From: Snarkypup Date: Sat, 12 May 2001 15:33:47 -0700 Subject: The Other Man (1/5) by Jess M. Source: atxc TITLE: The Other Man (1 of 5) AUTHOR: Jess M EMAIL ADDRESS: snarkypup@mindspring.com DISCLAIMER: I resent even the implication that I might be Chris Carter. DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: Anywhere, just let me know. SPOILER WARNING: None! RATING: R CONTENT WARNING: None that I'm going to tell you. CLASSIFICATION: MSR, sorta kinda, set somewhere in Season 7. Any resemblance to Season 8, living or dead, is purely coincidental. SUMMARY: Something's wrong with Mulder and Scully goes nuts, a bit. Or does she? This puppy is dark, dark, dark and gloomy. There's some love in there. And some physics mumbo-jumbo. And a bunch of science I know nothing about. Thanks to Darla for the quote, and the lurve. Email me, and reassure me that I'm not insane. -- Visit my site for all my fiction, lovingly archived by Galia: http://sf.exit.de/visionsoftruth/Jess/jess.htm Then visit Galia's site for more great fiction! http://sf.exit.de/visionsoftruth -- The Other Man "That which we do is what we are. That which we remember is, more often than not, that which we would like to have been, or that which we hope to be. Thus our memory and out identity are ever at odds, our history ever a tall tale told by inattentive idealists." --Ralph Ellison It began so innocently, the way it is with tragedies: the almost unrecognizable signs of disintegration beginning in the mundane. The flap of a butterfly's wings before the devastation of the hurricane that follows it. Chaos theory honed its abilities, Scully later thought, by practicing on their lives. It was just a routine blood test to determine if all the blood left at the scene was Mulder's, or if the perp was mixed in there too. A little DNA test, allowing them to distinguish Mulder's pattern and sort out whose splatter was whose. The sort of thing hospitals do every day for law enforcement. Just a little prick, and then the pain would be over. Mulder, sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, his arm bandaged and cradled in a new pale blue sling - "sky blue's all the rage with the kids these days, Scully," winced as the nurse slid the needle into his free arm and filled a small vial with his blood. "I hate needles," he announced to no one in particular. Scully, sitting in the guest chair in last night's suit and a shirt that was half cotton, half Mulder's blood, rolled her eyes. "So stop getting shot," she said reasonably. "Hey, I'm working on that," he remarked and rolled his sleeve back down. It was all so normal and usual and easy that when Chuck Finson called her down to the lab three days later, she thought at first that it must be related to the perp's blood. How on earth could anything terrible or complicated have come from something as simple as a thin silver needle, slipping under Mulder's skin and out again in seconds? xxxxxx Her heals clicked with a business-like clarity down the narrow tiled hall to the lab. Over the years she had perfected her walk, a no-nonsense stride that was both distinctly feminine and yet clearly authoritative. It had come to represent her entire personality. It was strange, she thought, listening to her shoes echo as she passed the first lab, how something so small had come to completely describe herself, a Morse message to the world at large. Inside the first lab, she could see someone working, a bright cotton hairnet covering their identity. She could almost see herself down here someday, working in the forensics department, sorting through trace evidence or perhaps learning to find a ghostly handprint as it rose in soft gray smoke on a bloody bed sheet. She pushed open the door to the blood lab and looked around. The room was empty except for one very young lab tech in a traditional long white coat and wire-rimmed glasses. He stepped forward to greet her. "Doctor Scully," he said, extending one thin, white hand. "I'm Chuck Finson. Thank you for coming down." He couldn't have been more than twenty-two and reminded her, almost heart-wrendingly, of Pendrell. Only a twenty-two year-old lab clerk would call her "Doctor." "Please," she said graciously, "call me Dana." He nodded and motioned nervously to a stool at the end of a long white formica counter. "Ok, Dana. Please call me Chuck. Um, you're probably wondering why I asked you to come down here so late." She glanced at her watch in surprise. God, it was late. Nearly seven. Down in the basement, time passed without outside reference, an experiment in cave-dwelling. She had long since given up trying to regulate a body clock. "Frankly, Chuck, I hadn't noticed," she said, smiling. "Now, what's up?" Peering nervously around the bright, empty room for a moment, he cleared his throat. "You're Agent Mulder's partner, right?" She nodded, eyebrow raised. He swallowed and continued. "I, um, I was just looking at the results of Agent Mulder's DNA test to make sure it was done correctly, and I, um, noticed something a little strange." Scully frowned. "Strange how?" "Well..." Chuck slid a test page out of a folder and placed it in front of her. "I don't know how well you can read this, but see here?" He pointed to one line of data, a thin black stream of bars. "This is really unusual. To be honest, I'm not sure exactly what it means." Examining the test page briefly, Scully shook her head. "I don't know either, Chuck. I'm a bit behind on this sort of thing. Fill me in. This concerns you?" He shrugged and pulled out a second test sheet. "Overall, I don't know. I mean, I took the liberty of glancing at Agent Mulder's medical records and he appears perfectly healthy. It could just be an anomaly. A genetic remnant. Or, I thought, maybe the sample was contaminated. So I figured I'd just compare it to the previous record. Agent Mulder provided an initial sample eight years ago, when the Bureau first started running tests. That's here." Lining up the two results, Scully eyed them critically. "I can't really see what's going on, here, Chuck. Enlighten me." "They're um... they're different." "Excuse me?" Scully asked, a strange shock slipping through her, like touching an electric wire. "They're what?" "It's subtle, but it's there. It's as if someone had done some sort of gene therapy on him. Could that have happened, Agent Scully? Could someone have slightly altered Agent Mulder's genetic code? Because if it isn't possible... well, I know this sounds crazy, but these two people are not the same." Scully stared at the two sheets in front of her. She was no genetics expert, but she could pick up the differences Chuck referred to. For a moment, she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Chuck was watching her, chewing on his lower lip. His eyelashes, she noted absently, were nearly invisible, blond on his pale skin. "He could certainly have undergone some form of genetic therapy, yes," she concluded. "Or you could have screwed up." The boy's face fell and he blushed furiously. "I... I ran the tests several times, Agent Scully. I believe them to be accurate." "Chuck," she said at last, still staring at the two nearly identical lines, "aren't you just a lab tech? Have you informed your superior of this anomaly?" For a moment, Chuck's head remained down. When he raised it to look her in the eye, Scully could see an intelligence there that surprised her. A knowledge. It was like looking at Mulder the moment he solved a case. Suddenly it was just... there. "I thought it might be best if only you and I had this information, Agent Scully. In the last two days, since I took the initial samples and ran the tests, the original sample Agent Mulder provided in 1992 has disappeared. No one seems to know what happened to it. And the newer sample was replaced. It was a very sloppy job, and the blood work proved to be exactly the same as the 1992 sample, but I'm telling you, it was not the same sample. I don't know exactly what you two do. I understand some of your work may be very dangerous. I've heard all sorts of strange things about aliens, alien-human hybrids, clones... Mostly, I think that stuff's full of shit. Mostly." He paused and watched her, breathless with nerves. Scully could see more than a passing resemblance to Pendrell now. This kid was practically his replacement. And she remembered well what had happened to him. "May I take these?" she asked, placing the two sheets back into their folder. "Yes," he said. "I made several copies. I filed two of them in your file, just in case." "That was very smart of you, Chuck." Sliding off the stool, Scully tucked the folder under her arm. "I don't know what these results mean, but I believe you understand the importance of not talking to anyone about them." "Even Agent Mulder?" Chuck asked. "Even Agent Mulder," she agreed. "I'm going to have a friend of mine take a look at these, see what she can make of them. For now, I appreciate your good work." "Thanks," Chuck said, blushing again. "I've heard a lot of amazing things about you and your partner, Agent Scully. If you ever need any help, anything at all, please give me call. Anytime." "I will," she assured him, carrying the folder out to her car and setting it beside her on the passenger seat. It seemed to have acquired a new weight, a new mass, exerting a gravity she felt through her whole body. Grimly, she called her friend over at Georgia Biotech from the car. "Dana," Meredith