Summary: Cassandra's inner monologue to her husband as she stands waiting for Mulder to pull the trigger. - Post-ep for "Two Fathers" R.

TITLE: Black Hole
AUTHOR: Maidenjedi
EMAIL: texgoddess@yahoo.com
RATING: R
CATEGORY: A, V, post-ep for "Two Fathers"
ARCHIVE: Spooky's, Gossamer, Ephemeral, list
archives. Everyone else please ask.
SPOILERS: takes place during "Two Fathers"
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, thank you very much.
SUMMARY: Cassandra's inner monologue to her
husband as she stands waiting for Mulder to
pull the trigger.

***

Author's Notes at the end.

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I was drowning in my own imagination. Colors and
pretty words and too much champagne. A night to
celebrate, a night for falling in love. I came
looking for you and I found nothing but a black
hole, a gaping wound from which the blood would
always pour.

I don't remember why I was there, what possibly
could have happened that was worth celebrating.
Was it a post-election party, maybe? 1972, Nixon
had won, and I remembered you saying something
vague, something incomprehensible; "Finally someone
worth bringing down". In any event, there we were,
at some country club in some Massachusetts town,
and there was the dashing if withdrawn Bill Mulder
with his dashing if uptight wife, Teena. There
were other couples, names and faces that have since
slipped my mind, memories taken from me in a dark
laboratory stinking of human blood. But I remember
wearing blue, light blue with ridiculous purple trim,
and I remember thinking I was like some simpering
Melanie Hamilton, and then Teena walked in, in
shimmering green silk. She was Scarlett and I was
Melanie and oh how lovely the magnolias were
that night!

You and Bill shook hands, congratulated each other
on some such thing, and Teena barely glanced at me
as I badgered her with questions about Fox and
Samantha. I had stories to share about my own
Jeffrey (yes, *my* Jeffrey, as even now he will
never be yours), but Teena was lost in her own
world, careful to be polite to me but no more. I
had no idea how much she loathed me, loathed my
status as your wife, viewed it as some inconvienence
to her way of living instead of sacred fact. I
didn't learn until later, did I?

We danced that night, and I drank champagne. Colors
swirled around me and pretty words floated through me,
and I couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't. It
was the last night I laughed, but you wouldn't
remember that. You would be gone the very next day,
no real explanation, and before I could confront you
I would be taken away, abducted and made into a test
dummy. I didn't know that yet, as I twirled in first
your arms then Bill's, and my laughter sang out as gay
as bells ringing.

The clock struck midnight when Cinderella's dream became
six mice and a pumpkin, and it was striking midnight as
I went looking for you. Bill and I had danced one final
waltz and I had one more glass of champagne. Bill disappeared,
undoubtedly to grab Teena's mink, and I left the ballroom to
look for you. I found you.

In the arms of Scarlett, Melanie found her wandering beau.

Was I surprised? Not entirely. Shocked though. Colors
and pretty words and the scent of magnolias. I wanted to
disappear and I wanted to take you with me.

I remember wondering out loud on the way home, how long
had it been going on? How long had I been blind to this,
to the innuendo? You said nothing, not a damn word, because
you don't air dirty laundry in front of the help, and that
bulking and perpetually stern man you had driving was help.

In my blue dress with the pale purple trim, I was Melanie.

Stripped to my slip and hose with only my make-up to remove,
I was just me, Cassandra. You hit Cassandra, back-handed her
once across the face, and her lip split and blood ran warm
down her chin. I watched it all as if it wasn't happening to
me. I had gotten my wish and had disappeared into the black
hole, collapsed inside the gaping wound you left in our
marriage. I watched you as you handed me a handkerchief.

"Wouldn't want to get blood on anything, Cass." Calm, cool,
collected. You even lit up one of your cigarettes, and the
stench haunted me even in the dungeon you committed me to.

Was it laughter I heard in the wind that cold November night
a year later? Laughter, dry and toxic, tinted with
a hint of smoker's cough?

Years later, in between abductions when Jeffrey tried his
damnedest to understand his poor, sick mother, I would
recall a night of dancing. Colors would swirl and for a
moment I would be in your arms, until I opened my eyes
to see for myself the hole into which I'd fallen. And then
I'd find myself on some cold steel slab, thinking it was
over, that someone had found me dead and this was my
autopsy, and the pain would be fresh and the oil thick and
I'd know it was you who did this. I remember Samantha
Mulder, small and fragile and pale, crying for her father,
and I remember thinking that she didn't want that prayer
answered. She and I wanted colors, you see, colors and
pretty words. She was me, maybe, a younger me born of
slime and Scarlett, and that her and I were in it together
told me every suspicion I had was right.

We suffered because of the vanity of one sorry son of a
bitch. How many died for you, how many died so you could
have your whore? Jeffrey wanted to know his father and he's
out there now, and what will he find, I wonder. Will you
sacrifice him, too, to some dead cause? Jeffrey was, is,
mine, and you'll take him from me if you can.

Blood pours even now, even now as I wait for it to finally
end. And how perfect is it to stand before Fox Mulder
and beg him to pull the trigger. His mother had killed me
in another life, his mother and the man who was certain he'd
been the father, as they stood entangled in some operatic
embrace, her lipstick staining even his earlobes. Poetic,
isn't it, this drama you conceived. You sold your own
daughter and your devoted wife for a little screw with a
tight bitch and never blinked once. I want to ruin it for
you, and if *they* really come one day, I hope you're the
first to die. I hope you've got a Morley jammed between
your lips when they do it.

And for me, somewhere, it will be colors and pretty words
and the wound, somehow, will close.


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NOTES: Whew....that took me one solid hour to write. Don't
have a clue where it came from.

Tonight, this goes out to everyone who ever reads my stories.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart. And as always, for
Michael, the other shoe.

Feedback, criticism, what have you always welcome at
texgoddess@yahoo.com