Mulder's Tale (1/1)

by Madeleine Partous
email: partous@vir.com

Hi. The lovely comments I received about A Hacker's Tale have
spurred me on to experiment further.

Writing in first person raises the question of how the other
characters involved interpret the same events. So this is
Hacker's Tale from Mulder's point of view. You should read
Hacker's Tale first if you haven't -- I can send it to you -- and
then this one before reading "Scully's Tale".

(Note: I've started indenting paragraphs because Stef's
formatting makes it hard to tell where paragraphs begin. God
bless you for doing this, Stef; I hope the indents help.)

MSR. Rated R.

************************************************************
DISCLAIMER: Characters and concepts herein are the
property of Fox and Chris Carter and have been lovingly
borrowed for entertainment purposes only.
************************************************************


     Hey.

     I thought I'd drop you a line because I happened to
"stumble" across the e-mail Frohike sent you about his little
ploy to get you-know-who.

     Quite frankly, I can't believe he wrote you guys about
it. It's stupid and dangerous: you can never tell who reads
these things.

     Frohike thinks I'm a total moron when it comes to
computers, but that's because I let him believe it; it makes him
feel better. The poor bastard has so few things to make him
happy. But meanwhile, anyone with a homemade e-mail stealth
program can get a hold of almost anything, right?

     You know that. Hell, even I know that.

     I was a lonely guy with a lot of downtime on his hands.
How do you think I found out what he was up to in the first
place?

     So I'm writing because as long as the proverbial cat is
out of the bag, my male ego needs to set the record straight
here. Jesus. Frohike made me look like a complete asshole,
some kind of medieval cuckold who can't see what's going on
right under his nose.

     You've seen my nose. It's hard to miss. It's always right
there in front of my face.

     But don't get me wrong here. I love the guy. And I
know how much he cares about me. In fact, I was quite touched by
the note he sent you. Parts of it, anyway. Frohike's saved my
ass more times than I care to think about and I've never had a
chance to repay the debt, not even once. One day, though, I
will. One day, I'll do something that'll change his life. I swear
it. Because to add insult to his injury, I let him do all the dirty
work, as he said, and then I snatched her away.

     That much is true.

     I feel a little guilty about it.

     Just a little.

     Well, very little, to tell you the truth.

     Hey. He's the one who keeps calling me a son of a bitch,
right? Wouldn't want to disappoint him.

     So. Here's what really happened.

     I've always known Frohike had the hots for her. He's
never been subtle about it. And it never bothered me much,
even though he really is a dirty-minded little troll, you know.
Wouldn't trust him with my sister. Mind you, I probably wouldn't
trust anyone with my sister at this point.

     And then there's the pathos of the thing, because quite
honestly I didn't think even Clark Gable would stand a chance
with that woman. She'd just give him the cold blue eye and
say, tersely, "Frankly, Clark, I don't give a damn," that sort
of thing. God. Scarlett's about as dangerous as Minnie Mouse
next to her.

     I really wondered sometimes if she wasn't a lesbian -- a
titillating concept, I'll grant you, if a frustrating one, at least
for me -- except that she seemed to like women even less than
she liked men.

     Or at least she didn't seem to like any of the women I
liked.

     Okay, this isn't altogether fair. It's not so much that
she doesn't like people. She's great with kids, did you know
that? Much better than I am. Kids make me nervous. I think
it's because I still remember how they think. They hate adults,
you know. Loathe them. I know I did. When you're a grownup,
if you're sensitive to it, you can feel the contempt they have
for you. And the thing is, they're right. They're really right
not to trust us.

     The thing is most people don't get her. Most people
don't even deserve to get her. She just doesn't suffer fools
gladly, that's all there is to it. She can be polite, but it's a
strain. The thing is, she lies really badly. Her face gives
everything away and she knows it. We've talked about it. So
what she does is avoid situations where she has to make nice.
And more often than not, that means avoiding people.

     Being a brilliant woman isn't easy. Being brilliant and
looking like she does is worse. She's so gorgeous that a lot of
men treat her like crap. They treat her like a bimbo sometimes,
drooling all over her. It makes me sick. It really does.

     It took me a long time to realize it also makes me jealous
as hell.

     She's put up with so many sexist remarks. She just
closes down, gets that look on her face, the one that says
nothing at all, as if she's not even there anymore. What's
wrong with men anyway, huh? What the hell is the matter with
us?

