"Cup-cake," part the one and only by Pellinor RATING: PG CLASSIFICATION: VHA (Yes, it's more Angst-Humour) SUMMARY: Mulder wants the truth, but does the truth want him? ____ DISCLAIMER: The X-Files and its characters belong to Chris Carter, 1013 and Fox, and I have no permission to laugh while torturing them, but do so without thought of profit. FEEDBACK? Yes please. Public, private, whatever. ***** She had cried, then. He had laughed, and she had cried. "Cry baby! Cry baby! Samantha's a cry-baby!" he'd shouted then, with all the sadism of an older brother, nine years old and nearly grown up. And he had laughed. But he _knew_ now - knew with a pain that dragged the tears from his eyes, raking down his cheeks like so many claws. He was a cupcake. "Poor thing!" she'd sobbed, eyes red-rimmed with sobbing. "It's all alone.... all by itself. We've eaten all its friends. Nobody wants it. It's all alone...." All alone, like.... "No!" he cried aloud, digging his fingers into his flesh, thought the stabbing pain was as nothing to the torment in his mind. "I'm not... I won't.... I can't.... I....." And then the voices of memory again, abrading his soul like sandpaper. "It probably blames you," he'd told her, heartless as any serial killer. "You're the one who dropped it on the cat. You're the reason no-one wants it. You're the one who's ruined its life." "I'm sorry, cake." Tears had poured from her eyes like the monsoon they'd seen on television at school. "I'm sorry, cakey. _I_ love you. I want you. I'll eat you." I love you. I want you. I.... Even I _like_ you.... Was there _anyone_ who could say those words to him, now? Silence. Silence and solitude. Minutes, hours, an eternity of silence.... Alone. Alone.... "You murdered it." Had there been no limit to his cruelty? Just days after she'd come home from having her stomach pumped, and he was like a boy pulling wings of a butterfly. "You killed it." She didn't smile for weeks.... But he knew now she had been right. He was a cupcake now, but there was no-one to chew his raisins, no-one to lick his cherry, no-one to crunch his little silver balls half sunk into the sweet pink icing, no-one to pull off the cat hairs left as scars upon his body, no-one to.... No-one. No-one. He was alone. "Scully," he whispered, now, seeing again the image of her pale face, her fiery hair, his constant companion since.... since _it_ had happened. "Scully.... Please come back. I.... I _need_ you." But he was alone in the empty cavern of his mind. How long was it since he had seen a human face? Time was meaningless now. Just shades of grey, an eternity without life, without colour. Grey faces smiling condolences, eyes looking everywhere but him. Grey hands awkwardly raised to greet him, falling back like so many dead weights. Grey words falling from lips like stones. Grey.... "Where are they, Agent Mulder....?" "Why didn't you protect her, Agent Mulder....?" "I must ask for your gun and badge, Agent Mulder...." "Can you hear me, Agent Mulder?" "We just want you to come and stay for a little while, just until you feel better, Fox...." Grey-faced men in white coats, their voices like honey but their hands like steel, and the keys hanging from their belts clashed like a knell of doom. It was _so_ like the noise of..... "No!" he cried aloud, beating his fist against the wall again and again, his agony growing with every blow. Soft walls. Padded walls. Nothing to distract from the torture of memory. He had to remember. He mustn't remember. He had to remember. He couldn't bear to remember. He had to remember. Remember.... She'd floated into the air like the lightest scrap of gossamer, blown by the wind. It was beautiful. It was terrible, but it was beautiful. "Scully!" He'd been frozen, caught in the familiar terror so often remembered from that other time. "Scully!" And then the light had reached towards him like long fingers and has entwined around him and enveloped him. The last thought he had had was that this, at last, was death. How he wished it _had_ been. "Death." He said the words now, savouring the stark simplicity of the single syllable. "Death." A word once feared, but now a shining beacon of hope. "Death...." Death.... He'd awoken to pain - an all-encompassing pain beyond anything he had ever known - a pain which made him want to scream his agony, but which was so great he couldn't summon the energy to move. The pain was everywhere, and nowhere, but as he concentrated, tears streaming down his face, he could tell it was radiating from his ears - from a terrible, screeching, agonising noise, like a million pieces of chalk on a million blackboards. "No!" It was the tiniest moan, but it was all he could muster, and even then he fell back, exhausted, red waves pulsing in front of his eyes. The sound swelled, as if putting out a long probing finger of noise, drilling into his head. It rose toward the end, swelling like a spring tide, sounding absurdly as if asking a question. "No!" He rocked his head from side to side, feeling warm tears on his neck. There was fire in front of his eyes - the fire of her hair.... the fire of her agony on his imagination. The sound swelled again, and there was a touch on his cheek, feather-light and cold