From: livengoo@bcvms.bc.edu X-From: rkwong@engin.umich.edu (Roberta Chi-Woon Kwong) Newsgroups: alt.tv.quantum-leap.creative,alt.ql.creative Subject: "Leap of Faith" part 11/11 Date: 7 May 1995 21:54:20 GMT Message-Id: <3ojfic$s24@srvr1.engin.umich.edu> This is being posted for the author, who doesn't have access to this group. Please direct all comments to livengoo@bcvms.bc.edu. This story is also currently appearing in alt.tv.x-files.creative. No re-formatting has been done in this section. ----------------------------------------- >Subject: Leap of Faith 11/11 Leap of Faith 11/11 Ooooh! At long last! No more will Leap of Faith glom up space on this list! At least unless I get lots of requests to repost, in which case I'll repost it in about four big chunks. Fair warning, I'm not going back and editing out all the repetitive intros and disclaimers. I'm a slob and you folks will just have to suffer. At least one reader knows me personally and can attest to that. Do I have to do this AGAIN? All characters property of Ten- Thirteen, Chris Carter, Fox, Bellisario, blah blah blah! Assume small type. Story copyright livengoo. Real name available to those who have the secret password. Oh, and for those of you who didn't know, there's no romance or sex in this story. I hope I haven't shocked you. ********************* Scully had hit the point where there weren't any words left. Al was reduced to a plaintive "Ziiiiiigggy!" Verbena must have run to get to the control room, she was out of breath and leaning on a dark-haired woman who looked as worried as Scully felt. "What's happened?" Verbena kept it short. "He saw us. I don't know how, but he saw us." "His eyes . . ." "Are still screwed up! It wasn't my fault!" Al was waving his cigar in the air in hysterical circles. "Al, calm down." The dark woman held her hand out to Scully. "I'm Donna Alisee. I was in Washington, funding hearings," she seemed apologetic. "I got back as soon as I could. Ziggy gave me the bare bones . . ." "Dr. Alisee, I gave you all the relevant data available to at this point." If computers threw snits Ziggy was in one. "Look first things first. It's no mystery why your friend saw you, if he's aware of you at all. Al would have figured it out once he calmed down. Sam doesn't perceive Al with the optical nerve, but telepathically. His brain just interprets it as a visual signal. Once your friend, Fox,"-"Mulder," Scully's correction was automatic.-"Got in range and he was ready for visual perceptions it was only natural he "see" you too." Alisee was very calm. Verbena looked like she was kicking herself mentally. "So what do we do about it?" Scully felt trapped, every time she turned around this got worse. At least this woman seemed more in charge than anyone she'd met so far. ""Agent Scully, I'd like you to go with Verbena. You two know . . . Mulder's profile best." She smiled. "Cook up something you think he'll believe. Fever hallucinations or flashbacks, something. Al, you and I need to strategize." Verbena nodded and drew Scully off. "I wish she'd been here all along. We might not be in so deep, who is she?" Scully glanced back over her shoulder to see Al deep in discussion with the newcomer. "That, Dr. Scully, is the only person I know who impresses me more than Dr. Beckett. That's his wife." Scully stared at her. "Come on," Verbena smiled. "I'll explain everything, about her too, and we'll find some way to pass you two off as little green men." ******************* Fox Mulder leaned against the side of the Hum-V and contemplated insanity. He'd always known he was skating on thin ice, but it had never really given way before. He felt . . . odd. Suspended. Too calm and quiet to be safe. Worse, he felt like his own reactions were one remove away. Out of body experiences in body. He grinned at that. He'd be doing crystals with Scully's sister if this kept up. He hoped. Scully was asleep in the cab, breathing softly and muttering every so often. One more terror he was aware that he wasn't quite feeling. Scully wasn't acting like Scully. She was talking to ghosts, and very nervous. She knew the military as well as he did, by now, but kept asking him questions about what they might do. If she hadn't told him some things that only Scully could know, hadn't smelled like Scully, felt like her, he'd have wondered if she wasn't someone else. That thought should have had him shaking with anxiety. On some level, it did. He just wasn't . . . quite . . . feeling it. So he was seeing Scully's ghosts, and hearing voices talking to Sam, couldn't remember how he'd gotten here and felt like he was watching himself go through his paces. He flashed on one of his old text books, (almost a relief to have a variation from the flashes of light and the light-and-shadow patterns he was seeing right now). The page was in his memory, down to the scorch mark on one margin where Phoebe Greene