     But she's paradoxical about it too. She's strong, strong
as hell, stronger by far than I am, as I'm sure you're already
thinking, but she's a woman all the way. For one thing, she's
often said she loves me because I'm gallant. Can you believe
that? Just because I open doors for her and walk on the street
side of the curb. I was raised that way -- there's no real
mystery to it. And besides, I really like women. A lot. An
intelligent, beautiful woman? Pinch me. I'm in heaven.

     This is what she said to me once:

     "You know, Mulder, you're the only guy I've ever met
who manages to be both completely non-sexist and a
gentleman."

     That's what she said.

     Sweet, huh? I'm not sure it's entirely true, but it's
sweet.

     I can hear you guffawing from here, but just remember:
*I'm* the one she's with.

     Heheheh.

     The thing is, I'm sexist as hell, but it's men I don't like
a whole lot. Sorry. Nothing personal. I like you guys. To a
point.

     Anyway. I knew Frohike had something up his sleeve
just from the way he kept looking at me. He's so sneaky,
sneaky old Frohike.

     And then there's the fact that he kept telling me to go
for it with her, you know? Why would he do that? He'd tell me
to go for it and then he'd just sit there and peer at me like a
mole.

     Like he was waiting to gage my reaction.

     So of course I gave him the standard schpiel about how
we're partners and we don't feel that way about each other,
blah blah blah.

     What I was really saying was that we're partners and I
had no idea how she felt about me.

     Because, boychiks, I knew damn well how I felt about
her.

     Christ. I've known it for years. And it didn't matter
how horny I got: I couldn't get away from it. From her. She
haunted me. I know, I know -- it's a cliche, but what can I tell
you? It's God's own truth.

     I'd meet women sometimes, I'd sleep with women
sometimes. I'd pay to sleep with women sometimes. But she was
always there, hovering in the background, a living ghost, the
only one I wanted. The only one I trust.

     Always.

     Since almost the first day.

     Actually, it wasn't quite the first day, but it was
definitely on the first case. You remember? I told you about it.
And I know what you're thinking, you perverts. It wasn't the
underwear. I barely noticed her underwear, you know that? I
was too dazzled by the fact that she trusted me this much this
fast to notice much of anything at all except her trepidation,
her guilelessness, her vulnerability, her sudden
acknowledgment that there might be something in my wacked-
out hypothesis after all.

     Well, okay: I noticed her underwear a little. I noticed
her skin. Her hips. Her waist. How firm her buttocks were
under my hand. But it doesn't matter. That's not even when it
happened. Not even later when we talked and for some reason I
told her everything about me.

     I'd never told a soul everything about me. But there was
something about her, even though I really did believe she was
sent to spy on me -- and she was, too; she never denied it --
that just made me want to spill my guts. It was uncanny. It
was a fucking X-File.

     As it turned out, she never did spy on me. From her point
of view, she never intended to. She'd always planned to give
them her version of the truth, and she never gave a damn
about how they'd take it. Never. They just never understood
her integrity. They miscalculated; strangely enough, they
often do.

     That day, those motherfuckers gave me my greatest
ally. It makes me want to scream with laughter. What were they
thinking?

     It didn't happen then. It happened a little later when we
stood in the cemetery in the goddam rain for an hour and yes,
we were fully clothed, soaked to the skin, and yes, suddenly I
realized I was completely in love with her, and it happened when
she started laughing her head off because she suddenly realized
that as ridiculous as it sounded, maybe I was right about the
boy walking even though he'd been in a coma for years and
maybe I was right about the forest summoning that girl and
maybe I was even right about the alien abductions themselves.

     It blew her mind. Because as crazy as it sounded, it was
the only explanation that made any sense.

     And that's when I realized what kind of mind she had.
That despite her scepticism, her mind was so pure, so
devastatingly scientific, that she couldn't dismiss even
something as absurd as this was on the surface because it was
the only theory we had going that worked.

     God. Do you have any idea what that did to me? She
cackled her head off in the rain because her mind opened all at
once, just like that, like a flower. She was like an innocent
little kid asking what rainbows are made of and then laughing
with delight when you tell her, against all logic, that it's made
up of rock candy...

     I knew right then and there she was the only one I
wanted.

     She was the only one I'd ever need.

     My soulmate. The one for me. That kind of shit.

     And I couldn't have her. I couldn't. I just couldn't
bring myself to ask her. You know. Partners. We were
partners. I believe in platonic friendships with women. I've
had tons of them. They exist -- I'll vouch for them.

