From: palmerdolph@yahoo.com   
      
   Title: One thought part three   
   Author: probe   
   Email: PalmerDolph@yahoo.com   
   Category: post colonization, angst   
   Rating: PG13 language, violence   
   Spoilers: no   
   Disclaimer: I'm just a devoted fan and I make no   
   money at all from this. Please don't sue me.   
   Summary: You really need to read part one and two   
   or you will be hopelessly confused   
   Thank You everyone who emailed me after part two   
   Thank you Amanda for all the hard work you do as   
   a beta. You are incredible and I live for your   
   approval.   
   Thank you Frannie the Wonderhorse for the emotional   
   reality check (for when I think everyone hates me)   
   and support(for when I think I write slow and   
   the story sucks and I think even more people   
   should hate me in addition to   
   the usual number I am thinking hates me)   
   Not to worry, I'm on medication.   
      
      
      
   Camp Four   
   Human territories   
   Late November 2000   
      
   I gave Skinner the little amount of food I'd managed to hide from   
   Camp Four's gate guards – some beef jerky and a Ramen noodle package.   
    Mulder had tried to give: flashlights, matches,   
   Candles and everything else he knew I needed and had been   
   living without, but I only took food and medicine for the   
   camp, nothing for myself.  I even refused the warm bath he'd   
   run for me.   
   His bathroom was beautiful – something out of a hotel brochure,   
   with marble and gilt and fat, expensive looking towels.  All the   
   rooms belonging to him were unexpectedly luxurious considering the   
   otherwise antiseptic cold of the base. God, how I'd wanted to climb   
   in, close my eyes, and pretend I   
   still didn’t believe in the aliens   
   Instead, I'd shaken my head. "Mulder, this isn't you."   
   "What choice do I have?"  He trailed his long fingers through the   
   water. "I don't belong out there with the human race. I'm not one of   
   them anymore."   
   "That isn't true."   
   "It is, Scully. My fate was decided a long time ago."   
   I held his gaze, my lips pursed, my eyebrows raised.  It was the old   
   standoff -- he believed in something that I refused to   
   accept.  He nearly smiled at me.  He must have been thinking it too.   
      
      
   He shook the water from his fingers…   
   "Leave this place, Mulder."   
   "This is where I belong." He strolled from the opulent bathroom,   
   maybe still hoping I would take advantage of it and assuage his   
   guilt.   
   I slammed the bathroom door back open. "I'm ready to leave."   
      
   His eyes were dark and his bottom lip jutted forward in   
   a pout that had once meant he might cry.   
   I wondered what it meant for this   
   Mulder, this Mulder who had abandoned humanity in exchange   
   for every creature comfort.   
      
   "Scully-" He reached for me but I stepped back from him,   
   something I don't think I'd ever done before.   
   "Mulder."  My voice was hard and sharp and his name was all I could   
   say.  If he could really see inside me then he knew all the things I   
   left silent.   
   Still, I couldn't turn down things that I knew other's back at the   
   Camp needed.   
      
   I made the return hike to Camp Four alone.  Mulder had the   
   Hover ships grounded, and the juveniles locked up   
    so there was nothing to fear.   
   The gate guards at Camp Four took the pack and   
   Everything I'd carried in my pockets:   
   medicine, powdered milk, freeze-dried   
   vegetables and rice.   
   I'd tucked the jerky and the Ramen noodles under   
   my shirt for my mother but I was too late to give them to her.   
   Or to tell her good-bye.   
      
       *   
      
   Skinner stayed long enough to help bury my mother in the nearly   
   frozen ground outside the camp.  "Thank you, Sir," I told him.   
   He was dirty and sweating in the freezing air, leaning on the shovel   
   for a moment of rest.  His eyes had filled then.  "Walter," he   
   corrected me. "I don't think I've been worthy of 'SIR' for a long   
   time."   
   "BUT -"   
   "I let you down at El Rico," he said, his voice gruff.  "I was a   
   coward, Scully, and everything I've done since has been a   
   kind of penance for that one decision."   
      
   "I've survived to fight them." I said.  "And so have you."   
   He nodded.   
   He replaced the last of the dirt and tapped it tight again   
   with back of his shovel.  We both stood silent while the sky   
   darkened.   
      
   "Mulder didn't give up, Scully, not completely," Skinner said.   
   "He's been doing what he can for the Rebels and for earth. I'd   
   been ready to die when you and Krycek interrupted   
   the interrogation. Keeping Mulder's role hidden from the aliens   
   is more important than my life."   
      
   Still, I wasn't ready to forgive Mulder's betrayal.   
   "He could join with the Rebels the way you've done.   
   He could fight them openly, give   
   the people left alive strength and hope to fight too."   
   I hated the way my voice shook. I was determined   
   not to cry. "He could fight beside me."   
      
   "Scully, I've seen him communicate with them.  He can do almost all   
   the same things they do. Maybe he's where he belongs."   
    "I don't want to hear this."   
   Skinner wiped the sweat from his face with the edge of his t-shirt.   
      
   "What about the Rebels?  He could fight beside you."   
   "No."   
   He gathered his sweater and coat from the ground.   
   "He couldn't."   
   I crossed my arms.  "Why not?"   
   I said, hoping to trigger   
   the part of him that had once been my boss.   
   Skinner stood and grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me around,   
   one finger tapped hard onto the back of my neck, finding the spot I   
   kept cut as a decoy for the gate guards to check. The chip was safely beneath   
   the cut. Skinner felt the tiny bump that he knew I couldn't   
   live without.   
      
   "Here, this chip that keeps you alive? This chip you have to hide   
   from the humans you fight beside? The aliens changed your DNA and   
   then marked you like this for a reason."   
   I whirled to face him again, "Why?  What do they want with me?"   
   "Spare parts. They can't survive here anymore.  They've already   
   adapted to their other planets. When Earth becomes toxic to   
   them, they can harvest what they need."   
   It was too horrible to hear.  "That's enough."   
    "All of you who have the chip, Scully… "   
   "Stop it!"  I slapped him hard in the face before I could help   
   myself.   
   He didn't even flinch.  "The Rebels want all of you killed or the   
   chip removed. Either way, Scully, you die."   
   I couldn't hide the tears then but I was too angry to really be   
   crying.  "Then I picked the right side to be on," I told him.  "I'm   
   not fighting for the aliens or the rebel aliens, I'm fighting for   
   Earth."   
   Skinner stuffed the food I'd given him, some matches and a bottle of   
   water into the deep pockets of his navy pea coat.  It reminded me of   
   the coats issued to my father and brothers in the time before the   
   invasion.   
   I'd dropped to my knees at the foot of my mother's grave   
   and tried to pray but there was so much to pray about and I wasn't   
   sure what to ask for.   
   I knew it wouldn't be long before Krycek came   
   back outside to bring me back to the hut.  It would be   
   just the two of us now.   
   "I'm going now, Scully."  Skinner put his hand on my shoulder and I   
   looked up at him. "One day, I'll come find you again," he   
   added.  But I wondered how likely that really was.   
   He helped me stand.  "But if I die before then, I want you to know   
   something."   
   I braced myself for whatever he'd held back from all the awful things   
   he had already said.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)