Title:         A Moral Act
Author:        dtg
Email:         dgoggans@earthlink.net
Website:       http://home.earthlink.net/~dgoggans/
Rating:        PG
Keywords:      missing scene
Spoiler:       Gethsemane
Archive:       After the Fact, Ephemeral. Anywhere
               else, please contact me first.
Disclaimer:    The characters belong to 1013, Fox and
               Chris Carter. No copyright 
               infringement is intended.
Summary:       A thousand rationalizations couldn't 
               dim the horror of having done this to 
               him.     
Author's Notes:This missing scene from Gethsemane was
               written for the After the Fact post ep
               challenge list. Thanks to my beta
               sisters Michelle, Vickie and Sally.

~~~~~~~~~~

       "Belief is a moral act for which the 
        believer must be held responsible."  
         -- H. A. Hodges

~~~~~~~~~~


*Mulder, the only lie here is the one that you 
continue to believe.*

*He said that the men behind this hoax...behind these 
lies...gave me this disease to make you believe.*

Two statements spoken in angry desperation to make 
him see how hopelessly deluded he had become, how 
much danger he would put both of them in if he 
continued on this path. 

She knew her words would hurt him. Four years spent 
forming a bond so close that their very thoughts 
seemed to jump the space between them as if spoken 
aloud had given her that knowledge. She could pierce 
his heart with a look, just as she knew he could do 
with her.

It was one of the uncountable differences between 
them that he had never intentionally done so, and she 
knew he never would. 

She spoke the words quickly, hating the bitter taste 
they left behind, but believing they were her last 
chance to get through to him. She was hurting him to 
help them both. Inflicting a little pain now was 
vastly preferable to watching him slowly destroy 
himself, as he would surely do if she kept silent. 
She was going to die soon, and there would be no one 
to keep him safe. She had to make him see, before it 
was too late.

But then she saw the pain in his eyes, and realized 
that a thousand rationalizations couldn't dim the 
horror of having done this to him. It was as if she'd 
reached inside and ripped away everything that was 
holding him together.

He turned away from her, but not before the grief in 
his eyes scalded her with shame. 

She stood motionless for a long time after his car 
had pulled away, tires screaming against pavement in 
his haste to put physical distance between them to 
match the emotional gulf she'd just created.

Suddenly, it was as if she could see herself though 
his eyes, could hear her own words hurled at his 
heart like daggers, and the enormity of what she had 
done made her physically ill. She reached blindly for 
a hand hold to keep herself upright while she 
breathed against the nausea. 

He was lost to her now, as she soon would be to him. 
As irrevocable as death, but made all the more 
horrible by the knowledge that it was by her own 
hand. A suicide of the soul. 

~~~~~

The flickering images of the muted video sent his own 
shadow dancing over the wall behind him, waxing and 
waning with the changing scenes. He didn't need to 
hear the words again, they mocked him from memory. 
The echoes of those voices multiplied in his mind 
into a shrieking condemnation of a wasted life.

He knew what he was doing, knew full well that it 
could only make the pain more intense, and he 
welcomed each wrenching wave of it with open arms. No 
amount of suffering would ever be fair retribution 
for what he'd done to her.

She had tried so many times to make him see. At their 
first meeting, she'd countered his smug challenge 
with such innocent sincerity-- and he'd blown her 
off. He'd been a fool, so certain that only *he* 
understood, so confident that everyone else was 
wrong. It was a pattern he'd clung to for four years, 
and now it had ended two lives: hers, in a few short 
months... his, tonight.

In a final act of cowardice, he would now leave her 
to face the consequences of his betrayal alone. He 
had no illusions that he could have offered her any 
comfort, but he owed her the satisfaction of leaving 
him behind to face his empty life. And now he was 
denying her even that.

His fingers curled around the weapon, its familiar 
weight taunting him with a long-buried memory. He was 
standing on the firing range for the first time, 
hands shaking with the adrenaline rush. The weapon 
clutched in his hands was as much a symbol of power 
as the badge that came with it. The power to do good, 
to right the wrongs, defend the innocent. Had anyone 
been here to see him now, they might have wondered at 
the bitter smile he wore. The only wrong he would 
ever be able to make right was to erase his miserable 
existence from the planet. 

If his death could reverse the tragedies his life had 
caused, he would gladly die a thousand times. 

He swiped impatiently at the tears, refusing to allow 
himself the meager release they offered, as he raised 
the muzzle to his head. 

"I'm so sorry, Scully," he whispered as his finger 
tightened against the trigger--

-- when the ringing phone clanged along his raw 
nerves, jerking the gun away from his temple with the 
violence of reflex. He stared, counting the rings, 
and felt the shame of relief. 

Another few moments of life, deserved or not, were 
his. 

~~~~~~~
 
The End