DISCLAIMER: I'm using stuff Chris Carter copyrighted, but what he doesn't know can't hurt him. Most of the characters here are mine, and those that aren't mine or Carter's belong to ancient Greek mythology, which can't be copyrighted anyway. So there. I'm just using them all for my own evil purposes... and yes, there is a method to my madness. Now, without further ado... ------------------------------------------------ TITLE: "La Forza del Destino" - Epilogue AUTHOR: Gillian W., better known as XGillian@aol.com RATING: PG-13 CLASSIFICATION: XA SPOILERS: Just about every episode, from the pilot on FEEDBACK: Please! Do not archive without permission. SUMMARY: Written 10/96-8/97. Mulder and Scully investigate deaths connected with small colleges in Virginia and New Jersey. ------------------------------------------------ "Death closes all: but something ere the end Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods." - Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses" October 16, 1998 12:01 pm >From the somber gray sky fell a thin misty rain that splattered the dark umbrellas and overcoats surrounding the new grave. The grass sparkled with tiny waterdrops, and the soil was damp with the rain. The crowd around the grave could hardly be considered a crowd: the former boss, the best friend's mother, a short man with glasses and wild gray hair, and a man smoking a cigarette. Cancerman could tell that Maggie Scully was fighting tears, and quite valiantly so. She had squared her shoulders against the clammy wind, and she attempted to look straight ahead, impassively. Their eyes met for an instant, and each turned away >from the other. There had been quite a bit of controversy surrounding the funeral of Fox William Mulder. By strict tradition he should have been buried in the Mulder family plot, next to the man and woman who had raised him and betrayed each other. Maggie Scully had realized that Fox would not have wanted to be laid to rest in the same soil that held Bill Mulder, yet she was not especially eager to give him the space next to Dana. After much thought and discussion, she had finally acquiesced. As inseparable as Fox and Dana had been in life, so would they be in death. She had taken it upon herself to arrange the funeral. She had forgiven him his moment of irresponsibility. No verse from John was etched in the stone marked FOX WILLIAM MULDER. The decision concerning the epitaph had been neither easy nor hard. Maggie Scully would have preferred a Bible verse, but she knew that Fox would never approve. She dared not choose anything directly related to his search for Truth; yet his quest had been the center of his life, and so it deserved some place in the ages. In the end she had opted for the obvious, the obvious that hides in plain sight. Under the dates that marked the endpoints of Fox Mulder's brief life, it read in exactly-carved letters, "The Truth is the Spirit." It fit perfectly, as had Fox and Dana in life. Directly between the two stones sat a little marker on which was engraved a bit of Latin. Maggie Scully had found it scribbled hastily on a piece of paper in Fox's apartment. His idea of a suicide note, she supposed. That and her daughter's name, drawn shakily on a poster beneath the city streets. With what little she remembered >from high-school Latin, she had figured out what Fox had written, and she had thought it fitting as well. Relinquunt omnia servare rem publicam. They relinquish all to serve the State. Relinquunt omnia servare rem publicam, she thought. Requiescat in pace. Skinner regarded the small stone inscribed in Latin. How true were those words. He supposed that for Mulder and Scully, it might have been more accurate to say "They relinquish all to find the Truth." How one said that in Latin, he had no idea. He, too, had relinquished all. His dignity belonged to a group of chain-smokers in New York City. For Mulder and Scully he had taken a bullet, and in his midsection was a scar that would forever bear mute testimony to his involvement in Mulder's search. For an instant he thought he felt a twinge in his side, but it was gone before he could decide whether it was a product of his imagination. They had been the finest agents he'd ever known. And the Bureau as a whole couldn't have treated them any worse. Relinquunt omnia servare rem publicam. Cancerman could not help thinking that although Mulder's parents already belonged to the ages, another mother and father were burying him. Mulder, it seemed, had been more comfortable turning to Maggie Scully for guidance than to his own mother. And, though Mulder had not been close to Bill for over twenty years, he had not been any closer to this lonely smoker. True, Cancerman had taken more interest in Mulder than Bill ever had. And what had he been to Mulder but a dark father, a sort of real-life Darth Vader? Waiting for Mulder to come over to the Dark Side and find his Truth there? But Bill Mulder, too, had been this dark father, having laid the groundwork for the undermining of his son's efforts. The sins of the fathers are visited on the children. He, like the hapless informant who'd set Mulder on the Onassis case, had no identity. His name was long ago forgotten, as was his past. He envied those who had a name, who had a past. Who would receive a proper burial upon their deaths. He shuddered to think how the Consortium would deal with his impending death. For, as Jeremiah Smith had informed him, he was dying of lung cancer. Like Mulder and Scully, he had thrown away his life for the sake of the Truth. Relinquunt omnia servare rem publicam. And in the distance the bells chimed the half hour. FIN.