Other wounds slow me as well—the long, vicious slash of a knife along my ribs that has become infected, a stinging cut on
my cheekbone, and the ligament in my left knee that was torn in a fall from a second-story window.
But none of that matters at the moment. I'm safe—as safe as I can be, anyway, and I'm even warm.
Outside, the snow drifts gently to the ground in huge white flakes, turning to dirty slush in the frozen D.C. night.
Inside Mulder's apartment, it smells like two-week-old chinese food and expensive aftershave.
The combination is nauseating.
He's not here, of course. The FBI has taken advantage of the slow week before Christmas and so he and Scully are away at a
conference somewhere. I have come to ground here, in his inner sanctum.
He'd be furious if he knew.
Right now, however, this is my place of refuge, is where I have run when there is nothing left for me anywhere else.
It would be different—dreadfully different—if Mulder were home. His very presence makes a comfortable room into a
waiting trap, and sets my every nerve on edge—but there is a calm in his absence that I don't quite understand, as if the clutter
of the rooms is a welcoming one, despite the hatred their owner feels for me.
It is the closest thing to peace that I have encountered in a long time, and the unfamiliar sense of refuge gives me the courage
to proceed.
I reach into my jacket pocket and pull out the little bottle of pills that has been resting there for the past six months.
Morphine, and a lot of it. Enough to send me softly off to the quiet void of eternity.
I don't like the idea of taking pills to end my life—I never have. It has always seemed to be a coward's way out. But I can't do
it any other way. I no longer have the neccessary arm for slitting my wrists, and I don't want to waste a bullet. The pills were
a favor long overdue that I called in from a pharmacist... friend, for lack of a better word.
It's the only thing I have left.
I put the bottle on the coffee table in front of the couch, and sink into the well-worn leather. I can't seem to look away from
the bottle—all the lovely little purple pills, sitting so calmly. They are calling to me, the siren's song of silence luring me
nearer and nearer to oblivion.
I get up and drift over to the cabinet in which Mulder keeps his liquor. No vodka—of course not—but there is a full bottle of
Jack Daniel's, with a layer of dust thick enough to make me wonder if he's had this bottle since he moved in here. I get a
shotglass from the sink, go back to the couch, unscrew the lid, and take a shot of the liquid. It burns down my throat and into
my stomach, stinging behind my eyelids.
I pull out a piece of paper and a pen, and scribble a message for Mulder to find when he walks in tommorrow afternoon.
Then, putting the message down, I reach for the pills.
Suicide is awkward with only one hand, and I almost drop the morphine all over the rug. I manage, however, and line the pills
up on the coffee table one by one.
I take them in groups of ten, chasing each one with a burning shot of JD. There are fifty pills, and by the fifth shot, my hands
have started to shake. The room has begun to blur, and memories I thought long buried begin to surface, swimming past my
eyes and re-opening old wounds.
My mother's face floats in frong of my eyes, bleeding and swollen from my father's fists. A long, timeless Russian night
when I was sixteen, and drunk as hell, and lost my virginity to a blonde girl with liquid black eyes, then went from her arms
to the arms of a dark boy who held me and fucked me into ecstasy. The time in the silo, and the memory of a burning knife
are almost enough to make me scream, but the sweet cushion of morphine and liquor is pillowing me, sending me down
further and further into darkness.
I can feel myself slipping, can actually feel the brain cells controlling my breath and heartbeat begin to shut down, and I bury
my face in the couch with my last concious movement, inhaling his scent deeply, and calling his face to mind.
Goodbye, Mulder.
Morphia
by Broken Angel
I'm deeply tired. Years of living on the razor's edge have begun to destroy me, and my fatigue is betrayed in every
infinitesimal drag of muscle, each slowed reflex, and every tiny weakness that catches at me, pulls me down. The remains of
my arm hurt almost continuously in a dull, throbbing violence of knife's heat dragged painfully through long-absent flesh.
I love you.