as ice. Two strands of darker sound rose and fell, winding around the background noise, as if two people were talking in no language conceivable on earth. "No!" He was vaguely aware that he had had other words, once, but he no longer needed them. His whole body, his whole mind, was screaming "no." "....reboot it." It was as if a switch had been pushed. The noises clicked into place, becoming voices, rustling like old leaves in the wind. "Damn fool programmer. Universal translator, indeed. Fine when it works, but with all these general protection faults...." "I spent half a Test speaking Centaurian to a buffalo last week." There was a terrible sound, a scraping cackle of laughter. "Still passed, though." "No...." He forced the word past his agonised lips. "The noise...." "It's awake," the first voice said, the sound getting closer as if the speaker was leaning over him. "What did it say? The nose....?" There was loud thump, and he winced, expecting to feel the stab of agony as the blow landed on his body, but there was nothing, just the endless torment of waiting. "The _noise_." The two voices made sounds of realisation. "I know what they say, but it really does work best when you kick it...." "Like humans...." The terrible laughter sounded again, followed closely by a yelp of pain. "You shouldn't say things like that." The voice was warning, but amused. "She might be listening." Strong hands dug like pincers into his shoulders. "You - don't - like - the - music?" The words were enunciated clearly, each word like a hammer blow on his scoured ear drums. "We - copied - it - from - one - of - your.... what do they call them? Molls?" "No," he whimpered again, hating himself for his weakness. So close to everything he'd ever wanted, and he was reduced to a sobbing wreck, unable to talk, unable to ask for the truth. Abruptly, the sound ceased, leaving his ears ringing with the after image of the barrage of pain. He couldn't speak. He couldn't even think. He just lay back and enjoyed the silence. "Thank Odin for that," the first voice said, sighing. "Wrong mythology," the other hissed. "It's Tuesday, so it must be Christianity." "Fridays are best, though." "Yeah." "Show me...." He licked his lips, forcing himself to focus on the words, though all he could see was the fire of her hair. "Show me the truth." Silence. A confused silence. Footsteps shuffled across the floor, scraping like the rasp of hard skin against metal. Whispers shivered down his spine like ghostly skeletons. "The truth?" "What's that?" Whisper, whisper..... "What truth?" "How the Hades should I know? A pause. A whirring sound, as of a computer hard disk, thinking. "Maybe he meant toilet?" Tentative, anxious. Clatter of a keyboard, tap, tap, tap.... "Or tooth? We could drill holes in his teeth, like that man..... Dawn someone, or Down. You know....?" "Hell." "What?" "You said Hades. Earth men are noted for their use of the word "hell" in trying situations, due to a spiritual deficiency on their home planet. Have you seen the price a religious soundbite can go for on television?" "And women. You said men. Earth women are noted for their extreme sensitivity to sexist...." "Don't _remind_ me about it. I still have the bruises." It was his worst nightmare. Jabbering, jabbering, on and on, not listening to him. He took a deep breath, drawing all the air into his lungs that he could. "Tell me the truth!" he shouted. Silence. A long, long silence. "Let's just ignore it and hope it goes away." It was the smallest conspiratorial whisper, clearly not intended for his ears. "We've got work to do, remember." "Oh yeah." Footsteps on the floor, crossing to his side. "Have you got the list?" There was the sound of crumpling paper, and a voice made small sounds, as if mentally checking off a list. "Got them all," it said at last. "Just one to go. Let's hope this one's okay." There was a long silence. He could feel eyes boring into him, cruel and appraising, as if seeing into his very soul. He knew he should be demanding still, but the vision of Scully flared in front of his eyes and he was without words, lost in tears. "Why did you chose this one?" The voice was oh so doubtful, confused. "It's not a very good specimen." "No." The other voice fell with disappointment. "It looked better when it was in the packet. It's wrappings were very fresh and new." The first voice sighed, sounding for all the world like an older brother. It was a voice he'd used himself so often on Samantha, before. "You _know_ Mom's told you again and again not to judge a human by its cover. You know how cunning they can be, disguising shop-soiled goods." "And this one's shop-soiled." It wasn't a question, but was spoken with a certainty that made him want to scream. "I'm sorry." "Look at _that_." A sharp cold finger jabbed into his shoulder, touching the scar left by Scully's bullet. He was turned into ice, horrified by the touch, horrified by the eyes that bore into him as if he was a lump of meat on a slab. He was powerless to move away from the touch. "And that." A stab at his thigh, bringing memories of the darkness of the dock, and Scully's face, lost and grief-filled. "And that." Teeth marks left by a beast woman in New Jersey. "And