Fox Mulder | Not a Green Man (basementman) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2013-09-22 15:10:00 |
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Christine had looked long and hard for the perfect place for the two of them to stay. The hotel she’d settled on was affordable, located in what was once a market building so it was historical and it was in the French Quarter. In short, it was perfect. She and Mulder had left New York on Monday morning and once they’d arrived in New Orleans had checked into the hotel before going out to take a walk. The French Quarter was much like it was in Christine’s time except for the fact that the buildings looked different and the traffic was not at all what she was used to. There were also many things that didn’t exist in her time including the hotel they were staying in. It was still a hotel but a much larger, more elaborate one. Christine preferred the way it looked right now. After they had dinner, they returned to the hotel and Christine went to take a shower. When she came out wearing one of the hotel’s bathrobes, her wet hair wrapped in a towel, she stopped for a minute to contemplate Mulder who was sitting on the bed reading. He was wearing his glasses and she had to admit that he looked very cute in them. “You look like a college professor trying to put a lecture together,” she said with a smile as she walked over and got onto the bed to sit next to him. “What are you reading?” Mulder glanced up and gave her a smile. “Sorry,” he grinned. “I was going to put it away when you came out, but then I apparently was a little too engrossed to actually notice that you’d finished.” He turned the book over and reached for the receipt he’d been using as a bookmark to slide in and mark his place. “It’s UFOs and the National Security State,” he said. “I know, I know - work, and no play, and all that, but it’s been a fascinating read to be honest. Not that I’m going to bore you with that here.” After all, even if Mulder was very bad at leaving work completely behind him, and even if the book was completely up his alley and his interests and technically no longer his ‘work’ per say, it didn’t mean that he ought to drag aliens into the New Orleans experience. “However,” he put the UFO book aside and hung half off the bed to grab another book from his carry-on bag. “This one might be a little bit more of interest in our current setting.” He held up a copy of The Haunted History of New Orleans and gave Christine a smile. “What say you? Shall we take a look and see where we are most likely to get lucky?” “Places to get lucky other than right here in this bed, you mean?” she said with a smirk. “but yes that sounds great. Let’s see what the book has to say.” Christine couldn’t help but smile when she saw the book in his hand. “I didn’t think of getting a book which is unusual for me. I almost always grab a book first when I’m going anywhere so I’m glad you did it.” And it made her feel good that he was interested enough to do it. “I don’t feel so bad about dragging you down here.” Christine kissed his cheek and rested her chin on his shoulder. “So let’s take a look and see what we can find!” “I don’t know what you’re talking about with this bed,” Mulder said shaking his head and looking at the book. “I was thinking about poltergeists and the undead walking among us - not, it should be pointed out, zombies, but rather the ghostly undead. At any rate… Yes, I thought it might give us a place to start. After all I don’t have my files from home here to cross-check New Orleans with potential paranormal activity.” He opened the book and leaned back against the pillow so that she could easily rest on his shoulder. “I was thinking maybe we ought to just find something that looks interesting and go from there? It’s not as if any of them are guarantees so we might as well find architecture, or restaurants, or something else we want to see that happens to be ghostly at the same time.” “Oh please. I forget that you are Mr. Innocent who never, ever thinks about anything naughty,” Christine rolled her eyes and settled herself against him. “That’s a good idea. There are plenty of places that have been rumored to be haunted for years so we could certainly look at those. There are also places that were supposed to be haunted in my time from things that happened in this time.” She paused for a minute. “although that might not necessarily mean it happened in this particular timeline. For instance after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, there were a lot of places that were rumored to be haunted and those are the ones I heard about two hundred years later.” For a moment, she stopped talking as she considered what she had just said. “You know I forget sometimes that I haven’t been born yet as far as the calendar in this world is concerned. It’s odd to think about that. I know how old I am in my own