Fic: Ambit (Mulder, Part 1)
Mulder's POV to follow:
Title: Ambit
Spoilers: Season 7, references to Per Manum
Keywords: MSR, AU
Rating: PG-13, maybe R in some sections for angst
Summary: There are more worlds than the one you can hold in your hand.
Disclaimer: I do not own this show or these characters.
Author's Note: With some apologies to Frank Herbert. Also, many thanks to missmonkeh and hankmoodyblues.
~~
Mulder hits the ground with a thud, air rushing out of his lungs and pain lancing through his right wrist as it takes too much of his weight. He lies still for a moment, trying to catch his breath, but the frigidity of the ground beneath him soon drives him to his feet. Wherever he is, he thinks wryly, he's not in Kansas... and not DC, either.
Wrapping his arms around himself to guard against the biting wind, Mulder takes a look around. The landscape appears barren except for a few bent and twisted trees, and the terrain is gray and craggy. Judging by what little sunlight is filtering through the heavy cloud cover, he guesses it must be close to nightfall. So, he thinks, not only did we end up in an entirely different place, but a different time, too.
Abruptly, he spins around, hoping to catch sight of his partner hunched against the wind somewhere nearby - but there is no sign of human or animal life to be seen. Great. We didn't even end up in the same place. An even stronger gust of wind buffets Mulder. He stumbles and begins to make his way toward a ridge of rock not too far away.
He's sure Scully had been right next to him before they were transported to wherever he is now - so hopefully she's not too far away. But really, he muses, how the hell should he be able to predict where she ended up? Who knows how the laws of physics have been and might still be changed in here?
Despite his aching wrist, the constant cold wind, and his worry over where Scully might be, Mulder can't help but feel some excitement over the fact that he has evidently traveled to another dimension. This would be even harder to believe than his trip back in time in the Bermuda Triangle - except that he can't think of very many places in his dimension that look like this. Plus, there's the way he got here...
Mulder sighs in relief when he makes it to the relative shelter of the ridge. However, he quickly realizes that being out of the wind does not mean the air is much warmer. At least he can look around without squinting now - not that there is much to see around him, other than rocks and bare ground.
After a moment of catching his breath, Mulder decides to go on in the shelter of the rock. It's obvious that he won't be going back to his world the way he came - and anyway, he has to find Scully before the two of them can try to come up with a way of getting back.
The sound of the wind howling around the edges of the rock formations obscures the sound of the approaching riders until the horses are just a few yards behind him. Mulder turns around to face them, reaching for his gun, only to find to his dismay that he has apparently left it behind in his home dimension.
The obvious leader of the five horsemen, a tall guy whose coloring and build remind Mulder somehow of a Viking warlord, barks something in a foreign language. Mulder can't understand the words in the least - but he has no trouble understanding the rifles all of the group members are pointing at him. Slowly, Mulder raises his hands. He says, “I'm sorry, I can't understand you.” This is turning out more like my little adventure in 1939 than I'd prefer, he thinks.
The leader blinks and mutters something in his language. Then, still training the rifle on Mulder, he demands in accented English, “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
“My name is Fox Mulder,” he replies, “and, uh, I'm a little lost, to be honest.”
“Lost?” the man repeats, incredulous. “Only fools or spies come out to these regions without permission.”
Mulder sighs. Yeah, this is going really well. “I promise you, I'm not a threat.”
The man snorts, and issues a command to his followers. Two of them dismount and begin to approach. “I think I'll judge that for myself, Fox Mulder.”
Mulder has a moment of wondering with which of these fine men he'll be riding double before the taller of the two who are now standing on either side of him raises the butt of his rifle. Oh. The weapon comes rushing toward the side of his head, and the world goes black.
~
A pounding headache and an insistent voice bring him out of unconsciousness some undetermined length of time later. “Wake up!”
Groaning, Mulder tries to raise his hand to the lump on the side of his head, but opens his eyes in surprise when his left hand follows his right. They are manacled together in front of him.
As soon as he has made this discovery, Mulder winces as a hand grabs his injured wrist to pull him into a seated position. When he is finally able to focus on the man in front of him, Mulder recognizes the guy who spoke to him last before he was knocked out.
“You are now a prisoner of the clan,” the man states. “After you are healed, you will be evaluated to see if you're useful to us as anything besides slave labor.”
Mulder swallows and clears his throat as his aching head processes this information. “Slave labor?” he repeats. What kind of barbaric place is this? He hopes strongly that Scully hasn't gotten herself into this kind of mess.