     This just wasn't one of them.

     But it was too complicated. And besides, she never
showed any indication...

     Well. Now I realize maybe she did.

     But at the time I swallowed it down.  My love for her. My
desire for her. My devotion to her. I'd have done anything for
her. I'd've died for her.

     I did.

     In my own way. More than once.

     I'm still dying for her every day.

     I don't know why I'm telling you this. You're probably
just snickering, you assholes. But you've never been in love
like this. I know you haven't. You don't know what it's like.

     It's been more than a year now and I still can't believe
it's happening. I still wake up every morning, sometimes with
her next to me, sometimes alone, not believing it.

     I want to believe. I really do. But we've never been
allowed to keep anything. Either of us.

     The pit of my stomach squirms most of the time because I
don't know how long they'll let us go on like this. I know they
know, whoever they are. And I'm afraid, so afraid, that
they're gonna find a way to stop us.

     Just for the hell of it. Just to take this away from us
too. Just to make sure we end up with nothing. No answers.
No solutions. No hope.

     Nothing.

     They're never gonna kill us, you know. Or at least I
don't think so. I think they're just gonna strip us of
everything. Until there's nothing left of us. Until we're
empty, drained dry, like a couple of shed snake skins, until
we just barely function. And then they're gonna shake their
heads, click their tongues and say, see, that's what happens
when you get obsessed with fairy tales, when you put the search
for truth before everything else.

     Two more casualties in an invisible war.

     And they'll park us in some sanitorium and feed us
pablum as we drool down our chins. And they'll take care of us
for the rest of our lives as we sit side by side saying nothing,
staring out into space.

     I'm terrified, guys. I'm scared shitless.

     I love her so much that it's eating me alive.

     But never mind that now. I was about to tell you what
really happened.

     I knew Frohike had something up his sleeve, so I started
keeping an eye out. I didn't know what he'd do, exactly. But I
suspected it would be fairly predictable.

     Frohike doesn't have a whole lot of experience in matters
of the heart.

     It took a while to figure out about the e-mails he was
sending her. A few times I walked into the office to find her
staring dreamily at her computer screen.

     Dreamily. I'd never seen her do that.

     She'd always jump and fumble around when that
happened, activating her screen saver or turning the damn
thing off completely.

     Not subtle. Not subtle at all.

     She's so cute that way.

     But still I didn't really clue in. Who knows what I
thought. Neither of us had lives back then, consumed as we
were by our individual quests, so the thought that she was
being wooed in any way didn't even enter my mind.

     And it wouldn't have occurred to me to ask.

     We'd become so distant in a way. Sometimes our search
collided and we'd be together for a while, just like the early
days when you couldn't pry us apart. But we'd drifted apart
slowly since her abduction; she inhabited her own private hell
and she'd closed herself off from me.

     God help me, I didn't know how to reach her most days.
I didn't even have the strength to try. 

     She had her demons; I had mine.

     It's funny. We had nothing left except each other, and
most days we didn't even have that anymore.

     She'd become like a stranger, and it made my skin
crawl. I resented it. I did. She never understood this one
thing about me. Or maybe she did, but at the time she couldn't
do anything about it.

     I don't think she understood that I couldn't reach out to
her. I just couldn't. I didn't know how. Something was broken
in me, the thing that would've allowed me to tell her how lonely
I was, how afraid, how much I needed her.

     They'd broken it. They broke it when they took my
sister.

     So we sat in that office wrapped in our separate
silences. And even though we barely talked to each other,
neither of us, it seems, could walk away from each other.

     It was weird. Despite the wall between us, we could feel
each other like we'd never been able to before. In retrospect,
I'd say we were addicted. Hooked on each other, on our mutual
madness, and on this fucking search which is bound to destroy
us both one day, one way or another. Maybe it isn't healthy. I
don't know. I don't particularly care. Back then it didn't feel
healthy; now it just feels inevitable.

     Now it just feels like it's all that matters.

     But back then, before we touched, before I ever kissed
her, we were like two addicts who were too enamoured with their
addiction to give it up. So we cleaved together in a
desperate kind of way because no one else could understand.
Everyone else would've recoiled in horror. It wasn't a physical
cleaving but it was just as intimate and we couldn't admit it out
loud. So we stopped talking and all that was left was this
invisible bond, stronger than steel.

     I could feel her breathe from across the room. And
sometimes, when I'd look over at her, I'd find her eyes on me.
She wouldn't drop them, either. She just kept looking at me. It
was eerie; it was baffling; it was unbelievably personal.

