TITLE - Showdown
AUTHOR - KillTheBee@aol.com
RATING - PG (maybe for violence)
CLASSIFICATION - MSR
KEYWORDS - Last Episode Ever Fic
SPOILERS -
ARCHIVE - SURE! Just let me know and send me the link
FEEDBACK - duh, it's like pineapple pizza, a must have KillTheBee@aol.com
DISCLAIMER - NOT MINE DAGGUMMIT!!!
AUTHORS NOTE - This is semi-how I want the last episode to be. part of it, anyway. I hope you like it, or maybe I inspired you to write your own last episode fic, and if I did, I'd love to see what you expect out of it or would like to see. My e-mail is KillTheBee@aol.com

Eagle Crest, Delaware
2:23AM - August 23

The uniformed Secret Agents were scattered around the privately owned building, hiding behind barrels of ice filled with the rank smell of sea food and ducking underneath low rafters. They were waiting anxiously with tightening chests in a smaller structure which lead into an empty series of airplane hangers. With their guns drawn and ready to begin fire, the Special Agent Fox Mulder signaled for the Assistant Director, Walter Skinner, to have his men pull apart the large heavy aluminum double doors that lead into and airplane hanger.
As they did so, it seemed to go through slow motion as the men clamped their hands around the handles and struggled to pull them apart swiftly. The men behind the doors, what was left of the cruelty behind the Syndicate's colonization project, whirled around. The last to turn around pivoted ever so slowly, taking one last drag of his cigarette as he blinked once and removed the tobacco from between his lips. What all these men saw was a violent flash of light and a raid of FBI agents dressed in black gear from head to toe flooding into the hanger filled with conspirators.
A helicopter had gotten it's sign and came whirling above the hanger, making a swoop around it and landing in the dew dusted field next to it. Agent Scully threw off her headphones and jumped out of the craft in the instant it landed, not waiting for the blades to come to a complete stop. She rushed into the building with her gun drawn in her navy blue jacket with the letters "FBI" written in yellow on the sleeve and back.
She stopped a man escaping from the side door. He was fairly young, most likely working on the same level that the known felon Alex Krycek worked on, just not as sly and clever. "Get down!" she yelled over the copter's wind. "GET DOWN!" she demanded when he ignored her orders.
She approached him, shoved the barrel of her gun into his shoulder, flinging his body around so that his broad back faced her and pushing him against the rippled wall. She flung out her handcuffs and clamped the cold metal around his wrist then a plumbing pipe that protruded from the soggy grass.
The shadowy character spit at Scully's feet, missing her by less than an inch, then mumbling something under his wasted breath in Russian. With this Scully took in a quick deep breath and hit him somewhat lightly in the head, but enough to get him to keep his mouth closed until she returned.
Scully rounded the corner of the outside of the building and inched her way up to a door that was partially open. She held her gun up by her should for a brief moment so she could slowly ease the door open without a squeak. When the hinges made the slightest noise, she bent down and spit profusely on it, then doing her best to do the same with the top and continued to open the door.
When she arrived inside, she held her gun down by her side as she attempted to close the door part of the way. She'd walked into a near massacre. The members of the Syndicate stood with their backs facing her, hands in the air but not weapons had been turned over to her government. Mulder's eye caught her's for an instant, she nodded to him as if it would tell him she'd captured the escaped man and snuck quietly behind the Cigarette Smoking Man.
No one in the line of inhumanitarians turned around to notice her shove her gun harshly into Cancer Man's back. Once they all saw him make a slow turn to face a mysterious woman behind him, the knew the FBI would be distracted just enough by his movement in readying all of their guns on that one man, that they had just enough time to whip out their weapons. It was as if someone had just yelled, "SHOWDOWN!" as the FBI quickly swung their guns back towards the line of non-captive men who had begun shooting aimlessly and began their firing. Cancer Man took a gun from his holster clipped onto his belt, spun around quicker and gave Scully a violent blow to the head, knocking her down on the chilling cement.
It was like something straight out of a horror movie. Blood shot from burst arteries, men fell convulsing on the cold ground, others dodged the thicket of flying bullets. A member of the Syndicate carry two guns dove to one side while firing from both weapons at the troop of patriots in front of him, snapping one in the shoulder where the bullet proof vest didn't fully cover.
Mulder ducked beneath the swarm of angry bullets to the fallen man, and in his insane rage against the men behind all of his despair, he yanked the giant automatic gun from around the wounded man's body and clicked the trigger once, sending out bullet after bullet in a row. Some of Mulder's fired shots hit, some ricocheted off the walls of the hanger, some went through, but numerous bullets pierced through flesh, sending massive amounts of blood springing like a geyser through the air.
