Title: "I Remember You"
Author: Rebecca Perlow
Rating: G
Category: LGM for Lone Gunmen, M for Mulder, V for vignette
Spoilers: Season Eight
Summary: After Mulder comes back from the dead, Langly encounters a
spirit of his own.
Disclaimer: Mulder and the Lone Gunmen are the
property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions,
and the Fox network. All albums mentioned are
the property of the Ramones and Sire Records.
Mountain Dew belongs to Mountain Dew.
Rebecca Perlow belongs to Rebecca Perlow
and everybody's happy.
My thanks go out to Erika, my beta reader and
friend who, like me, has a lot of stuff going on
right now, and to my Dad, who doesn't watch
the show but read this story anyway.
*******************************************************
"I remember you
Oo-oo-oo
I remember you
Oo-oo-oo.."
Langly toyed with the volume knob on his diskman as he balanced it
between jean-clad knees, the hyperactive beat of the "Leave Home"
album bouncing around inside the headphones clamped firmly to his
ears. Silently, he cracked his knuckles and prepared to tackle pages
3, 4, and 5 of the first May issue of The Lone Gunman. Behind
him, something was happening that, six months ago, not even the most
paranoid conspiracy theorist could have imagined.
Death was such a weird thing. So final and yet..not. Mulder's had
been the first of two deaths he had had to deal with in the last six
months. When Scully had called them with the news, he had sat down on
the sofa and not moved for several hours. After so many close shaves
in so many years, the very idea seemed downright impossible. People
like Fox Mulder didn't die. Obviously.
The second - another impossible passing - had hit him just as hard,
going so far as to send him into a 37 hour seclusion in the knee hole
of his desk, amid the aging dustbunnies and briar patch of extension
cords while Byers and Frohike tried to coax him out with promises of
pizza and dibs on the latest copy of Celebrity Skin.
Just him and his laptop as he furiously typed out condolences to
several online friends and contemporaries who had also been
devastated by the loss. His diskman became his best friend. "Leave
Home," "Rocket to Russia," "Rock N' Roll High School," "Too Tough to
Die," each album got their fair share of his attention in that first
week. He and a couple of the guys in his D & D group had even
purchased plane tickets for New York in the hope of attending the
funeral - or at least witnessing it via high-powered binoculars.
Fortunately or unfortunately, a set of unexpected circumstances cut
Langly's role in the pilgrimage short.
A few days before, Mulder had walked into their office, as healthy
and as alive as anyone walking the street. Maybe more so. No theory -
conspiracy or scientific - could explain it. Many would try.
It was a privilege not many people had been awarded - the ability
to
come back from the dead - save for a few religious icons and
monstrous stars of late afternoon creature features. And, on this
day, he sat on the couch at the far end of the TLG office, going over
the finer points of a recently closed case with his other two
comrades, as well as answering any questions concerning the three
months he'd spent in the ground of a South Carolina cemetery.
It seemed, to Langly, unfair that such a chance be bestowed to only
one person every 2000 years. Surely there were others who deserved a
similar turn of events. He could think of many, or at least one..
Unfazed by the ghoulish nature of the conversation, yet unwilling to
participate in it nonetheless, he chose instead to concentrate on
editing the upcoming issue, turning up the volume on his favorite
track.
Eyes glued to the monitor, ears tuned into the beloved CD, he was
unsure of precisely when the even drawl of Mulder's monotone had
disappeared behind him. But the computer clock had read 5:19 when
he'd felt a strangely familiar shadow behind him.
"Hey, Ringo."
It was Mulder's voice, Mulder's hand on his shoulder Langly had
thought as he turned around in his chair. But the figure that had
suddenly appeared in front of him stood at least four or five inches
taller than the seasoned FBI agent, clad in attire the Bureau would
have immediately declared unsuitable. The two items of clothing he
would remember in detail later were a pair of faded, unwashed jeans
that, from the collection of tears and gaping holes, could have
belonged to Michael Landon in "I Was a Teenage Werewolf" and a well-
worn leather jacket too small for the wearer, the sleeves stopping at
the top of slim forearms. The solid angles of his friend's features
were half-covered by a thick curtain of long, dark hair. The color
seemed to have drained from his face leaving a chalky subway tan in
its wake, and the eye he could see was distorted by a thin ovacular
lens.
Langly blinked hard as an overwhelming darkness seized the room and,
the next thing he knew, he was being hauled back up into the chair by
three familiar pairs of arms. The clock on the computer read 5:29.
As Mulder had approached him in search of a back issue, Byers
explained, he had slumped to the floor, taking the unfortunate
diskman with him. It's double A batteries skittering off into an
indiscernible portion of the room. The three men had spent the better
part of the last ten minutes attempting to revive him, succeeding
only when Mulder retrieved one of Frohike's sweat socks from the
hamper and held it under the younger man's nose.
Both events left their blonde compadre substantially shaken.
Over leftover cheese steaks and flat Mountain Dew a few days later,
Langly recounted for his friends what he had experienced in that
split second before he'd "bailed." Their response was skeptical at
best, belittling at worst. 'Keep telling that story and they'll have
you fitted for rubber headphones. 'No more headbanging for you,
Hippie,'' Frohike had eloquently put it as he crumpled up his
sandwich wrapper, aiming it for the garbage can.. and missing. Langly
remained convinced of the authenticity of his vision.
Though his partners would claim over and over again to have heard
nothing of the sort, Langly would swear until the day he died he had
been able to make out three simple words from a mouth that - in that
one second - didn't look like Mulder's:
"Gabba gabba hey."
*******************************************************
This story is loosely inspired by the "We'll miss you, Joey" image on
the official LGM website, as well as my own personal obsession with
the Ramones' music. Like Langly and many others, I love Joey and miss
him terribly.
Numbers:
5:19 - May 19 is Joey's birthday.
5:29 - May 29 is my birthday.
Rebecca's X-Files Fanfiction Page
http://www.gurlpages.com/tv/frohikeisadoll/