The man in front of him ignores Mulder and turns to his right. From behind him a man who appears to be a few years younger than Mulder comes into view. He doesn't look nearly as much like a bodybuilder as the leader, although he shares the same hair and skin color. He walks toward Mulder slowly, regarding him with what looks like a familiar mixture of compassion and clinical assessment. A doctor?
The young man kneels down next to him. “I'm Tellan, the healer of this clan. Please, lean back against the wall and stay still while I heal you.”
Heal me? Mulder thinks, wondering at this Tellan's lack of instruments or even a cold cloth for his head. But he follows the man's directions.
Tellan closes his eyes and raises his hands to the right side of Mulder's skull, leaving them close but not touching. Mulder is about to ask a question when he feels a soothing warmth begin to spread from the center of the pain outward, erasing the ache as it goes. His eyes widen as he grasps the implications of this.
As the pain in Mulder's head vanishes to nearly nonexistent, Tellan flinches backward. His hands draw back from the location where Mulder had been struck, and his eyes fly open for a second. But then he closes his eyes again and moves his hands down near Mulder's sprained wrist - and Mulder feels this injury, too, fade to almost nothing.
After another moment, Tellan sits back on his heels and opens his eyes. “Are you well now?”
Mulder nods, amazed. He manages a quiet “Thank you,” at which Tellan nods in return and stands up. Then the healer turns to the man who has been waiting this whole time and begins to speak to him in rapid, excited tones. The other man raises his eyebrows and stares at Mulder for several seconds before replying to Tellan at equal speed in his deeper voice. Tellan speaks again, emphatically gesturing toward Mulder - who thinks about standing up to make ready to defend himself if necessary, but decides he would probably fall over since his ankles are also chained together.
The leader of the clan addresses Mulder. “You. Fox Mulder. You have never tasted the raki? How is this possible?”
“I don't know what that means,” Mulder replies, bewildered, “so I can't tell you if I have or not.”
He turns and barks a command at a man Mulder had not noticed waiting in the back of the dimly-lit room. The man departs quickly, and returns in a matter of minutes carrying a branch of some kind of woody plant with large, jagged-edged leaves. His leader takes it from him and holds it in front of Mulder's face. “This. The...” He pauses, as if to search for a word. “The herb raki, it is everywhere in Elis.”
Mulder shakes his head slowly, noting the name of the place - region? country? “I've never eaten it, I'm pretty sure.” Or smoked it, if that's what he means by 'herb', he thinks to himself.
“How?” The amazement on his face is blatant - but before Mulder can reply, he cuts him off with a short phrase in his language. “Tellan,” he says then, “do you have the drink ready? I'm sure our guest is thirsty.”
He is, in fact; ever since he arrived in this place, he's felt parched, and his trip to this hideout or whatever it is has only increased the feeling. At the same time, as the healer brings forward a large mug of some kind of beverage, Mulder can't help wondering what's so important about him not having consumed any of this apparently ubiquitous raki. He looks at the mug with suspicion. Could it be some kind of poison? Although in that case, why would his captors have such an elaborate lie surrounding it?
Seeing this, the leader smiles, though it's not a very nice smile. “Oh, so he mistrusts our raki wine, does he? Well, let's prove to him that it is no poison.” He seizes the mug out of Tellan's hand, spilling a little of the liquid on the ground in the process, and swallows a mouthful of it. Mulder watches his reaction to it - but the very slight shudder that passes through him looks no different than how a man might react to a shot of hard liquor, and it seems to fade as quickly.
Tellan takes the cup back and hands it to Mulder. “Don't worry. It will quench your thirst,” he says.
The smell of the wine is intriguing: very different from any grape-based beverage, of course, but not too much like tea, which Mulder had feared based on its leaf source. He knows Scully would counsel that wine is not as useful to counteract dehydration as plain water... but these men don't seem interested in offering that to him. And besides, at least the alcohol should have killed off any strange foreign-dimension bacteria that might live in the local water. He brings it to his mouth somewhat awkwardly with his bound hands and takes a sip.
The raki beverage tastes as intriguing as it had smelled. It's unusually tangy and strong, but it does seem to hit the spot. Mulder tries to ignore the rapt silence of the other two men as he drinks the rest of the mug.