Wentland said. "It's great to hear from you. But tell me quick what you need. I know this isn't a social call and I'm going out to dinner." Scully chuckled mirthlessly. "Why do you always assume I need something when I call?" "Because you always do," Meredith said reasonably. "I love you anyway. What's up?" "I want to fax you two DNA test results from the same person. I want you to tell me what the difference is between them." Meredith was quiet for a moment. "That's a strange request, Dana." "I know," Scully answered. "I'll pop them in the fax machine as soon as I get home." She heard a slight shifting on the other end of the line. "How urgent is this, Dana?" "After-dinner urgent, if that's ok." "All right," Meredith said grudgingly. "And I bet it's super-secret gubberment bidness," she added, in her best Buckwheat. "Isn't it always?" Scully answered, smiling. On the way home, she managed to convince herself the results meant nothing. An anomaly, as Chuck had said. A mistake. Nothing to get worked up over. Meredith would take a quick look at them and then it would all be wrapped up, just like that. She faxed the two sheets over to her friend's home fax and took a long shower. After a large bowl of ice cream and back-to-back reruns of MASH, she was nearly asleep on the couch. The phone startled her and left her gasping. "Scully," she barked. "You answer that way at home too? No wonder you don't have any friends," Meredith's warm voice said. "Hey," Scully sighed. "I'm just a bit on edge. What can you tell me?" "Well, I assume you sent me these as some sort of silly joke, right? Mess with your friend's mind?" Scully sat up and switched off the TV. "No, no joke. Why? Mere..." There was a silence on the other end of the line, then Meredith said carefully: "Dana, these results... are they from someone you know?" "Yes," Scully whispered. "Someone I know very well." "Because they're impossible." "I don't understand," Scully said slowly. "Make me understand, Meredith. This is of the utmost importance." "Ok... well, you know how we've been cloning mice over at Biotech? Well, let's say I ran two DNA tests on my mice, one on the original subject and one on a not-quite perfect clone..." "You aren't suggesting..." "Look, that's just one explanation. Someone must be seriously jerking your chain, Dana, if these are from someone you know. I can't rule out some sort of genetic mutation, but ... then," Meredith said quietly, "that's not really possible, right?" Scully thought perhaps the world would have stopped, just for a moment, just this once. Outside her window the sun cast a last few longing rays over the neighbor's building toward the street. Cars passed, wind pulled swirls of paper from the road and blew them briskly toward the intersection. She couldn't move, couldn't think, couldn't breathe. "Dana?" Meredith said loudly. "Dana!" Scully found her world shifting, realigning itself. "Dana, there's someone at my door. I need to go. Are you ok?" "Go," she said slowly. "Go ahead, I'll call you later." "Dana, I could be wrong." "Yes," Scully said, watching a light wink off across the street, sending a window into darkness. "Yes." xxxxxx End 1 of 5 TITLE: The Other Man (2 of 5) AUTHOR: Jess M EMAIL ADDRESS: snarkypup@mindspring.com By morning, she had decided it was all a giant mistake, the sort anyone could make. Like calling someone with the wrong HIV results, or the wrong PAP smear. It happened all the time, this sort of medical nonsense. She would just take care of it in the lab herself, answering any questions that might come up. Because she didn't have any. No, she was sure of everything. She would stop on her way to work, she thought, and get them some coffee. Mulder liked his thick and black, like charcoal. How on earth he could drink that stuff, she didn't know, but he'd always liked it that way, he'd told her. Always, ever since he was a kid and he used to sneak it from his father's thermos. The coffee shop was crowded with patrons, and she stood in line, tapping her foot to the jingling swing music blaring from the overhead speakers. The barista stepped over and motioned to Scully with a nod. "One Colombian, tall, black and one double tall decaf Americano with room," she ordered. The girl nodded again, her head moving in time to the beat as she filled one cup. An older gentleman behind her placed his order for a "coffee, please. Just a coffee," and Scully moved forward to pay. The girl handed her the two coffees, wrapped in cardboard sleeves that did little to keep the heat of the drink from her hands. "Do you need a carrier?" the girl asked and she nodded. "Dana Scully?" The older man was addressing her. Scully blinked and examined him, looking for something familiar. He was wearing a tan trench coat that made her think of Deep Throat, so long ago. She shuddered slightly. "Do I know you?" she asked, still holding the two coffees as the girl reached across the counter with the carrier. The older man took it for her and held it out. "No," he said. "I'm a friend of Meredith's." "Meredith?" Scully said, her head refusing to wrap itself around anything remotely difficult. To think, she realized without conscious acknowledgement, would mean examination of what she had found yesterday. Work without thinking, she ordered herself. Survive without knowledge. It's the American way. The old man nodded and pointed to two deep blue plush chairs in the back corner. Scully walked with him. "Meredith?" she repeated as she sat down. "Is she ok?" Taking her coffees from her and setting them on a low table at their knees, the old man sighed. "No," he said, and he had a soft, gentle voice. Like a father. "No, she isn't. She's dead. As is Chuck Finson." And then suddenly, without warning, the bright haze of her morning vanished and left Scully staring at the two cups of steaming coffee in front of her as if they were something altogether alien, landed at her feet. "Dead?" She stared at the man and saw that he wasn't as old as she'd first thought, but that he'd gone prematurely gray. He was also carrying a briefcase. His own coffee sat untouched. "Last night," he affirmed. "Someone knocked on her door and put a .44 caliber bullet into her brain. And Mr. Finson apparently decided to drive off the edge of a bridge on his way home. And even stranger is the fact that though this happened in the middle of a great deal of commuter traffic, no one seems to have seen him do it." "My God," Scully whispered. "What the hell is going on?" "I believe I can answer that for you, actually," the man said. "Wait a minute. Who are you? How did you receive your information?" The man smiled. "You don't really think I'm going to tell you that, do you?" Resignedly, she shook her head. "This has to do with Mulder," she said. "Of course." The man actually chuckled. "Doesn't everything? Yesterday you received the results of a genetic test. The sort of test that is done occasionally on any member of law enforcement and the sort that normally would remain unnoticed. Unfortunately for him, Mr. Finson graduated top of his class at Columbia. He was one sharp young genetics student. Only one in a hundred techs would have spotted that anomaly. Only one in a thousand would have bothered to look into it. And only one in a hundred thousand gene therapists could have told you what it represented. It is perhaps a sad measure of how intertwined your lives are with fate that you happened to find both those individuals just when you needed them, Miss Scully." "I don't understand," Scully said slowly. "Are you saying Meredith was right?" "Meredith was absolutely correct, which is a shame for her, really. The man you are on your way to see, the man who has been your partner and your friend for the last seven years, Miss Scully, is not Fox Mulder. Well, not exactly. The current Agent Mulder is a clone, a copy of the original." For a long moment, Scully pondered simply standing up and walking away. Perhaps it would just disappear then, dissolve like sugar into a hot drink. The man seemed to sense this and waited patiently for her to return. "You're full of shit," she said at last. "I know Mulder. I have known Mulder. He remembers everything... everything about his childhood, his youth... my God, how could you even suggest this? How could you think I would believe you?" "I don't expect you to," he said reasonably. "Not at first. But you will come to believe it. Why else is your friend dead, Miss Scully? And Mr. Finson? These are not random coincidences, even you can see that." "I see nothing," she whispered, watching the steam curl slowly from the hole in the cap of Mulder's coffee. "It's simple. Ten years ago, I myself worked on the project. Cloning technology was new to us then, but not to those who gave us the information. We created a replica of your partner, aging him appropriately in three short years. Along the way, we made some... alterations. Corrected nature's mistakes, so to speak. We were ecstatic. It was quite an achievement. Today, the same thing can be done in six months. Progress, you understand, has been rapid. You have seen some evidence of this, I believe? Kurt Crawford was a clone, as Agent Mulder knows. At any rate, after we created the clone of Mr. Mulder, we simply needed to obtain unrestricted access to the original Mr. Mulder long enough to create the memory chip. Fortunately for us, Mr. Mulder had a habit of wandering onto Air Force bases when he wasn't supposed