Isolation (6/16) by ML email: msnsc21@yahoo.com Rating: PG13 for mild violence and swearing Type: Gen, het. M&S, a character/other pairing Disclaimer: You know the tune, sing it with me now: I don't own them, I'm just borrowing for a while. The original characters: they're mine, all mine. Author's Notes: This was written for the 2010 XF BigBang. I couldn't have done it without Wendy's expert beta. Bouquets of thanks to her! That said, if there are any errors or omissions, that's my fault. More notes at the end of the story. Summary: It's time to come out of hiding and get back to the business of saving the world. Mulder is looking for people to help him and Scully do just that. With so many of his former friends and colleagues either missing or dead, he gets help from an unexpected quarter -- and finds that he's not the only one who's ready to get back into circulation. Takes place in 2008, after the events of "I Want to Believe". We never gave up, we never will. In the end, if that's the best they can say about us, it'll do. -John Fitzgerald Byers x-x-x Chapter Six Two days after Frank first talked to him, Gibson Praise showed up at the diner again. "That guy is out there," Carla said. "You know the one who asked after you before? He says he'd like to talk to you." "Yeah, I'd like to talk to him, too," Frank said. "Luis, I'm taking a break." "Si, Francisco," Luis said. He'd been a cook at the diner before Frank bought the place, and he'd agreed to stay on after. They had a friendly rivalry over whose huevos rancheros were the best. Gibson sat at the counter, looking a little uncomfortable. "I'm sorry I upset you the other night. I won't come back here any more if it bugs you." "It's okay, kid. Do you smoke?" Gibson shook his head. "Neither do I. Let's pretend we do and go out back." "Out back" was a weathered wooden picnic bench, shaded by an equally weathered metal awning. "You want a root beer?" Frank asked. Gibson shook his head no. Once they were settled at the table, Frank asked, "You didn't just make up all that stuff the other night, did you? About 'seeing' stuff in my head?" "No, it's true. At first I thought you were mad because I found out who you really are. Now I know better: you believe that you're Frank Franklin." "How can you tell a thing like that? I've never met you, I've never met this Mulder guy, and yet you say I know him, and he knows me." "Mulder used to think about you all the time. He came to stay with me, a long time ago, and you were one of the people he thought about. So even though I never met you, I knew who you were and what you looked like, from Mulder." "What you're saying, this isn't Candid Camera, right? You mean it?" "Yes. I can hear what people are thinking." "You've got to be kidding me." Gibson shook his head no. "A lot of times, I wish it weren't true." "Okay, tell me what I'm thinking right now." Frank closed his eyes and turned his back on Gibson for good measure. When he turned back, Gibson didn't say a word. His face was fiery red. "I don't think I know the right words..." Gibson trailed off. "Never mind kid, I believe you. I'm surprised that they don't know about you at the Fort." Gibson went from red to pale. "Don't tell them! Don't tell them you know where I am!" he said in a hoarse whisper. "Calm down, kid, I won't." Something bad had been done to this kid, that's for sure. x-x-x Brian looked up as the bell rang on the front door of the Perdita Press's office. He was alone; his one employee was a part-timer who sold advertising and set up the want ads, had already gone home. "Hi, hon," Annie greeted him. "You want to go out for dinner tonight? I don't feel like cooking." "Sure. Pizza, Chinese, or Mexican?" There were not many restaurants in town, and they each strove to fill a culinary niche. Brian and Annie had their favorites: Donna's did breakfast and lunch and closed at two; the one pizza place, which opened at noon and stayed open until about ten, and then there was Abel's: Abel's Chinese and Mexican Cuisine. One side of the dining room was decorated with souvenirs from a trip to Mexico the owner had made years before, and the other was hung with delicate paper lanterns, now grimed with age. It didn't matter which side you sat; you could mix or match dishes. Brian gave the edge to the Chinese side of the house; the cooking seemed more authentic somehow. The cook's ancestry was neither Chinese nor Mexican. His forte was in combining both cuisines in what he called "Asian-Southwestern fusion." Abel himself brought over the featured appetizer of the evening, Southwest-style fried egg rolls. "How are you two doing this evening?" he asked. "I'm trying out some new menu items. I used eggroll skins for these, then rolled 'em up with chipotle chicken and cheese," he said. "And the dipping sauce is