Fic: Splitting at the Seams
Taking a break during my Greek studying to post this, since it's finally done!
Title: Splitting at the Seams
Spoilers: Biogenesis, The Sixth Extinction, and Amor Fati.
Keywords: MSR, missing scene.
Category: SRA
Summary: Opening his eyes finally, Mulder tried to swallow, and Scully gasped, pulling back to look at him with wide eyes. “You... help... me,” he managed to say, past a raw throat.
Rating: PG-13
Feedback: Is welcomed! Contact me at pomme_noire@hotmail.com
Archive: Sure, but please ask me first.
Disclaimer: I don't own these episodes or these characters.
Author's Note: Though there are a few elements changed from canon here, I tried to keep it so that it would mostly fit with what was shown onscreen. I guess you could say it's AU, but only slightly.
Thanks to amalnahurriyeh for her patient and very helpful beta comments!
~~~~~~~~
Mulder knew as soon as he started up the stairs that he wasn't going to make it to the top. The agony in his head was increasing too sharply. As he sank to the ground on the landing, he fumbled in his pocket for his cell phone. Scully... Scully would come get him. No - she was in New Mexico, looking for the artifacts. He pulled out the phone anyway and pushed the speed dial.
Scully's voice sounded distracted as she answered. “Scully.”
The cacophony in his head grew louder, and Mulder thought he could pick out a familiar, odious voice among the many - getting closer. He didn't have much time. He had to concentrate.
“Hello?” Scully was annoyed now.
“Scully...” Mulder managed to gasp out. He wasn't sure if he had even been loud enough for her to hear, so he tried again. “Scully.”
“Mulder?” Her voice was sharp with concern. “Mulder, is that you?”
“Scully, I... can't... my head...” It was becoming impossible to speak. The phone fell out of Mulder's hand, and he closed his eyes in a futile attempt to block out the noise and confusion.
Dimly, he heard Scully's worried response cut off suddenly, and he wrenched open his eyes to see Krycek smiling down at him in cruel satisfaction as he dropped Mulder's cell phone next to him. He continued to smile as he opened his own phone, dialed a number, and waited.
“Yeah, he's here,” Mulder thought he heard. There was more, but the rest of the spoken words were just another layer of noise for him. He couldn't bring himself to consider the meanings, and his eyes drifted shut again after a few moments. It brought no relief from the constant noise and pain.
He had no idea how long it was before another familiar mind began to approach. At first, he wondered in surprise how she had known to find him here, but then the general agony - greater than he had felt yet - that came from being near two people's thoughts caused him to abandon all attempts to think rationally. He thought he might have moaned.
“Shh, Fox, I'm here.” A woman's voice - her voice. Her hands on his face. He tried to open his eyes, but could only manage it for a second. It was long enough to see genuine concern in her face, mixed with the excitement and fear that he could also distinguish faintly in her mind.
“Let's get him outside.”
Mulder felt himself being lifted up. This wasn't good. Scully wouldn't know where they had taken him. He struggled weakly.
“Cut it out, Mulder,” came Krycek's voice, right next to him. His next thought was just as clear as if he had spoken it. Or I'll drop you down these stairs.
Mulder opened his eyes again, just as he and his companions made it down the flight of stairs. The noise was receding, but Mulder could tell that it would be returning in seconds. His phone rang, from behind him.
Through his still-battered mind, Mulder only managed to comprehend bits and pieces of the spoken conversation around him. He could distinguish some words, but they were so closely overlaid with the thoughts behind them.
“He... Scully before--” Shit. She better not--
Diana's voice was frigid. “Why didn't you--” --Allowed her to get involved? That--
“All he di--” --up, just because you're all--
“...The timeline. We can't take the risk--” This is too important, he's just what we've--
I'll let her deal with-- “--tter call him as soon as Mulder is in the car.”
By this point, Mulder thought they had made it down one more flight of stairs and to an exit. He had not been able to follow the conversation that had taken place around him, but he could at least help himself walk to some extent. Sometime during the course of the past few yards, Krycek had vanished. Mulder wondered vaguely if he might have just imagined him being there in the first place.
“How are you feeling, Fox?” Diana asked him softly.