It's only a few moments after he has handed the empty cup back to Tellan that Mulder begins to feel strange. First he starts to feel lightheaded, and then detached from his surroundings. The room seems to grow cold, though the temperature has been comfortable until then. He blinks several times, with no effect on the blurriness of his vision. He slides down the wall until he is lying with his back against it. He is barely aware of the presence of his captors now; all of his attention is on the nausea that has just gripped him. It has to be poison after all... but why didn't they just kill him if they've decided he isn't useful?
Suddenly, Mulder experiences a sickeningly familiar blast of sound and agony, as the thoughts of everyone in proximity to him begin to stream into his mind without mercy. He screams and tries futilely to cover his ears. Noooo! No! Please, God, not again!! He is hardly able to form the thought as his brain is overwhelmed beneath the flood.
Just as he is about to let out another scream of torment, something changes in his mind. Instead of shutting his eyes and trying to block out wave upon wave of thoughts and noise, Mulder's eyes open as wide as they can. He is no longer hearing thoughts, or seeing anything of the room he is in. Instead, he sees the place where he arrived, still empty of most living things - and then after a second, he rushes to a vast unknown stretch of rolling farmland dotted with towns and villages - and then a stone house with a wooden roof, out of whose front door a woman with red hair is exiting. Scully! He tries to hold on to that image, but it rushes on and on, from a huge bustling city with high cement walls, to a system of caves guarded by many men hiding in wait with rifles, to other scene upon other scene... until, exhausted, Mulder gasps for breath, shudders once, and collapses into unconsciousness.
~~
Mulder wakes up this time lying on a comfortable surface with a pillow behind his head. There are no manacles on his wrists or ankles. It takes great effort to open his eyes, and when he does, they slam shut again at the sharp pain that lances through them. Before they close again, however, Mulder sees Tellan standing at his bedside.
There is a brief pause before the man speaks. “Welcome back, Seer,” he says, in a quiet voice that nevertheless makes Mulder wince slightly at the dull ache in his head. “You have been away from consciousness for nearly two days.”
That explains why I feel like I haven't moved in about that long, Mulder thinks, shifting his stiff limbs a little but staying on his back. Wait. What had Tellan just called him? Seer?
Memories of his terrifying experience with the raki begin to filter back, and he turns toward where he knows the healer is standing. “My-- my eyes hurt.” His throat is still raw - from screaming, most likely.
“Yes,” comes the reply. “The pain will continue for a while, but not forever. You'll become accustomed to your new vision before too long.”
This does not exactly sound promising. Mulder swallows against his dry throat. “What did you do to me?” He is trying to ignore his raging thirst.
Tellan sighs. When he speaks again, he sounds both regretful and surprised. “All I did was recognize your still latent ability. The herb did the rest, although I know it wasn't a pleasant experience.”
“What latent ability?” Mulder presses, despite the fatigue that he still feels weighing down on him. He needs answers, and he guesses that this may be the only chance he has to get them for a while.
There is another pause. “You really don't know? But your mind showed evidence of a previous raki muse, although it seemed to have been smoothed away somehow.”
Mulder takes a breath. He notes that he can... feel, or sense in some way, that Tellan is incredulous but fascinated by this conversation. He is not discerning thoughts from the man per se, but there is still increased perception on some level. At least it isn't overwhelming his mind at the moment.
“That wasn't caused by raki,” he says finally. “Like I told you, I'd never seen that plant before, much less drunk it.” A sudden vivid memory of the black oil pushing itself under his skin makes Mulder shiver. “And it didn't-- I never experienced anything like what I experienced with what you gave me.” Plus, the first time almost killed me, he refrains from adding. He hopes Scully can find him before the same happens this time. At least he knows she's somewhere in this place... if he can trust what he saw under the influence of this drug.
“You must truly not be from Elis,” Tellan states, the tone of surprise still present. “Everyone here undergoes the raki muse when they become an adult - but no one is completely free from the herb before this, as you were.”
“So everyone has to go through that? Everyone ends up in a coma for two days?”
“No.” The man's emotions seem to have shifted to include some awe. “Your reaction is fairly rare. There are other seers, and have been some among the clans in recent memory, but the last one I met was when I was only ten years old - many years before my brother Jalgar became chief - and that one was not at full strength. It's a great benefit to us to have a seer with us once again, especially one so powerful as you.”
Mulder is silent, absorbing this disquieting information. Then he asks, “And what happens if I don't want to be your clan's seer, or anyone else's for that matter?”
“Jalgar will not let you leave,” comes the swift response. “You are too valuable to us. And even if you were to leave somehow, you can't leave your role behind. Now that you have tasted the raki, your body needs it like it needs water, food, and air.”
