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'TWO WOMEN, ONE MAN'
By: Vickie Moseley

I can't turn my head to see, but I hear her thoughts and her footsteps.

Diana. Et tu Brute?

Her thoughts are at war with her words and I struggle to separate the two strands before they are forever tangled in my mind.

"I know what's happened to you. I know what you're suffering from. I've been sitting back and watching."

At least that much is true. But her thoughts betray the gentle caress she tries to put in her tone of voice, the touch of her hand on mine.

'He's so weak, so helpless. It would be so easy to end it all. But he's necessary, necessary to the project. How one so fragile can be such a keystone to the greater good has to be the ultimate irony. Almost most ironic than the fact that the one man I ever thought I loved would be the one man I would be required to destroy.'

Ah, there it is, at long last, the truth. Scully, where are you? I owe you several 'I told you so's. You tried so hard to warn me, even risked destroying our friendship in your efforts to save me from my own stupid fantasies. How could I have ever imagined that this woman, this Judas, had loved me?

"I know you know about me . . ."

Damn straight, Diana. I know all about you now. This disease, this curse has had one bright spot. I finally saw the light. I finally realize what you have been all along. How could you do this to me?

"That my loyalties are not just to you . . . but to a man you have grown to despise."

'A man who has turned the wheels of your life for far longer than you could imagine.'

I know that, too, Diana. I can see it in your mind and it's shooting the light right down to your heart. Your empty heart.

"You have your reasons, but as you look inside me now, you know I have mine . . .

'He rescued me from a dead end existence. He dragged me up from the bottoms of the career ladder, promised me everything I dreamed -- an important position, travel, excitement. And when I grew lonely, he even gave me you. You were never meant to be more than a sex toy, Fox. I rue the day I let you as close as I did. I should never have allowed myself to become attached.'

"Fox . . . Fox, I love you. I have loved you for so long. You know that, too."

'Say anything, anything he needs to hear. He has to live, he has to keep breathing, long enough to fulfill the project.'

Go, Diana, just go. I can't die, I wish I could. I wish I could end this charade. I would do anything to stop you and your 'owner' from using me as your lab rat, your organ donor. If I could move, I'd kill myself and end all your aspirations.

"And I won't let you die . . . to prove what you are, what's inside you. There's no need to prove it. It's been known for so long."

'Your whole life. Everything has led to this day.'

My god. My entire life has been a lie.

"Now we can be together."

Only in hell, Diana. Only in hell.

She kisses my forehead and smiles. She leaves me alone and the room grows quiet again. I use every ounce of strength I have to follow her departure with my eyes. I hear the echo of her thoughts as she enters the hallway.

'I did my job. It's over. Soon it will all be over. When he's dead my life will go back to way it was.'

I want to scream, I want to rail against this imprisonment of my body and mind. But all I can do is slip back into the darkness.

THE END