had set his book on fire the day he met her. His training found terms he already knew by heart: conversion disorder, disaster syndrome. What disaster? He wanted to remember, wanted to know. There had been bright lights, a woman? Sam? Or Scully? Or maybe it was just him, now. Another book came back to him, this one smudged with finger prints and the tears of a fourteen year-old: They cannot scare me with their empty space Between stars - on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places. He smiled sadly and imagined Scully's face if he told her Robert Frost had been an abductee. You could find plenty of desert places without outside help, of course. Frost, he was sure, had built his own hell. He hadn't had it bequeathed the way Fox had. It didn't matter, hell was still hell. And he was watching the flames, and wondering when he'd start feeling them. ************************** Scully was having flashbacks to med-school all-nighters as she guzzled her fifth cup of lousy, Project Quantum Leap coffee and flipped through another anthropology text looking for an imaginary creature to impersonate. Verbeena was sprawled on the floor, surrounded by more books and munching popcorn. "We could pass off Al as a leprechaun." Verbena'd already abandoned pookas, pixies, nixies, sprites, demons on probation, and high-school-genius-experiments. She'd never thought it could be so difficult to find a delusion for someone to believe in. "An Italian leprechaun?" "You never know, archetypal spirits?" "Even Mulder wouldn't fall for that one." "You did say he believes almost everything." "Almost. Just almost. He doesn't believe in vampires, or in campaign promises so he's not totally gullible. He also didn't fall for the thing about BMW putting ice-melting lasers on their new models, though he did contact Macintosh to see if the new PowerMacs could be networked to the coffee machine." "You mean they can't? And I had such high hopes of good coffee when I woke up!" "Ver-b-e-e-e-na! Who cooked this idea up? Was it Al?" "You know perfectly well it was Dr. Alisee, and it's a pretty good one, if we could just come up with something that would explain hearing you and Al without reinforcing his worst habits." "That won't happen. Mulder's *worst* habits are dietary and I don't plan to give him any advice on food." Scully sighed. "I feel like George Carlin looking for Bill and Ted. He's not going to trust advice from delusions. Maybe we should just tell him the truth." "What, that you two are telepathic visitations from the future trying to keep the bad guys from getting him and Scully? I hope you're not thinking of telling him about Sam! Look, is there any chance he'd believe you're angels trying to work off Purgatory?" "I'm the Catholic. I don't think he's been to church since he was a kid. Hey, hey! How's this one, we can tell him we're the projected advisors of a government department trying to counter the Men In Black!" "God, that's so paranoid it might just work!" "Right, and we're an underfunded black project, so we can't afford to intervene directly. This is never going to work. He might believe it, but he'll never believe I'd believe it." "I don't know, you already believe some of what he's told you and you know you're not delusional. He just might fall for this one." "He'd go looking for us." "Not if he believed finding you would compromise your contact?" Scully sighed and ground the heels of her palms into her aching eyes. "This won't work, Verbena. What Mulder believes has its own twisted logic. We can't outplay that game with him. He believes in a lot of things but he's not stupid." "Scully, do you have a better idea?" "Dr. Scully, Dr. Beeks," Ziggy's voice was peremptory. "it appears you will not have to create a new myth. The military has withdrawn." "What?" they chorused. "Why?" Scully continued. "Not that I'm not happy about it, but . . .why?" "The communique I have been able to find gives only one reason, Agent Scully. Apparently they have just learned that Agent Mulder is there." Scully stopped, baffled. "That's it? Mulder's there so it's cease fire?" "Apparently." Scully and Verbena looked at each other. ********************** Sam yawned and wished desperately that Al would appear. The only sounds around him were crickets and Mulder's breathing from the bench seat of the hummer. Sam had drugged him again, a powerful muscle relaxant. A car crash two days before and the last days' accidental battering had caused painfully stiff muscles that eliminated Mulder's usual careless grace. He would have tried to get the drugs into Mulder regardless, the man badly needed to sleep, to move beyond the confusion and anxiety of a trance like the one he'd suffered. "Sam." For a moment Sam looked for Al, then realized the voice was wrong. "Mulder?" but softly. He hadn't really sounded awake. "I'm sorry, Sam. I was so close . . ." His voice sounded