From: ephemeral@ephemeralfic.org Date: 5 Jan 2002 16:31:26 -0000 Subject: From Afar by KatyBlue by KatyBlue Source: direct Reply To: katy2blue@aol.com TITLE: From Afar AUTHOR: KatyBlue CLASSIFICATION: MSR, A RATING: PG-13 SPOILERS: Not really, although the premise of the aimless Mulder-wanderer of season 9 is here. E-MAIL: katy2blue@aol.com WEBSITE: It's a new URL...please come visit! http://www.geocities.com/katyblue_shadesofblue ARCHIVE: Any well-meaning XF site is okay. Just drop a note and let me know -- I like to visit! AUTHOR'S NOTES: To all the readers out there who continue to read -- thanks for every kind word ever sent my way. And for Meredith, whose editorial skills remain unrivaled, and who continues to entertain the delusions of this now intermittent writer. *********************************************************** Part (1/1) Lackluster curtains a drab shade of gray hung from the window. Filmed glass looked out onto a parking lot through a layer of grime. The natty carpet was rough under his feet, and he wondered briefly about communicable fungal diseases and if he should be wearing shoes as he crossed the room. It wasn't as if he hadn't been in a similar place before. Wasn't as if he hadn't spent nearly the last decade of his life in similar, depressing settings. But always, there had been a connecting door. A presence felt, if not seen. Sometimes on the other side of the wall, yet beside him despite the barrier. Manic Christmas lights blinked in a repetitive pattern where, outside his window, they were climbing a pole to the blinking, neon vacancy sign above. Another Christmas, another Chanukah, slipping by, virtually unnoticed by him. But this one held some important firsts he couldn't ignore. A child's first celebration. And his own first year in eight where he found himself, once again, truly alone. He sighed. Sat down on a bed bedecked in tasteless gray polyester. He rubbed at eyes that felt hot and grainy. Their first phone call. He was nervous. Through the rift lent by distance, he felt separate. Unsure. Doubting himself in the midst of the season of giving and wonder. He picked up the phone and dialed the number. A familiar voice on the other end, though not the one he was breaking into a nervous sweat to hear. "Frohike here." "It's me." "Hey." The word was infused with an almost impossible warmth for so brief a greeting. "Everything's set up here. Untraceable. We're ready to patch you through anytime." Another sigh slipped out. "How about now?" he asked reluctantly. "I've gotta warn you that you've only got about five minutes before we need to cut the connection." "Jesus, Frohike...five? That's it?" "Sorry." His eyes were burning now. He wondered if he was coming down with a cold. He wondered if he was coming down with an alien virus that would take over his body and mind. His life. He found himself on the verge of laughter, however inappropriate. A psychologist he'd gone to once had asked him what was funny about the family tragedies he'd been describing. He hadn't realized he'd been smiling while recounting them -- his use of humor as a defense. He'd stopped going when the woman didn't seem to understand this reflex. "Five minutes?" he repeated. "Sorry, buddy." There was a pause over the air. "We miss you," Frohike stated. "Thanks." "Everything's okay?" Mulder let out a short cough of what might be construed as laughter. "Everything's just great." The dresser he was staring at was pocked with a myriad of gouges from a bored occupant. The wood veneer scratched by what looked like the kick of someone's boot. A tattered bible lay atop the sorry piece of furniture. Someone had ripped a large section out. Maybe out of anger, maybe to take with them for inspiration on the road. The metal heating unit under the window was rattling like a late-stage tuberculosis patient's lungs. Everything was just grand. "You ready?" Frohike asked. "Is she on the line?" "Waiting. Good to talk to you, bro," Frohike squeezed in. "You'll hear a series of clicks -- when it stops, you're through. Gotta go. Take care of yourself." "I will." He started to add "Thanks, Frohike..." but the clicks had started. It sounded like a frantic bug tapping its appendages against the receiver in search of a mate. Lips pressed tight, he felt his heart beginning to beat in time to the electronic insect. Sudden silence from the tiny tapper. And then dead air. No, not dead -- alive with the presence he'd been waiting for. His heart was pounding now, loud in his ear. "Hello?" To his dismay, his voice came out as a weak croak. So soft, he could barely hear her, his name issued forth with the familiar intonation she lent to it. "Mulder?" "Scully." He answered as if in prayer, breathing his life into the receiver. For a span of seconds silence stole in, both rendered speechless by the contact. He held his breath then, in order to hear hers issue forth instead. Soft susurrations into his ear. Scully broke the silence. "I miss you," Her voice sounded tired. Sorrowed. "I miss you too," he said quickly. "How's the little guy?" "He's good. He misses you too." He knew this wasn't true, only what they both wished -- a hope that his son knew of him. Could remember him from such a brief period of interaction so early in life. Such a fragile wish, steeped in the land of impossibilities. "Are you coping okay? I mean, with the baby," he added. "Yes." The answer seemed flat somehow. "I wish..." She sighed and didn't finish the thought. "What?" he urged. "Nothing." "Don't leave me hanging here, Scully. We've only got five minutes." "Five?" she repeated, and her voice cracked on the word. Her next were quicker. "I wish a lot of things," she admitted with a sigh. "I wish you could see him. I wish you were here for the holidays." He wished he were there, holidays aside. He'd never talked to Scully about his parent's conflicting faiths -- his mixed-up childhood where Chanukah warred with Christmas and the ideology of both somehow escaped him. But he didn't want to waste the time now to enlighten her on yet another Mulder family dysfunction. He'd grown into adulthood never knowing what to do at the holidays. Scully had believed his non-participation to be the affliction of a lonely workaholic. He hadn't ever admitted to the fact that he was just confused by the season. Bereft of traditions in a world of people with purposeful celebrations. He traced an aimless pattern on the comforter. "Are you going to your mother's?" "Yes. The whole family's going to be there." She paused, and added as an afterthought, "Except for you." It was kind of her to include him as family. He wished he felt as if there were such a place for him. "I'm sure Bill won't shed any tears in my absence," he observed. "Probably just as well I'm not there to antagonize him." He was trying to lighten the mood, but obviously failed. There was no laughter on the other end, only silence. "Scully?" She didn't answer. "Scully?" He heard the catch of her breath, quickly drawn in. It took another few seconds to realize she was crying. "Don't, Scully," he murmured, straining to hear each hiccuping breath. No doubt she was covering the mouthpiece of the phone to shield him. He wished she wouldn't. He wanted to hear every breath she took, even in anguish. "Please, don't. You know we chose to do it this way." "I know," she answered shakily. Where was the Scully he'd worked with for eight long, hard years? The strong, fierce woman who always gave back as good as she got? Mulder felt as if somehow, somewhere, the ground had been yanked out from under him. Half the time, he had to argue himself into believing he hadn't come back from the abduction in some sort of parallel universe -- an alternate reality in which Scully was a frail woman rather than his indomitable, stoic partner. Fox-sexist-Mulder, hello. "I don't agree there was a choice," she added finally. Her next breath tremored over the line and silence followed and fell between them again. He couldn't argue her point. "What have you been doing?" she asked finally. She'd gained a bit of strength, because her voice was firm. All Scully. He laughed and wished he hadn't. "I'm keeping busy." "Please don't do anything dangerous, Mulder." He looked down at his watch. Almost four minutes had passed. Jesus. Four minutes and they'd barely exchanged any words of meaning. This was all they would get for a long time. They'd never been big talkers. And certainly never spoken the words that most couples speak to one another as a matter of course. The overused and lightly tossed exchange of 'I love you'. He tried to imagine how he would slip this phrase in, but couldn't seem to figure out how to give her even this tiny concession. The shortcoming made him feel small and mean. He needed more time. On his watch, the second hand almost seemed to pick up speed. Rushing crazily to get around the numbers on the tiny dial. "Scully, we've got less than a minute..." he blurted. God, there was so much to ask her. About William. About the X-Files. About teaching. About life. So little to tell her about his seemingly meaningless flight. This conversation was pointless. What he'd wanted was not the few words they'd just managed to exchange, while the tiny winking lights outside the window sped merrily along their programmed route up the pole -- climbing, climbing, ever climbing to the neon vacancy. He wanted, selfishly, more of a connection. He wanted Scully here with him. "Give William something from me for Christmas." His voice was growing as rushed as the second hand racing around the face of his watch. He resented the season's intrusion. Almost resented the baby's infringement into these few stolen moments. It seemed almost a dream most days to imagine he had a son out there. A baby, growing each day while he languished in the stasis of a cheap hotel room under an assumed name. It seemed more than a dream to imagine Scully out there, missing him. It seemed the nightmare of a lonely man. "Don't go, Mulder --" "Scully --" he started to say. Her voice was cut off by a series of clicks. The frantic, clicking electronic insect scrambled Scully away from him. He wanted to shout at it. To yell out a 'no' that would reverberate through this room. A denial that would perhaps echo throughout the entire universe. The phone line was dead. Too short. Too soon. They weren't done. It wasn't fair. He knew that wherever she was, Scully would be feeling the alienation just as acutely as he was. Mulder's Christmas gift to her -- this cut-short phone call -- a reminder of their severed bond. He lay back on the bed and let the receiver fall, inert, beside him. He stared up at the cracked, chipping paint on the ceiling. Why hadn't he said it? He'd heard his parents say it to each other, before Sam disappeared, of course. He'd heard it in hundreds of countless movies, seen other people use the words, right out loud sometimes, in public places. They were words that always seemed cheap to him. Too easy to say. Why was it so hard? Wasn't it the least he could have done? To have given them to Scully as a gift over the distance that separated them? Alone, in his dim motel room, he lay on the bed and his eyes fell to the window, watching the lights whirl around the pole outside. Lying beside him, the abandoned receiver lay silent and still. But somehow, he'd like to think she might have felt the meaning behind his words, traveling out of his heart, leaving this cheerless hotel room far behind. A capacity for love. Not enough, but the only gift he could offer. Racing across the miles and rushing at her from afar. "I love you, Scully," he whispered aloud. There was no answer. Only continued silence. *********************************************************** THE END