10/23/01 Title: Lock-out Time Author: ML Email: msnsc21@aol.com Distribution: Ephemeral, Gossamer, yes; if you've archived me before, yes; otherwise, please just let me know and leave headers, email addy, etc. attached. Thanks! Spoilers: Three Words, Empedocles Rating: PG Classification: S Summary: "There is no second chance, not for most of us. When we reach the window it is Lock-out Time. The iron bars are up for life." Disclaimer: These characters are not mine, they belong to Chris Carter, TenThirteen, and Fox Broadcasting. I mean no infringement, and I'm making no money. With sincere apologies to J.M. Barrie...author's notes at the end. Lock-out Time by ML Fox Mulder looked around him in fascinated awe. It was not at all what he had been led to expect. He had feared so much. But somehow, the things he'd been told were wrong. He couldn't quite understand why. "You will understand, in time," the voices told him. They didn't sound how he expected them to sound. They didn't look like what he had expected, either. How was this so? "We showed you, and others, what we thought you could comprehend," the voices said. He didn't even have to speak; they knew his questions before he asked them. <> he thought. <> "All in good time," they promised. "You can go back whenever you want. But there are things we can show you, things that you want to know. Let us show you these things first, the things you call the truth." Mulder thought about this for a while. Was it a trick? Would they really let him go if he asked them to? Should he call them on it? His brain was fizzing with so many images. Some he knew were memories: Scully, Skinner, the Gunmen. But intermixed with them were other images. They were tantalizing and indistinct, and he wanted to understand them, to know more. If they told him he could go back whenever he wanted, why not stay and find out what they wanted from him? He could go back with something tangible. He would remember what he saw and heard, and would be able to understand. He worried about Scully, but he also knew that she had others watching over her. He knew that she would miss him, and he would miss her. But he would go back soon, and everything would be okay. It would be just like before, but better. They promised him that they could make him healthy again. They kept their word. And in return, though they didn't actually ask, he agreed to stay. Just for a while. Just long enough to find out the things he wanted to find out. <> he thought. <> <> the voices said, and because they had kept their other promises, he was sure they would keep this one, too. He had no real sense of time passing. Every time he thought of Scully, he thought, <> the voices soothed and reassured him. Sometimes he wasn't sure if it was his own mind telling him these things, or Them. <> he thought at them. <> the voices thought back calmly. <> he thought. <> they thought back. He believed them because he wanted to believe them. And the things they showed him, and told him, were amazing. <> they told him. <> This sounded familiar to him, though he couldn't remember from where. But it sounded reassuring, and he wanted to see and do as much as he could. "A singular opportunity," he heard another voice in his head say. This wasn't as reassuring as the other phrase, but it made sense to him. So he stayed on and on. He could always go back, and he wanted to take something with him, something he could show the world. Though there was no night or day where he was, They gave him a sense of waking and sleeping. Though They had no concept of days, They gave him a sense of time. He still thought in hours, minutes, seconds, though he had no way of knowing how many had passed. Sometimes he sensed that he "slept" longer than he would consider a "night." He sensed that They used him somehow while he slept this way, but when he returned to consciousness, he had no memory of what had been done. He always did a mental inventory after these times, and as far as he could tell, he was still him. One "day" the need to see Scully grew so strong that They could no longer tempt him with knowledge. "I need to go back," he said. "I need Scully." His voice sounded loud and creaky in this place. His throat was sore. He hadn't spoken aloud in a long time. The voices didn't think at him for a while. Then They said, <> XxXxXx He finds himself on a street in front of an unfamiliar house. He sees that he is wearing the same clothes as he wore when he was taken. <> he thinks to the voices. There is no answer. A light comes on in an upstairs window. He wonders who lives there, and as he wonders, he can see into the window. He has a sense that he is in two places at once: both somehow at the second-story window, and also standing looking up at the house. He thinks he should feel weird about this but it seems not-weird. It's just something he can do. The room he sees into is cozy looking. It contains a twin bed covered with a bright quilt, and shelves filled with toys and books. As he looks on, a small boy appears in the doorway and takes a running leap onto the bed. There is no mistaking the boy's parentage. He's the image of Mulder himself as a boy. After a moment, Scully appears in the doorway. As she walks toward the bed, Mulder can tell by her silhouette that she is pregnant. She tucks the boy in and looks toward the door again, speaking to someone Mulder can't see. She is smiling. <> he thinks to the voices. <> <> the voices reply. <> <> he thinks. Too long, by the look of things. Silence. Helplessly, he looks on as the tableau unfolds. The person Scully was speaking to enters the room and approaches the bed. Lamplight glints on his glasses and bald head. He leans down to kiss the boy goodnight. "NO!" Mulder tries to shout. The people in the room hear nothing. The voices curl around his brain again. <> the voices say. <> "NO!" Mulder tries to shout the voices out. He tries to bang on the glass of the window and he shouts again toward the family inside. "SCULLY! SCULLY! I'M HERE! SCULLY!" The silence is deafening. He watches helplessly as Skinner puts his arm around Scully's shoulders and kisses the top of her head. She turns out the light as they leave the room, leaving Mulder staring into darkness. He keeps calling, even