to be there." "Memory chip?" she hissed. "Are you insane?" "I assure you, Miss Scully," he said mildly, "I am perfectly sane. Think of the chip in the back of your neck. It has been suggested to you, has it not, that it could possibly be gathering information directly from your brain? That it could access your thoughts, your memories and record them?" "Someone suggested that once, yes," she said, fists clenched at her side. How the hell did he know that? How did he know any of this? "Well, then, would it surprise you to learn that we can, in just sixteen hours, download the entire contents of your memory and place them say... into the mind of that coffee waitress? Then that scruffy little blue-haired teenager would be just as capable and confident as the very mature and experienced Special Agent Dana Scully. In fact, if we were to erase her own memories first, she might just think she was Special Agent Dana Scully. And to some extent, she'd be right." "You're saying you captured Mulder, copied his memories, implanted them in a chip into the body of this clone and released the clone back to me?" "Essentially, yes." Scully stood up, gathering the two cups of coffee with what she hoped were not obviously shaking hands. "This is ridiculous," she said firmly. "I've never heard anything so silly. I refuse to sit here and be treated like I'm..." "Miss Scully," the man interrupted, one strong hand on her arm. "Wouldn't you like to hear what happened to the original Fox Mulder?" She sat down. "I don't know," she said. "I don't believe there is an original, other than the man sitting in his office right now wondering why I'm late." "This entire procedure happened seven years ago, on your second case together, as you may have gathered. We took the real Fox Mulder at Ellens and gave you the clone. It went so smoothly, I was a bit surprised. This..." He reached down and pulled up his briefcase, popping it open on his lap. "... is a picture of the real Fox Mulder." He handed Scully a color enlargement. The man in the photo was clearly Mulder, and yet he wasn't. Thin and scraggly, he sat on the edge of a hospital bed and stared at the camera, his face blank. He looked older than the man she knew, and his skin was pale and sallow. "When was this taken?" she murmured. "Assuming it isn't a fake, which it must be." "I assure you, Miss Scully, this is no fake. It was taken last week, at the facility at Ellens Air Force Base. That man is the one who ran off that night to look for alien space ships. He is the real thing." "Why?" she asked, tracing the expressionless face with one nail. "I don't know that," the man answered. "I only know the hows, Miss Scully. No one ever told me the whys." "Why come to me now?" she said, starting to hand the photo back. The man motioned for her to keep it. Reluctantly, she turned it face down on her lap. "I was informed last week that the project has reached the end of its useful life. This man, the real Fox Mulder, will be terminated in..." He glanced at his watch, face unchanging. "... just over forty-eight hours. I would hate to see that happen after working so closely with him these last seven years." "You must have another reason, assuming all this is true," she said. "Perhaps," the man admitted. "One I cannot go into now." "Of course," she said and turned the photo over again, examining the ragged face. What if it were true, something whispered within her. What if you just left him there to die? "So what would you suggest I do about all of this?" "First of all, I'd remove the chip from the clone," he said, a bit eagerly. "It's disguised, quite cleverly, by a thin membrane, but the location is similar to your own." "Why wouldn't a CAT scan have picked it up? Or an MRI, or hell, even a n x-ray?" she demanded. "Unlike your chip, which was, frankly, designed to be found, this one was designed not to be. I did my job very, very well. Remove the chip and he will be out of the control of those who run the project." "What about his memory?" she asked. "I don't know," the man admitted. "I've never removed one. It could certainly wipe out his memories. We have no idea how much his brain is dependant on the chip, how much he has stored in his own mind." "Great," Scully murmured. "You're asking me to go to my partner and tell him that he's not who he thinks he is and then ask if I can slice open his neck?" "I never said it would be easy. But if you prefer, go to Ellens first. Find the real thing, then see what you believe. But don't wait too long, or there will be nothing there to retrieve." "If I do nothing," Scully said quietly. "What will they do to my Mulder? To the man you say is a clone?" "Nothing," the man said. "He is no longer their concern." "Does he know?" she asked, feeling suddenly sick. "Does he know he isn't Mulder?" "No," the man said. "He believes fully in who he is. It wouldn't have worked otherwise." "I don't believe any of this," she asserted. "I don't." "Well," he said, rising stiffly. "Believe what you like. But what if you're wrong? Can you take that chance?" xxxxxx In the end, she decided to tell Mulder the truth, or at least what she understood of it, and see where his easy intelligence took them. On the way to the office, now without coffee, it seemed like it would be easy enough. She would just show him what she had been given, tell him about the man in the coffee bar and he would take over. In the face of catastrophe, she was astounded to discover that she wanted nothing more than to crawl away into a hole. If it were true, though she couldn't imagine how it could be, it would mean she had walked away from her partner. Left him to be locked up, possibly... no probably tortured, experimented upon and kept against his will for seven years. She thought of her own missing three months and shuddered. It wasn't, her conscience reminded her, like she could have done anything differently. But hadn't it seemed easy at the time, that rescue? There she was, one little woman with one little stolen gun and she'd just driven right over and picked him up. Surely they should have put up more of a fight? In the Bureau parking lot she sat for a long moment with her eyes closed, wondering how her life had come to this. Seeing little green men and clones, for heaven's sake, where flesh and blood had existed just hours before. She told herself to suck it up and carried the folder into the building, taking her sweet time in getting to the elevator, chatting with the guards, hesitating over a trip to her own office, and finally, finally pushing the button for the basement. I'll just tell him as if it were someone else, she thought, pushing open the basement door. Mulder was sitting at his desk, his left arm still wearing the sling, feet up, twirling a pencil thoughtfully as if he might be pondering launching it skyward. He sat up as she walked in. "Well, there you are," he said eagerly. "I was beginning to get worried. Scully, what do you think about a trip to the Big Apple? I hear someone's exanguinating pigeons in Times Square." And that was it. Her resolve crumpled and dissolved. He was so quintessentially him, talking about some sort of pigeon vampire. She crossed the office and stood before him, examining him. He looked like Mulder, hell, he was Mulder. There was no question. Setting the file folder down on his desk, she tried to focus through a suddenly blinding wave of tears. "Scully?" he whispered, watching her in confusion. "Did someone die?" She shook her head, unable to speak, absorbed by the perfect imperfection of his mouth, by the way his eyes moved from brown to green to gold around the pupil. "What's wrong?" he asked, a bit more forceful. "You're frightening me, Scully." She wanted to just forget it. To let it go unknown by anyone but her. But of course, there was no forgetting now, not with a clock ticking quietly in the background. "Scully," he said, picking up one of her limp hands and holding it tightly. "You're terrifying me. Say something. What the hell is wrong?" She smiled sadly and leaning forward, kissed the side of his mouth. "Have I ever told you that I believe in you?" she asked and felt him stiffen. "Jesus," he hissed. "This must be bad. You're sick again." "No," she said softly. "Stop trying to guess and give me a moment." Backing up, she sat on the edge of his desk and collected herself. God, if it was all wrong, what would he think of her for believing, even for a moment? "Yesterday," she began, fingering the edge of the folder, "Chuck Finson called me down to the lab and asked me to take a look at something." "Chuck Finson? Scully, did you hear that he was killed last night?" "Yes," she said slowly. "Someone told me this morning. I'm getting to that." His eyes widened and he frowned. "Ok," he said. "What did Chuck show you?" "Your blood tests." Mulder was perfectly still for a moment, then he said softly: "I'm sick?" She shook her head. "He showed me these two test pages," she said, removing them from the folder and spreading them out before him. "This test is the one you submitted blood for last week. And this one is from 1992." "So?" he asked, looking from one sheet to the other. "They aren't the same," she said, getting it out at last. Mulder looked up at her, astonished. "What? Are you saying that smoking bastard did something to my DNA?" Scully rubbed at the spot between her eyes for just a moment, then shook her head again. "That was what I thought, at first. So