TITLE: Fallen
AUTHOR: kaydee falls
CLASSIFICATION: V or S, character reflection
RATING: PG-13, i guess
SUMMARY: A familiar villain reflects on his current place in the world.
SPOILERS: overall mythology, passing references to Colony/End Game, Talitha Cumi/Herrenvolk, The Unnatural, Requiem, Within/Without
DISTRIBUTION: take it! please! just tell me where....
DISCLAIMER: no, he isn’t mine. if he was, we’d be seeing a lot more of him, believe me. oh yeah, and i don’t own Mulder or Scully, either.

Fallen
by kaydee falls

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They used to fear me.

It was a marvelous feeling. So was the hatred. You could taste it in the air between us. Fear mingled with a heavy dose of hate. It thrilled me. I fed off of it. It gave me power over them, and power is the only thing I’ve ever loved.

Power is strength, and I was always the strongest of my compatriots. They all envied me, jealousies simmering beneath false fronts. I felt those, too. They gave me an adrenaline rush, an emotional high. But nothing felt quite as good as the fear.

That’s why I loved being assigned to field work. It put me smack dab in the middle of all those innocent men, women, and children. Most of whom scarcely paid me any notice, of course. But the potential -- ah. Just knowing that I could bring fear to all their hearts, if I so chose. The power I had was magnificent, the opportunity to control every single one of them, bring them to their knees in fear. The privilege. I rarely exerted this influence, obviously. The few of my fellows who had become drunk with power had been removed neatly, efficiently. I was never drunk with it. It was just a warm buzz under my skin.

Working at headquarters, behind closed doors -- that was always a bitch. Like I said, the envy was nice, but nothing next to the fear. And none of my coworkers feared me. Why should they? What could I do to them? They performed all their duties meticulously, and I couldn’t touch them. And that led to a feeling of smugness -- which did not boost my ego whatsoever. It made me dislike them intensely. Not hate, never hate -- it would be as senseless to hate them as it would be to hate myself. They were just like I was, except they didn’t have the opportunities to be feared, as I did. My periods spent in the labyrinthian offices were brief, and far between. The rest of my time was devoted to field work. That which I loved the best.

In truth, of course, my duties rarely required much in the way of dealings with ordinary citizens. I was more in the field of regulation, you might say. A sort of undercover police officer. I was to seek out those of my associates who had “fallen.” That was our code word for any of our kind who became traitors to our project. The Fallen. I knew the Fallen well. I found them, and I killed them. It was my job, and it was my passion. The Fallen always had the insatiable desire to help mankind, to reveal our decades of hard work to the public, a public which would never be ready to learn the truth.

My motives were never entirely unselfish, of course. If the world learned the truth, they might stop fearing me. And so, the endless war I waged against the Fallen was my personal crusade, my only means of maintaining my power.

Occasionally, ordinary men stumbled in my way. They tried to interfere, or they caused a disturbance accidentally. I killed them, too. Secretly, I enjoyed the interference. Pure human fear gave me the greatest degree of satisfaction, fed my endless appetite for power. And the fear felt by one of the Fallen, when they caught sight of me -- that was a delicious treat, as well, for they had become all too human. Sometimes I would forget that this was one of my own that I was killing, because their fear felt so purely primal and human. In working with the normal men, they were becoming men themselves. It was wonderful.

Our kind was not meant to have a fear reaction. We were not designed that way. We were supposed to be cold, calculating bodies, all working in unison to achieve our goals. Almost like worker bees. But we are far too adaptable. When we encounter men, we begin to unconsciously assume some of their inherent traits. The Fallen are the more susceptible of us. They begin to believe that their loyalties lie not with their brothers, but with the men we monitor, keep such careful tabs on....plot against. Then they vanish. They betray us.

And when it has been determined that a missing member of our establishment has Fallen, I am sent to kill him. Or, occasionally, her. Technically, we are genderless. Sex is determined by the form we choose to wear when we go among men. But that is irrelevant. The key thing is, the Fallen can feel fear. In wanting to save humans, they start to become them. In a few rare cases, their resemblance to normal men becomes such that I can hardly tell who they originally were.

Once, just once, there was a complete freak happening, in which the Fallen died as a man. He was once of the first Fallen, back in the early days of our project, back when I was sloppier and made more mistakes. My mistake, in tracking him down, was in underestimating men, an accident which allowed several to see my true face. It was a stupid error, and I was strongly chastised for it afterwards. But it was one mistake I never regretted. It was my first true, unbridled taste of fear. A taste which I never forgot.

I remember that early assassination fondly. Our customs were still so primitive, formal. There were still so few of the Fallen, then. We thought they were freak aberrations, and treated them not as criminals, but as misguided souls in need of serious psychiatric remodeling. We pitied them. We didn’t even call them the Fallen, yet. We called them the Unnaturals. And they showed remorse. I would show my victim my true face, and they would show me theirs. It was how things went. This one, however, was the only one who truly wanted to be a man. He was the first to refuse to show me his true face, and when I killed him, his blood flowed red.

