Title: Mourning

Author: Tasha - tasha@thetruth.de

Disclaimer: The X-Files in its glorious entirety belong to Chris Carter. 

Category: V, Doggett POV, post-ep Existence

Keywords: Character death 

Rating: PG-13

Spoiler: S8 including Existence

Summary: The past haunts all those who have 
survived.  

Archive: Ephemeral, Gossamer, SHODDS (and all 
related), XFMU. Others please ask. 

Feedback: Makes my day. Flames have the tendency to 
prove to me that I'm right about writing D-Fic. 

Author's Notes: My muse obviously was in a strangely 
melancholic mood that day. So be warned, this isn't 
too happy.

Once again, this goes to all the SHODDS out there. 
Ladies, you rock.


    
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He had gotten used to her cold glance over the years. 
Somehow, he was even comforted by the soft animosity 
in her eyes which only politeness and consideration 
seemed to conceal at times.  

He had never expected her to forgive him. When he pulled 
the trigger that day, he knew very well that he not only 
would kill a man, but that he would also lose a friend. 
A friend that was so much more than a friend. 

But that day, he'd lost everything that might have evolved 
from this friendship. Everything he might have wished for.

What he didn't know then was that she was to become his 
worst enemy.

The loud explosion, the muffled sound of a body falling 
to a wooden floor, her painful cries and his victim's 
silent death struggle had blurred to the familiar hum he 
always heard in her voice when she spoke to him in that 
low, hostile whisper.

Like she did now.

Over the years, there had been times when he wished he 
could tell her, explain everything to her, make her 
understand. She wouldn't listen, of course. Not any more.
Certainly not to him, but neither to Skinner nor Monica. 
When it came to the events of that day six years ago, she 
wouldn't listen to anyone, it seemed. 

But she would talk.

Every year on that same day she came to him, sat down 
on the dark wooden chair while he would sit on the bench, 
next to the stiff and scratchy grey blanket that kept him 
warm at night, silently facing her. Every year, she would 
not allow herself to take her eyes off his face while she 
spoke to him in that same low, hostile whisper. She told 
him what happened that day as if he didn't know, as if he 
hadn't been there. 


As if he hadn't been the man who had pulled the trigger. 


Every year, he saw the hatred glistening in her eyes when 
she looked at him. And just as the very year before, he sat 
still and listened to her story again. 


"... We had left Washington, D.C. the week before, and we 
were staying near his mother's old house. He'd sold it 
after her death, but he said he wanted to see it one last 
time... That night, a strange hollow sound woke me, and 
when I looked for him he was gone. And the baby was gone, 
too."


Here she stopped, as always. He didn't say a word. As 
always. He knew she'd go on soon enough. She'd never tell 
the story without its ending.


"I somehow... felt the light before I saw it. I heard a 
strange sound and the next thing I remember..."

Struggling with the emotions, she stopped again.

The first time she had told him her story, he had jumped 
to his feet at this part, rushed to her to console her 
as he saw her tears and heard her sobbing, had asked her 
to stop. Now he knew better. He didn't stir, he didn't ask, 
he didn't offer consolation, but he listened to her, 
already knowing the words she was about to utter by heart.


"The next thing I remember was A.D. Skinner's voice. I 
saw you - " The cold glance made him shiver, just as 
it did every year. " - standing near the door. You left 
without a word."


He still regretted not having told her what he had known 
then. He probably should have told her that Mulder had 
killed the baby in the woods. He should have told her that 
he had found William, and that to this day his mind refused 
to remember what the tiny body had looked like when he'd 
found it, refused to imagine how the child must have suffered. 
He should have told her that Mulder came at him, covered in the 
baby's and his own blood. He should have told her that Mulder 
had transformed into something he had forbidden himself to
believe in. She would have listened. The virus had still been 
there. Her treatment had only belated its effects on Mulder. 
No one knew at that time, but when he had found Knowle Rohrer's 
disfigured body shortly after Krycek's death, there had been 
no doubt.

"We'll have to tell her, sir," he had pleaded with Skinner. 
"We have to get ahold of her."

"If you tell her that she's lost him forever now, you'll kill 
her," he had replied cooly. "She will blame herself for what's 
happened. The treatment was her idea. There's no saying what 
might happen to her."

At this moment, he knew he would never tell her. He couldn't. 
The only thing left to do was to protect her from what Mulder 
had become. And to hope that she wouldn't hate him for doing 
so.

He had fooled himself. 

But some things count more than one's own life. 



"You... you just stood there when he came through the door. He 
was... he was bleeding so bad. He didn't say a word, but when 
he saw you pointing the gun at him..."

You didn't see the look in his eyes, he thought. Dana, you never
knew it wasn't Mulder anymore. You didn't know what had happened,
his mind shouted. But he didn't say a word. And so she went on.

"...he came right at you. Before he could say anything - "

How could he have said anything? Mulder had spoken his last words
long before that night, John Doggett thought.

But he was quiet.

" - you shot him. In the face." The coldness of her words still
made him shiver, after all these years. 

Blood everywhere. Mulder silently was sinking to his knees, never
taking his eyes off the man who had become his fate. Slowly, 
controlled, John had lowered his gun. 

"You killed him. He didn't have a single chance," she said, her 
voice cold with hatred. And she was as wrong as never before in 
her life. 


She was eyeing him attentively now. The air between them seemed 
to get thinner, colder, with every passing second. The oxygen 
in the cell seemed to turn into a toxic, crawling into his lungs 
and choking him. All these years, he had not said a word, had let 
her look at him, had sustained her gaze that told him how much 
she wanted to kill him. But she had always let him live to the 
next year, knowing with the certainty of a woman driven by her 
hatred that this was the way to kill him more slowly and more 
painfully than any weapon ever could: By showing him how much she 
hated him for what he had done.

All these years, he had died a little more while listening to her, 
sitting 
on the bench, next to his grey blanket, watching her hating him. 

And this year, he broke the silence and her hateful gaze with his
words.

"It wasn't him anymore, Dana. I didn't kill Mulder - he was dead
long before I even pulled that trigger."

A hissing sound escaped her throat. 

"Before I came to the house, I found the baby in the woods. I 
found William."

Now she was listening to his story, to the truth she had been living
without for all these years. He told her everthing. And as she 
listened, tears softened her eyes' cold stare and reminded him of 
past times. 

Tears are memories that come back to life, his grandmother had 
always told him. 

His memories had been tearful once, too. Now he had no tears left, 
just the truth to tell.

Patiently, silently she waited until he had finished. In vain he 
searched
for an understanding in her eyes. 

And as silently as she had come, she left again.

He listened into the silence for a while after her steps had ceased 
and then nodded slowly. She hadn't even let him say good-bye.  

She had taken his memories with her. And she'd left the tears.




A week later, former United States Marine and FBI agent John Jay 
Doggett, aged 50, sentenced to death for killing a former colleague 
seven years ago, was executed at 6.00 a.m. on a Saturday.



  * * * * * * * * * *


 - The End -