small and young. "They wouldn't give you back, they wouldn't . . ." he faded off again. Sam watched him, almost regretting the drugs. If Al was right, Mulder hadn't had peaceful sleep for more than twenty years. Leaving him to his dreams felt like walking out on him. Sam wrapped his arms around himself and slid down the side of the truck to the ground, miserable. He was supposed to make things right, and he couldn't make this right. There just wasn't any way. The only thing he could do was sit through the night, sharing Mulder's nightmares in his own, lonely way. ********************** Sam watched Fox Mulder try to work at least one knot out of his neck and shoulders. Between the car crash two days before, the ride in the hummer and sleeping in the back of the truck it was a miracle the guy could even move. His fair skin had gone colors humans were never meant to be, ranging from the impressive black eye to the delicate, buttercup yellow of several of his bruises. Sam didn't have the heart to complain about his sore thigh with Mulder so miserable. "You know, Skinner's going to think you got kidnapped." Sam stared at Mulder, utterly baffled. As Mulder gradually regained some composure his sense of humor was returning, and it was very strange. "Kidnapped?" "That's right, he always assumes that if I'm black and blue, you got kidnapped. Sort of like Pants Corral and Levis. He's probably chewing pieces off his desk, wondering where we are and how we caused this mess with the army. He'll assume it's our fault, of course." Sam paused, trying to decide if Mulder was trying to be funny or not. He had a sick feeling that the agent might be telling the absolute, literal truth. Sam shook his head and pulled out the remaining MRE. "Here, why don't you split this with me." "What is it? It better not involve vegetables." Mulder looked up from the ground, where he was trying - and not really succeeding - to work the stiffness out of his legs. He was saved from Sam's review of the menu, however, as a low droning dopplered towards them. Mulder shielded his eyes and squinted at the canopy, trying to make his blurred sight come clearer. Sam looked up to watch as what seemed like every helicoptor that had ever appeared in M*A*S*H left. Just left. No searching. No strafing. Nothing. Just . . . left. "Scully, did that look like what it sounded like?" "Uhhh. It looked like a full retreat. Is that good or is it bad?" "It could be either. It could be both." Mulder shook his head. "Maybe we have friends in high places?" "High places, probably. Friends I wouldn't be so sure about." He got to his feet as though his joints weren't really there. "You said we were out of gas. We'd better start walking if I'm going to avoid eating vegetables." He sounded very, very distracted. ***************** It was a long, slow, uncomfortable slog home. They'd walked upwards of six hours, due west. Sam's childhood in Indiana came in handy as his boyscout training let him find directions. Sam had watched Mulder carefully, noting that he could see a little better with great relief, but disturbed by the young man's quiet. Al had never appeared last night. Sam really felt lost here. Whatever Mulder and Scully were dealing with didn't make any sense to him, and he already knew they had problems he would not have any hope of solving in this Leap. He'd done what Ziggy said, kept Fox Mulder alive and on Earth, but Sam couldn't believe that was the only thing he was here to accomplish. "Mulder," Sam pitched his voice low, partly because he was out of breath, partly to not startle his partner. "You were talking in your sleep last night." Sam almost ran into him, he stopped so fast. Sam found himself fixed by a very alert stare. It took an effort to remember that Mulder was still not seeing more than blurred shapes. "I talked about Sam?" It wasn't really a question. "Ye-e-e-s, about Sam. You talked about the lights, too. And about being trapped. And . . .Mulder, you talked about being close." The man swallowed and looked away. Sam sucked in a deep breath, wondering why he'd started this, what he thought he could accomplish. What was he going to say to Mulder that could possibly help? "Mulder, I know sometimes you wish they'd taken you instead of her. I know you've been hurt a lot because you couldn't find her," Sam was rushing, blurting it on instinct and barely catching mistakes. He'd couldn't help so much of the hurt, but maybe one thing . . . "and I know Sam would have gone on her own to save you. She wouldn't have wanted to lose you. And, Mulder, neither would I." Sam brought himself up short, leave it, leave it, don't say too much, for god's sake. And the odd thing was, every word was true. He didn't have to speak for Scully, he could speak for himself. Fox Mulder watched Sam as though he could really see him. He was breathing hard, and Sam could see the muscles along his jaw