though he knows she can't hear him. Everything goes black before his eyes and he hears a voice in his head again. Her voice. They've done that to him before, he realizes now, to try and calm him when he's gotten too agitated or restless. He'd always thought he'd imagined her voice on his own, for his own comfort, but now he knows it's one of Their tricks. "Mulder, you're safe. It's okay." The voice continues, whispering along his senses. It's not working the way it did in the past; this time, They've added something new: he feels the touch of her hand along his arm, then softly stroking his forehead. "NO!" he shouts and tries to jerk his body away. He doesn't want to sink into acquiescence any more. He doesn't seem to be restrained, though now memories of all the times before indicate that he usually is, and that resistance causes deep, tearing pain. Why is it different? Do They think that now that They've shown him this, he will stay of his own free will? He jerks away again, batting his hands around him. He hits something. He hears a sharp intake of breath, and suddenly is falling. The thunderous thunk and jar as he hits makes his eyes fly open. Scully stands over him anxiously. She is a good deal more pregnant than she was when he saw her in the window. She is rubbing her arm. He realizes that he's lying on the floor in his room, next to his bed. "Scully," he croaks. "What are you doing here?" "I came to check on you, and I could hear you yelling from outside the apartment," Scully tells him. "Were you having a bad dream?" "I was remembering something," he says. He can't meet Scully's eyes. "Are you okay now?" she asks gently. She hasn't tried to touch him, now that he's awake. She's been very tentative around him since he's been back, and he knows that it's partly because of what he said to her. "I feel a little disoriented," he mumbles. He still can't say what he wants to say to her. "What's this?" she picks a book up that has evidently tumbled to the floor along with him. "'Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens'," she says. "Is this yours?" "I guess it is now," he says. "It was Samantha's. I was going through a box of her things and I guess I fell asleep looking through it," he says. Scully leafs through the book. "I only know the regular Peter Pan. You know, the one in Never-Never Land with Captain Hook." "Same guy wrote this one," Mulder explains, "but it's Peter Pan as a very little boy. Almost a baby." "Nice illustrations," Scully comments, and carefully puts the book down on the edge of the bed. "Can I get you anything, make you some tea?" Mulder shakes his head. "I'm okay." He can't say anything else. The dream still has its grip on him. "Okay, I guess if you're okay, I'll go on home. Call me if you need anything, Mulder," Scully says. She makes a gesture toward him, as though she'd like to touch him, but her hand falters and falls back to her side. He nods, his face in his hands. He hears her let herself out the door. He hears the thud of it closing in his chest, in his heart. He lies back on his bed again, but he's afraid to go back to sleep. He's had nightmares all his life, but since he's been back, they've been particularly vivid. This last one was so real he wonders if part of it was a flashback. He can only remember patchy things from his abduction, and in his waking hours those are fading, but obviously they still have power over him. As does his imagination, and his fears. He wonders if he's lost his last chance by pushing Scully away. He gets up and sits on the floor next to the boxes he'd been going through earlier. It's true that the things in this box belonged to Samantha, but they belonged to his mom first, and he brought them home when he closed up her house. There are a few other books in there, old enough to be valuable; a rag doll, some pieces of costume jewelry. He picks up the doll and looks at it for a long time. He can remember Samantha carrying it around, though mostly she kept in on a shelf in her room. Mom had told her how special it was, and how old. Samantha had been a sensitive and intelligent little girl; she'd always taken good care of her things. It makes him sad that Samantha will never pass it down to her own daughter. He feels too restless to settle to anything. He wishes Scully hadn't left so quickly, though he knows that she is trying to honor his wishes. What she thinks are his wishes, anyway. How can she know, when he's not sure what they are himself? Idly, he picks up the book again, leafing through the pages. It falls open to the middle of the book, the last bit he remembers reading before falling asleep: "...we who have made the great mistake, how differently we should all act at the second chance. But Solomon was right -- there is no second chance, not for most of us. When we reach the window it is Lock-out Time. The iron bars are up for life." He doesn't have to be a psychiatrist to understand the meaning of his dream. He's had variations of it in the past. Sometimes Scully's with Skinner, sometimes with someone else. Once, God help him, she was with Tom Colton. He even dreamed her with bucktoothed Lucius Hartwell. He's always worried that Scully would move on and he would be out of her life, and he's even pushed her away in the past, but she always resisted him, and she always stayed. She's always given him one more chance. Given them one more chance. Has he been given his last chance? Has he locked her out for good now? He's not going to wait any longer to find out. He closes the book and picks up his phone. "Hey Scully, it's me." end. ===== author's notes: The quote I used is from "Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens" by J. M. Barrie. It's a story filled with both melancholy and humor, and quite different from the well-known "Peter Pan" by the same author. This has been languishing on my hard drive for several months. I originally meant it as a satire, a "what if Mulder decided to stay with the aliens?" sort of story, but I already miss Mulder too much to do that now. So I came up with a different ending, and here it is. I hope you enjoyed it. Find more of my stories at: http://www.kimpart.com/mlfic.html I would love to hear what you think of this story: msnsc21@aol.com