Later Fallen treated him as a martyr, of sorts. And so the custom of showing one’s true face died. They would all refuse. None of the succeeding Fallen would bleed red, however. In that sense, they were not following their martyr. None of them actually wanted to be men; they just wanted to help them. None had the passion, the love, for something earthly that he had had, that caused him to transform into a human. And so, none of them give me quite the same euphoric sensation when I kill them.

Still, the fear is a beautiful thing, and it gives me great joy to inhale it in the moments before I assassinate Fallen. And, like I mentioned before, even better is when a normal man interferes.

That’s why I used to love Mulder. The first time I encountered him was about six years ago. He was on a wild goose chase at the time -- later, I would learn that he was always on some wild goose chase or another, and half of them involved his long-lost sister. Well, he and I crossed paths. Over one of the Fallen. This was a different type of Fallen. One of the Clones, the Hybrids, whatever you want to call them. One of us, and yet not one of us. The originals were the first Fallen. They scattered their seed throughout the Earth, polluting themselves, our race, by diluting their children with human blood. So now, even we don’t know where the boundary is drawn between Clones and Hybrids. They’ve become so intertwined, they’re no longer distinct from on another. Most of them are Fallen. They all recognize me, no matter what form I take. Tracking them is one of my greatest pleasures. The fear they exude is blissfully overwhelming. I’ve become quite the legend among them -- they call me the Bounty Hunter. It’s a cute nickname, filled with their hatred and fear. It suits me well.

So: my goals were in stark contrast to Mulder’s, and he had the nerve to intervene. This wouldn’t have bothered me, except that he didn’t fear me. Not at first. His partner, however, was delightful. She picked up on my power much faster, almost instinctively, and her fear grew and blossomed as the days went by. It reached its fantastic peak when I kidnapped her. I didn’t kill her, because I needed to use her to get the Samantha Clone. Instead, I kept her very close to me. And drank up the fear that rolled off of her in great waves. Oh, she controlled it well, on the outside -- but external appearances have never thrown me off. I knew that she was deeply afraid. It was wonderful.

Mulder I didn’t kill that time. I could have. I had so many chances. But, initially, he was extremely disappointing. No fear. Hatred, yes, and I do like the scent of hatred, but it paled in comparison to my expectations. It wasn’t until we were on that arctic submarine, though, that fear surfaced. And it well made up for the wait. Mulder is a brave man, and works well under pressure -- but even as he weakly shouted demands at me, the fear pervaded everything. Fabulous. I delayed killing him, choosing instead to slowly beat the life out of him, in order to prolong that fear. Marvelous. And then I left him to die.

He didn’t, of course. But that served only to delight me. Because now he had learned to hate me, and to be afraid of me, and so had his partner. Now, whenever I encountered them, the fear and hatred permeated the air. I adored it. I even had the joy of kidnapping her again -- well, not really, but I did carjack her vehicle and used her again, briefly, while I was tracking the Smith Clone. That led me straight to Mulder, as well. Oh, those were the days. Even though I had to put up with a few men giving me orders every now and then, once going so far as to use my healing powers instead of my killing ones -- in spite of this, life was good.

They used to fear me.

What ever happened to those times? What changed? Why did things have to become so different? Why did the powers that be decide that tracking down and killing the Fallen wasn’t a necessary task? Why is our race losing?

Things went so horribly wrong, so fast. The rebels, the Fallen, the humans, us. It became chaotic, uncertain, confusing. Nothing went right, and yet nobody seemed to notice.

My job changed, abruptly. I was still working in the field, but no longer seeking out Fallen. Instead, they sent their Bounty Hunter on a mission to collect certain people. Previous abductees. Those with anomalies in their brain functions. I searched for them, I found them, I brought them together to board the ship.

And there was Mulder. I hadn’t been sent to get him, but he was there, among the crowd I had assembled to be transported. At first, I was glad. I thought I would be deriving great pleasure from his fear.

But this was an odd group. None of them felt fear, as the ship approached. It disgusted me. Except for Mulder, they didn’t even realize that I was alien. They assumed I was just one of them. And even he forgot me, once he saw the lights.

I decided that I didn’t like this new assignment.

Then I had to collect that Praise boy, so I didn’t have the opportunity to feel the fear of the new abductees as they were first introduced to the tests. My colleagues became very smug about this. All that field work they had missed out on, now they were getting their little revenge by sending me away while they could experience the power trip of a lifetime.

So I was already bitter, when I chased after the last child. Bumped into Mulder’s partner down there, but to my shock, she was very much in charge of the situation. Maybe not in terms of rank or control, but she felt no fear of me now. Hatred, yes, but what I desired more than anything was fear, and she wasn’t giving it to me! My apprehensions had been confirmed: she knew the truth, so she no longer felt fear of me.

Resentful rage built up in me, and I made sure I caused as much trouble for her as possible before I completed my assignment. Then I returned to the ship, but I was too late. The abductees had all already passed the fear stage. The only feeling they gave off now was pain, and I could garner no satisfaction from their pain. Some of the others did, I could tell, but not me. So I was in a bad mood when I reported to my superiors for my next assignment.