working. It took a few moments, a long time, but Mulder finally managed a grin. "Then you'd better get me back to civilization or this rabbit food will kill me. Eating this stuff, it's no wonder I was hearing voices." "That and the army's idea of drugs." Sam dropped into step, guiding him past pitfalls and snags on the ground. "Considering what I had to give you for those pulled muscles I'm surprised you think you're still on Earth at all. You just let me know if you start hearing ET." Mulder laughed, and Sam was glad to feel the muscles in his arm relax. "If I could "phone home" I could phone for pizza! No more of those MRE's you tried to force down my throat." Sam breathed a sigh of relief. If Mulder hadn't wanted to believe he was sane, it would never have worked. Deep down, he really didn't want to follow his sister enough to disappear into an alien ship or, more to the point, into a trance forever. When Sam showed him the door out, he took it. It was good enough for Mulder, and it would have to be good enough for Sam. ************************* It was a full evening, suffused with blue light, when Sam's directional skills had their greatest testimony. "The cars! Mulder, there are our cars! We'll be home for dinner and a shower." "I've heard this before, somewhere." He sounded tired, but he was smiling. "Good for you, Scully. I don't mind that you're an excellent outdoorswoman. I make up for that by my unerring instinct for D.C. parking spots . . ." Sam smiled. If Mulder could find parking spots anywhere, as he'd claimed, he'd have long since been recruited into private consultancy at quintuple his pay. ."but can you use those skills to find us a cheeseburger and a bath?" Sam unlocked the doors and settled behind the wheel, relishing the feel of good seats in a way he'd never thought possible. Mulder sighed with pleasure as he folded himself into the passenger seat. *************************** A good dinner and a hot, hot shower had done a lot to improve Sam's mood. A lot, but not everything. He sat cross-legged, painting cortisone cream on the nasty mosquito bites on Scully had gotten. She'd lied. She was allergic to something, and it was itching and driving Sam up the wall. Mulder was out like a light in his own room. Sam had shot him full of muscle relaxants to take the edge off the bruises and strains from a long hike, half-blind. His eyes were improving rapidly, but had still cost him a few tumbles on their trek. Now it was just wait for Al. Who showed up, like Marley's drunken tailor's ghost, at midnight and dressed in a purple lame frock coat with matching spats and a copper watch fob. Sam cringed at the ensemble. "Latest thing in Paris," growled Al around his cigar. "Haven't you got any fashion sense?" "Thankfully, no. Look, we're back. The missing kids are back. The aliens didn't get Mulder. We've had a good dinner. And I haven't Leaped, so what is going to happen next? Jack the Ripper? Mulder gets bitten by a werewolf?" "And turns into Jack Nicholson?" Al looked at him quizzically. "Just tell me a couple things, Al, I have a right to know them. Why didn't the EBE's take Mulder? Why didn't the bad guys get us? And when do I finally get out of here and back to nice, sane, leaps?" Al smiled and shook his head. "Ziggy says a Lieut. Ron Hayse was reported AWOL the other night. He doesn't reappear for a year and a half, and then in a coma. The waitress he would have knocked up goes on to get a mathematics degree when she quits her job. He recovers and runs a gas station in his home town. Does that answer question one?" Sam nodded and painted cortisone onto another bite. "The kid is out of the woods - for now." Al looked sourly at the handlink, hit it a time or two and bit on his cigar in frustration. "He has more run-ins with these people, these Men in Back," Thump on the handlink. "Black. It seems they're the ones who reported his presence up there. At some point in the future . . well, that's interesting." Sam looked up. "At some point he and Scully investigate the reappearance of Hayse, when the guy shows signs of . . . Ziggy says the records only refer to 'singular behavior', whatever that means. Mulder starts remembering whatever he saw down there and it has some kind of effect, from what Ziggy can make out. She still can't get into the X-Files, but it looks like you did it." Al smiled at Sam. He and Scully both survive, we can't quite make out details, but the X-Files are still operating in five years, with all present and accounted for. Beyond that Ziggy says it gets too speculative." "Huh. Everything about those two is speculative." Sam scowled at a golf-ball sized bite on one arm. "And the Men in Black?" Al looked at the handlink, puzzled. Looked up. "All Ziggy'll say is that they don't exist. They exist but they don't exist." Sam looked back. "Spooky." "Doo-doo-doo-doo . . . ." *************************** One