Date sent:        Sat, 11 Apr 1998 23:53:21 -0700
From:             ddwake1@netcom.ca
Subject:          Islands

Title: Islands
Author: Spooky
E-mail: ddwake1@netcom.ca
Rating: PG
Category: V
Spoilers: none
Keywords:
Summary: In the aftermath of a heinous case, Scully's thoughts turn to
her partner.

Disclaimer: You know who owns them. I'll put them away when I'm done,
Ma. I promise!

Islands
by Spooky


Oh Mulder.

I see him standing across the room, a tall, solemn figure, alone in a
darkened corner. Other agents
form islands of humanity and self-congratulation in the light,
oblivious. Another heinous case
closed, another killer behind bars. Noticeably, they don't include
Spooky Mulder in their
backslapping, even though it was Mulder who solved their case. Even
though it was Mulder's input
they had begged for. They glance over and talk about him, but will they
invite him out of the
shadows into their light? 

Of course not. They might become tainted by Mulder's darkness, by his
lunacy, by his brilliance.
Mediocrity becomes them.

And to be brutally honest, Mulder would probably be petrified by the
invitation. He can handle
scorn, derision, rejection...he's used to it. But acceptance? Acceptance
can't be handled with
scathing invective and sly innuendo. No. Acceptance would mean he would
have to raise the
portcullis, lower the drawbridge...let them penetrate the armour that
shields him from the world.

God knows he has a hard enough time just letting me in.

It makes me mad, though, to see him treated as a pariah. The Bureau
leper. It makes me madder to
see him accept it. But he is brilliant and eccentric and not at all
ambitious -- just the right
combination to breed rivalry and jealousy.

That's not quite fair -- there are a number of agents who genuinely
respect Mulder. Unfortunately,
they're not here. 

And the object of my reverie is totally unaware, staring vacantly ahead,
not quite out of the abyss,
not quite yet in the land of the sane.

Walking in a madman's mind will do that.

I wonder if they see what I see and I know they don't. A deliberate
blindness, not to see the toll this
latest monster has taken on his soul. They don't see the effort it's
taking him to keep his feet, to
keep his shoulders from slumping in fatigue. They don't see the dark
circles beneath haunted,
unfathomable eyes. They don't see past the mask of invulnerability that
shelters the shattered soul
beneath. 

I do. I see it all too well.

Or maybe they do -- they are trained observers after all -- maybe they
do and it frightens them.
Hell, it frightens me. Unable to cope with Mulder's bouts of prophecy
that they both need and
loathe. So they ostracize the prophet.

God knows Mulder wears his isolation like a hair shirt.

These things they may have seen, but they wouldn't have see the nausea,
the uncontrolled tremors,
his thrashing, sweat-drenched, nightmare-laced sleeplessness.

No. They wouldn't have seen these. These are left for me to agonize
over. Humpty Dumpty has
fallen from the wall and I lovingly glue the shards together. But what
happens on the day I can't?

I didn't want us on this case, didn't want *him* on this case. I even
went to Skinner to protest. He
threw up his hands. The Bureau was taking a beating both in the media
and on the Hill. The case
was high profile and dead in the water.

In short, they needed a miracle.

They needed Spooky.

And Spooky had delivered. Again. Had dared the abyss to walk in a
madman's mind. And all it
cost him were pieces of his soul and sanity. But he did it. Time and
again he walked the tightrope
of insanity as if daring it to claim him. Most agents have enough sense
of self-preservation to keep
their distance.

It's not that Mulder doesn't have a sense of self-preservation --
despite what his HMO may believe
-- it's just that Mulder's sense of duty and honour, his sense of right,
outweigh it.

I know he does it not for his job, not for himself, not for the dead.
Not even for a little girl lost on
a cold, November night. He does it for the living -- for the children
who will live to go to Little
League and ballet and have first dates. For the families who will not be
left bereft as his own.

It's the human monsters I fear: the Modells, the Mostows, the
Roches...these are the monsters that
force him into the abyss. Who kill, not from need, but from desire.

ASAC Jenkins is speaking to Mulder now. I see the effort it takes him to
focus his attention, to
pull himself back from the realms where madmen play; realms that haven't
yet released their hold
on him. He nods and says a few words, distracted. Unused to praise.

A final word and Jenkins leaves. At least someone acknowledges the debt
they owe him.

I cross the room, dodging the congratulations they offer me, if not my
partner. His gaze is
unfocused again; I wonder what he sees. Am absolutely certain I don't
want to know. I touch his
arm. We speak no words -- I have long since learned to look past his
facade. A spark of life finally
reaches his worn eyes, reassuring me that, this time, he has escaped the
abyss.

I've always thought Mulder burns like a candle, for all his fear of fire
-- his flame and passion
bright. Or maybe he is the moth, forever lured into the deceptive light,
heedless of the cost. Or
maybe I'm the moth, caught in Mulder's orbit, doomed to burn myself on
his brilliance.

I'll gladly throw myself on his passion forever if that's what it takes.

For now, though, we stand together in stillness and silence, our own
solitary island, while the room
swirls around us.

Finis