At this, Mulder slits his eyes open to look at Tellan. It still hurts, but he can manage it enough to watch for the man's reaction. “It's addictive?”
The man looks a little confused by the terminology, but he replies, “It's a part of every meal for us, in almost everything we eat or drink. To go without it is not only difficult to manage, but very unpleasant. Seers are particularly sensitive to its effects, and therefore your need for it is stronger than most of us.”
Both his eyes and his empathic sense tell Mulder that Tellan is speaking the truth - as well as the fact that his thirst has only been growing during the time he's been awake. He grits his teeth. “I've lasted for two days without it, though,” he points out.
“Not entirely,” Tellan says calmly. “At several points while you were unconscious, I gave you a small dose of raki steeped in water. Otherwise, the time away from it so soon after your first muse might have weakened you to the point that you would not have been able to wake up.”
“Shit.” Mulder raises a hand to rub across the stubble on his face, noting that he can't keep himself from trembling even now. He wonders if he has the strength to make it through withdrawal at this point - and decides to ask the question. This empathic ability will let him know once again if the healer is lying when he answers.
When he hears the question, Tellan raises his eyebrows. “Is that what you're planning to do - to go without raki from now on?”
Mulder nods. His eyes have adjusted a little more to the light in the room (which is at a very low level; he tries not to think about the implications of this fact), so he opens them a little wider.
“Well, I could tell you that you would sink back into a sleep from which you would not wake,” the man says with a wry look, “but you would know that I was lying.”
He sighs in relief.
“On the other hand,” Tellan continues more seriously, “we cannot offer you any food or drink that's free of raki - it is in everything we eat - and as an honored seer, you will be given food and drink three times a day, whether or not you choose to eat it. Even if we were to only give you the bland food that children eat before their first muse, there would be enough raki in it to tantalize you and make you long for more.” He pauses, and then seems to decide to keep going. “Also, you should know that my brother will not give up easily on the idea of having a seer for our clan. He has already announced your existence to all of us, and has established your incorporation. He may… intervene in your decision, if it seems like your plans are nearing success.”
Mulder is having more difficulty following Tellan at this point. The need for raki is becoming harder to ignore, and he knows so little about the rules of the clan structure, or this world as a whole in fact. He swallows again, painfully, and closes his eyes. “I'm tired,” he mutters.
“Of course, Seer,” Tellan says. “Rest. If you need anything more, there's a servant posted outside your door ready to receive your wishes.”
The door closes and locks after the healer leaves. Mulder waits for a moment, and then opens his eyes again to take a real look around his room for the first time - or his cell, he amends to himself. Getting familiar with it ought to distract him at least for a short while.
For a cell, it's pretty nice - nicer than any of the various other ones he's found himself in over the years. The very low light illuminates a good-sized area that includes the bed, a hardwood table next to it, and a rug covering most of the floor. There is also what looks like a closet across from the bed, next to an open door on the far side of the room.
Mulder takes a deep breath and sits up. As he expects, his headache increases in intensity, but it's not so bad that he can't handle it. With care, he raises himself to his feet.
The headache is again made worse by the change in position, but the pain subsides to a bearable level after a moment, so Mulder starts to walk toward the door on the other side of the room. He pushes it open further to reveal a very compact bathroom, mostly taken up with the tub against the far wall but also containing a toilet and a sink. At least they have indoor plumbing here, he thinks, pleasantly surprised. Light in this room is at the same very low level. Mulder notes that there is no lock on the door, but there is a door, which is something.
After Mulder closes the door and uses the facilities, he is washing his hands when he first sees the mark on his right wrist. The low light makes it difficult to distinguish until he brings it closer to his eyes - and then the trembling in his hands increases. It seems to be a tattoo of some kind, though the meaning of the dark-inked script portion of the symbol is lost on Mulder. The stylized representation of an eye is much less mysterious in meaning. But what mainly concerns Mulder is that he does not remember asking to be tattooed. A permanent mark made on him without his consent, while he was lying unconscious due to a drug overdose, only adds to his growing feeling that he is both a slave and a prisoner - no matter if seers are “greatly honored” or however Tellan had put it.
What he observes when he glances up into the circular mirror hanging above the sink only adds yet more to Mulder's fear and feeling of being trapped: the way his eyes look in his haggard face is frankly terrifying. He has never seen himself with such widely dilated pupils; there is nothing visible of his iris as far as he can tell.
