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TUNGUSKA MEDITATIONS
by - Joyce
December 1996
DISCLAIMER: Mulder, Scully, and Krycek belong to CC and Fox Broadcasting. I'm only borrowing them for a moment and will return them. No infringement is intended.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Thanks to all the kind people who wrote complimenting my first piece. If this is any good you can all pat yourselves on the back for giving me the courage to try again, if it doesn't measure up, the blame is entirely my own. I do want to say thank-you to Kathleen Lietz who graciously read this and offered suggestions.
FEEDBACK: mab49@earthlink.net
SUMMARY: Mulder recalls how he ended up in a Russian cell and wonders if he has a future..
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Through me you pass into the woeful city,
Through me you pass into eternal pain,
Through me you pass among a people lost.
Leave all hope behind, you who enter here.
Dante: _Inferno_ III
It is the stench I notice first as I awaken, my face pressed against stones impregnated with despair and filth. Pain echoes from the walls. My own aches, the whip scores burned into my forehead and back, are just a drop in the ocean of pain that fills this cell. I am alone with my pain, my fear; by design perhaps. The Russians are masters of the chess games of the mind.
Disjointed fragments of memory surface to torment me. Huntsmen effortlessly running me to earth, men, gray and colorless as the mud they toil in rip open the earth leaving behind yawning graves, whips cracking like lightning bolts hurled by an angry god strike me down and cast me into this place of silent damnation to lie at the gates of Hell.
At last, the memories coalesce. Realizing where I am, I can only pray that this cell is not a tomb where I will lie forgotten until my bones melt into the stones. Carelessly I have launched myself into the darkness, heedless of consequences, arrogant in my presumption of security. Now I stand before the gaping maw of Hell and begin to know true fear. The cold here strikes not only my body, but my soul as well. My bones shake with the encrusted terror seeping from the very stones in the wall. I am surrounded by death and despair yet I will not surrender to their siren songs. Anger will hold back the harpies of despair for a little while, until I find a way out; I've always found a way out, I whisper to the stones. They remain silent as gravestones. I am alone with my fear and the silent, waiting stones of my cell.
A voice, persistent, annoying calls to me from the wall, demanding an answer in a language I cannot speak. In anger and frustration I yell back my helplessness. I am helpless in body, a prisoner in a dark place where my life is valueless, and in mind, unable to communicate even my pleas for compassion. Krycek was my tongue and he is gone. Transformed in this instant from a hated enemy used for my purposes, to a desperately needed ally. I still hate, but that hate is being overridden by the need to speak with someone who can understand me. The stones watch as I am driven to acknowledge my helplessness.
The voice pauses, startled by my outburst, then resumes, quieter, softer in English. Maybe there is a God after all, though this might be one more torture crafted by my captors. I cannot trust even happenstance. What are the odds that in a gulag in the back of beyond in Russia, that I should be stuffed in a cell next to a prisoner who speaks English? But the need to communicate, to touch another soul, is stronger than my distrust. I am lost without a guide to lead me past the monsters of despair and loneliness that lurk here in this shadow world.
The voice from the other cell, illuminated by eyes stark with madness tells me that we are in the place of the walking dead. Despair is the only thing he offers. I am in a place of torment where the guilty rule the innocent. Surely I have not come so far, come so close to the truth which would vindicate my quest, to sink among the gray men, faceless shadows sucked dry of hope. I will not, cannot believe that this cell is my destiny; yet the voice chills all hope. Its litany of despair clings to my soul, sapping the strength of my beliefs like a succubus. Angrily I fight back against the creeping hopelessness the voice has sown within my heart. More mind games I think contemptuously, another assault on my belief that there is the possibility of release. I defy the stones which have sealed me off from the world of the living. I will be free, I cast back at them in our silent debate, but now this affirmation has begun to take on a desperate tone as if I am assuring myself more than the stones of my tomb.
