Walk This Earth Alone
By Anna Otto
Email: annaotto1@aol.com

http://www.geocities.com/annaotto.geo/index.html

Rating: PG-13
Category: VA
Spoilers: Biogenesis
Disclaimer: Not mine
Summary: Want to know how to destroy someone's content life 
without lifting a finger?


Everyone I meet lately has a hidden agenda. I suppose that's one 
of the perks of my job - it's never boring. Others may find 
satisfaction from dressing into poorly sewn suits, shaking hands 
with the management, and sitting all day long, shuffling papers 
around or punching numbers into computers. Their lives may be 
safe, and their consciences may be clean, but ask any one of 
them and they will tell you that they will never be content. Not 
as long as they live on this godforsaken planet. Not as long as 
they stare at the walls surrounding them.

My life is a carefully created network of enemies kept in check 
and colleagues who owe me favors. It's not always easy to deal 
with them, but I draw comfort from the familiarity of danger. 
My few short-lived affairs - one-night stands, as I should call 
them in all honesty, are based on mutual but temporary need. 
They disappear into oblivion the morning after, and we're even. 
In a way, it's an easy life - and I've never known any other 
options, nor will I ever come by them in the future. 

I'm content in my choices. I'm content even though my arm is 
missing, my friends are absent, and my name is beaten into dirt - 
in certain circles. I cannot change the past, and I accepted that I 
must live with its consequences.

When my feet halt beside a fallen form of my former partner, 
they do so of their own volition. I need to keep going - I have a 
meeting to attend, and a new friend to make, and I have no time 
for someone who never needed anything from me. Fox Mulder, 
an unnamable quantity, an exasperating, ever-changing man who 
can so carelessly destroy my peace of mind, without even 
opening his eyes to acknowledge my presence.

I try to make a step. A few inches off the ground, one stair in a 
small staircase, it shouldn't be that hard. 

I haven't seen him in a year. Hey, ex-partner, how has it been? 
Are you surprised that I know something about the reason why 
you're spilt on the floor? Do you know how little I should care 
that you're in pain? 

I don't, you know. I don't care, even though right now all you are 
is agony personified. I can step on you - accidentally - and you 
probably won't even notice. It could make us even, Mulder, for 
all the times you've beaten the crap out of me. You are very 
quick with your hands for such a supposedly peaceful creature.

I walk over him, instead, as a man either too careful or too 
cowardly to take the necessary step. He is not my problem.

My lines slip off my tongue with the ease of a professional killer 
and actor. The package I carry changes owners, and my mission 
is accomplished. The good professor leaves the scene of the 
crime, and I should follow in his footsteps and clear the area, but 
instead I step closer to the edge of the roof and breathe in the 
chilly evening air. I wonder if people moving below have content
lives.

You should go, a voice that could shock me even out of amnesia 
mocks me. You have no reason to stay.

I wonder if Mulder knows how much I hate hearing him in my 
head. If Scully has the same problem, I honestly pity her. I wish 
I could tell him to shut up, but I tried it before and it never 
worked. Yes, I reply tiredly, I know that I should be leaving. 
Maybe I like it here.

Alone, on the roof, in the cold dark night. I can see your point.

If so, go away, I tell him. I haven't invited you here.

No, Mulder replies. You just left me to squirm on the staircase. 

I've followed you to the Gulag. I've tried to help you numerous 
times, against my better judgment. I've almost lost my life for 
you, for a dubiously comforting knowledge that you might walk 
this world and occasionally direct your gun at my head when our 
paths cross. 

Weren't you just telling me that you don't care? 

Such an insidious insult in his voice. I *don't* care, Mulder, not 
anymore.

Then why don't you come back and step over me another time?

I run downstairs. Do you know what will and strength it took to 
not think about you, Mulder? A year, an entire year of content 
life, during which your voice almost faded away, and you were 
not in my dreams, in my water, in my drugs. Do you know how 
much I hate you for slithering back?

Do you know how little I still care, Mulder?

I stand, looking down at the cause of my headache. Maybe our 
pains match, ex-partner. Why aren't you replying now?

His eyes open, and I wait for an old candle of hatred, of 
recognition. Come on, it's me, your enemy. You remember me, 
don't you? 

I wait in vain.

And then I crush down on my knees next to him, and search his 
pockets for a cell phone. Number one, send. Scully, where the 
hell are you today? Number two, and Skinner will ask too many 
questions. Number three, what does the mystery door hold for 
me? Diana Fowley, and I have no time to wonder about his 
phone preferences - just give her the coordinates and the brief 
update on the situation. She seems to understand, she knows the 
clock and dagger routine. If she doesn't come by to pick him up, 
I will find her and hurt her. 

On the other hand, she might enjoy that too much.

Why am I still talking to you like you can hear me, Mulder? Old 
habits are so easily resurrected. 

And every content life is a lie.

I would embrace you, just to make sure that you're still
breathing, but it would be a lie too. I want you to 
remember me, the true me, every blow and every insult. I want 
your days to be as haunted as mine are.

I want you to be the one to say: "I don't care." What would it
take, Mulder?

What would it take?

I leave him behind, and walk out alone. The doors swing open, 
and I hear his voice in the gust of wind that gets caught between 
the glass panes. The street lamps flicker and alter the shadows so 
that his silhouette is painted on the ground before me. And if any 
one of the dark-haired men walking in front of me turns around, 
I'm convinced that I will see his face, contorted into a grimace of 
unbearable torment. 

This world bears his presence. If I were blind and deaf, I would
probably still stumble across him in a lightless void.

But I don't care anymore, Mulder. I haven't stayed, and I haven't 
personally dragged you into a hospital. I haven't betrayed my 
presence. Maybe I've won.

And every day, as I have for the past year, I'm walking away from 
you, from the past that never had a future.

I walk this earth alone.

The End.


But I walk this earth alone,
And all I've ever known
Is you're right beside me.
If I love you for a day, 
Then blow my life away,
Can I leave you behind me?

Lauren Christy, "Walk This Earth Alone"


Author's Notes: Another addition to the pool of post-Biogenesis 
exercises, simply because I had to absolve Krycek of his sins of
omission. Thanks go to Ash for inspiration, and Rachel and Leigh
for beta-reading.