Disclaimer: I am Chris Carter. I am the Surfer Dude God. These are my creations. I am entitled to write about them, and .... Wait. <checks calendar> It's Monday... I am Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France. As the Emperor of France, I have permission to do anything, including writing stories about short, beautiful women and brilliant men who are criminally tall. I keep my X-Files fan fiction here in my jacket where Josephine cannot find it.

The old bastard is going to shoot me.

He was just sitting there when I walked through the door. Lounging there, at my desk, just like he owned the place. And maybe he does, given what I know now.

But he doesn't own me. I wonder if he knows that.

An obscene number of people -- friends, colleagues, my mother, his *wife* -- have died, reduced to black and flaking charcoal heaps on the floor of a hanger at an improbably named airbase, and what does he talk about? A picture from years past, a captured moment in stark black and white. Black like charcoal. White like the lights that Mom talked about.

"It's Bill Mulder. Fox Mulder's father."

Funny how it can take a tragedy to awaken you to even the smallest of truths. I used to despise Fox Mulder for his investigations into the so-called paranormal. I relished tagging him as "Spooky" in private asides to other agents. I rubbed his nose in the loss of the X-Files every chance I got. And I hated him when my mother turned to him after her last abduction. I hated him enough to do my father's bidding, to set up Mulder and Scully so they'd be thrown out of the Bureau.

I wonder if Mulder knows how sorry I am about that. He heard my summary to Kersh, a plea to return the X-Files to Mulder and his partner. It wasn't my usual kiss-ass style, and Kersh was still trying to wrap his mind around that when I got up to leave. I tried to put the whole of my apology to Mulder into the weight of my hand on his shoulder, a brief admission that he was the better man for the job, that I should have listened and sought his advice, that I had been wrong about him.

We traded a glance. I'd like to think that he understood, that he knew. But that sort of wordless communication is rare. I think perhaps Scully and he have that, the kind of understanding that comes as an uncommon gift and burden to partners. You can see it when they look at each other, when they work a case, when they face the brunt of Kersh's displeasure. I never had that with Diana. No sympathy, no resonance, no shared anything. The only persistant memory I have of working with her is her perfume: expensive, cloying, invasive tendrils of scent, perfectly matched to a proud and cold woman.

My father reached into the drawer of my desk, and withdrew my weapon from its confines.

"Your mother was right. I came here hoping otherwise. Hoping that my son might live to honor me."

My eyes take in the too-tidy desk, the blank and darkened computer monitor. I'd left my report notes here, arranged neatly on the desk. Everything I could remember, every little nuance, snatches of conversation--I typed it all in, offering it as some sort of penance. It was probably the most succinct and insightful thing I'll ever write.

My father has been busy. The notes are gone, and I imagine the computer files have been erased. I harbor no illusions about the copy of the report in Kersh's hands. Something suitable, something vetted, will take the place of my report.

Honor you, old man? I suppose I have, if you count 'giving the Devil his due.' The blackened skeletons in the hanger taught me not to underestimate you. You can't know yet that I sent AD Skinner a copy of my report in good old manila interoffice mail, slipped onto a mail cart on my way to Kersh's office. If you manage to intercept that one, maybe the diskette copies I mailed postage-due to Scully and Mulder at their homes will elude you. The last copy of the report? Well, let's just say that the Attorney General has it in her safekeeping.

My father stands, and levels the weapon at me. The old bastard is going to shoot me. Strangely enough, I can believe that.

The faint scent of perfume wafts in from behind me.

The old bastard is not going to shoot me. He can't shoot me, just like he couldn't bring himself to kill my mother. But he's going to watch someone else do it.

She's going to shoot me.

My partner is going to shoot me. In the back. While my father watches.

I don't want to believe it.

That pretty much sums up my life, doesn't it?

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