week later: "Look, Agent Scully, *I* don't know why Sam hasn't Leaped yet! *I* don't run this show! You want to file a complaint you can take it up with God or whoever. You find out, you just let me know." Scully had been there a week, reading issues of the American Medical Association Journal that, as she put it, hadn't been written yet. She was bored and nervous and letting Al know it in no uncertain terms. Al Calavicci was ready to strangle her. *He* didn't know why Sam hadn't jumped a week ago when they finally made it back to the hotel. It would have been a logical time to do it. Ziggy was still in a snit that she hadn't been able to absolutely her identify the Men in Black or verify that Hayse, the army AWOL, was taken, but it seemed likely that Hayse was the one who took a shot at the Visitor, and paid for it. Every guess was that he'd been taken instead of Fox Mulder. If Sam hadn't been up there, been shot, if Mulder hadn't been trying to draw off pursuit, Hayse would never have been down by the crash. Sam had thrown up when he realized just how very close they'd come to disaster. Mulder had taken a lot of ribbing when he'd shown up at the FBI wearing dark glasses to cover a black eye and to protect his scorched retinas from light. They'd heal, but he'd have to wear the dark glasses for a while yet. Scully thought he looked like a cartoon spy, and "Spooky" jokes had been flying fast and furious. Skinner had taken a look at Mulder, and at the medical reports and grinned evilly. "Supposed to stay out of the sun for a while, eh, Agent Mulder. Good. Then you should have plenty of time to take care of the paperwork you'll need for the car, and the health insurance forms, and your report, and the backlogged work you've been ducking." Mulder couldn't have looked more dejected if he'd gotten a death sentence. Sam had spent the week since recovering. The bullet wound was uncomfortable, but superficial. The few autopsies he'd had to do were easy, it was a pleasure to be able to use his medical skills again, even in this capacity. A week of physical therapy and government routine had seemed like a vacation to him, even with Scully dropping in on Al's coattails every so often to rag on him (he was starting to appreciate having just one minder). He'd gone shopping again with Mulder this afternoon. Apparently Ms. Martin liked the mysterious look, because he had a date set up with "Sheryl" for later that night. Sam had occupied himself in the back of the store, while Mulder told a series of utter lies to explain the glasses, and cheerfully let himself be steered into dinner and a concert. Sam had no trouble getting the junior clerk to ring up his purchases while Mulder played fox to the manager's hound. His worst problem was keeping a straight face as he corralled Scully's partner and steered him back to work. While Mulder went to answer the inevitable summons to Skinner's office over his paperwork, Sam quickly pulled out his purchases, gift tags and a pen. He'd just finished his work when a blue flash swept him up and he understood what it had waited for. ************************** Dana Scully staggered a moment before she caught her balance. She had the strongest feeling that there was something important that she'd forgotten. She looked around the office, trying to shake off the feeling that the date on her calendar couldn't be right. That was strange, there was a little cloth doll on her desk, black and white, with a red nose and a pink bow on its head. She looked over at Mulder's desk where a similar doll perched on top of a precarious heap of folders. This one was taller than hers, dressed in pants and a belt, and it had a really loopy looking grin on its face. it looked familiar, somehow, and she wandered over to see the tag around it's neck. "To Fox Mulder, from a friend you haven't met yet. Some day we'll have to trade war stories and fairy tales. Take care and watch out for the bug-eyed monsters." Scully shook her head. Mulder had some weird friends. She turned it over to see who it was from and frowned as that strange flash of familiarity hit her again. It was signed: "The other Sam." ************ Thank you all for coming on this little ride with me. This is only the second piece of fiction (as opposed to doggerel or parody) I have ever attempted, and the kind notes and encouragement were appreciated. Sucker grew like slime mold! I'd originally thought I'd top out like Vacation at about six parts, but didn't have a chance. Really big, huge special thanks to rodent and Amperage for their help, suggestions, rescues, encouragement, advice, information, and outrageous stories. This would not have been half as good or half as much fun to write without them. (Oh, and my ftp karma is just as bad. Thanks to everyone who has forwarded stories and full-court grovels to get you guys to keep forwarding stories. Will write for stories.)