TITLE: 'LCTTA4: On The Outside Looking In' AUTHOR: XSketch E-MAIL: XSketch@hotmail.com WEBSITE: http://thesketchfiles.bravehost.com SPOILERS: Everything up to 'Trust No 1' RATING: PG-13 (for language) CLASSIFICATION: MSR, S, Angst-o-rama, pre-ep, AU-ish (only in that whose to say this didn't happen where the cameras weren't rolling?) SUMMARY: With only the company of a fourteen-year-old boy that can read his thoughts, just how 'eaten away' was Mulder's resolve by Trust No 1? And can he really refrain from returning home again... permanently? FEEDBACK: Hugged and turned into a shrine at XSketch@hotmail.com!!! DISCLAIMER: If you're still under the impression I own these lovely characters, you're more in need of help than me! ARCHIVE: Of course - just email me so I know where :) DEDICATION: To everybody that reads my stories and take the time to give kind words of support (you know who you are ;)) AUTHOR'S NOTE: There's just something very screwed up with a 14 year-old kid helping to hide Mulder, but there you go...If that's what TPTB decided, they must be right *choke*. Anyway, yes this is the fourth installment in, esentially, my shippy, angsty re-write of season 9, which started with 'Last Chance To Turn Around' what seems an age ago :) It's not really necessary to have read the 3 predecessors to this, but it might help, and I'd be greatly humbled if you did :) LOL It is, however, *vital* for you to know what the hell happenbed in the show up through the start of s9. ==================================================== 'I never should have gone away, I never should have gone away and left you like I did with tears in your eyes I thought you'd take me back but now to my surprise I'm on the outside looking in, Gotta find a way, gotta find a way back to you heart, dear once again. Won't you take me back again I'll be waiting here till then On the outside looking in' ~'I'm On The Outside (Lookin' In)' by Little Anthony & The Imperials 'The desert never rests. For a place so hot, with such little wind most of the time, you'd expect it to be still, and yet...' *sigh* 'It's always moving...forever changing direction. One second a particle of sand lifts with the slightest puff of air, and then - without warning - something sends it hurtling in the opposite direction. 'God, it sounds so much like my life, and yet I actually envy that tiny, almost insignificant fleck; to have no worries in life? No sense of helplessness? ...No all-consuming need to be back with the people you love the most...' As the emotion blocks his throat, the man wipes his wet eyes and quickly looks up from the patch of dusty ground he's been silently staring at for the past ten minutes. He'd promised the boy that he wouldn't think along those lines - wouldn't think of *them* - whilst in close proximity to the trailer, but even four months after leaving her apartment, his mind refuses to not wander back in that direction. Of course, if he were alone he'd think about them all the time without pause, but the kid's helping to protect him, so it's only fair to let him keep his sanity. "I'm watching TV now." The statement makes the man turn and he looks down at the boy - wondering in the back of his head how his son will be when he grows up (as well as praying that he'dd be back with them in time to find). "Gibson, I'm sorry - I didn't mean to..." His unsteady voice trails off and he briefly glances guiltily at his feet. The portable television in the corner of the trailer is the boy's only refuge from the daek, all-encompassing thoughts that plague the man's mind, so he knows exactly what is being implied by that small sentence. "I swear I'll stop--" "She's misses you too." Mulder's head snaps up with a bone-jarring force. "Ho--" "As much as she hates herself, she wishes she'd turned to see you. She reads your letters to Will every night...plays the song every other night." "But they're okay?" Nothing else matters to him right now except the answer to this question. Remaining in the open entrance to the trailer, Gibson's eyes cloud over, and the man feels a sweat break out across his forehead as he waits to learn the health of his family. 'My family? God...My family....' *Always have been, always will be.* *I've been gifted with perfection, only to then have to walk away from it...* *Just remember, when it's safe, to come back! My constant-* *My touchstone. My family.