At the moment, his mind felt slightly clearer. Mulder turned his head to the right, where she was supporting his arm, and tried to formulate an answer. “Where are you taking me?”
She hesitated for a fraction of a second before smoothly replying, “To the hospital, of course.”
“They can't... can't help me,” Mulder told her. If this was caused by what he thought it was, there was no hospital that could help him.
“Don't worry about it, Fox,” she answered soothingly. “I know how to help you.”
When they arrived at Diana's car, she opened the back door for him. She started to say something else about how it would be best for him to lie down on the back seat when the noise in Mulder's head returned with a vengeance. He gasped and leaned against the car, putting a hand to his head.
“Fox?”
Mulder barely heard Diana's spoken inquiry. Instead, his mind was filled with a whirl of thoughts and feelings, Diana's foremost. Impatience. Resolve. He needs to know about the most recent developments, so we can adjust the timeline. There was a flash, a clear image of Cancer Man's face.
“You... you're working for him,” Mulder gasped.
She looked at him coolly. “What are you talking about?”
“Spender. Scully was right. How long have you been working for him?” Mulder realized that he was yelling. He pushed himself to his feet. “How long, Diana?”
“You're confused,” she said, her face revealing nothing. Her thoughts, however, revealed shock and some fear. “You need to calm down.”
He stepped toward her slowly, fighting against the pain. “I'm not confused, and I'm not going to calm down. Tell me!”
She sighed. “I'm sorry.” Before he had time to react, Mulder was thrown backwards against the car by the force of the stun gun in Diana's hand. His only thought as he slid to the ground and blackness claimed him was relief - the cacophony was fading along with consciousness.
~~~~~~
Pain. The pain was constant now, as were the voices and the noise. Mulder didn't know how he had arrived at the hospital, but here he was, in a padded cell, pacing back and forth and screaming in a futile attempt to block out the agony in his head.
He was fairly sure that the doctors had given him some kind of tranquilizer a while ago, but it might as well have been a shot of caffeine for all the good it had done him. His declaration to Diana had been right: they had no idea how to treat him.
Diana. He could still hear her thoughts hovering around the edges of his mind. She was still watching him. There was no hint of remorse in her for what she had done, only regret that she had to cause him pain to further the cause. He wanted the answer to his question. How long had she been betraying him, betraying the X-Files?
“Scully!” Mulder guessed that his cries were largely composed of her name. If anyone could figure out how to get this to stop, it was Scully. He hoped desperately that she would get here as soon as she could - not that he had any concept of the passage of time. He might have been in here an hour, or a week.
After an unfathomable length of time, exhaustion overtook him suddenly, and Mulder collapsed in the corner of the room. Under the continual agony in his mind, he was faintly aware that he had screamed his throat raw, and both of his hands hurt. How had he managed to injure his hands in a padded cell? The thought was almost amusing.
The door to his cell opened, and two orderlies came in with the doctor. Mulder thought he might have attacked a doctor or a nurse earlier, in an instinctive attempt to get the noise of their thoughts away from him... but for the moment, he was too exhausted to do anything but stare at the intruders.
The pain reached nearly unbearable levels as the thoughts of the three men all entered his head at once in a bewildering disorder. It was going to completely overwhelm his own mind, he knew. Frantically, Mulder pulled himself as far away from them as he could. “No,” he moaned, and barely recognized his own voice in the din.
The doctor said something in a calming tone, but Mulder heard none of it. He was too busy gasping at the sheer agony of being so close to three separate minds, all of whom were focused on him.
Hold him.... more sorry for...
... the guy if he hadn't... the next scans will... already...
Not that... feel... show us anything new... steady...
He felt strong hands on his arms, and he automatically struggled against their grip for a few seconds before giving up. It was too much effort, on top of attempting to keep his own mind distinct from the flood of other thoughts. Besides, if he was being given another sedative, maybe he would finally be able to sleep, to have the constant onslaught against his sanity held at bay for a few hours.
A needle stung into the skin above his hip. Mulder flinched, but otherwise remained motionless. They would leave sooner if he stayed still.
Sure enough, it was only a few more endless seconds before he was again alone in the cell. The hoped-for sleep did not arrive, however. Had Diana given him something after she stunned him, or was his brain simply too overstimulated to allow him to relax?
