From: Lav'sPrem Date: Tue, 06 Jul 1999 20:22:07 GMT Subject: New: Forward Retreat Here it is, my very first post and geeze are my hands shaking... The story is written in complet present time. Sorry if that offends anyone. It just seemed right in the context. Title: Forward Retreat Author: Lavinia's Premonition Rating: PG. Classification: MSR, V E-mail Address: paragon_@hotmail.com Distribution: Archive anywhere just keep my name on it please. Disclaimer: They're not mine. I think we've established that already. Summary: "In the year nineteen and ninety nine, seven months, from the sky will come a great King of Terror. He will resurrect the great King of Angolmois. Before and afterwards Mars reigns happily." Nostradamus I found him in his apartment. Like the bond of mother and babe, I always know where he is. We just have trouble distributing the roles. Every time I think I'm in control, I trip on my Mary Jane's and skin my knee. But he's not always there to make everything better. The door shuts quietly behind me like an extra heartbeat. He doesn't turn his head but he knows I'm there. He's looking out the window where the X is embedded into the dust. A constant cross he bears for the knowledge he won't share with me. I'm not jealous, or so I tell myself. I come up beside him, close enough to smell him. My father smelled of the sea, my mother smells of fresh bread, Melissa incense and flowery perfume... But Mulder is intoxicating. My own special narcotics. "L'an mille neuf cens nonante neuf sept mois. Du ciel viendra un grand Roy d'Effraieur. Resusciter le grand Roy d'Angolmois. Avant apres Mars regner par bon heur." His voice is like sin and his smile is my salvation. He looks at me now with those tormented eyes. In them, I see a hundred cries for sympathy. "My French is a little rusty." The voice comes from practice. My brain runs on automatic when I'm with him. He swings he legs around a chair to face me, but his eyes remain on the sky. "In the year nineteen and ninety nine, seven months, from the sky will come a great King of Terror. He will resurrect the great King of Angolmois. Before and afterwards Mars reigns happily." Mars, the God of war. Strong and willful. Brash and naive. That is my Mulder. That's the way I want to remember him. Fighting that battles that no one else is brave enough to. "Nostradamus' end of the world prediction." So Melissa had managed to enforce some of her gospel on me. It seems to impress Mulder as he watches me carefully. "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: the eagle, the bull, the fair-man, and the lion. Will ride and bring with them war, death..." "Famine and plague," I finish for him. He nods and looks younger again. "Mulder." I reach over and touch him on the shoulder. I shouldn't steal these moments from him. He can't imagine what the mean to me. '"The world is not going to end tonight." He doesn't believe me. He tells me so. I sigh and let go of him, I let him fall. "That's crazy. Why today? Why any day? Remember four years ago? The world was suppose to plunge into darkness on October 27th. But you're still here. I'm still here." "I'm scared." He's scared. My god of war is frightened. And so, it awakens the darkness within me. I want to say something. I want to reassure him. I want to take him in my arms and hold him to my chest and tell him that everything is okay. Everything is fine. Everything was never fine. And it never will be. So instead, I watch him. Over time, I have learned that underneath the man, is the little boy wearing armor that's too big for him. He walks around with his plastic sword trying to fight the wrong dragons. It's only a matter of time before the princess in the tower let's her heart turn to ice. "I don't want to die." It melts my ice heart. Now, he is the child. I want to be strong for him. I can fight the dragons for you, Mulder. I can trust you, and look out for you, and kiss your knee when you fall. But there are some things I cannot do. "The King of Terror will come from the sky." He leans his head to the sky and I know what he thinks of. Samantha. No amount of praying or hoping or believing will bring her back. It isn't really Samantha that he looks for. After a while, the pain dulls and become at low hum in the back round. Experience talking. He misses the security. He missed the love. He misses his mother asking how his day was when he comes home from school. He misses the lost games of catch with his father in the back yard after supper. Fox Mulder's childhood was stole from him. It stands in the graveyard and waves to him. And I wait on the other side of the gate. "Let it come." He looks at me shocked. Shyly, I toy with my hair like a younger girl. "Was it all that you expected it to be?" He sees through my games. I'm clear water that takes the form of whatever it has to be to survive. "Frankly, I expected more lightening." Like a masquerade, we wait until the first masks drops. It's his. "You don't understand." Like a caged animal, he huddles in the darkest corner of his mind. "Then teach me." The challenge has been taken. Led out into the sun for the first time, he blinks. I move over to him and close the void between us. Cupping his face in my hands, I look at him in the light. He shivers in my hands. I'm shivering too as I bring our faces closer until the lips meet. When you look at it at a scientific point, it was just two membranes of the cranium meeting and exchanging saliva. But to us.. then and there... I can't explain it, if I tried for years to come. If they came. A smile would comes over my face and I would blush so bright that no words would come out of my stammering mouth. Because it would be the same mouth that Fox Mulder had kissed on the last day of the world. It was six years of never knowing compressed into two second of tender bliss. Tears streamed down his face and I felt the hot salt on him. I want to be close enough to taste his tears. But I'll have to settle with his smell: He smells like Mulder. We pulls apart and then I hear the sound of hoof beats. ~THE END~