that." A knife wound on his arm, with a vision of a cell phone bidding him goodbye at the end of an experiment. "And that." A wince of pain, as the cold finger touched a still- healing slash, souvenir from a serial killer he'd captured a few weeks earlier. "And that...." Stab. "And that...." Stab. "And that...." Stab. "I'm sorry." It was little now, humble. "Maybe he will pass the other tests." "Maybe." Grudging and unforgiving. "But you _know_ you should check them all for damage before taking them off the shelf." "But he was on special offer." The smaller voice found a new burst of confidence. "Buy ten, get one free." "You could have chosen a better free gift than this one." The voice was stern, but beginning to soften a little. "But he.... the store-keeper.... you know, the one who breathes smoke from his mouth.... he said Mom and Dad had paid such good money for the merchandise over the years that we could have this one as a special free gift. He smiled as he told me to take him. He didn't give me a choice." There was a loud sigh, full of disgust. "Maybe he has _some_ redeeming features....." A long silence. Fingers.... Fingers probing his body.... I'm nice. I'm desirable. You _do_ want me.... He wanted to whimper like a little child, clinging to its mother, fearing the loss of her love. I _am_ nice.... But then he remembered, and hated himself for his weakness. What did it matter if they didn't like him? Why was he so arrogant as to think he deserved to be liked? There were _answers_ out there, and he was neglecting to find them. Scully's life could depend on it, and Samantha's. Not his. His didn't matter. "Tell me the truth!" They both sighed, and the probing fingers drew back as if they'd been burnt. "Tell me! I need to know the truth!" Silence. "Tell me!" A light welled up from somewhere, and a low whine began to sound in the background. Like Samantha.... Dark braids falling straight down, as she took the happiness from their lives for ever. "Tell me!" Tears were choking his words, but there was anger there too. "Tell me the truth!" "No. Way." The words were accompanied with loud thumps, as of a hand coming down to emphasise the sentiment. "But I _need_ to know...." His voice was cracking with desperation. "Tell me!" "But Mom's list? What do we....?" "We get another. She asked for 512 pounds of human. She didn't say what variety. _No-one_ would want this one. Far too noisy, not to mention damaged." Something penetrated at last, making his shouts dry up in his throat. "Don't.... don't put me back," he whimpered, sounding so little in his own head. So close to the truth he could touch it, and it was being taken from him. It was.... it was horrible. It was the worst thing of all. And Scully.... "See? Crazy too. Probably got a maggot inside it. Let's send it back." The light blossomed, burning his retinas with its white glare, and, against his will, he felt his body run from the light, seeking the comfort of the darkness. "No-one would want it." No-one would want it.... No-one would want it.... No-one would want it.... Voices, voices, echoing in his memory now and for ever after that day, torturing his every waking sound, silenced only by the soft waves of forgetfulness brought by the needle. No-one.... Scully, her red hair gone forever. Of course they'd wanted _her_, warmed by her smile, her clear blue eyes. Skinner, mysteriously disappeared from the middle of the team assembled to look for Scully, and never seen again. His sister, taken in his place, her fond smile worming its way into their hearts when they had felt nothing but disgust for him. Max Fenig, taken after the entity had touched him and recoiled in horror, leaving him sprawled on the floor as Max had been clutched to its bosom. No-one. He was alone, rejected. No-one wanted him. No-one cared. They hadn't even cared enough to torture him with their tests. _That_ was what hurt worst of all. They hadn't even wanted to kill him. Music sounded in his head, bizarre in his memory, and he sang along, brokenly. "I am the eggman, They are the eggmen...." Feet sounded outside, and they key rattled in the lock. The light gleamed off the clear liquid of forgetfulness in the syringe, and he laughed. He would forget, and he would remember. He would forget, and tomorrow he would remember, and would once again learn the truth..... "I am the eggman, They are the eggmen, I am the cupcake." ********** The end. ********** This was inspired by a cover story on a magazine I saw briefly on a news stand this morning. "I was rejected by aliens," it read, which immediately suggested a whole load of stories to me, before this one emerged as the front runner. And was I the only five-year old warped enough to cry unconsolably at dinner, refusing to eat the penultimate mouthful of baked beans in case the last mouthful felt lonely and rejected? Yes, I thought so, but it's a true story nevertheless. I suppose I should disclaimer the Beatles too, so the song "I am the walrus," rather misquoted here, belongs to the Beatles, from their Magical Mystery Tour album. ********** Feedback? Do what you like with it. I know this was rather.... er..... weird, to say the least, so I suppose I deserve anything you can think of to say.