I faxed them over to geneticist I know. Her name was Meredith Wentland. Last night I sent her your test results. Just after she called and told me what she thought was wrong, someone walked up to her door and shot her through the head." "Jesus," he whispered. "What did she say?" She had begun to sweat, she wasn't sure when. A cold drop slid down her bare side beneath her shirt and was absorbed by her skirt. "She said if she didn't know better, the second test showed evidence of cloning." Mulder sat back and stared at her, his jaw actually hanging open for a moment. "Scully? Are you honestly saying what I think you're saying?" "Just listen to me," she pleaded. "There's more." "Oh, what? You found my birth-tank?" He was sarcastic now, glaring at her with his arms crossed over his chest. "Mulder, please, you aren't making this any easier." For a moment, he let the indignation drop and she saw how hurt he was. She winced as the expression was quickly covered by ire. "You believe it," he said, rolling his eyes as if she were really trying his patience. She sighed and slid her finger along the edge of the photo inside the folder. Seeing this, he grasped the folder and yanked it away from her, opening it and staring at the remaining piece of evidence. She watched as his eyes widened and then closed. "Tell me this isn't who I think it is." "It isn't you," she pointed out. "Is it?" "Not that I remember," he said slowly. "What the fuck is going on here, Scully?" "This morning, while I was getting us some coffee at that place down the street from my apartment, a man approached me. He claimed to be a friend of Meredith's, but frankly, I doubt that he'd ever met her. It was just a way to get me to listen to him. He claimed to have participated in an experiment begun ten years ago. He... he said he helped to create a Fox Mulder clone and that when the real Mulder sneaked onto Ellens Air Force Base seven years ago, they replaced him with the clone after downloading his memories to a chip that was implanted in the clone's neck. That man in the photo is supposed to be the real you. And you... you are supposed to be..." She trailed off, unable to finish. Mulder's face was completely blank. "A clone," he said. "Yes," she whispered. "God, Mulder, I know it sounds impossible, but Meredith is dead. I checked on my way to work. And Chuck Finson. I believe Chuck knew what these tests results showed as well, he just didn't know how to tell me." "You think I'm a clone." He was still, his voice sending a chill straight through her body. She felt herself breaking as if he'd dipped her into something impossibly cold and then dropped her. "No," she said quietly. "Not in my heart. But my head is putting up a hell of a battle. Meredith worked at Georgia Biotech." "The people who clone mice," he said, without emotion. "Yes," she admitted. "She was the top researcher in the subject in the United States. I'm sorry, Mulder. It's probably..." "Are you sure you still want to call me that?" he interrupted. "Maybe Mulder Two would be more appropriate. Or hey, Son of Mulder. Or maybe Mulder Returns. Fuck, Scully, how could you believe any of this bullshit? Oh wait..." He stood and she could feel the anger radiating from him, right beneath the pain. "I get it. This is so perfect." "What is?" she asked. "They finally found a way to pull you away from me," he said bitterly. "All this time they've used the paranormal when all it took was one little bit of perfectly arranged science." "Mulder," she said carefully, "they haven't pulled me away. I'm right here and I'm not going anywhere." He had been standing with his back to her, his hands on his hips. Now he turned and examined her face. "Right. So if this man... the 'real' Fox Mulder should happen to exist, you'd still want to be my friend and partner? If what you say is true, Scully, I'm not even a real person. I'm some giant lab experiment. Or maybe that's what intrigues you about the idea?" "Mulder..." she began but he cut her off with a defensive hand. "I thought I could trust you," he said. "But I see how wrong I was." That angered her, pushed the blood through her icy veins. "Oh, so you'd rather I kept it from you, right? Because everyone knows ignorance is bliss, right Mulder? Especially when it comes to what might have been done to you medically against your will." He stopped pacing and stared at her. "This is nothing like that." "Oh yeah? You kept your knowledge of my infertility from me, Mulder. Something as fundamental as my reproductive system and you kept it from me. Who's untrustworthy now?" Defeated, as always, by her body, he sat back down and looked up at her. "So how do we prove to everyone's satisfaction that this isn't true?" She sighed. "The man this morning said you had a chip in your neck. That it feeds you your memories. He also implied they use it to control you." "Oh nice," he spat. "Wouldn't that be ironic? So you want to remove this thing? This chip we've never noticed in three years of airport metal detectors, x-rays and CAT scans?" "He said it was designed to be difficult to detect." "Oh, I'm sure. Imaginary chips always are." She shrugged. "I know how much you hate going under the knife, Mulder. It's up to you." For a long moment he simply stared at her, then he lifted the photo of the other Mulder, sitting pale and listless in his cell. "What about him?" She sighed and looked away from him. "The man said they were going to kill him. Terminate, he said, in forty-eight hours." "So you want to cut something out of my neck that may not even exist, then fly out to Idaho and break into a military base in order to rescue someone who may also not even exist?" Nodding, she met his steady gaze. "Ironic, isn't it?" he said. "Isn't what?" she asked. "Just when my identity comes into question, you start acting like me." xxxxxx End 2 of 5 TITLE: The Other Man (3 of 5) AUTHOR: Jess M EMAIL ADDRESS: snarkypup@mindspring.com They met at the Gunmen's lab less than half-an-hour later. Scully watched as a confused and cautious Frohike did as Mulder asked, preparing a syringe of local anesthetic and running a razor over the base of Mulder's neck. Mulder sat, shirtless, with his arms over the back of his chair. He looked incredibly feral, more so than usual, and she knew he was purposely displaying himself for her, showing her the body she was questioning. "What the hell's going on?" Langley whispered to Byers behind her. "I don't know. Shut up," Byers answered back. "Agent Scully believes I may have had a chip implanted in my neck, one that may be affecting my memory," Mulder said caustically. "I'm going to humor her by letting her finally get her dearest wish, to slice me open." "Fuck," Langley whispered as Scully felt her eyes water with tears she wouldn't have shed for all the money on earth. Mulder was looking her in the eye, and what most made her want to cry was not the anger or the disgust, but the naked fear she saw there. Some part of him believed it as well. "We're ready, Scully." Frohike stepped back and handed her a pair of surgical gloves and a scalpel. Byers laid a petri dish on the table beside Mulder's chair while Frohike draped a towel across his upper back. Scully concentrated on the bent curve of Mulder's neck, remembering touching him there before, when their trust for one another was just building. What if she found nothing? What had she done? She made the first incision after pricking Mulder with the scalpel and receiving no reaction. Frohike mopped up the thin ribbon of blood that snaked down his neck to the towel as she pulled back his skin and fished gently beneath it with a pair of forceps. "Anything?" Frohike whispered, and just as she began to shake her head, she felt something touch the tip of the forceps. "Maybe," she said and felt Mulder stiffen. "What? What is it?" he demanded. "Hold still," she said and gave the object a gentle tug. It slipped free easily. She held it up and examined it carefully, but even to her untrained eye, a computer chip was obvious. "My God," she whispered. A gentle tug from Byers on her left sleeve brought her back down. He pointed to Mulder. "I think he's passed out," he said quietly. "What?" Dropping both forceps and chip into the petri dish, she rushed around the chair to find him slumped against the his own arms, eyes closed, breathing rapid. "Mulder!" she said, frantic with no way to tell what was wrong. "Mulder!" A gentle slap on the shoulder and his eyes opened weakly. "Scully?" he said softly. "Yes," she breathed in relief. "You fainted. Do you know where you are?" "Yes," he said cautiously. "What did you just pull out of my neck?" She glanced to Byers, who was busy examining the chip under a microscope. "It looks just like yours," he said. "But larger. More complex." Mulder blinked rapidly, then steadied himself by meeting her gaze. "Guess you were right." "Not necessarily," she said. "It could be anything. Let me stitch you up, ok?" He nodded and sat quietly while she pushed the thread through his skin. Four stitches were all that was necessary. While she worked, she talked to him. She thought it might calm her own racing heart, if nothing else. "So tell me, Mulder... what did you last get me for my birthday?" "Two boxes of Frosted Flakes and a copy of Steel Magnolias on DVD," he answered instantly and she smiled. "Year before that?" "Nothing," he said quietly. "I didn't forget though. I just like to skip years." "Keep me