Mulder shuts his eyes in panic and then opens them again after several seconds. There is no change in his reflection, not even the usual brief contraction of the iris. The entire center of his eyes is still solid black.
Stumbling back from the mirror, Mulder tries with only partial success to keep himself from hyperventilating. He raises one shaking hand to his face, still staring in horror at his reflection. Even though the darkness of the room means he can't distinguish it anymore from this distance, the image is not one he's going to be able to forget any time soon. A memory of the stereotypical description of the face of a Reticulan flashes across his mind, and he chokes out a nearly-hysterical laugh that dies away quickly.
Mulder leans against the wall of the bathroom, breathing heavily. Scully would be able to tell him if this kind of thing is permanent, he thinks, if she were here. Maybe if he can just resist the raki for long enough...
As if on cue, there is a knock on the door of his room. “Seer?” an unfamiliar voice calls, sounding hesitant.
Mulder clears his throat, wincing at the pain this produces. “I'm here,” he says hoarsely, taking a step out of the bathroom.
The door opens, and the scent of raki mixed with that of fresh rice and meat wafts into the room. Mulder groans and almost collapses against the wall again. This is going to be harder than I thought.
He feels the uncertainty almost radiating off the boy who's carrying the tray. “Where-- where would you like me to leave this, Seer?”
Mulder has a shrewd idea that the kid has been ordered not to take the food away even if the seer tells him to. He points vaguely at the bed. “You can set it on there, or the table. Whichever.” No wonder the kid is alarmed - he knows now what he looks like, and it wouldn't be a pretty picture even without the freaky dilated eyes.
The boy nods and sets the tray down carefully on the bed. “Enjoy your meal, Seer.”
The smell of the food is pure torture. Mulder has to take another deep breath before he can reply, and by that point the kid is almost out the door again. “Wait.”
The boy stops, and his nervousness increases as he turns back. “Yes, Seer?”
“What's your name?” Mulder asks, trying to appear as non-threatening as possible.
“Tysan,” he replies. “And I-- it's my honor to serve you.”
Mulder wants to laugh bitterly - but this situation isn't Tysan's fault. “I'm Mulder.”
He senses Tysan's surprise at this, but the kid merely nods again. When Mulder doesn't say anything else, he says, “Let me know if you need anything else, Seer Mulder,” and departs.
After the door shuts, Mulder lets himself slide down to the floor. The shaking is getting harder to control, and his body's awareness of the closeness of a source of raki is almost like a physical presence in the room. He doesn't notice that he's starting to crawl toward the bed until he's already halfway there. It is only by his strongest effort of will that Mulder is able to stop himself. He wonders miserably how long his strength will last - how long it will be before he has no rational thought left to counter this all-consuming need.
~~
Mulder ends up curled on the floor at the foot of the bed all night. He thinks he may have caught a few minutes of sleep here and there; for the most part, though, the worsening withdrawal symptoms keep him awake and in torment. At least the smell of his dinner fades somewhat as it gets cold - but that doesn't help much. As the night passes, Mulder's thoughts become more and more scattered. Still, he holds onto the need to keep away from the raki-laced food.
When Tysan comes into his room the next morning, his greeting is cut short upon noticing Mulder shivering on the floor. “Seer Mulder, are you well?”
Mulder is too distracted by the scent of the plate of breakfast Tysan is holding to be able to reply, even if he had grasped the sense of the words. He closes his eyes and moans.
Tysan promises something about getting the healer, and mercifully takes the food with him as he leaves.
Tellan's clinical concern manages to penetrate the nausea, chills, and overwhelming hunger that grips Mulder. “I see you're putting your plan into practice, Seer,” he says, touching Mulder's forehead gently. “How are you faring?”
Mulder opens his eyes and tries to focus on the healer. “Doing... great,” he replies through chattering teeth.
The man raises an eyebrow in a manner that reminds Mulder with a pang of Scully. “Yes, I see that.” He turns over his shoulder and says something to Tysan in a low voice, then turns back to his patient. “Your suffering would be greatly eased if you allowed yourself to eat.”
Mulder says nothing.
The healer sighs. “Why are you doing this to yourself, really, Seer? This is your role, what you were made for, and you cannot avoid it.”
At this, Mulder scoffs. He doesn't have the concentration to try to explain all the various ways he disagrees with Tellan's statement, or the confidence that Tellan would understand, and so he contents himself with, “Watch... me.”
