From: jstoy@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1998 18:54:35 GMT Subject: New: Going Home Again (1/1) Going Home Again by Jennifer Stoy (jstoy@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu) Rating: PG Classification: VA Spoilers: Redux II Summary: A letter that can't be sent. Disclaimer: 1013, CC, and FOX own X-Files. No infringement intended. Archive wherever, as long as my name and email remain attached. Polite plea for feedback here: jstoy@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu Going Home Again by Jennifer Stoy To Whom It May-- To My-- Dear Mr. Mulder-- Dear Fox. Dear Fox this letter will never be sent but I'll write it anyway, because maybe one day you'll understand. He said I had to see you and talk to you, that there were Very Important Reasons today would be the day. You look so young to be so very unhappy. Not so very long after our meeting, I used His Connections to find out more about you, now that you're real again. I found out about your partner woman, and that she was very very sick and dying, and that you'd been together so long. Fox I'm so sorry. I didn't know. How terrible to lose so many things so quickly. Of course, she didn't die, and I wasn't yours. But Fox-- He kept His word. He always does. You have to understand I couldn't help but to grow up to forget. I'm not brave. I just want to be happy and I can't remember and be happy at the same time. I know you know that. But because I saw you again, this time is different. Forgive and Forget is what He says. He means Forget and Forget, but I love Him so that I won't call him on it. You're Real again. Real. In my world, it's a joke of mine. There are a lot of things that are only Make-Believe. Make-Believe. Make-Believe your name is Samantha and you're an orphan from an enchanted kingdom. That you're a princess hidden away because it wasn't safe. That you'll reclaim Your Proper Position someday. Do you understand a little better now? Make-Believe you have Those Terrible Nightmares at night with the light and the men and the screaming and arguing. I had those nightmares as a little girl before He taught me that to get rid of Those Terrible Nightmares, you must Forgive and Forget. I was so glad when they stopped coming, because they made me cry and cry and didn't help me at all. Not one teeny itty-bitty bit. I have three children, you didn't know that. They don't have Those Terrible Nightmares. I made sure they wouldn't. They don't know I have them. Do you want to know what I named them? The oldest is Peter Junior, like his father. The next is my only daughter, Ashley Jean, and then there's the youngest, Randolph Fox. We call him Randy, and I pretended that he was like you come back to life. Randy, Ashley, and Peter Junior live in a Safe Today World, and He promised me they'd always be safe. I love Him, Fox, he's the only one I know who's kept all his promises to me. I have a secret. After you left and I told you I didn't want to see you again, I was telling a fib. I wanted to see you and Mom, too, but I was so afraid of Dangerous Complications and Those Terrible Nightmares I bit my tongue and told a million lies. But I wanted to see you so terribly and so I looked you up on the computer. My husband works in the industry, he taught me how. It was very easy, because you're an FBI agent. I started to watch you. You live in Alexandria or maybe it's Arlington, anyway. Virginia, very close to your Very Important Job. You're just like Him; it's always your Very Important Job. I think that's why I still like you, Fox. You're so much like Him it's scary. You're always working and you don't like to let your love show. I like that I'm the one you love, but that's not as true as it was, isn't that so? Because you ignored your Very Important Job right after I saw you because of your partner. I sneaked in and saw her while she was sleeping, right after the doctors said she wasn't going to die. Because she was your-- well, I don't know. I would have asked Him about her, but He's disappeared. Do you know where He's gone? I'm afraid He's hurt or sick. I worry He'll get cancer. Like your partner. Your partner is very beautiful. I'm not very smart, Fox, not like you or Him or your partner. But I know some things about you. You ought to love her. Life doesn't last very long, and if you let your Very Important Job be the most important, you WILL be exactly like Him, and you said that you HATED Him. So I thought, as a good sister, I should tell you that you're like Him. I think He loved Our Mother. I know you love her. I know because I watched you after she left the hospital and you hovered. You're very like Him, because He likes to treat women like Ladies. I think it's very gentlemanly of you. By the way, if you're scared about anything else, she loves you back. I'm afraid of what you mean in my life, coming back like this! I live in Norfolk, you understand, and it's a long drive to Washington. But I want to see you. I want to talk to you and ask Too Many Questions. All my life, I've asked Too Many Questions. No one ever gives me answers. I think you would. No. No no no no. I know you would and then you would ask ME Too Many Questions. I'm not smart! I'm not very brave, either. I am simply a homemaker in Norfolk who has Terrible Nightmares and is obsessed with an FBI agent who may be her long-lost brother. Maybe I need to see a psychologist. I can just see that-- Doctor, my name is Samantha. When I was eight years old, something very strange happened to me. I fell asleep in one house and woke up in another. No one will tell me what happened, and I thought maybe I Imagined the Whole Thing, but then He came-- He's my father, or at least He says so-- and said that we were going to meet my brother. And my brother is thirty-five years old and he's been looking for me since I was eight and he was twelve. And he's lived in a world of shadows and conspiracies and he's probably crazy. Now, this is all his problem, except now I'm obsessed with him. And my Father has disappeared. And-- I have to stop writing this. If the kids or my husband saw it, Fox, they'd be very upset about it. I'm very upset about it. But I want to tell you, One Day, I'll be brave enough to come and talk to you. I couldn't think of a lot to say that First Time, and I was so afraid of you and Those Terrible Nightmares. I had to try very hard to Forgive and Forget so that I could get the kids off to school on time. But I can't Forgive or Forget any more. I can't even Make-Believe any more. I can't think I'm Princess Samantha of Camelot anymore. I think that I'm Samantha Abducted. Samantha Abducted by unfaithful retainers, Samantha Abducted because of Very Important Jobs and His Connections. Fox, you've forced me to wake up from a sleep that's lasted twenty-five years. You're not the Prince Charming who was supposed to arrive. You didn't arrive with Love's First Kiss or anything. You arrived, sad and alone, crying because He thought that seeing me would bring you back to life. I'm Real again because of you. Before I was only Make-Believe. Before I lived in a gingerbread house with the miller and the children. Fox! Fox! I didn't want to be Real! I didn't ever want My Proper Position! Fox! You woke me up and I'm awake in a world that I don't even know. Why did you do this to me? Why did He do this to me? Why couldn't you just let me go and leave me alone? I can't go home again. None of us can, even if Dad were alive and we were all willing. Even if we went back, it would be different. None of us can recapture what we've lost. You need to learn to Forgive and Forget the Past. Love your partner-woman. Have children, and try to be happy. I don't want to think that you're sad. We can all Make-Believe-- Fox-- Anyway. That's all. I'm going to try to Forgive and Forget, and maybe He'll come back soon, and I can make a New Year's Resolution to call you up on the telephone and just say hi how are you I'm fine bye. Merry Christmas Fox. I love you. Your Sister, Samantha. The End Author's Notes: This is my 'celebration' about returning to New Orleans and yet another experimental view into a different voice. I have to thank Nascent, because her insistence about Samantha's importance to the X-Files definitely contributed to my background thoughts on this idea. I also have to thank my dear and beloved beta readers, they are greatly appreciated.