guessing, right?" she asked, making another stitch. "Right," he agreed. "Ok," she said, setting aside the needle and surgical thread and patting his neck with gauze. "All done. I'm just going to put a bandage on this." Frohike handed her a band-aid and she raised an eyebrow. "A Band-Aid?" He shrugged. "It's all we have. I ran out of surgical tape last month when Langley took a nose dive off his skateboard." She rolled her eyes and pressed the Band-Aid into place. "Fine. Ok, Mulder, one more question." He nodded, slowly, as if afraid to pull his stitches. "What did you get your sister for her eighth birthday?" There was a moment of silence in the lab. Then Mulder's strangled voice. "I don't know, Scully, what did I get her?" "I don't know," she answered, eyes widening. She was glad she was standing behind him. "You never told me." "I can't remember," he said dully as she moved around to kneel before him again. "Ok," she said. "Any birthday." She watched as he closed his eyes and concentrated. "Oh God," he groaned. "I don't know, Scully. I don't know." Desperately, she searched her mind for something else. "Tell me the name of your fourth grade teacher." Another agonizing pause and he stood, nearly knocking her over. "This is stupid," he said, stalking over to his shirt and suit jacket. "No one remembers the name of their fourth grade teacher." "Mrs. Fitzsimmons," Langley supplied quietly. "Mr. Dumas," Byers added. "Miss Charpal. She had great breasts and long hair like Farrah Fawcet." That came from Frohike. "Fine," Mulder said angrily. "So I can't remember. Why don't you say it, Scully? You're right. I'm a fucking clone." There was a strange stillness in the lab before Byers whispered: "What?" "Forget it," Scully said quickly, shooting Mulder a terrified look. "Fuck you, Scully," he said, and pulled his jacket on over his bare back. "I'm going home. Don't you dare follow me. Do you understand?" Before she could even nod, he had swept his shirt off the back of the couch and disappeared out the clanging door. Scully stood, aware that all three gunmen were looking at her in a mixture of fear and sympathy. She straightened her jacket and retrieved her coat from the couch. "He'll be fine," she said. "He's just in shock." "You should go to him," Byers said. She looked over to see him smiling sadly. "I know," she said. "See if you can figure out what the hell that chip is for." He nodded and Frohike gently ushered her out. His hand touching the small of her back made her wince. xxxxxx She sat for fifteen minutes in the car outside Mulder's apartment before she walked up the stairs. His lights were on and as she approached the door, she could see that he had slammed it. The number four lay upside down on the carpet. Slipping it into her pocket, she used her key to let herself in, not even bothering to knock. Mulder was slouched on the couch, the contents of his bookcase and desk scattered around his overturned chairs and coffee table. "I'm sorry, Scully," he said immediately as she shut the door. "It's all right," she said, picking her way around the books and papers to sit next to him. He had been weeping, she could see it, though his eyes were now dry. The skin on his cheekbones seemed thin and worn, like parchment. She waited for him to speak first. "She wasn't even my sister," he said at last, wearily and Scully was sure her heart would break. "It's all I can think about. She wasn't even my fucking sister." Scully slid closer to him, determined to put her hand in his, but as she moved, he seemed to simply collapse into her. She sank back until he lay half on top of her, his face pressed into her neck, his hands gripping her jacket as if he were about to be pried away. Within an instant, he was crying again. She tried to shush him by gently stroking his hair. "It could be wrong," she said softly. "I was thinking on the way over. Maybe he's the clone and you're you and this is just another way to fuck with your head. Who knows how long that chip has been there, recording everything you've thought about, all your memories? Maybe they just wiped everything from your childhood out." "I can't remember college," he moaned. "I can't remember Phoebe Green until she came over here." "Maybe it's a blessing in disguise," Scully suggested, but her heart wasn't in it. He sighed and pulled her closer. "I can't remember Diana or graduating from high school. I have vague images from that time, but I think they're memories of his memories, if that makes sense. Like maybe I called them up sometime in the last seven years and now I have memories of that." She pulled his head up until she was looking him in the eye. "You don't know that it's true. Mulder, it's just so convenient. It's so easily devastating. That photo could be a computer manipulation. It might not be real at all." "I feel it," he whispered. "I feel the emptiness of my own mind, Scully. You can't imagine what it's like. I can't remember anything before Ellens. Nothing." "Do you remember your sister's abduction?" she asked and he nodded. "But I've relived it so many times since then, it's another memory of a memory. Jesus, Scully, what if it is true? What if I'm not Fox Mulder at all? Who am I?" Fiercely, she drew him to her and kissed his forehead. "You are Fox Mulder," she said. "You are my friend and my partner." That set him to weeping again. He smelled like coffee and dust and sunlight. He smelled like Mulder. "What if he wants you back?" he choked out onto the skin above her collar. Startled, she stopped touching him and sat up a bit. "What if he what?" "Well," he reasoned, sniffling and wiping his nose on the back of his hand like a child, "you were his partner. This is his apartment. I do his job. If he wanted it all back, Scully, I'd have to give it to him." "First of all, Mulder," she said sternly, "I don't belong to anyone. No one is just going to just ask and receive. Secondly, a man who's been held in a cell for seven years is unlikely to pass the FBI psyche evaluation. Thirdly, you've been paying for this apartment and doing his job for seven years, that ought to count for something. And finally, this is probably all just be another ploy to snap you, and it seems to be working." He looked past her for a moment, out at the setting sun beyond his building. The light cast his face in soft orange and deep purple shadows. "But just say it is true. Say he is Fox Mulder and I am a clone. Who am I, Scully? The FBI would kick me out in a nanosecond, even if he could never come back. So who am I, if I'm not who I've been?" "You're Fox Mulder," she repeated, stubbornly. "That's his name," he said. "And I once met a woman at the grocery store who was also called Dana Scully. It didn't make me question my identity." "This is a bit different than that," he said. "Even if I still call myself Fox Mulder, what would I do?" She leaned back against the cool leather of the couch, listening to its familiar creaks and groans. She had fantasies about this couch, about this man. Things she intended to do to him someday. Why had she waited so very long, she wondered? Did she somehow, subconsciously, know? No, that was ridiculous. "You and I would go run a haunted Bed and Breakfast in Vermont," she said. "We would get married and settle down and have a couple kids and forget everything that we know about this damn place." He wasn't taking her seriously, and anyway, she wasn't sure she was either. "Come on, Scully. I'm not kidding." "Mulder, this conversation is irrelevant. You and I both know that this can't be what it looks like. We'll go to Ellens and find..." "Me?" "Nothing," she finished. "We'll find nothing. I don't know why they're doing this, but we'll find out." "Scully... what if I don't want to?" His voice was so quiet, it was like overhearing someone whisper a secret you couldn't quite make out. "What if you don't want to what?" she asked. "What if I don't want to go to Ellens? What if I don't... what if I don't want to know? What does it say about me that I would gladly just let this one go?" She stared at him, searching his weary, familiar face. How often had she sat across from him, staring at that same face, that same combination of eyes and nose and lips and thinking how beautiful, how perfect he was? She sighed. "I don't care who you think you are, Mulder. The man I've known this last seven years would already be calling the airlines and packing every black item of clothing he owns." He smiled then, slightly, a weary little grin that was more water than anything else. "Funky poaching for myself. Who would have thought it, Scully?" Exactly, she thought. Who indeed? xxxxxx It occurred to Scully, on the plane, that Mulder had become a study in quantum physics. He kept glancing out their window at the silent darkness streaming past, as if he could tell their location from the bright light of the full moon. She wanted to tell him that he couldn't know exactly where they were, because of the chance that he was presently in two places at once. He flipped restlessly through the in-flight magazine, his energy bouncing around her in both particles and waves. "What time do we get in, again?" he asked. "Ten," she answered. "Well, that's not going to work. We can't go waltzing into a secret government facility at ten in the morning, unless we pose as donut delivery men." In the back of Scully's thoughts, the clock ticked like a metronome, the movement of its hands marked in both minutes and