Tysan comes back into the room then with another plate of food that smells, if possible, even more tantalizing. He leaves it on the bed, close to the foot this time. Mulder squeezes his eyes shut again as if that could block it out.
“You have at least three more days of this to anticipate,” Tellan informs Mulder, “unless Jalgar decides he wants to consult his seer before then, in which case he will take matters into his own hands. I will also be forced by my gift of healing to intervene before you begin to die of dehydration.”
Mulder once again stays silent. He has no idea if he can make it that long - especially if the clan leader does get impatient.
After a moment, Tellan stands up. “Well,” he says, “I'll leave you to your self-imposed torment. But let me repeat: even if you manage to fight through your strong need for the raki, you'll have nothing you can eat or drink in Elis that does not include it afterward, so what will you do then?”
~~
The agony of the raki withdrawal seems to increase by the hour - not that Mulder is able to track the passage of time in this state. Looking back later, he isn't sure what finally leads to him giving in: whether it is his strength running out, or the truth of Tellan's last comment to him, or if he is in the grip of an especially torturous period of the withdrawal, or the advancing dehydration - or some combination of these factors.
Regardless, after one more agonizing night, Mulder finds himself reaching for the tall cup of raki-laced water and draining it, then pouring himself another cup and draining that as well before turning to the still-warm breakfast Tysan brought him not too long ago. The relief is immediate, though incomplete; even after eating every scrap of the meal (as slowly as he can force himself to do so, remembering the danger of eating too much too quickly after missing several meals) and drinking all the water, he still feels an underlying need. It's like he's been given a bottle of lukewarm water after coming in from 100-degree weather, but he's not allowed to dive into the pool in the shade. He can tell that a more powerful brew of raki would assuage this feeling, though only temporarily of course.
To try to distract himself from the crippling knowledge of his failure and defeat, Mulder sits on the edge of his bed and thinks through what he has learned about the situation. He has been imprisoned and enslaved, even if he's being somewhat well-treated. The raki evidently triggered something in his brain that he'd thought Spender's doctors had removed, and in this dimension it means that he's a seer. Other than the empathic ability and that first incomprehensible vision experience - the “muse” - he's not totally sure what this entails. It makes him a valuable commodity, though, based on Tellan's comments. He's sure it won't take him too long to find out what else is expected of him.
The first massive dose of raki has also, he reviews, changed his eyes at least semi-permanently. He supposes he should be grateful they've given him a cell fitted to this new feature of his life, with its very low lighting... except that if it weren't for them, he wouldn't be dealing with it at all. He wonders bitterly if they have some plan for keeping him from going blind if he's ever allowed out of this cell.
Mulder hasn't tested this hypothesis, but he guesses that his captors are going to keep him in a constant state of jonesing for the next big raki fix, so they can give it to him whenever they want him to go into a vision state. He smiles wryly. Seers seem to be this world's version of the Delphi Oracle - although he has no idea if he's supposedly going to be receiving these visions from a deity of some sort, and he doesn't think he has enough control over the muse to answer specific questions. Come to think of it, he realizes, I'm pretty sure I didn't say anything coherent at all. So how is it useful to them? Is there someone who will act an interpreter of his screams and gasps?
He sighs and stands up. Maybe he'll go take a bath to get the sweat off. Then he'll find out if his bathroom is stocked with a razor of some kind, now that his hands are no longer shaking so much that he couldn't shave without nicking a vital artery. The men of the clan that he's met so far are clean-shaven, so it seems likely there'll be one somewhere.
Mulder allows himself a long soak in the tub. The water temperature stays hot the whole time, which is another pleasant surprise. He dries off with one of the towels from his closet, and then wraps it around himself before looking for a razor.
There is, in fact, a drawer under the sink in the bathroom that contains an ornate-looking straight razor and some soap. Mulder picks it up. It's going to be difficult to get a good shave with this lighting, he knows - and yet if the light were brighter, he wouldn't be able to see anything at all most likely. Go figure.
As he starts to apply the soap to his face, Mulder tries to avoid looking at his eyes in the mirror. The thought crosses his mind that whoever stocked his room must trust that he won't attempt to get out of his role as seer by using the razor to slit his own throat. He certainly won't - he still doesn't know where Scully is exactly, but he can be pretty sure that she'll be looking for him soon if she isn't already. He still hopes she'll be able to find some way of curing him, even though his failure at resisting the lure of the raki will make it harder for them both.
Mulder does his best not to imagine Scully's reaction when she finds out what he's done, and when she sees the effects of the drug on him.
~