Inferno

Inferno was the first story I wrote, and it is still, in many 
ways, my favourite, maybe in the way that people are never 
supposed to forget their first love.

For four months, this was everything to me. I wrote it during a 
long period without Internet access, during a summer of no new 
episodes. For the whole time, it was my only link with my X-Files 
obsession. Consequently, it totally dominated my thoughts in a way 
no story has done since. I composed it in my head on the way to 
work, while talking to people, while in bed. I wrote much more 
slowly then than now, too, so it was a long obsession.

I also grew very fond of my secondary characters - the only time 
I've really created characters of my own. Poor Gardiner, hero-
worshipping Mulder, much to Mulder's dismay, and rather charmed by 
Scully. Newman, the nasty agent-in-charge who hates Mulder, but 
who does genuinely care about solving the case. And Lewis, the 
villain, who I could write about for hours....

I am still very nostalgic for that summer.

The story itself is heavy angst, of course. The theme is guilt, 
and blame - self-blame, and blaming others. 

(Be warned that the following contains spoilers for the story. You 
may wish to read it at the end instead.)

The story starts with a criminal, Matthew Lewis, being arrested, 
and, rather than taking responsibility for his own actions, 
swearing undying hatred for the man who caught him. Later we find 
out that, over the years, he has come to blame that man for 
_everything_ that has ever gone wrong in his life, in much the 
same way as Mulder seems to blame everything wrong in his own life 
on Samantha's abduction. Find Samantha, and everything will be 
okay, he feels. For Lewis, it is similar - get revenge on the man 
who captured him, and everything will magically fall into place 
again.

Won't it?

This is the story of Lewis' overwhelming need to blame, yet it is 
also the story of Mulder's almost-identical need. Mulder and Lewis 
are two halves of the same coin. Both have a single defining 
moment in their life to which they attribute everything. "Nothing 
else matters," says Mulder, of his search for Samantha. "Nothing 
else matters," says Lewis, of his need for revenge. 

But if Mulder found Samantha, would it change anything else in his 
life? Would it change the past? Would it give him his father back, 
and his childhood, and the respect of his colleagues? Would it 
make him happy? (A question I explored in a short story: "The Rich 
Fisher.")  Worse, what if he was forced to face the possibility 
that Samantha's abduction was his own fault, and no-one else's - 
that his father's death was his own fault, and Scully's abduction? 
What if he  came to believe that he had no-one but himself to 
blame for everything wrong in his life, and everything wrong in 
the lives of anyone he's ever cared for?

What then?

We're talking guilt - the shifting of blame from something 
external, to something internal. If guilt becomes excessive, what 
happens? Would this sudden revelation drive Mulder to feel even 
more determination to succeed, to atone? Would it overwhelm him, 
making him wallow in regret for the past, preventing him from 
acting?

And - poor Mulder - I cheated. I gave Mulder a little voice in his 
head, constantly reminding him of all the things he has to feel 
guilty about, constantly reminding him of his failures. Like with 
Modell, we're talking mind control, almost. I don't see Mulder as 
being on the verge of insanity, depressed, nervous, introverted. I 
really don't. But the Mulder in this story _is_. He's a Mulder 
pushed beyond endurance by an invader in his own mind. I would 
like to think that he fights very well, all things considering.

But he doesn't talk to Scully about it, and that's setting up 
themes for the sequel....

*****

Purgatorio

Purgatorio is the sequel to Inferno, though the case-file part of 
the plot is self-contained.

At the end of Inferno, Mulder had suffered at the hands of Lewis, 
a psychic criminal who, bent on revenge, invaded Mulder's mind to 
whisper a constant litany of guilt and blame, even managing to 
replace some of Mulder's memories with subtly different images. As 
a result, Mulder came to believe that he was responsible for all 
bad things that had ever happened in his life, or Scully's. 

Happy story, then.

Inferno ended with Scully vowing that they would recover, but, 
really, how plausible is this?

Scully, you see, doesn't believe in psychics. All she knows is 
that, recently, her partner was almost suicially depressed, on the 
verge of insanity. "It wasn't me; it was psychic mind control," 
says Mulder, dismissing her concern, refusing to see a counsellor. 
"I'm okay now. It's over," he says.

Scully is not convinced.

And she is right not to be. 

Yes, Mulder has realised that the voices in his head were the work 
of a psychic, yet the after-effects still linger. Which memories 
are real and which are planted by Lewis? Unfortunatly, he still 
believes the false ones. While he accepts that Lewis invaded his 
mind, part of him thinks that Lewis did him a favour - he showed 
him the truth. It's a painful truth, but it's the truth. He just 
has to accept it, and get on with it.

Misunderstandings all round, then. While Mulder is painfully 
depressed, Scully is getting increasingly stressed, feeling that 
she has to be strong and bear Mulder's problems as well as her 
own. Mulder needs her, she feels, so she must not allow herself to 
relax, to break down herself. But how to you help someone who 
denies that they need help? You try again, and again, and again, 
until you are ready to scream with the frustration and the stress 
of it.

This is more a Scully story than a Mulder story, then. It is also 
a case-file, which includes some scheming by the Consortium, links 
to Scully's abduction, and a sneaky little plot twist that, in 
Mulder's view, could explain quite why Scully is finding it so 
hard to cope.

Scully, though, simply can not accept Mulder's theory - simply can 
not even begin to contemplate accepting it.

Can their partnership survive?

******