Eventually, the unending pounding against his mind forced Mulder to his feet again. He resumed his pacing and his yells. He knew he was under nonstop surveillance from the camera in the upper corner of his cell, and wished again, desperately, that Scully would come. Surely Krycek hadn't somehow intercepted her. No, he would know if something had happened to her.
There she was. He could feel her getting closer. She was at the hospital. If only he could push aside the rest of the thoughts in his head, get her to know he knew she was here. “Scully!”
Scully was looking at him in the observation room now. Her shock, horror, and compassion at what she saw would have brought him to his knees - if he could have held onto her feelings for more than moments at a time. “Scully!” Please, don't listen to whatever Diana is telling you. She's a liar. I know you know that. You've known it for longer than I have.
Mulder paced until he was in front of the video camera and called her name again. Her fear for him was now mixed with anger - at those who had put him here. If he focused as much as he could, he could also sense that her trip to New Mexico had yielded something that surprised and shook her. But that was all pushed to the back of her mind now.
Suddenly, Mulder realized that she would want to come to him, to see him in person. The thought was more disturbing to him than he would have imagined: of course he wanted to see her, craved face-to-face contact with her... but there was no possible way it wouldn't be agonizing for them both when he inevitably could not speak more than a word in response to whatever she said to him. And then there was Diana, who was still ever-present and watching him - reporting back to her black-lunged boss at regular intervals, no doubt.
He rubbed his hands across his face roughly, barely noticing the resulting pain in his hands. As he began to pace once more, Mulder decided that he could not turn Scully away if she determined to visit her ranting, crazed partner in his cell - not that he had a great deal of choice in the matter. Just as he painstakingly completed that thought, it was lost in the further realization that perhaps Scully would be prevented from coming to him by those watching him: the doctor, or Diana, or even Skinner, whose guilty thoughts had hovered at the edge of Mulder's mind on and off for a while now.
Mulder felt Scully's frustration increase then - they were telling her that he was dangerous, violent, not a good idea to get close. No, Scully, never to you! You know that. Don't you?
His progress back and forth in the cell grew faster, more agitated. Every bit of his reasoning that pointed out why Scully should not try to see him in here had faded. It was just additional torment now to be so close to her, to feel her, but to be prevented from having any real contact. As his agitation grew, his fragile hold on remnants of rational thought began to slip again. No. That was just going to prove their point for them. He had to try to stay calm - as best as he could, while the agony in his head continued unabated.
Trembling with exhaustion and effort, Mulder moved to lean against the wall facing the camera. “Scully,” he said, looking directly at the camera. She was still very nearby, he knew it.
Long moments later, Mulder felt the approach of another mind, outside his cell. Scully's thoughts were just as overwhelming in this close proximity, but Mulder stayed silent and still as the door opened.
As she entered the room, he quickly met her gaze. Even without the wave of emotions and thoughts that came along with her first direct sight of him, Mulder could see how much she was shaken and pained by what she saw just by her expression.
“Mulder...” Scully breathed. “Oh, my God, Mulder. What's happened to you?” She took a few steps toward him. Why haven't they done anything for his pain? Are they that afraid to get near him? The anger in this last thought, though not directed at him, caused a fresh stab of pain in Mulder's mind, and he let out a moan and wavered on his feet.
Instantly, Scully was beside him, helping him lower himself to the floor. Her hand on his arm seemed to strengthen the intensity of the flow of her thoughts. Oh my God. He's gotten so much worse. I shouldn't have left-- I let Fowley find him first-- God, how aware can he be in this state? The doctors don't know how to cure this-- there's got to be a way. Mulder closed his eyes and tried to block it out, knowing that she would not want him to be able to have such direct access to her mind... but he had not figured out a way to create an effective mental barrier. Maybe if he could concentrate on her voice instead; she was speaking to him quietly and urgently.
“Mulder, can you hear me? Can you speak?” Please.
He opened his eyes. “I... it hurts... Scully...” Well, that was a little better than he had feared. There was almost a complete sentence in there somewhere.
Relief at his ability to respond was foremost in her thoughts, followed swiftly by care and guilt. “I know, Mulder. I'm so sorry.” She reached out her hand and touched his forehead. I should have come back sooner. Maybe I could have stopped this.