guacamole with a little lemon grass and garlic." "Thumbs up, Abel," Annie said. "Thanks." It was Abel's hope that one day he'd be featured on one of those TV shows about off-beat restaurants. "What do you think of Chinese sausage pizza rolls?" "If you make them, I'll try them," Brian said gamely. "You're on," Abel said. "I'm still tweaking the recipe. I should have it down by next week. Have a good dinner, folks." Abel made his way around the dining room, greeting other diners and getting their reactions to his newest creation. The rest of their dinner was more conventional. Brian chose his favorite green chile enchiladas and Annie opted for the same with red sauce. Once they were served, Annie asked, "Have you thought about taking a vacation this summer? We've never taken one." Brian looked startled. "I hadn't thought about it. Is there someplace you wanted to go?" "It might be nice just to go to San Francisco for a long weekend. If you like the idea. Except for trips to Eureka, you've hardly left town since you moved here. I thought you might be getting bored." "Not at all. If you want to go someplace, we should." He seemed a little uneasy to her, but he smiled and nodded, as if that would fool her. "Well, I have an ulterior motive. I got a letter from a friend of mine in San Francisco. I'd like to show you off." "Is this someone you went to school with?" Brian toyed with the straw in his margarita glass, not looking at her. She wasn't imagining it; he seemed unenthusiastic about this trip. "We were both recruited by the same company. She still works for them. I wouldn't be surprised if she's trying to get me to come back." "Do you want to go back to that work? I know you said you resigned to come back and help your parents. Now that they're gone, you don't have to feel tied to Perdita. You graduated top of your class at Stanford -- I'd think a lot of companies would be falling all over themselves to get someone with your knowledge and skills." "Yeah, I know. It turns out that I didn't like working for some company making drugs for profit: the kind of drugs that might help in one way, but harm in others. Even if I didn't become the counter- culture revolutionary that my folks hoped I would be, I do have some standards." "I thought you quit because your mom died, and you came back to help your dad?" She nodded. She'd been a little glad to have an excuse to quit, she remembered guiltily. "That wasn't the only reason I resigned. I discovered that I just didn't fit in with the whole corporate world. And although I couldn't leave here fast enough, my ideas had changed by the time I came back." "There are lots of alternatives to Big Pharma, aren't there? Non- profits, even working for someplace like the National Institutes of Health or Centers for Disease Control." "That might be marginally better than working for Rousch, which my parents really hated." "Wasn't that the point? You were rebelling against them. You didn't want to do what they expected you to do." "That's true. Though as it turns out, the apple didn't fall far from the tree. I didn't join the Peace Corps and go to Africa. I worked in a clinic in South Central LA instead. I helped vaccinate kids and teach basic hygiene. I guess I wanted to prove that I wasn't completely venal and just out for a buck." She sipped her drink. "And then I went to work for the big drug company. I sure showed them." "They were proud of you anyway, right?" She'd told him about her parents, and she was sure that others in town had done the same. They'd died within six months of each other. Her mother had a stroke and seemed to be recovering when another struck, this time fatal. That winter, her father just gave up. When he died, she felt like she'd walked around in a fog for several months afterward. Being back home, among the people who knew her parents and knew her, had helped. And then Brian came to town. "Yes, they were proud of me." Annie smiled sadly. "Sometimes I wish I hadn't been in such a hurry to leave town. When I told my dad that, he told me that they'd raised me to know my own mind, and to do what's right, no matter what anyone else thought. He said that he thought they'd succeeded. He said he knew that when I came back." "I know they did." Brian put his hand over hers. "I'm sorry that I never got to meet them." "Thanks, honey." Annie said, suddenly a little choked up. She wiped her eyes with her napkin. "How did we get into this sentimental conversation? I thought we were talking about vacation." "That's where we started. I wondered if you were feeling the call of the city on a more permanent basis." "I don't think so. You don't want to leave, do you?" "No, I don't. I like it here," Brian reassured her. "I don't want you to feel like you're staying here just for me." "I'd say that's a pretty big