Title: Out of the Shadows Author: Agent L Classification: V, MT, post-ep Rating: G -- nothing objectionable Spoilers: Three Words This is a Doggett-free zone. Distribution: Anywhere, as long as my name is attached. Disclaimer: To Chris Carter, David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Fox, and now Robert Patrick: I know they're not mine, and no money, gifts or even chocolate would be expected or accepted for this. Summary: Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery. Feedback: Yes, please! LHoward388@aol.com "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil..." Psalm 23 The siren screams through his restless sleep and he jerks upright like a puppet yanked by invisible strings, his own scream ripped from his throat in a human echo of the sound. For a moment he doesn't know where he is or who he is, lost in the suffocating cloak of darkness, still tangled in the suffocating folds of the nightmare. The sound of his own breathing rasps in his ears, uneven, half-sobbing as his lungs beg for air, more air, there's not enough air...Somehow he staggers to the window and throws it open, shivering as the early spring breeze dries the sweat on his skin. His heart pounds against his chest as if trying to escape his body. His arms and legs tingle with the rush of adrenalin, his muscles trembling like a racehorse's just before the gate opens, awaiting the brain's command to run, to fight. The aftermath of nightmares is as familiar to him as waking from a natural sleep in the morning. Before the abduction, he fell asleep again quickly, having trained himself to send the demons back into his subconscious until the next night. But lately, the panic will not subside. It crawls under his skin, festers in the back of his brain. They can find him here. They could be outside. Right now. The hazy orange streetlight outside his window becomes the sinister glow from an alien craft. The hum of the refrigerator grates along his nerves like sandpaper. Or does it come from some other, extraterrestrial source? Is that simply the scrape of a branch against the window? Only the flash of a car's headlights? He wonders if he is having a heart attack. There is no pain, but surely his heart cannot sustain this pace, rattling like a jackhammer against his ribs. Even when his teeth begin to chatter from the cold, he remains near the window, focused on slow, deep even breaths of fresh night air, reluctant to close himself in with the demons again. Watching. Waiting. You are having a panic attack, says a calm voice in his head that sounds surprisingly like his own. An irrational response to some external stimulus. A natural result of the physical and mental trauma during your abduction.Classic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, neatly labeled and classified, first-year Psych student stuff. Nothing to be afraid of. But he is afraid of nothing. He understands the voice. He understands what is happening to him in a clinical, detached way, but he cannot stop it, cannot control it. He has lived in a constant state of anxiety -- nameless, faceless, shapeless fear -- since he came home from the hospital, escaping the feelings during the day with frenetic activity, hoping to drive himself to exhaustion, to submerge the memories for a few hours of dreamless sleep. But every night he awakens to the sound of his own screams. And for one moment of complete and utter despair, he wishes they hadn't brought him back. Because now that he is alive, he is in hell. Before the abduction, he had gotten in the habit of calling her after a particularly bad dream. She would listen patiently as he rambled, never complaining about the hour, never using his weakness against him. Sometimes he would awake the next morning with the phone still clutched in his hand, wishing it was her hair streaming through his fingers, her scent on the pillow instead of the faint odor of detergent. But the woman he's come back to isn't her. She has the same face, the same red hair, the same blue eyes, but she has changed. Withdrawn, uncertain, with her own set of anxieties and fears about the life growing within her. Just yesterday, watching her absently stroke the swell of her stomach, he'd fought an irrational jealousy of the child curled within her womb.... then hated himself for his selfishness. He has lost his touchstone. He floats free now like an astronaut cut from a lifeline, drifting in space... *I can't live like this.* He reaches for the phone, his hand shaking, pride shredded. The line on the other end rings several times, and with each ring he considers hanging up -- but then he looks at the tangled sheets. Touches the scar on his chest. Sees the nightmares that still lurk in the shadowy corners of the room... "Hello?" The voice is sleepy, unhappy. But it's human contact, a connection with reality. "It's me. Fox Mulder. I'm sorry. I --I know it's late. Or early. But I need to talk to someone. I'd like to see you tomorrow." "I'd be happy to talk to you, Fox. Stop by my office at 10." "Thanks, Dr. Kosseff." He hangs up the phone. The shadows are only shadows, after all. The End