years. Over the past seven years, time had become a duality: past and present, variable and relentless. Found, her mind supplied for one stroke. Lost, another whispered, and she wasn't sure anymore who she would find and who she would lose when this was over. "Wait, that wouldn't be believable. You don't look like you've gone near a donut since college," he rambled on. She gave up trying to pretend to be amused and turned back to the window. The moon cast a bright shadow on the rounded bellies of the clouds beneath the plane's wing. Light and dark. Night and day. Mulder and... not Mulder. "Scully," he whispered, and he was suddenly inches from her ear. "Mulder," she replied, turning so that she could feel his breath on the side of her mouth. "If it's true," he began, and she opened her mouth to stop him. A finger trailing across her open lips surprised her into silence. "If it's true, I want you to know something." Her stomach dropped. She was terrified and hopeful in the same breath. You've already told me, she wanted to say. You think I didn't believe you, but I did. "Yes?" she whispered. "I still won't let you call me Fox," he said and she cursed his perpetual avoidance, his Peter Pan humor. "Noted," was all she said. He was quiet for less than a minute before she felt the rush of his breath as he spoke. "I'm sorry," he said. "For what?" she asked, suddenly unwilling to be serious. Choose one or the other, she told herself. Stabilize yourself. But she couldn't, instead whirling between the two sides of herself, the two men she saw each time she looked at Mulder's face. "Nothing," he said and sat back. "I'm going to rest up. I suspect I'll need it." She watched him, and he politely kept his eyes closed. He wasn't asleep, but this was easier than trying to talk to her, she suspected. If he wasn't Mulder, especially in his own eyes, then was she Scully? Or did she go back to being plain old Dana, and really, would she even want to? In the world of the quantum, the act of observation itself determines the outcome. We see what we want to see. What did she want to see in the man beside her? Did the way he saw her make her who she was? What if there were two Mulders, and one looked at her with that love and devotion and trust and the other saw only the partner who had left him alone? Which person did that make her? Her mind continued drawing scientific metaphors around them both, shaping her world, as it always had, in terms of what she believed to be truth. By the time they landed in Idaho, they were webbed, mapped in precise scientific truths that meant nothing, that had no relevance to the people within them. Scully sighed as Mulder rose from his seat and shook himself like a dog, scattering her thoughts. Mulder was Mulder. What she saw in him changed nothing. xxxxxx End 3 of 5 TITLE: The Other Man (4 of 5) AUTHOR: Jess M EMAIL ADDRESS: snarkypup@mindspring.com In the single hotel room where they waited for nightfall, as she watched him pace the carpet like an animal, she decided she was wrong. "Mulder," she said, "come sit down." "And do what? Watch Oprah? I don't think so, Scully." He was angry again, biting at his nails in place of the seeds she knew he wanted but was resisting. Seeds were for the real thing, the man who had learned the habit from his father. Mulder wanted that father now, flawed as he may have been. The irony was not lost on her. "Mulder," she said again and this time he stopped, directly across from her. For a moment, she saw the fleeting desperation he felt as it moved across his face. "I can't, Scully. I can't just sit there. I'll go crazy. I'm going crazy now." "I know," she offered and he shook his head. "Okay," she said softly. "I don't know. But I'm here, Mulder. I'm here." "I know you are," he said, and flopped with weary resignation onto the bed beside her. "I know that, Scully. I'm not sure why, but you are." Reaching over, she stroked his hair back from his forehead in a gesture that seemed familiar despite the fact that she rarely did it. He closed his eyes, leaning into her touch. She hesitated only a moment before letting her fingers stray slowly down the rough edges of his jaw and back up to run the sensitive pad of her thumb across his mouth. When he didn't protest, she scooted a bit closer and cupped his cheek, her fingertips tickling his ear, her thumb flat against the soft skin of his cheekbone. "Do you like my face?" he asked, his voice low. "You know I do," she replied, her fingers tracing his eyebrows, the soft black curve of his eyelashes against his skin. "I always have." He was still as she continued to touch him, her hand exploring the slight cleft at the end of his chin, the broad sweep of his nose, the high point of his adam's apple. His ears were warm when she closed her palms over them and blocked out the noise of their breathing. She found the curls of hair behind his ears and tugged gently until he opened his eyes and met her fond gaze. "I want you to touch me. I want to know that I'm real," he said and she shook her head, leaning down to place a kiss on his forehead. "You are always real to me." "You say that now..." he began, but she silenced him by pressing her lips, dry as leaves, against his own. For a moment, she couldn't remember how to kiss, which was a strange surprise. She had assumed it was like riding that proverbial bicycle. But when he opened his mouth and moistened her lips with his tongue, it all came flooding back. "Strange," she whispered, when he drew away, staring at her with dark, unreadable eyes. "I think ... I had forgotten how wonderful that is." "I don't think I've ever really known," he answered and since she knew for certain that he had kissed several someones since they'd last been here, she took it for the compliment it was. She let him lean up and catch her, pulling her down onto him and into him. They kissed until her body pulsed with the rhythm of her own blood. "I'm not going to make love to you," he whispered suddenly and she sat up on her knees, looking down at him in surprise. The old Scully would have said something about being presumptuous. This one, the one who had both cut and kissed her partner, just stared at him instead. "It wouldn't be right," he explained, as earnest as ever, "to involve you with me at this point, before we know who I am." It would seem that while she felt reformed, new and somewhat fledgling, Mulder had not changed one bit. "I know who you are," she said firmly. "No you don't. What if we walk into that facility tonight and find him? What if he exists? Then will you still say you know me, Scully?" She let herself consider her answer. Mulder watched her as he always did while she formulated her theory. The annoying thing was that he knew what she would say before she said it. Like a grand master, Mulder was always several moves ahead. "I won't know him at all," she said at last. "And he won't know me. We..." She made a gesture between them, tying him to her with an invisible thread "... We know each other. Whoever we are to everyone else, or even to ourselves, we are Mulder and Scully to each other." Mulder smiled gently and pulled her back down into his arms. It wasn't until the sun set and he left her to go change his clothes that she realized he had never even attempted to make love to her. And she, like a fool, had not asked him to. xxxxxx It shouldn't be so simple to get into an Air Force base, Scully reasoned as Mulder cut the wire of the perimeter fence and she slipped through the hole into what was, really, proving to be another dimension entirely. Mulder jogged ahead of her, glancing occasionally at a map he had plied from the Gunmen with apologies and promises of scoops for their next edition. "It should be right over there," he said, his voice high and reedy in the night's light wind. He was pointing to a long line of barracks, one of which had fewer lights than the other, a dark shape against the black sky. She nodded and followed as he skittered through the waist-high sage that grew around them. It was like hunting on the moon - moving in the strange white light that washed the world into shades of gray. Mulder's hair was touched with silver, his skin was the color of a dove's wing. They reached the back door with little problem, ducking once to let a jeep pass with only the driver inside. Ellens, it appeared, was nearly abandoned. It made sense, Scully thought. If they were liquidating one aspect of the program, it was possible they were going to liquidate the whole thing. Mulder was fiddling with his lock-picking equipment and something electronic, like a keypad, he'd scammed from Frohike. The door hummed and buzzed and he punched numbers and maneuvered slim black picks until with a click, the door opened. Mulder, his hand on the doorknob, turned to look at her. His face was a strange hollow of shadows under the light above the door. "Don't look back," he whispered and she felt the impossible draw of her old life behind her. She slipped one hand over his and squeezed his fingers around the keypad and the lock picks and her own thumb. He nodded once, and they slipped into the facility. The hallway was one long, industrial, gray rectangle, punctuated by lighter gray doors. She felt as if they were still outside in the moonlight, rather than inside under the cool white light of the fluorescent bulbs that shuddered overhead. "Jesus," Mulder whispered. "I'm beginning to hope if he's real, he's