Mulder's previously rational mind had left him. The dangerous anger he had built up inside of him was released in the most violent of manners, causing a colossal catastrophe. Out of his perephrial vision he could see Scully lying limply on the ground, the life seemingly sucked out of her, thick dark red blood poured glistening from the wound on her forehead. His calming rage returned, he was mechanically fireing away at lives lived to destroy; in essence, destroying the destroyer.
Mulder coyly edged closer to Scully subconciously, still pulling back on the trigger sending bullets flying in every direction. When no one was left standing but FBI agents in awe behind objects, Mulder dropped the gun to his feet and fell to his knees beside Scully's barely-breathing body. He slipped his hand beneath her neck to raise it slightly, hoping to bring her back to the conscious world for at least a small fraction of time to reassure him.
Scully's eyes fluttered open at his touch, trying to gain enough composure to speak. Mulder's eyebrows arched painfully at the sight of her bloody forehead that was dripping through her hair and making it course and sticking to the touch. "Scully...." he whispered under his breath.
"Mulder..." she managed to choke out.
"Scully," his eyes raced her body trying to find signs of any other injury, and when her lips started moving with no sound coming out, he redirected his attention to her face.
"Mulder..." she whispered hoarsly. "It's...it's not your fault."
Mulder felt a chill run down his back, sending goosebumps around his entire body. He got an eerie feeling that she wasn't just talking about this possibly fatal injury she was suffering from at the time, but about everything. He felt a bond of 7 years welling up inside him, something had been lifted from him; like he felt some sort of release at that moment. Scully's words had given him some kind of faith that she didn't hold him accountable for any of the events they'd experienced over the past 7 years; like she wasn't blaming him for his irrational behavior.
His train of thought was interupted when Scully struggled to send urgency to her voice as she said, "Mulder," and looked over his shoulder.
Behind him stood a man blowing gray clouds from his mouth into the air ever so casually, a dark, thick and heavy gun hanging at his side. Mulder jumped up immediately and drew the gun from his ankle holster as he rose.
"Game's over," Mulder said cockily. "You've been smoked out, C.G.B."
There was an instant flash of shock in the old man's decrepid face as he heard his initials spoken with such impunity.
"That's right old smokey," Mulder clipped the safety of the gun. "I know your name and I know your game and I just won it."
"No," said the man. "You didn't win it. You got through it the only way you could. By throwing a tantrum and destroying everything."
"Yeah," Mulder smiled evily. "But I won. I got what I wanted."
"Oh?" Cancer Man breathed between puffs. "And what's that? Certainly not your sister."
After a few seconds, Mulder answered, "Revenge."
"Is that all you wanted, MULDER?" Cancer Man brought his cigarette down. "REVENGE? That's all you want after all these years?" Mulder drew his gun up to aim at the old man. "I don't think that's it. I think you want the answers you've looked for for so long. How can you be satisfied, knowing that you've done all this without ever knowing the truth?"
Mulder readjusted his aim and grip on his gun as the man raised his hand to take another long drag of his cigarette.
"You're going to stand there with that gun pointed at me, but if you shoot me, how will you ever know the truth?"
"The truth? The only thing you've ever given me is LIES!" Mulder shouted. "Why should I trust you NOW when all you've ever done is lie?!"
The shadowy figure said nothing.
"I know," Mulder's voice had toned down. "To save your pitiful and pathetic life!"
The smoke in front of the traitor's face cleared, allowing Mulder to see him in whole.
"You're not worth it," Mulder said. "You're not worth saving. You may be immune to punishment, but you're not immune to death. You're just as mortal as anyone else, and your life is in MY hands. You think that by trying to hand me answers that are nothing more than LIES that I'll bother to spare it?"
Once again, Cancer Man was silent. Like he suddenly knew something that Mulder didn't and he was so sure of what was to come that he didn't need Mulder to spare his life.
Mulder heard Scully cough his name, then words, "Look behind you" under her breath. It was barely audible, but enough for him to spin around to see Krycek and his one good arm aiming his handgun at him. Mulder held his gun on Krycek as Cancer Man pulled his into clear aim. This was where the real showdown began.
"Put it down, Krycek!!" Mulder hollered. "Put it down!!"
"Looks like I won, Mulder," Cancer Man said, making Mulder turn back around to find the old man's gun on him.
Krycek had been a distraction so Cancer Man could draw his weapon and not be fired upon, because when Mulder turned around for a minor second to get a last look at Krycek, he was gone, so he whirled back to Cancer Man. The angry tossed around in Mulder's eyes and face, yet the man that stood casually in front of him showed no readable expression.
