Through Time VI: Last Voyage 2
Author: RocketMan >lbontger@wmcstations.com<
Disclaimer: M&S do not belong to me.

(see part one for other)

Last Voyage 2

Trinity River: April 1998

"Look, Scully!" he whispered franitcally, shoving her awake with his
toe.
She crawled out of her sleeping bag and up next to him, pushing away
sleep and his rudeness.
"See?" he said, pointing with a finger to the image before them.
A man, his form wavering and dark even in the moonlight, was pawing at
the river bank, searching for something it seemed.
"They say it's the ghost of La Salle, whose men ambushed him and dumped
his body in the Trinity Lake."
Scully watched in fascination as the thing looked up once and shivered,
then returned to his digging, a franticness that made her feel sorry for
the thing.
"A ghost,"she breathed. Her hair, rumpled by sleep, slipped into her
eyes and she carefully pulled it back.
Mulder's intense eyes looked to hers. "A ghost. And there's no way you
can tell me it's not."
She shook her head. "I have no answers for you, Mulder."
The image jerked suddenly and looked to the river, as if by staring into
it, he could regain what had been lost.
And just as quickly as he had appeared, his image faded into
nothingness.
Mulder leapt to his feet and ran to where the ghost had been.
In the bank was no footprints or clawmarks, but only sand and water and
grass.
Scully came up behind  him and looked over his back, eyeing the clean
bank.
"What was he looking for?"
"I don't know. Maybe he lost a piece of gold or something as they were
throwing him in."
She shook her head, and then began sifting through the sand with her
toe, not sure why, but drawn to the act.
Her foot hit something and she began digging with her fingers, carefully
avoiding the sharp sticks and rocks until her hand closed on a piece of
carved wood.
She frowned and pulled it up into the moonlight, brushing sand off its
worn surface.
It was old, antique looking and the carving looked foreign, as if some
stranger from an unknown land had lovingly carved each detail.
Mulder looked at it with interest and then smiled.
"It's a fox, Scully."
She smiled and offered it to him. "Here, it's your namesake."
He shrugged. "Finder's keepers."
She tucked into her coat pocket and began combing the rest of the bank
for any clues to the nature of the thing they'd seen.

Scully's Apartment: May 1998

Dana turned in her sleep, feeling cold and bare in just her T-shirt. But
it was too hot to wear anything else.
She sighed and turned again.
And found the wan face of Mulder staring back at her.
She yelled and jerked and it vanished.
Gone.
She shook her head and looked to her clock, sitting on her dresser
beside the carved wooden fox.
There he was again, his face and a shifting form.
It was Mudler.
And yet it wasn't.
She jolted out of bed and to the other side of the room, grabbing her
gun from the chair as she did.
The form smiled and laid a trembling finger to the fox.
Suddenly was staring directly at herself, in a ghost image too.
She shook her head and rubbed her eyes, watching the ghosts clasp hands
and then disappear.
Along with the carved fox.
She slowly crept over to her nightstand, peering at it in the dark.
Nothing but her clock and a box of tissues.
She picked up her phone and dialed Mulder's number.
He answered on the first ring.
"Mulder, you're not going to beleive this."
"Try me. Oh, and did you leave that fox over here?"
Silence.
"Scully?"
Silence and then a rush of her breath.
"I think I'm going crazy. I just saw us. And they took the fox."

end
adios
RM
just a little follow up.....