“No, it's... not your fault,” Mulder told her. He took her other hand in his, ignoring the increased pain as best as he could. “The artifact.”
Scully nodded. She bit her lip and looked away for a moment. “Mulder, do you know how you got here? What they've been trying to do for you?”
Mulder scooted so that he was no longer facing the video camera. This was going to be more difficult to answer. “Diana... found me,” he whispered haltingly. “University. She had... stun gun. Don't remember anything then... until I was here.”
Scully's expression darkened. “A stun gun?” she repeated, keeping her voice low with difficulty. She was clearly attempting to keep control of her emotions. The tumult of her thoughts in response to these revelations, however, was dramatic.
Closing his eyes again, Mulder nodded. “They keep... giving me shots. Nothing... helps.” The effort of speaking was beginning to fray his control. The thoughts of their observers in the room with the camera started to stream into his mind at a greater rate, and Scully's reply was lost in the noise.
“Mulder? Mulder!” Oh, God, he's going catatonic. Please, Mulder, stay with me! “Mulder, can you hear me?”
Mulder's eyes opened, but he couldn't seem to see her. His field of vision was curiously narrow. But I can still hear you, Scully. He tightened his grip on her hand as best as he could. It seemed like maybe the drugs were taking effect - or his overworked brain was finally starting to give up.
“I need some help in here!”
~~~~~~
The all-too-familiar cacophony of voices and thoughts brought Mulder out of unconsciousness. He could tell by his level of exhaustion that he had not been unconscious for long. He was lying in a hospital bed now - restrained, by the feel of it, but he wasn't sure if he could move much even without the straps.
By sheer necessity, Mulder was beginning to learn how to more quickly distinguish between specific voices in the confused babble in his head. It took him only seconds, therefore, to recognize the thoughts of Dr. Harriman, Skinner, Diana, and Scully. They were arguing about him, about what should be done for him.
Mulder didn't have to hear the defeated thoughts of the doctor to know that this thing was going to kill him, sooner or later. He had guessed that back when he first figured out what was causing it. It only made sense: most of the people Scully and he had ever come into contact with who had been infected by the black oil had died. It had just taken longer for him.
Scully had not made the connection yet, and Mulder had not related his theory to her when he had the chance. Not that he was certain that the information would have been a great deal of help; they had no access to the vaccine that was the only cure, as far as Mulder knew. And of course, his symptoms were something separate from the original infection by now.
Scully's idea was to track down the artifacts at their source. Mulder had gotten glimpses of the idea when she had first been approaching his padded cell, and her resolve to test this theory was growing stronger. As much as he wanted Scully to stay near, her need to seek the answers made sense to Mulder.
There was nothing he could do. He let himself be submerged in the tumult around him for a length of time that he had no means of determining. Being awake was utterly draining and exhausting even though he could now barely move.
Then Scully's mind began to grow closer, more distinct from the babel. She was coming to talk to him. Mulder tried to rally his strength, to make it so that he could greet her with something more than his outwardly unresponsive, all but comatose self. He wasn't sure how well he would succeed.
The door to his room opened. Mulder concentrated, and managed to turn his head fractionally toward Scully as she approached his bed.
“Mulder, it's me.” Her voice was quiet and controlled, but underneath her thoughts and emotions were still as troubled as they had been when she was in the cell with him. “I know you can hear me.” She took his hand, careful to avoid hurting his injured fingers. At this point, Mulder barely registered the increased intensity of her thoughts that the physical contact caused. He was too tired to resist, at any rate. But there was something significant about her last statement... she believed that he could hear thoughts? Or she believed that, despite his lack of visible response, he was still here?
“I want you to know what I'm planning,” she continued. She sniffed, and took a breath to try to steady herself. “I'm leaving in a little while, to go to the Ivory Coast. I think the source of the artifact that did this to you is there.” Her voice shook. “Mulder, I think this will lead me to some answers, so we can figure this out - but I need you to hold on. Please.”