They assigned me to be a monitor.

“With all due respect, my expertise is in field work, not in low-key espionage,” I told them. “My tracking talents will be wasted, sitting in front of a few screens. I kill humans, not watch them.”

“There is no field work,” they replied. “Our human allies require that these individuals be monitored. This is your assignment.”

“What about the Fallen? And the Clones?” I asked angrily. “They haven’t vanished. There are a lot of them still down there, trying to brew up trouble.”

“The Fallen are of no importance at the moment,” they informed me. “Report to your assignment immediately.”

I did as I was told. My peers were sufficiently smug at my being downgraded. My dislike for them all intensified, as the days passed. Days, weeks, months, who could tell? I did my job, and hated it. It was boring. It was degrading. I hadn’t tasted fear in ages.

Then I learned of their release of the many abductees. And that these “new” people were becoming the assassins. They were the ones who were killing all who got in our way. Without discretion. When I was informed of this, I was furious.

“This is your idea of colonization?” I demanded of my superiors. “Don’t you remember the problems that Hybrids have always caused us, their tendency to give in to their human genes?”

“They aren’t Hybrids,” they replied. “They are what our human allies refer to as alien replicants. Human replacements. A whole new breed, if you will. They are clearing the path for our invasion.”

“Who, exactly, are they killing?” I asked.

“That is not information you need to know.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. There had always been ranks in our system, sure, but there had never been no withholding of information from a fellow member of our race. What we told the Clones, or the Hybrids, or the humans -- that was another matter. But within the race, all information flowed freely. There was nothing that was not told.

Saying this would only anger my superiors, however, so I decided to just plow on ahead. “They are removing the Fallen?” I persisted.

They were exasperated. “The Fallen are entirely inconsequential,” they said. “Your old job has been terminated. There is nothing for you to do on Earth that our abductees are not doing now. Please return to your post.”

“You cannot use humans for this work!” I insisted. “I never understood why we relied on our human allies so much. However you may think they are helping us, they are still men! Their loyalties must lie first with their own race -- as must ours. Which is why eliminating the Fallen was always so important!”

All but one of my superiors had left the room, and he was growing angry. This emotion was made far more obvious by the fact that, having recently come from a meeting with the human associates, he was still in his human form, along with all its imperfections of facial expression. “You should be grateful that we have these new beings to do the dirty work for us!” he hissed. “Grateful, that we aren’t constantly sending you Earthside!”

I gaped at him. ‘You should be grateful’ is a distinctly human expression. Our race does not feel gratitude. That, like fear, is not an emotion natural to us. We take; we do not thank. “The future of the project requires that we eliminate all threats, including that of the Fallen. It is a duty that only one of our own kind may accomplish. By using humans, we are putting ourselves at the disadvantage. Men are fallible; men are not loyal to our cause. Why should we rely on them?”

“How dare you question our decisions!” he spat at me. His human face was getting redder and redder with fury. “Our cooperation with the humans is essential for our future colonization--”

“We do not cooperate with humans,” I interrupted, my voice steel. “They cooperate with us. That, or they die. We always have the upper hand. That is how it has always been, that is how it always shall be.”

A flicker of confusion played across his face. “Times have changed,” he said, but his voice had lost its power, its authority.

My mind glanced back to the early days, when the Fallen were called the Unnaturals, and were so few in number. Somehow, I knew that this weakling in front of me had forgotten those days. The old customs. But I hadn’t. “As your executioner, I show you my true face before I kill you,” I intoned. “Show me your true face so you may die with dignity.”

He was confused. Then I pulled out my beautiful stiletto weapon, and activated it with a soft hissing sound. Then he understood, and he panicked. The fear reached me in a torrent, and I would have smiled if I had been in human form. I had starved for this fear for so long. I savored it for a moment, then harshly stabbed my former superior in the base of the neck.

For only the second time in all my experience, a member of my own race bled red blood.

I finally understood, my vaguest suspicions verified. My job has changed. Having killed a superior, I knew that I would now be considered a Fallen. A traitor to the project. I would be forced to escape to the Earth, where I would live out my life a hunted being. Some other Bounty Hunter, or perhaps one of these new ‘alien replicants,’ would be sent to track me down, to kill me. That is of no matter to me. As I once told an FBI agent, everything dies.

In truth, I want nothing to do with my own kind. They have disgraced me, betrayed me. On Earth now, I never assume my old favorite form. I don’t want to be recognized as the Alien Bounty Hunter. When I encounter a Clone or a Fallen now -- and I can always tell -- I turn away from them before they can see me. Why should I kill them? What good would that do?

And so I go on, invisible among the men. Men who don’t spare me a second glance.

They used to fear me, but not anymore. Why should they fear me? I have no power over them. I am an outcast member of a weak race. My own kind disgraces me. It has Fallen.

My entire race is Fallen.