Hope does return, briefly, when Krycek is returned to me. Irrationally I resent the fact that he bears no marks of the whip. He speaks of torture and spies and I wonder again if I will ever taste freedom again. More lies, I assure myself, desperate to deny that I have finally passed beyond all hope of freedom. He is my enemy still, but now our roles are reversed. I am the one dependent upon his mercy and he is quick to remind me of my place; not with a beating like I gave him, but with curt words that cut like an overseer's whip. Later, I stand helpless as he speaks with our guard and then leaves with him. Krycek's words of reassurance ring cold in my ears. I am alone again.
As if born out of my loneliness, the voice returns. It speaks of my fate; work until the body fails, then death through some obscene experiment. Finally it utters my doom. Destroyer of hope, a vulture of despair, yet it rings as true as prophecy. Krycek has betrayed me. Fear grows within me as I glimpse my doom. It doesn't really matter if Krycek was my betrayer or Marita or even Cancer Man, I have been a fool and even God's own Fool must pay the price in this game I play. I am lost among a strange people who will not even understand my final words; be they of courage or terror, it will make no difference. I shudder as I feel the shadows gather like ravens to gnaw at my soul while the laughter of my enemies surrounds me.
In this ante-room to Hell, in this instant before annihilation, I must face the grim knowledge that my obsession with the truth has led me into this dark place. I claim to trust no one, yet in my arrogance I placed my life in the hands of my enemy believing I was in control. My pride was like a ravening lion, with my soul, my future its prey. I heard its roar in the slam of the cell door. My betrayer merely assisted me in my determined rush towards annihilation. As was always planned, no doubt, I would build my own gallows and weave the rope that will hang me. This betrayal has merely settled the where and the when, my mind, however, recoils from the how.
Standing here on the edge of the abyss, I ponder the shadows that reach out to claim me. I was born into darkness the night Samantha was taken by the light. Rage against that light fueled my obsession; my desperate faith that my sister can be restored to me to slay the black violence that seethes within my heart. I used that rage to stalk the minds of killers, those like me who rage against the light, but unlike me, act upon that rage. I hide my violence behind a smooth facade, carefully controlled until it boils out of me to smash against anyone in my path. Not yet a murderer, but only by some restraint of honor, not by any lack of will.
So many deaths to my name. Like Luther Boggs, I hear them whispering to one another, their dry bones rustling as they gather to welcome me into their midst. So many ghosts; sacrifices on my altar of truth, surrogates for me. They lurk in the looming shadows; casualties of my war with those who stole my sister and murdered the man I would have been. They are my accusers, my judges. I press against the stone wall, huddled against them, unable to use my anger to lash out, to threaten them as they drive me into madness. I am in the domain of ghosts, those already dead and those of us on the threshold of their world. The stones drink in my despair as I am joined with all the lost souls who journeyed through this gate before me.
As I struggle to comprehend my own fate, I think of Scully. A hasty message on her answering machine telling her of my plans must now stand as my final words to her. So much left unsaid between us may now never be voiced, but if the God who remains silent as I wait for my destruction is kind, then she will already know in full the words I never spoke. But I fear that Scully may be facing her own Gethsemane because of me, because her loyalty to me may override prudence. She has lied for me in the past and we came through the shadows into the light vindicating her faith, but now the shadows are too strong and they engulf us. Mine will be a private death, hidden in darkness, but for her, a tool that failed them, they may exact a public vengeance. I fear that they will crucify her on the cross of her refusal to betray me.
"Please, Scully, abandon me and save yourself. I am already lost. Please, dear God, don't add her to my list of victims," I whisper to the cold uncaring stones that must have heard so many pleas uttered in despair as great as mine. Silence answers me. I would willingly die a thousand deaths at the hands of Cancer Man and his ilk to save her from a moment of trial, but I am helpless.
The locks on my cell slam open. I have only time to catch a fleeting glance of the man in the dark coat but it is enough to inflame my fear. I will not go gently into their labs. Despair forgotten, I surge against the helplessness the stones have sung into my soul. Guards burst in and thrust me resisting to the floor. Spread-eagled, I buck against the needle jabbed into my back. As I sink under the dark waves, I pray for the strength to face the truth that waits for me and the courage to be worthy of Scully's trust. Hell's gates open to receive me as I enter into Gehenna.
THE END
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Post-Episode Stories | Stand-Alone Stories | Ghost Series | Wall Series | Absalom Series
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