     Sometimes at night I'd sit at home in front of a video
doing you-know-what and all I'd see was her; and I swear to
God sometimes I couldn't tell if she was there or not because
she'd gotten so deep under my skin that she was always with
me.

     Of course I knew she wasn't really there. Not really.

     But the fact is I made love to her long before I ever
touched her and something in her eyes sometimes told me that
she knew.

     That she'd been there with me.

     But we never talked about it.

     Anyway. I didn't clue in right away about the e-mail,
but the roses were harder to miss.

     That's what I want to know. How the hell did Frohike
think I'd miss the roses, anyway?

     I mean, maybe it's true that I'm a complete doofus, but
when a fresh red rose is sitting on your partner's desk every
morning for two weeks, the odds are good even someone as
dense as me will notice, you know?

     Frohike? Hell-OHHH!

     At that point I started getting jealous big time.

     Okay. So I suspected Frohike was the culprit. But I
wasn't sure. I couldn't be sure. And even then, even if it was
only the Toad Man, it made me ballistic.

     Because she sat there sniffing that rose first thing in
the AM with that look on her face, the look I'd never seen, the
look she'd never worn for me, and I just stewed in my corner
of the office, glaring at her.

     Whoever was sending them had to know we weren't
away on a case at the time, that we were hanging around filing
paperwork, catching up with the endless reports that you
probably don't realize make up the bulk of what we do.

     It's not very interesting, but the two of us spend a lot
of time comparing field notes and typing up a pile of bullshit
for the powers that be.

     She's better at it than I am. In fact, she always goes
over my stuff because I ramble on and on about the meaning of
life and crap like that, and I'd've been fired a long time ago if
it wasn't for her moderating influence.

     I trust her. I let her do what she thinks is best in this
regard.

     So meanwhile, we were in the office and whoever was
doing the rose thing knew we were there.

     I was fairly sure Frohike was responsible. What freaked
me out was her reaction. She wasn't acting like someone who was
being wooed by the Toad Man. She wasn't rolling her eyes or
freaking out or looking disgusted or anything.

     Which raised the question: Was it in fact Frohike? And
if it wasn't him, who the hell was it?

     Because she never showed me a card or anything, you
know what I'm saying? I just couldn't be 100 percent sure it
was him.

     That made me crazy.

     I didn't want to have to kill a complete stranger.

     And then she'd started throwing moist goo-goo glances
my way, which didn't make any of it easier.

     I sat there trying to interpret what her eyes were
saying, you know? Was she saying, oh look, Mulder, someone
finally appreciates me, you loser. Was she saying, hey,
Mulder, there's this guy -- I was assuming it was a guy --
who's in love with me at last, so fuck you.

     I just didn't know what she was saying.

     All I knew was I wasn't the one who'd done it. It never
occurred to me, not in a million years, that she might think I
was at the root of it.

     Not at the beginning, anyway.

     I mean, she kept looking at me, you know? Smiling
enigmatically, as though we were privy to a secret. It was
bizarre and for a while I was confused as hell.

     But come on, give me a break. That's where Frohike underestimated my
intelligence. At the end of two weeks, 12 roses and a shitload of
tacky presents, of course it dawned on me.

     Oh, yeah. Let me tell you about the presents. They were
embarrassingly adorable -- plush animals, heart-shaped
chocolates, a groundbreaking treatise on relativity, all that
teeth-clenching mushy stuff.

     She'd leave them lying around. You don't know how
hard it was not to build a great fucking bonfire with them
when she wasn't looking.

     Man. Was I jealous. 

     All I could think about was how I'd kick Frohike's and
Pendrell's butts all over town. I'd do them both for good
measure because I wasn't still wasn't sure which one of them
was the guilty party.

     I just hoped to God it was one of them.

     At one point, a cold sweat broke over me as I stared
panic-stricken at a spectacularly hideous stuffed giraffe with
the words "I'll stick my neck out for U" stitched in big red x's
on the side. What the hell does that even mean? It's
meaningless gibberish. But for some reason, at that exact
moment, I started thinking maybe Skinner was doing this.

     Skinner! See how far gone I was? Can you just picture
Skinner buying a stuffed giraffe for *anyone*?

     This was long before we knew he was married, by the
way. Not that marriage would necessarily change anything.

