TITLE: Iscariot AUTHOR: Denise Morgen EMAIL: meadora@hotmail.com CATEGORY: Angst, Character Death RATING: R SUMMARY: Welcome to the price of betrayal... SPOILERS: none, but assume the 7 th season never happened and Diana's alive. ARCHIVE: Knock yourself out. Just keep my name & info attached and drop me a line so I can come visit! FEEDBACK: The quick and easy way to having a shrine erected in your honor! DISCLAIMER: The characters of Mulder and Scully belong to Fox, 1013 Productions and Chris Carter. I don't have permission to use these characters and I'm not making any money from their use. AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is unlike anything I've ever written before. There are NO hearts and flowers to be found in this piece, people. If you're looking for a happy ending go elsewhere. I dedicate this to the ladies of the Mulder Torture Anonymous, whose tireless forays into the realm of a broken Mulder inspired this story. Visit my fanfiction, it gets lonely! http://DennysX.cjb.net Iscariot By Denise Morgen I have found the door to hell, and contrary to popular belief, it's lacking the pitchfork wielding devils and excessive heat. No, hell is much more insidious than that. Hell is the empty static hiss of my blank TV screen and cavernous darkness of my Alexandria apartment. Barren...Listless...Dank...Empty... Just like what's left of my life. The gunmen gave me the tape. Thrust it in my hands when they met me at the gates of the prison. "New evidence..." they said, like I hadn't had evidence enough of her betrayal. Apparently I hadn't because instead of throwing the tape away I went directly home to watch it. Was I eager for more justification of my actions, another morbid look at the lie I'd mistaken for truth? Or maybe even then I knew - some small part of me that was screaming in denial demanded I watch... God, I am such a fool. It was her. They were threatening her, but she refused to bend. Confident, she threw their demands back at them. Would she betray me? Even to save her life? Never. Did she believe that she commanded the same loyalty from me? Of course. They taunted her with a murder, the revelation of evidence left planted at the scene. They painted her hands with the blood of a friend, but she remained steadfast. "Mulder won't believe your lies," she answered. They told her of the woman, even now working her way back into my trust and my bed. She stiffened in pain at the revelation and doubt fought to work it's way onto her face. My eyes were the ones raining tears when she straightened her spine and spit in the face of her nearest captor before defending my loyalty. "Mulder believes in me." Oh Scully, when was I ever worthy of you? Her words were ringing through my ears when the tape ended, spewing it's static crackle out into the broken abyss of my solitude. She tried to tell me, swore her innocence in the eyes of her very god. But the evidence was too conclusive, too damning, too believable when it fell from the lips of my lover in the tangled covers of our bed. I should've known when the cancer returned, stealing it's way through out the highways of her veins. She called for me, sent messengers in the form of her mother and the gunmen to bring me to her side, but I was too blinded by my rage and hatred to come. Finally it was her brother Bill, of all people, who came and drug me to her deathbed in the prison infirmary. For the first time I felt guilt; I was the one who'd lobbied against allowing her transferred to a decent hospital. Desperate to inflict a little more revenge on her for her perceived betrayal, I cost her days, hours off of her life with my childish actions. But in the end it was the minutes that mattered. Dana Katherine Scully died at 7:17 a.m. - I got to her room at 7:23. Her mother said her last words were, "Tell Mulder I forgive him." Hell is too good for me. I have betrayed my best friend, my only supporter. I deserted her in her hour of need and ranked myself on the side of our most hated enemies. I have thrown away the life of the woman I love in a fit of petty anger. And what did I get for my thirty pieces of silver? The arms of a black widow and the heavy silk of her lies. Where I stood to be her salvation, instead I am her betrayer. Just call me Judas. Fini. Note: this is way darker than anything I normally put out. I know I'm probably not going to get any feedback from this (the gods know I rarely give feedback for something so depressing!), but I just had to get this one out there.