It hurt, even distracted as he was by the constant pain from the noise in his head, to see and feel her grief. Struggling mightily, Mulder thought he had succeeded in moving the hand that Scully was still holding. He felt her surprise and hope, and heard her take a sharp breath. But he was unable to repeat the action, and her hope dimmed. She reached her other hand up to stroke his face. “Please hold on, Mulder,” she whispered. “I'll be back as soon as I can.”
Mulder felt like crying himself in frustration. He desperately wanted to reassure her that he had heard, and that he would be here when she got back - but he was unable to force his body to move. Helplessly, he continued to stare straight ahead as Scully sniffed again, and gently lifted his hand to her lips. She left the room.
As Scully gradually left the limits of Mulder's ability to touch her thoughts, he wondered that the loss of one of the voices in his head should pain him so keenly.
~~~~~~
Time passed. Mulder still couldn't quite track its passage well, but since he could distinguish individual minds out of the chaos now, he had some idea of when a new shift would start at the hospital by which minds he could discern.
His mother visited at one point. She was highly distressed by Dr. Harriman's recitation of his prognosis, but more so by her son's continued inability to move or respond to anything around him. Mulder wished she would stay and comfort him - her visit seemed all too short. But he was helpless to reach her.
Diana also came to him. Mulder wished he had been truly unconscious for this visit; now that he finally had realized the extent of her treachery, hearing her profess that she loved him despite her loyalty to Spender was further proof of how very little he had ever actually known her. It saddened him somewhat when her thoughts showed that she truly believed what she was saying.
Looking back on it later, Mulder realized that was one of the last things he remembered before things got very strange.
~~~~~
The dreams (that was what they had to be, he reasoned afterwards) were bizarre, a mixture of things he desired and things he had never spent much time thinking about. But even the wonderful parts - his sister's happiness, the chance to live a peaceful life - were tainted and somehow unsatisfying.
There was one recurring part to the dream, though, a scene in which Mulder always felt like he hadn't gotten to spend enough time when he left it. So this last time, when he closed his eyes at Spender's suggestion and found himself on the beach, he determined to find out what the boy he always saw wanted to show him.
He was young again, and watching the boy jump down from a huge, intricately-crafted sand sculpture of a UFO. Smiling, Mulder said, “Wow, what did you make?”
“An unidentified flying object,” replied the boy promptly. Then, without another word, he began to kick at the sculpture, scattering it.
“Hey!” Mulder stepped forward, shocked. “What are you doing? Why are you destroying your spaceship?”
The boy looked at him accusingly. “It's your spaceship! You're destroying it.” He picked up a handful of sand and threw it at Mulder. “You were supposed to help me!”
Mulder could only stand and watch as the boy continued to break apart his sculpture. Something about his words had hit him, hard.
The beach faded from view. His life continued to pass, and those he loved died. Now Mulder was alone with the man who claimed he was his father. Scully was dead, he told Mulder. How could she have died without him knowing, without him being with her?
No, here she was! Mulder smiled and reached for her weakly - but she was cold and furious, accusing. “You're not supposed to die, Mulder. Not here.”
He tried to explain how he was too tired; there was no way he could be expected to do any more with his life. But she refused to accept his excuses for his failure, demanding that he get up to fight. Then she left, as suddenly as she came.
“Scully!” Mulder cried out her name, despairing. She was gone. But now... now he could hear something else. A voice.
It was Scully again - but she was scared, and begging him to get up now instead of demanding it. He struggled to get back to her, to move from this dream-turned-nightmare to where she was-- and he arrived just as a single tear landed on his cheek. Scully's face was right next to his.
“Mulder, help me. Please.” Her voice was quiet and desperate near him.
Opening his eyes finally, Mulder tried to swallow, and Scully gasped, pulling back to look at him with wide eyes. “You... help... me,” he managed to say, past a raw throat.
He lifted his head a few inches - which was much harder than he expected - and they embraced. He vaguely noticed that he had had to pull his hands out of some kind of loose restraint before he could put his arms around her. But even as he luxuriated in the feeling of Scully holding him close, he realized with a wave of relief that there was silence in his head. The pandemonium was gone.
Scully started to pull away, then noticed with alarm how he sagged back toward the table immediately. She quickly put her arms behind his head and neck again. “Mulder, can you sit up?”
