mulder makes it sound, Sir," Scully says. "We've seen that individual humans, and even hybrids, can defeat the enemy by working *outside* their paradigms of thought. I've seen some of these people in action, and they have abilities which are unexplainable, illogical, and often unbelievable. I think it could make a difference, Sir. Even a few decisive victories could turn the tide, if they create hope, and a group of highly visible--" Scully makes a face, "Superheroes, for lack of a better term, could do that, I believe."
John doesn't want to say what he's thinking, but as usual Monica gets there before him. "I think it's a good idea, Sir. As outrageous as it sounds, it just might work."
"It can't make things any worse," John finds himself saying in agreement. "I say we give it a try, sir. The problem is finding these people, and convincing them to help-- a lot of them aren't the most stable folks I've met."
"That is an understatement, considering half of them are in prison for murder." Skinner sighs. It's a very familiar, and the first time John heard it directed at him instead of Mulder he knew he'd never be able to quit the X-files. "Do you realize what you're asking me, Mulder? Even just trying to pitch-- this-- to the others? It's-- it's ludicrous! It's like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon!"
Scully looks like she's about to speak, but Mulder stops her with a gesture. He's staring at Skinner with the eerie expression that everyone's gottne familiar with since he came back. "Have you cracked the passphrase, yet, sir?"
Skinner's startled; John's just confused. "What?"
"The other passphrase on the palm pilot, the one that lets you access the special programming."
"How the *hell* do you know about that, Mulder?" he asks, his voice low and dangerous.
"Alex told me," Mulder said, cocking his head. "He didn't think you'd have gotten it by now, and I quote, 'Too damn paranoid to ask for help, and too damn proud to figure it out on his own.' But he knew what was coming, too, and nanotech can do a lot of things other than block arteries. He gave me the phrase, and I think you'll find some very interesting subroutines behind the security block."
Skinner looks like he has no idea how to react to this, and the whole thing is over John's head. Scully's staring at Mulder in disbelief, and looks like she can't decide whether to hit him or kiss him. And Monica, of course, is quietly taking everything in. Finally Skinner makes a little moan of defeat.
"Fine, Mulder, you win. I'll bring this up today at the meeting. But you have to promise me that there will be *no* capes or spandex involved."
Part 3:
Druid Hill Sanitarium hasn't changed since the last time John was there a few months ago. It's still white and clean and quiet and so very, very well-intentioned. The maniacs don't escape from here, they're released on good behavior.
The section John and Mulder are heading for is slightly less unnerving, at least, or perhaps it's just that he's more familiar with it. He strides down the hall, Mulder following bemused in his wake, until they get to the white-painted door with a pencil drawing of Batman taped to it, and "Tommy's Room" printed underneath in a careful hand. John glances at Mulder, and knocks.
Tommy opens the door, grinning, and John pulls him into a hug. "Hey, Tommy," he says.
"John! Dr. Ferris said you would be coming by. Come on in." He ushers them into his room. It's as homelike as a high-security asylum can get; the walls are covered with brightly-colored posters, two televisions are blaring and a video game is paused on the PC, headphones laid beside it, half-a-dozen comics books and an box of colored pencils scattered over the carefully made bed.
"Did she mention-- ah--" John waves half-heartedly at his companion, who is still standing in the door, cataloging the room and probably working up a profile of its inhabitant in his head. Or, for all John knows, talking to the boy's dead mother.
He steps forwad at John's words, though, and offers Tommy his hand. "Mulder," he says with a half-smile.
Tommy accepts gravely. "I'm Tommy Conlon. I guess you know all about me." He shoves a couple of comic books off the bed and sinks into his desk chair. "Sit down, make yourself comfortable."
Mulder folds himself up on the floor, so John takes the bed. "Listen, Tommy," he says. "I know it's been a long time since I've seen you. I've gotta apologize. I know it's been lonely since Anthony left."
"Hey, no sweat," Tommy says. "I know you guys've been busy. I watch a lot of television news. He gestures at the televisions: One of them is tuned to a rerun of Smallville, the other's on CNN and is showing footage of an evacuation somewhere in the Midwest, while a commentator talks about how the US government is working full-time to contain the threat.
Mulder raises his eyebrows. "Anthony ?"
"Anthony Fogleman. He's been helping Tommy learn to control his abilities," John says. "He had similar powers, but they developed much more gradually than Tommy's."
"Yeah, and he's much better at not killing people with them. It was John's idea," Tommy says. "He's helped me a lot too."
"Tommy, you're not going to kill anyone accidentally either," John says firmly. "You're not a scared little boy any more. Dr. Ferris has said it would be safe for you to leave the sanitarium whenever you think you're ready."
Tommy shrugged. "And if that's really true, and I'm safe, why isn't my dad here with you guys?"
John felt his heart twist. "You know he only wants what's best for you, Tommy."
"Yeah, I know," Tommy says. "That's why he gave the hospital custody and moved to Tennessee." Before John can respond, Tommy changes the subject. "So what's up? I know you didn't just stop in to say hi-- you're supposed to be out there, fighting the real monsters."
tbc
Part 4 (snippet):
Mulder gives a half-turn to show off the cloak, which somehow avoids catching on any of the underbrush. "The Wrath of God? I think I'm starting to like this kid, Doggett."
"Since when do you read comics?" John asks as they're interrupted by the sound of Scully over the audio link.
"Mulder? John? The feed went funny for a second, are you three doing okay out there?"
John reaches for his mike, but it seems to have turned into something sleek and silvery and Mulder gets his on first.
"Hey, Scully," Mulder says cheerfully, "In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape our sight. Let those who worship evil's might beware our power--"
John has gotten his communicator working meanwhile and cuts him off. "Yeah, we're fine, Scully, Monica. Tommy was just testing out some tactics, must have interfered with the signal."
"All right. Well, report back when you're about to move in," Monica says.
"Will do. Doggett out." He clicks it off, and without stopping to think, stows it away in his own uniform. Mulder's watching him. "Why does Scully put up with you, again?" John asks rhetorically.
"Must be my charm," Mulder says with a grin, tucking his plam away beside his communicator and setting off after Tommy into the forest. "C'mon, the night's only going to get blacker."
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Chantilly lace and a pretty face?
Well, I always did like the Big Bopper better than Buddy Holly! Anyone who alludes to Ancient Greek erotic poetry in a rock'n'roll song gets my vote.
no nano nanonovelnovelnovelnovelnovel
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Me writing this was a direct result of finding a whole bunch of DC-Universe fanfiction and
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