Disclaimer:All things X-Files belong to Chris Carter, 20th Century Fox, and anyone else with a legal claim to the materiel. Absolutely NO infringement of copyright is intended; these guys are not making me any money AT ALL. In fact, like everyone else, I lose on the deal, but since I am borrowing the characters just for fun - and will give them back in one piece at the end - that's okay by me. Please don't sue me okay? I don't have any money to give you anyway. Do you think that if I did, I'd be sitting here, doing this!!?? Me, personally, I've always wanted a LIFE. Guess I'll have to make do with this... ((JOKE, everybody ... joke...))
PERCHANCE TO DREAM
BY MAGGIE
Sand; sand everywhere. In his hair, his ears, his eyes, his clothes ... He coughed incessantly. Dammit, he was even breathing the stuff.
Feeling around for the jacket that he was sure he had left lying around here someplace only five minutes ago, he tried to keep his back to the prevailing wind and it's stinging burden. It was around here someplace, had to be ... There! The roughness of cloth under his fingers kissed goodbye to the momentary panic and wrapping the canvas jacket up around his head and shoulders, he indulged relief as he was finally able to take an unrestricted breath and carefully wipe away the grit that was clogging his eyelids, so that he could at least open his eyes and see again.
Keeping his back to the wind, he looked cautiously around him, taking in as much of his surroundings as the jacket's protection would allow. It wasn't so bad really; there were mountains in the distance up ahead that he was sure he recognised. If only he could remember. Anything. Like how he got here in the first place, or the name of those mountains, or in which direction lay civilisation which he was sure was tantalisingly close. Maybe just beyond that rocky outcrop a few yards over at ten o'clock.
Struggling up despite protesting muscles - (how long had he been lying here, he wondered) - he half crawled up the steep incline, sand giving way to rock which made his going easier despite scrapes on his hands and knees. At the top, he peered carefully over the precipice, keeping his jacket well forward in case the wind was blowing up from the valley ahead of him.
Disappointment flushed through him like a knife stroke; no buildings, no people, nothing except what looked like ... grey bundles of rags, dotted irregularly around for as far into the distance as he could see. As if someone had blown away a clothing store or something. He could see the wind catching at odd limbs of clothing which flapped half-heartedly. The whole atmosphere was one of desolation; what had happened here, and why?
Some movement caught the corner of his eye, something that didn't fit with what his mind was telling him. There it was again, that bundle down at the base of the hill over on his left hand side. That wasn't the wind. It was more like ...
Adrenaline surging out of nowhere picked him up and flung him full tilt down the curving bank towards that horribly familiar movement. As he got closer he could see what his instincts had already conveyed; those weren't bundles of rags down there, they were people. What was left of them.
He skidded to a halt on his knees next to the miserably twitching heap of skin and bone, barely covered with what looked like an old, threadbare curtain. He hardly even dared to disturb what might once have been a man, he was so sure that the slightest touch would send the limbs of this tortured creature scattering into dust.
Finally reaching out to gently stroke the dry, wispy hair, he choked back an exclamation of revulsion when, at the merest touch of his fingers, it fell away, to be caught at and tossed by the wind. He found himself trying to follow its progress with his eyes, and jerked back in shock at a touch on his hand.
"Oh, God ..."
The creature was staring at him, with an expression on it's face that he could somehow - despite the advanced emaciation - recognise as desperate, no, insane, hunger. Not for food, not for water.
For death. It's eyes were fixed, not on his, nor on the canteen he could suddenly feel the weight of around his neck, but at his waist, or more precisely his right hip. They were staring at his gun.
He was halfway back up the rocky bank before he could think. He knew those eyes, what was left of that face.
"No, dad, no, I can't, I can't ..."
His own father, here amongst the others, barely human flotsam now, this man who had been the order of his life when he was young, perhaps even beyond that; this man who had presided over birthday parties and vacations and the teenage problems judged by Mulder to be unsuitable to be answered by a mother's wisdom.
Stunned and shocked even beyond physical sickness, Mulder just stared, unable to speak. Finally a dry croak of revulsion and sadness came out of his mouth, trying too late, to swallow it back.
"My God, Dad, what did they do to you ..." he whispered, wiping his hands over his face so that he would feel something other than this awful horror.
He couldn't feel his hands, he couldn't feel his face; he couldn't stop staring at his father.
He yelped and jerked around at a sudden touch on his arm.
Scully.
Seeing her opened the floodgates of speech and he was yelling at her now, trying to get her to see what he had seen, trying to wipe that puzzled and concerned expression off her face.
"Look, Scully, look for God's sake, look what they've done to him!! That's my Father, Scully, what in the hell have the bastards done to him?"
He pointed back to where his father lay, but somehow he was gone. The desert was gone, there were walls and Scully sitting beside him, other people, a man and a boy standing near her ...
"It's alright, Mulder, it was just a dream, that's all; you're okay."
Mulder was confused by Scully's perky demeanour; what did she mean, he was 'okay'? He felt very far from okay; his father was dead, there were bodies out there ... What in the hell was going on?
It could only mean one thing.
"What's happened, Scully, what are you looking so happy about?" he retorted with his usual dry sarcasm. "Did you get the documents unscrambled?"
"It's all very clear," she replied, her tone positively chirpy. "All you have to do is go out there and you'll find all the answers."
What was she talking about? He'd been out there and all he'd found were questions; what had he missed?
He was hearing voices; voices he knew, but couldn't put a name or a face to, saying something about fire, and something to do with guilt ... and answers.
Again with the answers; and why did he feel so light, and warm and safe? Surely the last thing he was was safe.
He looked around and he could find nothing threatening anywhere near him; in fact, he could hear something that made him feel positively happy. It was a sort of a dry rattling sound, he could almost identify it, it was right on the tip of his tongue.
Sunflower seeds!! That's what it was. Like 42, Sunflower seeds were his answer to Life, the Universe and everything.
He reached out for them ...
*
Hours later Mulder sat alone in the hut, still only wrapped in the blanket that Albert had given him, and he tipped the Sunflower seeds from the little pouch he'd been given, into the palm of his hand; he swirled them around with his index finger and then picked one out and popped it into his mouth.
When he'd first come around he remembered Albert saying something about him having a second chance.
'Oh well,' he thought ruefully to himself, downing another sunflower seed; 'I guess it's back to the salt mines ...'
The End