incentive." She leaned over and kissed him. "I also like teaching, and I like the kids." She paused, then added, "this is where I'd want to raise kids, if we decide to have them." "Really?" Brian's voice went up an octave. "I mean, uh, we haven't talked about it since, uh, since we were first married. Has something, uh, happened?" "Don't freak out." Annie's heart sank. "I didn't mean to spring it on you. Nothing's happened. I know we said we'd wait until we were ready. I brought it up because I thought, after the conversation we had on the beach the other day, that maybe you were ready to talk about it again." "I'm not freaking out," Brian said defensively. "I hoped that I'd have recovered my memory before we took that step. I just wish I knew more about my past." "Well, we know you're healthy, and that's a good start. Neither of us is getting any younger, even if everyone calls me your 'child bride'. I was a late in life baby, myself. We don't have to rush into a decision. It just seemed like maybe it was a good time to talk about it." "Okay," Brian said. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound like I was panicking." "There's nothing to be sorry for," Annie said, doing her best to look like it was no big deal. "If you're not ready, you're not ready." "Hey folks," Abel stopped at their table again. "How was everything. Are you ready for dessert? It's fried ice cream tonight." x-x-x "...so I made my way back here." Gibson paused to take a drink. "I knew I'd be safe if I stayed near the reservation, and I wanted to be someplace where Mulder would know to look. He always told me he'd try to contact me, one way or another. "I didn't know where he was, or if he or Agent Scully were even still alive, for years. This spring, I heard from him." Gibson wasn't a demonstrative person, but Frank could see the happiness in his face. "And he told me that he thought it would be safe for me to come see them, if I wanted." They sat at Frank's kitchen table, eating chips and salsa and drinking root beer. Frank had gone back into the diner and told the others that he was taking the rest of the day off for some personal business, and he took Gibson back to his house to talk. "You didn't go right away?" Frank said. "How come?" "The elders said I should stay put for a while. That I'd know when the time was right. Mulder understood that." "I never understood this mystical mumbo-jumbo, myself. After I met you the other night, I tried to remember some stuff. When I came here, where I lived before, things like that." "And?" "I've tried and tried, but I can't remember for sure anything before working at Fort Huachuca." x-x-x The cops were no help at all. Until Roger had been missing for 24 hours, they wouldn't file a report. They wouldn't even come out, saying that there was no evidence of a crime having been committed. Did Connie know if he was in any trouble? Did he have any enemies? She told them about the visit from the IRS guy, and she could almost hear the cop shrug over the phone. Maybe Roger hadn't been paying his taxes, the cop said, and he got arrested. In that case, it was a Federal matter. In any case, the Chicago P.D. could do nothing for her at this time. So, she'd have to do for herself, as she'd always had to in the past. Roger seemed to be alone in the world, same as she was. She had to do something. The band for the evening recording session would be arriving soon. It was too late to cancel, and besides, she owed it to Roger to not let his business go down the tubes. What else could she do? The cameras. They recorded everything that moved; even if she hadn't seen it on the monitor, maybe there was something there. She ran back to the security room and made sure that the recordings were downloaded to disk before they cycled through again. No time to look at them now; she'd have to check them after the band left. She was on her own again, but she knew what to do. x-x-x "What do you think?" Gibson asked. "About what?" Frank asked. They'd been sitting at Frank's kitchen table for what seemed like hours. Gibson tried every way he could think of to get him to remember something, anything, about this Frohike guy. "I can't believe you don't have a computer," Gibson said. "I don't need one. Haven't used one since I retired, and I haven't missed it. No cell phone, either." "I bet you I could find Melvin Frohike on the Internet. You'd see that you're him." "Tell you what," Frank said. "I have to go into Tucson tomorrow to get some supplies. Why don't you come with me, and we'll go to the library and you can show me." "Really? You'd do that?" Frank shrugged. "You seem like a nice kid. I can humor you at least that much. If we don't find anything, you'll shut up about this Frohike guy, okay?" Gibson smiled. "Sure. I promise." ~*~ Continued in Chapter Seven