The house is silent, the darkness having enveloped his parents in sleep and
shrouded him from them, from his father, from the way his mother looks at
him and the way he looks at himself in the mirror. There is no sadness; only
a deep, aching calm and some sort of emptiness, like the loss of a friend.
But the feeling of rightness, of relief, is still there, still pulses in his
chest as it has since the thought became final, the hurt concrete, as he lay
crying silently and nursing his hurt in the cooling bathtub earlier that
evening.
"Big tough man, can't you straighten up? All your fault, all your fault. We
left you in charge."
His slender hand reaches out; closes around several objects that lay on his
desk, and like a ghost boy he walks to the door of his room and there he
pauses, looking around. At the empty bed. The moonlight through the window,
his bureau, the model planes and collection of a child's dreams. Back when
he was still a child. Fourteen, fourteen, and too old, now. His father says
so.
"Hey—get out of my life!"
Down the stairs and into the empty living room, pulling up a chair to the
tall shelf by the door—he knows where this box is. There used to be a lock
on it, but it was broken a couple years ago and no one bothered to replace
it. They've has more important things to worry about, like their missing
daughter and their son who has more or less become nonexistent.
More or less.
The boy reaches for the box, opens it, puts a hand on what's inside.
Breathes.
Carrying his things back up the stairs, fingers tented against the door of
his father's study—sanctified place, off-limits place, hated place. The
place his father retreats to now, the place where the conversations are held
so many nights, the place he sees in his nightmares when Bill Mulder puts a
hand on the back of his neck and the other on the buckle of his belt.
Breathing, faster now.
Without bothering to turn the lights on—he can find his way by touch and
the moonlight seeping through the blinds—he moves to his father's chair
and sits down slowly, carefully. He opens one hand and spreads before him
like an altar the things he's brought: the picture, his family together and
smiling, Samantha in the middle with her hair reddened by the sun. A carved
wooden fox, made by his father for his fifth birthday, kept ever since. And
the plastic game piece, the last one, the red number 2. Scout.
The last thing he touched before he ruined his family's lives.
He is crying now, a little; the chair smells so much like the man that is
his father—aftershave and cologne, an undertone of scotch whiskey and the
simple scent of the man himself. The boy remembers afternoons spent painting
their boat; camping in the woods, his mother and his sister and backyard
barbecues. It is like a film reel that has turned black suddenly; he is only
fourteen, but he knows enough to understand why his father never touches him
anymore except to punish him for something, always something, but always the
same thing, underneath; he knows enough to understand the accusations and
the truth in them; he was, after all, in charge. His mother's pills and the
emptiness in her eyes; why every time he tries to talk to them it is like
stepping into an icy draft. He knows it was his fault, knows he should be
looking for her, knows that he is the only one left who still cares. But he
is tired, so tired, and tonight he has tried again and again he has failed.
Weeks spent biking around the neighborhood, months spent alone and
remembering, remembering, the night spent catatonic and shivering in the
Martha's Vineyard Hospital; the Thorazine prescribed for him while a shadowy
smoking figure watched from his mother's kitchen; the empty bed and the
untouched toys. He kept a journal for her, writing letters about his life,
kept it up for a year and a half before the truth finally began to come home
to him.
He wants to believe, but he is tired.
His father hates him.
Before the deep ache can become guilt and he can begin to double-guess
himself he opens his other hand and gingerly unwraps the object hidden
inside. The metal catches the silver moonlight and glitters as he shifts the
revolver to his right hand; it is beautiful, even in his purpose. It did him
no good two years ago, but now it will bring an end to the search, to the
voices, to the pain. His father will no longer be reminded of the child he
lost every time he looks at the child that remains. He will punish himself
for his own failure; he will follow the course of action that his wounded
heart believes is right.
The taste of gun oil; his heart triple-beats. He closes his other hand
around the wooden fox and shuts his eyes softly. There is no need of a note;
they will know, oh, they will know why. And be relieved. The objects on the
desk will serve as all the testimony he needs.
He sings a little, softly, an old song that they used to sing. His voice is
slow and thickened with tears. He smiles a little.
He does love them. He hopes they know that.
There is a shot. Only one.
"I'm on the outside
Somewhere in Pennsylvania, a young boy whose parents still call him Aleksei
awakens and turns his head as if hearing a voice call his name; the course
of his life will be irrevocably changed by that single shot; somewhere else
a red-haired girl awakens her sister crying from a nightmare she can't
explain. Somewhere else the stars turn and the universe aligns to send him
back—wrong, wrong, wrong. Like a light. Like a light in the sky. Mistake,
to leave at all.
Can we believe that Bill Mulder, awakened by the shot and knowing exactly
what it was, cradles his dead son in his arms and makes his own vows as his
mother weeps? Can we believe that the man, his clothes splattered and
smeared with blood, closes his eyes and remembers his own words, his own
mistakes, his own accusations? Can we believe that the boy's parents, in
their grief, are reunited and stand against the Project, that this is Bill
Mulder's final straw and he makes a stand against that dark man, demands an
end, sabotages his own work? That Samantha comes home, that all of them are
returned, that the invasion is forestalled? That they stand, all of them. in
dark suits beside a too-small grave, that they can fight the future?
I want to believe.
But I'm still here.
Why?
Fox Mulder
Reincarnation & Redemption Companion—WAIT!!
It wasn't Bill Mulder's fault. None of it. It's not fair to think so. He
did the best he could. Forced into his choices, recruited, falling and
unable to fight the future, not even his own. He believed in what he was
doing, tried to do the right thing, and lost his family because of it. It
wasn't his fault for what he did, what people made him do, for his inability
to show the way he felt, for his inability to find a solution to the
nightmare he found himself in. He lost his family, his life, first his
daughter and then his son. Taking it out on his son was the only thing he
could do; but he was not a bad man. He loved us. He tried his whole life to
sabotage things, to arrest the process, to believe that there was no fate
except what was made week by week, year by year. I learned how to survive
from him, how to take it, how to go on and do what I need to do in the face
of everything, rejection, confinement, disbelief, fear. To do my work, to
not let the otuside trappings affect the inside. That story, that possible,
AU, was unfair. I loved him. That's all. That's simple. My guilt is my own,
no matter whether or not any of you agree with it, my shortcomings, my
faults. Don't think, don't think that that was a placing of blame. Does
anyone out there agree with me? How can you, you don't know me. But I'm
sorry. It was bitter and I'm sorry.
"I cannot blame this on my father;
—Staind, "It's Been Awhile"
Proud to be William Junior and still alive,
Reincarnation and Redemption; or, for Bill Mulder
by Fox Mulder
The boy slips soundlessly from between cool sheets, his shadow thrown
against the wall of his bedtoom by a silver shaft of light from a summer's
full moon. Like a whisper he pulls on a ragged pair of cut-off shorts—tenderly, so tenderly, the welts from that familiar strap are fresh, so
fresh—and moves in a glide to his window, his narrow bare chest framed in
light.
I'm looking in
I can see through you
See your true colors—
'Cause inside you're ugly
Ugly like me
I can see through you
See to the real you..."
8/29/01
...he did the best he could for me."