* 'When it's safe'? Would it *ever* be safe for them? Four months of seperation had rolled by at a snail's pace and he'd gained some new information that might help fight the aliens, but it wasn't enough - especially if they wanted to give their son a future. "She's worried because she hasn't heard from you," Gibson finally relayed. "you haven't answered her e-mails..." Guilty as charged, but for her safety more than anything. He'd religiously driven to numerous internet cafes in the neighboring towns three times a week - reading and savoring every word she'd typed to him (some just short notes essentially pleading him to come home ASAP. Others, updates on William's progress...or rambling recollections of the day's events - anything to make them feel that much closer). No reply message had left his mailbox, though - not even when she'd asked him for help concerning a demonic possession case Doggett and Reyes had gotten themselves caught up in. Maybe it was time to send that long-overdue message to let her know he was as okay as he could be under the circumstances...Whatever that meant. "How do you know all this? I mean, if you're just saying this to calm me a little... Y-you know you don't have to..." Mulder whispered - his mouth suddenly too dry to make it any more than that. Gibson Praise shook his head dismissively and then shrugged his shoulders. The connection he had made to these people that were practically like family now scared him, and - occasionally - annoyed the hell out of him (the last thing he needed in his already complicated life was two tortured souls bombarding his brain with their woes). Yet he was also happy to know he could help them - even simply by passing on how they were feeling; they'd always tried (albeit with little success) to protect him. And even though he'd been the one helping to cover Mulder's back out in the New Mexico wilderness for the last two and a half months, he actually felt the safest he'd been for some time. "I hear you all the time...Even when you don't think you're thinking about them, you are - your brain hates itself for *not* knowingly doing it, if that makes sense... I try to block it so you can have your privacy, but..." Gulp. "Your thoughts shout so much, and you feel so much...It was just like a hum underneath everything else at first, but now...I f-feel it too." The boy paused again and stepped down onto the sandy ground. Mulder's litany of 'Oh God, what have I done? I'm such a schmuck - ruining his life as well... always ruining lives...' echoed in his head, but he tried to push it aside. This was\not the time for that conversation again. "I feel like this outsider looking in...and at some point I got access to the tight bond you share with Agent Scully. I don't know when, or how, but it's like being with you both in the same room." Mulder placed a hand against his chest as his eyelids slipped shut. He'd told her that no matter where he was or what happened she would always be in his heart, just as he would always be with her should he be taken off this mortal coil again. He hadn't realised it would be taken so literally through the words of the fourteen- year-old kid. "You feel her too," Gibson corrected. "But your pain usually washes the feeling out." The former FBI agent smirked at such adult philosophy coming from a very young teenager, but then lowered his hand. Yes, he felt her. She'd said, on his return, that something had been telling her something wasn't right, even after he'd been buried, and he too now felt deep inside that they were alive and well...He just prayed she couldn't feel how he felt at present. Thinner, bedraggled and still sporting a nasty wound on his upper left arm from an encounter with a supersoldier three weeks ago (which would have been fatal had it not been for the train at the railway crossing knocking down his hunter and giving him chance to increase the distance gap and get to his car)...He was far from being the man that had given her promises for the future before leaving her apartment that morning an eternity ago, and that was even before taking into account his mental state! How the hell had a pregnant Scully survived his abduction and death? "She didn't." Snapping back to reality (having not even realized that his mind had wandered elsewhere yet again), Mulder shook his head and focused on Praise. "Huh?" "She didn't survive: she just...was." 'I prayed *so damn hard*, Mulder.' "She's not sure if she can do it again." He didn't question that fact. Just being the outsider himself on his impromptu 'visit' a fortnight after leaving and looking at the pain etched on her sleeping face had proven she was suffering as much as him. His sole goal was to smoothe out those distress lines. "She can...She's the strongest person I know...I-I know stuff's happened she hasn't told me about, but I gotta believe she can make it through, 'cos if she can't there's no hope for me," he choked out, suddenly finding the sand at his feet interesting again. Gibson winced and moved to re-enter the trailer. There was nothing he could do to make this any easier, and knowing what lay out there only made him feel more pity for the man. "I'm going in to watch telev--" His voice cut off as he saw Mulder's right hand lift into the humid air. Silence. Thinking. Calming. "I--...It's okay...I'm going into town to the cafe," the older man sighed. "You'll be okay?" There was no reply, but none was really needed, and a beat later Mulder headed toward the horizon to take the half-mile walk to his hidden car. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX INTERNET CAFE CLOUDCROFT, NEX MEXICO - 12:31pm There was a message from Frohike, as expected, in his mailbox when he checked...and yet another from Scully. Prayers have given us little headway in the past, but faith is all I have left now - faith and hope that you'll be home soon - so I pray this reaches you and finds you alive and well. An awkward glance at his covered arm before turning back to intently read her email. Firstly, I forgot to mention last time that thanks to Monica's determination, John was found in Mexico and saved before the corrupt local authorities. His memory had been wiped by still-unexplained ways because he got too close to the truth in an investigation he was carrying out... Besides the impressive number of hospital visits they too are now clocking up (must be a con of working in the X-Files office...at least it can't be completely put down to your clumsiness) A small smile lifted the corners of his mouth. The guarding wall around her heart was built back up, but for once it didn't bother him because he knew he was on the inside, and somehow it was like a deflector against anything that tried to intercept/destroy everything they had together (especially comforting to his own heart when she'd mentioned in one of her messages three weeks ago about the pushy entomologist Rocky Bronzino). He knew the sadness behind the banter, though - understood it; they tried to just act as if he was off on a case alone... but the reality of the forced, extended separation always broke through the facade. William's growing fast, and already starting to display so many characteristics his father \would be proud of. I wake up late at night wondering if I'm gonna walk into the living room and find him lying in front of the TV - remote clutched firmly in hand. I just wish his father was here to stand by my side as we watch over him... It was times like this when he wished he wasn't in a public place - he must have looked like a complete fool sitting there, staring at the screen with a smirk on his lips but large tears pouring from his eyes. Nevertheless, onward he read, with pride and love warring for prominence in his heart. Mom likes to joke that those we're up against really don't have a chance with an uber-Scully- Mulder out there. I've attached a recent photo she took of him with me on my digital camera. Mulder quickly clicked on the button to download the attached file, and then readjusted the size of the two windows on the screen so that he could see both the email and photo at the same time. "Scul-ly..." he whispered - his voice hitching as he struggled against completely breaking down. Why was he here? How the hell had he lasted this long away from them? She'd been the one his life had depended upon since the day they'd met anyway, but since their relationship had deepened and...and now, with Will... He was alone, had had to do some dangerous stakeout work on possible leads, had come close to dying more than a couple times, and all he wanted was to be back home with the only two people in the whole universe that gave his life meaning! This was ridiculous. Who was to say that they really *were* safer without him there? And four months of intense searching for information had turned up little - if any - information, so was there any point? It was time go back h-- 'We've come through enough in the past...and we've gotten this far ...Go ahead to wherever you must to find a way home, but don't turn back again until you have. I just want you to be careful and safe... I love you too much to lose you again.' He shook away the words she'd uttered when he'd played 'Shadow' and secretly visited her apartment. Things had gone too beyond that now. Raising a shaky hand to tenderly run a finger down the image of his son and partner's faces, he bit down on his lower lip - weighing up the options. This time, it really was his choice. God, you promised to write me! Four months, Mulder, and nothing! I can sense you're still alive, but ...where are you? Are you okay? What's going on? The message abruptly ended there, like a virtual slap in the face or kick up the ass for his silence. He let out a deep sigh and then hit the 'Reply' for the first time from this address. The choice had to be made, but she had always been the one in the past to either support him if it was a good one, or bring him round when it wasn't. If the path he had chosen was wrong, she would be the one to tell him. So, with a cautious glance over his shoulder, he started by typing in the subject header Dearest Dana... - an endearment they'd agreed upon for security purposes before his departure, but hey!....maybe it'd also help to apologise for the lateness of the message... THE END...for now J 'There's so much I want to know, You've got the chance to learn, If it means I'd have to go, I'll be right here when you return' ~'Out Of Thin Air' from Disney's 'Aladdin And The King Of Thieves' EXTRA AUTHOR'S NOTE: I know John Doe comes after Trust No 1 in season 9, but I needed it, so just swapped 'em round :)