time and it appears that hasn’t changed but it’s not like I can search for relatives in any of the graveyards because they haven’t died yet. Or been born for that matter. Well maybe my great great great...hell I don’t even know how many greats it would be grandfather. He might be buried here somewhere.” She looked at the book and pointed at a picture inside it. “That church. It’s still standing in the 23rd century. It’s been restored several times of course but it will still be there when I’m a kid. We went there on a school field trip.” Mulder raised an eyebrow and grinned at her. “I’m innocence personified, Christine. You know that.” He then looked at the church she’d pointed to and shook his head. “It’s odd enough for me to be placed not quite two decades into my future. I can hardly imagine what it’d be like to be so far placed back into the past. I hadn’t really stopped to consider, but you’re right - unless you’ve done geneology research it’s not as if you’ll know who your relatives were. I suppose you could look for ‘Chapels’ as a for instance, but there’s no guarantee they’d actually be related to you, and no way of checking. Assuming that they even exist in this reality. Clearly my family doesn’t,” he added and frowned slightly. “So my ancestors wouldn’t be buried anywhere either. “Would you like to go there? To that church? See it from this century as well as from your own?” “I can’t believe I forgot you were the epitome of innocence,” she said, shaking her head. “Thank you for reminding me of that.” Christine contemplated what he had said. “It is strange seeing it from the perspective of what I know and looking back at it now. I do know that my ancestors came from France at some point, the original spelling of our last name was Chapelle. At some point the second l and the second e were dropped to Americanize it I suppose. Actually my name means “christian” and of course “chapel’ means church so I wonder if my parents secretly hoped that I would become a nun?” She laughed. “I sure fooled them didn’t I? I would like to see that church though, look at it now, compare it to what I remember. It was beautiful, very peaceful.” “Then let’s do that tomorrow,” Mulder said decisively. “We’ll check it out and you can tell me what you remember about it being different from the future, and then maybe we can see if there’s anything else interesting in the area, and then get some lunch…” He reached for the phone and pulled up an app, typing in the address of the church, and looking for near-by restaurants. “I suppose we can make a final decision on lunch tomorrow because who knows what we’ll be in the mood for then, but it does look as if there are some regional restaurants around that have some fairly high ratings, so there are probably options even if we don’t want to drive further afield.” He tilted his head and looked at her with a bit of a grin. “I’m trying to picture you as ‘Sister Chapel’ or ‘Sister Christine’ and it’s just not quite working out for me.” “I’d make a lousy nun. I’m not so good at the quiet, mild mannered thing,” Christine laughed. “so it’s just as well that it didn’t happen.” She watched Mulder as he played with the phone. “It’s funny that of all the things that seem so backward to me here like the computers, the phones are my favorite thing. They’re a lot more like home than some of the other things around here.” And there were a lot of fun things you could do with them. “A lot smaller than the phone you and Scully carried around on the show.” Christine had found that amusing. They were huge compared to what they had now and even more so when she thought about the communicators she was familiar with. “You know, they think I’m addicted to my cell phone in 1997,” Mulder chuckled. “They ought to see me now with this thing,” he sat the phone down to the side on the table and gave her a look. “You don’t seem to have forgotten to put on clothes after your shower, well I mean, you’ve got this robe on, but you do realize you cannot just go wandering about in your robe, don’t you?” “If you had that thing in 1997, they’d never get any work out of you,” Christine said. His next words had her arching an eyebrow. “What are you getting at Agent Mulder? Are you trying to determine if I’m wearing anything under this bathrobe? Is that it?” She grinned and took the towel off her head, tossing it off the foot of the bed. “Well my hair was under that towel. So now you know.” “Hey!” Mulder said, pretending offence at the comment. “I’m not that addicted.” But he also wasn’t that interested in proving his point at the moment - at least not any point that involved a smart phone. He slid forward and reached for a strand of hair and raised his eyebrows. “Well, I know about the towel… but not about the bathrobe. What do you say I find out, Nurse Chapel?” “I think you’re onto something, Agent Mulder," she said with a grin and leaned in to kiss him.” |