Just as Mulder was ready to get things moving on his own, the last of the FBI troopers stormed in through the back, having ran out the front of the delapitated building and making their way around the back to bust in.
"Nooo!!!!" Mulder screamed as the light of helicopter's oozed in outlining the bodies of once heroic men.
This provoked Cancer Man, first saying "Goodbye," then all fell silent and all bodies froze as the shot rang out and suddenly stopped as it sliced through the skin of Mulder's lower shoulder and wedging itself in deep beneath the subcutaneous layer of fat. Mulder wouldn't vanish without a fight, so as he was about to drop and let the life drain out of him, the bodies that once seemed frozen sprung to life at the sound of the click of Mulder's trigger and the quiet gasp coming from the villian in front of him. Cancer Man held the hole in his stomach, the blood squeezing through his fingers as he dropped down on the floor in front of Mulder.
Mulder stumbled for a moment then dropped his gun, the sound of it's fall echoing on the walls. His knees hit the cement with a hard thud, sending a shot of pain to his shoulder making him grimace. He dropped face down finally on the ground beside Scully who tried to move through her debilatating head wound.
She edged her way over to Mulder as urgently as she could, and managing to turn him on his back for numerous reasons. One being to keep the dirt and infestations of the northern state's ground from sneaking into his bullet wound and setting in infection, and to see him.
Before she could say anything, he said, "It's over...." under his breath. "It's all over."

FBI Building - One Week Later

Sitting in Skinner's office, Mulder sat uneasily in his chair having just begun the road to recovery. "I think this is it," Skinner told him.
"That's it?" Mulder was taken aback.
"What more do you want?" Skinner questioned.
Mulder shrugged, "That's all you have to say? After all that, you have no more to say?"
"What do you want me to say? This is pretty much over with," he told him.
"I want you to tell me that it IS over with," Mulder began, standing up. "That there won't be anymore injustice of this kind. That these men who escape the demands of the law will no longer do that. That they're gone and if any one of them were to return that you and the FBI's supers will slam the law that every US citizen does it's best to abide by."
"I can't promise that..." --Mulder cut him off.
"What CAN you promise?" Mulder demanded.
Skinner seemed to think for a minute, then stood up moving towards the door, "I can promise that life for you and Agent Scully will never be the same. And that neither of you will have to suffer from any of this torment these men have put you through over the past 7 years again," he pulled the door open. "That's what I can promise."
After all Mulder had been through with Scully, and alone in his whole life, those few words the assistant director promised him made a smile spread across his face for the moment. He walked out of Skinner's office for the last time ever into the hallway where Scully sat with her legs crossed reading a newspaper. When she noticed Mulder, she folded it up, put the paper down, stood up on her high heels and waited for Mulder to approach her.
Scully tilted her head to the side and let her lips slide slightly open to take in a deep breath as he came up to her with a saddened look on his face.
"Mulder?" she asked, bending a bit so she could see his face more clearly as he had his head bent down. "Mulder, what's wrong?"
She put her hand on his good shoulder to stop him and draw his attention to her.
"I'll never know," he whined through tears that formed in the back of his eyes. "I'll never know..." his voice was in a whisper.
Scully quickly outstretched her arms for him. She laid his head down on her shoulder and let him. After a few seconds she heard him take a deep breath and let the tears flow freely like a river. This struck the tenderness in her heart, causing her own tears to form and flow as much as Mulder's, if not more. All the emotions built up, all the walls erected over the years, everything came crashing down in a pile of dust in front of them. They fell to the bench padded with a maroon color, Mulder in Scully's arms and Scully in his. Scully was gently rocking them back and forth but never trying to end the crying and emotional sparks that were being exchanged and thrown out. That time was the last they'd ever have to cry tears of saddness on this matter, and they let their feelings show that last time so that they'd never resurface again and cause pain when and where it's not needed.
This was where life could begin, and would begin. From that moment on, it wasn't about finding aliens and proving life off this planet and out of this universe, nor was it about finding Mulder's sister. It was about finding his own life, finding where he needed and wanted to go from there. With all the pain behind him, he needed guidance to find what he wanted to get out of life. All he wanted was a sense or touch of normalcy, something steady, and happiness. Happiness including restful nights with someone he loved and cherished, never night after night on end of not sleeping, getting a wince of sleep only when taking an over the counter drug.
And he would soon realize that finding the woman he loved more than anything ever imaginable wouldn't be so hard. All he had to do is what he did; pull away from Scully's embrace and take a long look at her. The decision was made.
THE BEGINNING