dead." She understood. The institutional quality of the building was designed to give one the creeps and it was as efficient as the medical personal who would have dared to work within its walls. Nothing moved, and by the look of the nurse's station at the end of the hall, the place was pretty much as abandoned as the rest of the base. "Let's go," she said, her throat dry. Mulder nodded and they moved forward. The doors were labeled with names. The names were typed onto little strips of white paper, each one slipped into a holder above the reversed peephole. She read the first one with trepidation, but it was easier after that. Most were yellowed, the rooms empty as she stood on tiptoe to peer inside. Mulder worked the other side of the hall, his dark form hovering in the corner of her sight. She was halfway down the row of doors when she heard him gasp. He was standing before a door, his face white. When he pointed her to the name on the door, his hand shook. She stepped up carefully, knowing what she would see typed there. Mulder slid slowly down the wall until he was squatting, his head buried in his hands. She stood on tiptoe and read the name. "Mulder," it said. "Mulder, Fox William," to be precise. She wasn't sure if he had looked into the peephole or not. Her heart pounding, her hands sweaty, Scully rose up and peered into the room. It was empty. "He's not there," she whispered, and her voice shook with relief. Below her, Mulder didn't move. "Yes, he is," he said quietly. "He saw me and moved. I think he's standing on the side, next to the door." Scully could feel the adrenaline racing through her body and yet she couldn't move. "You saw him? You're sure?" she said. A bitter little laugh escaped from between Mulder's fingers. "Scully," he said. "I think I know my own goddamn face." "We have to open the door," she said. She was suddenly frantic, unable to keep still. Dropping to a crouch in front of Mulder, she shoved out her hand. "Give me the picks." Her badly shaking hands made it difficult to get the picks into the lock, but after a few stabbing moments, she did it. A quick movement of her hands and the lock clicked over. Cautiously, she pushed open the door. The arm that jerked her sideways and slammed her against the wall was slim, but strong. Her mind registered the smells of urine and disinfectant just before the breath was knocked out of her chest and everything around her went dark. xxxxxx When she could focus, she was lying on her back, staring at the sort of ceiling tile that begs to have its holes counted from boredom. Her head hurt, but through the buzzing in her ears, she could hear voices. Strangely similar voices. "She didn't know?" one voice said, slightly raspy and unsure. "She didn't know," the other, more familiar of the two answered. "How could she? Look at me." "I don't want to look at you," the first voice said, petulant. "Look, we need to get you out of here. Are you coming?" "I haven't walked more than fifteen feet in seven years, and you can't carry us both. We'll have to wait until she wakes up, which may mean we get caught." "Before you slammed her against the wall, she was walking pretty well on her own." "I didn't mean to knock her cold. I thought she was the nurse." "If that's how you treat the nurses here, it's no wonder they keep you locked up." "No one's been in here in two days. I just wanted to find out where they were. I was starving." "We'll feed you as soon as we get out of here." "And when, exactly, will that be?" Scully rose slowly, keeping her eyes closed until she was sitting on the edge of the bed. When she opened her eyes, she wanted desperately to close them again. Mulder, or at least the man she had known as Mulder, sat opposite her, his body slumped wearily into a plastic chair. Next to him sat ... her mind refused to say it for a moment, but then it slipped in, like trying not to think about an elephant. Mulder. Mulder sat in the other chair. "Scully," they both said at exactly the same time and she wasn't sure what the hell she was supposed to say to that, so she just stood, carefully. "Let's go," she said, finally, and both men looked disappointed. "It's a long walk to the car." Mulder rose and helped the other man up. Scully realized she hadn't looked this Mulder in the face since she woke. When she met his eyes, she nearly sank back onto the bed. His anger, his hurt, was clear, radiating from him like light. "Scully," he said, and his voice sounded like Mulder, but it didn't. "I never thought ... I thought you had forgotten me." She glanced at her Mulder, who watched her with his face cautiously blank. It was his panic face. God, she thought, I know him so fucking well. "I didn't know," she said softly. "I'm so sorry." "He ..." The old Mulder shuddered under the new Mulder's hand. "He told me." The Mulder she didn't know stepped forward, his steps small and careful. When he stood before her, untouched by the man she knew, he ran a thin finger down her cheek. She realized, as his skin dragged across her own, that she was crying. "I came for you," she told him, her words stumbling out before she could stop them. "I came for you and I had a gun and they gave you back to me and I thought ... I thought it was you." "I know," he said, and pulled her forward until she was holding his thin body, feeling each rib through the cotton scrubs they had left him in. He smelled terrible, like shit and dirt and sweat and bad food and blood. She curled her hands in the fabric of his shirt and sobbed. "I hate to break up this touching reunion," a soft voice she knew better than her own said from behind them, "but we need to get moving." xxxxxx End 4 of 5 TITLE: The Other Man (5 of 5) AUTHOR: Jess M EMAIL ADDRESS: snarkypup@mindspring.com In the car on the way out of the state, the Mulder she didn't know slept in the back seat of the Taurus, his mouth open, a half-eaten bag of fries at his feet. The Mulder she did know drove silently. He had not said a word since they left the facility except "three Big Macs, three fries and three cokes." "Mulder," she said softly and he didn't even turn his head. "Mulder," she repeated and this time he turned to glance at her. "I need another name," he said before she could continue. "I don't think it's fair to rescue the guy from seven years of prison and torture and then ask him to let you call him Fox." She swallowed back the strange lump that formed in her throat. "I don't want to call you Fox, either," she said. "I want to call you Mulder because that's who you are." "Then who's he?" he asked, his head cocked toward the back seat. "He's Mulder, Scully. I'm no one. I'm terra incognita." "I'm not calling you that," she said, feeling ridiculous and irrational. "Call me Marty," he said and she choked back a laugh of pure horror. "No way," was all she could answer. "Then you think of something." His voice was tinged with anger, his hands were tense on the wheel. She opened her mouth and closed it again. There was no answer. "Jesus Christ!" he exploded suddenly and she risked a hurried glance at their passenger, who slept on. "Stop worrying about him, Scully. I know the guy. He sleeps like the fucking dead." Guilty, she stared at her own hands. "I can't believe this," he muttered. "I thought I'd seen x-files, you know? That I'd seen everything horrible and dishonorable and terrible in this world, but I was wrong. This is a fucking nightmare. I'm just going to wake up and it's going to be okay, right, Scully? I'm going to fucking wake up and get my life back, right?" She had nothing to say, but from the back seat, a soft voice said: "I've been telling myself the same thing for seven years, buddy, and it doesn't work like that." It was at that point that Scully burst into hysterical tears. Perhaps it was the two nights without sleep, she told herself as she sobbed. Yeah, that was it. Just the lack of sleep. Not the cloning of the only man she'd ever loved and the discovery of it and the real person in the back seat and the fucking science fiction bullshit of her life. Nope, lack of sleep. While she pondered the crazed stupidity of her own existence, Mulder, her Mulder, slammed the car over to the shoulder of the road and shouted at her: "What are you crying about, Scully? What the fuck do you have to cry about?" When he was gone, stalking out of the car into the night and the dark woods, she was left with the silent man in the back seat and the strange, hot ticking of the engine. And then she started to laugh, and she couldn't stop. "Were you always this weird?" back seat Mulder asked, conversationally. "Or did hanging out with him for the last seven years do it to you?" Scully hiccuped back her hysteria and stared at him. He seemed perkier since they'd fed him, more like her own Mulder, who she could hear crunching around out in the woods like an angry bear. "If it makes any difference to you both," he said, "I don't really give a shit about being Fox Mulder anymore." "You say that now," she pointed out, "but you don't know anything about what's happened in the last seven years. Once you're back in civilization, you'll want it all back." "All what?" he asked. "My sister is dead. My mother is dead. My father is dead. They told me all about it while I was in the facility. What possible reasons would I have to care about who I was? You think after all this, I just want to go pick up where I left off, chasing little green men? Scully, I've