Bonnie Gayle Hood
[email protected]
http://members.tripod.com/xtrordinaryxfiles/index.html
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CLASSIFICATION: Angst, Pre X-Files, Mulder POV
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RATING: G
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SPOILERS: Fire is referenced, you should also know Mulder's story.
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SUMMARY: Fox is in college in England, but not even an ocean can keep his thoughts from Samantha.
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DISCLAIMER: (Most writers try to have fun with this but I personally just skip it when I'm reading, so...) Mulder and Scully belong to Chris Carter, Fox, 1013, David, and Gillian, various others, and the BIG BAD WOLVES...umm lawyers! I don't own em, I just steal, but I will return them and I'll try to return them in better shape then I got 'em:>) If I did own 'em, not only would I be richer than I deserve to be, the UST mumbo jumbo would be a bad memory!
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ARCHIVE: Sure. Just keep my name, e-mail address, and website. I would love to know.
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FEEDBACK: Yes please!
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Fire and Rain
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground
~~~~
...The plans they made put an end to you.
~~~
I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again
~~~
James Taylor
Fox Mulder trudged from his calculus class to his dorm room through rain that never seemed to stop. He glanced down at his Wellies, which he still couldn't believe he owned. They were very, very useful though. No wonder the Brits loved them so much. He wondered to himself for the thousandth time whether it was worth it to come to England: the land of rain, tea, and the Royal Family, in that order. He decided for the thousandth time that yes it was. It was worth every soaked sock and more, just to be an ocean away from his parents. He had even had a brief fling with the first girl that looked at him. Ever. In high school he had always been an outcast. Even before Samantha was taken.
Fox hoped silently before he stepped into his dorm room that his dorm mate wouldn't be there. Jake was nice and all that...but sharing a room just reminded Fox too much of the good...well...better old days when Samantha would come into his room, shaking from the terror downstairs, and Fox would read her Robinson Crusoe under the blankets with a flashlight, doing crazy imitations of all the voices just to get a laugh. He didn't want to be reminded of Samantha. In fact she was the main reason he had run away. He admitted it. He ran away from his old life, and stuck his head under the sand like an ostrich. The only problem was, it seemed that not even an ocean could put a halt to his memories of Samantha.
He pushed open the door and found the room empty. Fox walked to his bed and stretched out on top of it. He was so lost in though, he didn't even bother to take off his muddy Wellies.
It would have made it so much better if he had been able to write home about it all to Samantha....Samantha. God, did he miss Samantha.
The thing that no one understood was that he didn't just miss Samantha. Oh, he did. But he missed his family just as much. He ached for the family that had been. They weren't always dysfunctional. There were sunny days. Literally and metaphorically. There were picnics. There were car trips. There was laughter and togetherness.
If only he had realized how short it would last he would have enjoyed it so much more. Savored every minute that the family was just that, and not a family in name only.
Sure there were fights between his parents. There were raging, all night, screaming matches between a drunken father and a mother who was slowly but surely losing her sanity...but even they didn't hurt as much when Samantha was there. When the fights began, Sam would run into his room and cower, shaking, under the covers, curled up against him. Eventually the shared warmth would be enough to let them both sleep.
There were no more sunny days after she was gone. The sun could have shined on them, but the whole family buried themselves under their own private rain cloud and wouldn't notice.
After she...left...disappeared...was taken into a bright light and never brought back...the fights got worse. Either that or he secretly needed Samantha's comforting presence as much as she needed his, so the fights seemed worse without her there to comfort him/comfort her. Probably both. It was on those nights that he would think, against his will, that he was angry at her for deserting him and leaving him to face their parents by himself. It was a daunting task for a boy of twelve.
Because it was the two of them against their parents...against the world...it made their relationship an especially close one. And that made her leaving so much worse.
Funny. Fox never asked what the fights were about and his parents never gave a hint. The next morning he would come down to find his father gone, his mother hoarse, but sipping her tea nonchalantly like nothing was odd about the situation, and a broken Ming vase in the trash. It always reminded Fox of a forest fire. The fire fighters wouldn't try to put it out. They'd let the fire burn itself out, and let nature take its course. Then you could either rebuild on the newborn earth, or not try at all, and deny there was any difference at all in the forest. They didn't care enough to try to rebuild the family sans Samantha. Denial was the only way life would go on in the Mulder house.
But denial only works for so long. Fox stood and walked to the window. He stared out at the rain that suited his mood to a T. He was an ostrich all right. But the problem was even ostriches couldn't leave their head under the sand forever. They had to face the light of day eventually. And so did he...but not today. Not even soon. Not until he had figured out a plan. A way to get Samantha back. He was her big brother!
He remembered a day long ago. 'The time before' was how he remembered it: the time before she was gone. They had all gone to the beach. Fox was 10, and Samantha was 6. The family had finished their sand-filled picnic lunch and Samantha and Fox had gone into the water. They waded so far away from their parents that they couldn't pick out the dot that was their beach umbrella among the many dots on the sand. Fox and Samantha stayed close together, and played a game where they tried to hold their breath for the longest. Sam was in the lead when suddenly a boy on an inner tube came crashing in on a wave. And ended up right on top of Samantha. Fox knew that Samantha was trapped and couldn't breathe, so he yelled at the boy to get off, his voice squeaking in panic. The boy didn't understand, so Fox pushed him off of Samantha and dragged her onto the shore. After she caught her breath, she was shaken, but fine. They didn't even bother to tell their parents.
Fox didn't see any difference between saving her then, and saving her now. That was what had drawn him here to Oxford. But the problem was he didn't know what to do. There were no classes called 'finding and rescuing your little sister 101'. Fox didn't like the feeling that he was just sitting here wasting time, letting her get farther and farther away. He wanted to do something that would bring him closer to his eventual goal.
Fox heard the door open and turned his head to find Jake, his roommate, standing at the door.
"Jesus, it's dark in here, isn't it?" Jake laughed.
Fox realized that he hadn't turned on the light.
"I was busy thinking."
"Think. Think. Think. You, Fox, are famous around here for all the thinking you do. You even think your deep thoughts while the Professor lectures. I don't know how you pass your exams!"
Fox realized that he wasn't paying attention to what Jake was saying. "What?"
Jake started laughing, and Fox couldn't figure out what was so funny.
"Fox! You need to get out of this dark room....I know! You've yet to see a rugby match. Come on! There's one tonight."
Fox hesitated, and then hesitated longer.
"I'm not taking no for an answer. We'll stop at a pub I know beforehand, a chum from boarding school, Marcus, and his sister Phoebe are waiting for me there now."
Fox hesitated again. "All right, I guess."
Jake laughed. "Good! Who knows, you might even find Phoebe to your liking, she isn't seeing anyone currently."
Fox shrugged. He doubted it.
They walked out into the rain together.