     (Which reminds me, I figure that if the AD could hide a
legitimate marriage from us for all those years, we should be
able to sneak around for a while before he figured it out.
Although the looks he gives us sometimes... well, never
mind.)

     So I started shaking, my fists curled up into
tight little balls, thinking, Christ, that bald bespectacled
middle-aged son of a bitch is trying to jump my partner.

     I almost decked him a couple of times. God knows I'd
done it before, but this time I didn't need drugs in the water
supply to get me going.

     This close. I came this close.

     I'd become totally fucking obsessed. And all the while
she was making googly eyes at me, you know?

     And then I got it. Bang. Like that. Like a thunderbolt
out of the blue, as they say. I finally put it all together. The
presents. The flowers. The looks. She'd even started to
giggle periodically, for God's sake.

     Anonymous. It was all anonymous. It was the only
possible explanation.

     Some poor pathetic lovestruck goon had made the
mistake of sending her anonymous flowers and gifts.

     And she thought the pathetic goon was me.

     I was ecstatic. Embarrassed, too. I was humiliated that
she'd think I'd ever send her that kind of kitschy trash like
some perpetually erect adolescent. It was outrageous to me
that she actually seemed touched by that junk. She's got
impeccable taste, you know. Otherwise.

     She's got great taste in men, as it turns out.

     So I thought to myself, Mulder, my boy, how can a
clever chap like you take advantage of this interesting situation?

     Sounds a little heartless, I know. But all's fair in love
and war, right? 

     It was right about then that I accessed her e-mail late
one night after sweating over the new password she'd put on
her incoming mail. And that's when I found the love letters I
knew I'd find.

     I know, I know -- it's despicable. But I was a desperate
man.

     Wanna know what the password was?

     FWM.

     Cross my heart and hope to die. Get it? Fox William
Mulder.

     Honest. It sent a shiver right through me. In fact, it gave
me an instant hard-on, I'm sorry to say.

     For some reason, it's still one of the sexiest thing she's
ever done to me. Because it meant only one thing. Because it
confirmed what I'd come to believe.

     She wanted it to be me.

     I wish I could even begin to make you experience how I
felt sitting there at two in the morning in front of her
computer when I typed in those three letters and saw the
words "Access Granted" flicker across the screen.

     I just sat there trembling with a big stupid grin on my
face for about 10 minutes.

     And then I read the letters and laughed my ass off with
the kind of goofy glee you only get when you're triumphant in
love and your rival is flailing around in the dirt.

    Poor old Frohike. I'm sorry about this, I really am. It's
low. But I would've seriously messed with anyone's head who got
in my way at this point.

     Those letters. Man. They were truly ridiculous. All that
"how-do-I-love-thee-let-me-count-the-ways" type of crapola.
Corny, corny stuff.

     Those letters had Frohike written all over them.

     I should've known she'd fall for it, my sweet,
sentimental darling.

     It's always the no-nonsense ones who do.

     Meanwhile I couldn't stop laughing like a maniac. I was a
happy, happy man.

     So there you have it. That's what really happened.

     Oh, yeah. One more thing. Frohike mentioned a vague stakeout
story when it all came to a head. Well. That's more or less correct.
I was prepared to wait it out because it seemed pretty clear it was only
a matter of time.

     But I must admit I encouraged it along a little.

     Frohike never knew about this, but I started sending
her a few anonymous gifts of my own.

     Nice ones.

     In fact, one of them was a one-karat diamond ring.

     Do you have any idea how much a chunk of ice like that costs?
God. I had to borrow a ton of money.

     Thank God for Frohike and his unimaginable freshly-laundered wealth.
Such a good friend. I couldn't've done it without him.

     Ain't I a stinkuh? Huh? Ain't I just?

     I made sure I was out of the office when she got that particular gift
on a Friday morning.

     And this much is true: she met me in the Taurus that
night in front of some disgraced senator's house for a stakeout
we'd agreed to do as a favour because things were slow in the X-File
department.

     She was wearing the ring on her right hand, clever girl,
because we may never be able to make it official, but I wanted
her to get the symbolism of the thing.

     Then let's just say that after that, the stakeout got
postponed for a night or two.

     After all, what's one more corrupt politician roaming
free in Washington for a weekend?

     We got him on Monday. No harm done.

     And yes -- I've repayed Frohike since. Not to mention all the
videos I gave him. That's hundreds of dollars worth of fun and
games right there.

     Poor old Frohike. I hope he's lucky at cards.

     Heheheh.



END