seen little green men, and they aren't green. They're gray." "I know," she whispered, somewhat stunned. "Mulder calls them 'grays.' I mean... I mean..." "I know what you mean," he said, sounding very reasonable. They were both silent for a moment, listening to Mulder's pouty tramping around in the underbrush before he spoke again. "I don't really feel well." It was more of a whisper, but Scully heard it well enough. "You shouldn't have eaten that hamburger," she said. "Your system can't handle the grease." "I don't think that's it," he said softly, and this time she sat up and leaned over to put her hand on his forehead. The man she knew and the man she didn't looked at her for a moment in one face. His skin was cold and clammy, but his eyes were bright with affection and trust. "It's just a bad hamburger," she said, even as she was scrambling over the console to him. "I've never let you die before, Mulder, and I'm not about to start now." "I'm not Mulder," he whispered. "Of course you are," she said, reassuring him. "No," he answered her, his voice faded. "He is the man I was meant to be, but never was." "What?" She was so busy stripping back his shirt to feel his thready heart beat that she barely registered what he was saying. "They needed a dark knight, so they created one. But it didn't work, Scully. It didn't work at all. I could never have accomplished what he has done. I was too weak. I was too human." "You're delirious," she said. "No, you're wrong," he said, his eyes still bright but his face the color of arctic snow, a bluish-white like the moon. "I was already being manipulated from all sides. I sold my soul to them, Scully, and the price ... the price was you." "I don't understand," she whispered. "They wanted me to use you ... something about your genetics, and some tests they'd done when you were a child. When they first approached me, there were several candidates, but things didn't work out with any of them. Part of the deal was the mother. Something to do with your immune system, I suppose. None of the other women were able to carry it to term, in the end. Then they found you, and I guess they just decided it would be better to let it all work out naturally. Occam's Razor, you know? The simplest solution is the best. I wanted to know what was in it for me, of course, and they said it would buy me immunity. But then, just when I finally met you and approved you as someone I could stand to be with, they decided that I wasn't quite right. They wanted everything to be genetically perfect. So they sent him instead. Truthfully, I was glad at the time. I thought he would seduce you and, assuming it worked, that would be it. You two would be stuck in some lab somewhere, hermetically sealed and popping out kids like a pitching machine, and I'd get to go back to being me. No offense, you understand, but you were never really my type." She just stared at him, unable to respond. "I figured you two would create these ... things they wanted and then I would be returned to go on working and heck, maybe surviving this whole global apocalypse thing. But it didn't work that way, did it?" She shook her head, her hand glued to his forehead by his sweat and her horror. "So they took you, and they stole your ova to mix with his genetically perfect sperm. I don't know how well their little experiment worked. All I know is that they seem to find him more interesting as an adversary than they ever found me as a friend. They told me he has single-handedly done more to advance the project just by being his self-righteous, genetically-enhanced self than I could ever have accomplished with their full blessing." "You're lying," she whispered. "None of this can be true." "How else would I know?" he said. "Come on, Scully, how else would I know?" "But," she said, "I know you. I know Fox Mulder. He wouldn't do what you just described." He smiled then, a weak little smile that showed a few of his familiar, straight, white teeth. "You do know Fox Mulder," he agreed. "You just don't know me. And it was so lucky for you that you didn't. He and I may be clones, but only I am our father's son." xxxxxx Mulder found her leaning against the trunk of the car, staring at the stars. He had been gone for hours, and she had been leaning there, watching the rotation of the earth, her head pounding, her ears ringing. "Scully," he said softly and she jumped, even though she'd heard him coming. "I'm sorry. I'm behaving like a child. He's... he's just thrown me off and I never really had a childhood, so I guess I'm reverting. Forgive me?" "He's dead," she told him, and watched as he stared at her for a moment, then ducked his head past the open back door of the car. She wanted to say something more, but the words wouldn't come past her reluctant tongue. It was the same tongue that had kissed Mulder just the day before, and now she couldn't get it unstuck from the roof of her mouth, where it tasted only gunpowder. "What the fuck is going on?" he shouted and she waited until he reappeared beside her. Sometimes she really wished she still smoked. She desperately wanted something to do with her hands. "What the hell happened?" "I shot him," she said. "That's obvious," he said, watching her cautiously, as if she might be insane. It was possible, she thought, that she was. "Why?" "It was a mercy killing. He was dying, Mulder. When they said 'terminate in forty-eight hours,' they meant it, whether we found him or not. His body was ... collapsing. He told me he'd seen it before and begged me to help him. I couldn't let him suffer like that, so I shot him." Mulder opened his mouth slowly, then closed it again, for once at a loss for words. "He was very brave, Mulder. He told me how much he admired everything you'd done, how strong he thought you were. He was proud of you, in a way, like a brother is for his brother... or a father is for his son." "I... Jesus, Scully, you shot him..." She was no longer frantic about it. She'd had hours to adjust to the burning memory of Mulder's startled eyes as she pulled the trigger. Maybe he hadn't thought she would really do it. She'd only known that she had to do it before he told her Mulder a single word of what he'd told her. "I'm so sorry, Mulder. It was the only thing I could think to do. He wasn't going to live through the night, but he was in terrible pain." Trust me, she thought, watching his face. I'm a doctor. She had an irrational desire to smile. "What are we going to do?" he whispered, still shocked. His aching voice shot straight through her and wiped away her inner smirk. "We'll bury him here," she said firmly, taking charge the way she so often did in their partnership. "Outside, where there are no walls. I think he'd have liked that." Mulder nodded, dumbly, stumbling from her and looking, again, through the open car door. After a moment, he walked away and she heard him throwing up. It didn't seem appropriate to go hold his head, so she stayed where she was. It would be shocking, she knew, to see your own dead face. She certainly felt sick after she'd done it, looking at his familiar dark eyes with a trickle of black blood sliding down between them. He returned, scrubbing his face with his sleeve. For a moment, he simply stood and stared at her. She thought, with only a small desperate pang, that he might hate her. But then he pulled her to him, pushing his face into her hair. "I can't imagine how difficult that was for you," he murmured. "God, Scully, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for everything." Mulder was so open. She marvelled that she'd never seen it before. "I love you, Scully," he was saying, over and over. "I love you." "I know," she whispered, drawing herself up until she could kiss him. "I love you, too. I always have, and I always will." "You are the thing that holds me here," he told her, leaning back until he could cup her dry cheeks in his hand and tip her face up to meet his watery gaze. "You are the one true thing in my life. Now more than ever." She stared back, and watched his face crumple yet again. He was so gentle, he couldn't bare to see her hurt. "And you are my truth," she said, her hands on the warm muscles of his arms. "The only one I have ever known." Then she disentangled herself from his embrace and motioned to the dark fringe of woods the edged the road. "Come on, Mulder" "I can never really be Fox Mulder again," he said with certainty as they walked into the woods together, looking for somewhere to bury the other him. "How will I look in the mirror, Scully? Who will I see?" She stopped in a small clearing, just big enough, really, for a body and two exhausted grave-diggers. "You will see who you are," she said simply. "You will see who I see." He placed one hand on her shoulder. "Who is that?" She smiled and slid his hand down to her heart, pinning it under her own. "Mulder," she said, her voice cracking with joy, though she was sure he would hear it as pain. Joy and pain were so alike, she saw now, coexisting within her - two hearts in one body, "what do you know about sub-atomic particles?" End AUTHOR'S NOTES: I started this puppy over a year ago. It lay around, whining pathetically, until yesterday, when I decided I might as well finish it. This is has led me to two conclusions: 1. I used to like a show called "The X-Files." 2. Apparently, I don't like it very much anymore. Email me and explain to me that I'm wrong. Tell me it's all about the lurve.