Mulder found that his eyes had drifted closed again. He opened them slowly, and then became aware that Scully was waiting for him to do something. Again, it took more effort than he thought it should, but he was able to pull himself into a sitting position.
“Good. I'm going to try to find you something to wear.”
As she hurried toward a supply cabinet on the far wall of the room, Mulder looked down at himself and saw that he was only partially covered by a thin sheet. He shivered. What had been done to him while he was dreaming? There was a spot on the back of his head that hurt. He reached up to investigate, and his hand encountered a bandage. Even touching near the spot caused the pain to increase, so Mulder dropped his hand back down.
“Here, put these on.” Scully was in front of him, holding out a pair of sweats and a sweatshirt. “We need to get out of here before someone comes looking for you.”
Mulder wanted to ask her where they were, and if she knew what had been done to him. But it was too much effort. He took the clothes she offered him, staring at them blankly.
“Mulder?”
He looked up at her.
She was worried, but trying not to show it fully. She opened her mouth. Then she seemed to change her mind. “Get dressed, Mulder?” she repeated, gently removing the leads that were still attached to him.
With Scully's help, Mulder succeeded in getting into the clothes she had found. He was unsure how well he could actually stand and walk - and was therefore grateful when Scully set his arm over her shoulders and her arm around his back unhesitatingly. “Let's go.”
It seemed like the journey out of whatever building they were in took forever. More than once, Mulder stumbled or otherwise came perilously close to collapsing. Every time, Scully managed to keep him upright, though he knew he had to be too heavy for this to be at all easy for her.
At one point, she stiffened next to him, whispered, “Someone's coming,” and practically dragged him out of the hallway and into a small, darkened room. He leaned heavily against the wall. His exhaustion was so great that he barely heard the footsteps as they passed by. The area at the back of his head was starting to throb in time with his heartbeat. When Scully turned to him after the footsteps had passed, she looked worried again.
“We're almost there, Mulder,” she told him quietly, her eyes searching his. “I'm sorry we have to do it this way, but you'll be able to rest soon.”
“Good.” He tried to smile, and pulled it off well enough that it brought an answering anxious smile to Scully's face.
Finally, they made it out of the building. Mulder squinted against the sunlight, wincing as the throbbing in his head increased. He hoped Scully's car was parked nearby.
Thankfully, it was only a few steps until they arrived. Scully paused for a moment as they approached the car, looking up at him speculatively. She seemed to decide something, and led him to the passenger's side door. “You're going to need to lean against the car for a second - sorry, Mulder.”
Mulder obligingly took his weight off her shoulder and leaned as best as he could against the vehicle while Scully opened the door, adjusted the seat, and then stood up. “All right.” She stayed still while Mulder transferred his weight back to her shoulders, and then carefully helped him lower himself into the seat. Mulder sighed in relief as soon as he was no longer on his feet, though he was careful to lay his head against the seat in such a way that it didn't increase his pain. He closed his eyes. The sound of the car starting barely registered.
A gentle hand on his arm caused him to open his eyes again a short time later. In the driver's seat, Scully was looking at him with concern. “How are you feeling, Mulder?”
He took a deep breath. “I'm okay, Scully. I think.” She raised an eyebrow inquiringly, and he elaborated, past a still-sore throat, “It's just... there's a bandage on my head, and it aches - but not like before - and I don't know why, or what happened to me.” This was the most he had spoken at once in... he had no idea how long it had been, even. The thought only added to the fear he had been trying to ignore since he had regained consciousness.
Scully's expression was unreadable for a second as she faced the road. Then she turned back to him. “I'm sorry, Mulder,” she said, reaching for his hand. “I know you must be feeling disoriented and scared.” The compassion in her eyes was almost as clear as it had been to him when he could read her thoughts. “We're going to find out what they did to you, and you're going to be all right.”
Mulder nodded faintly. He wasn't going to bet they would be able to find out much about it - it had been Spender who had taken him from the hospital, hadn't it? - but at least the voices were gone. Whatever they had done to him, he couldn't complain about that.
Scully remained silent for the remainder of the trip. Mulder's exhaustion prevented him from staying awake, despite some motivation to do so, so he did not know how much time had passed when Scully gently shook him awake.
“Where are we?” he mumbled, after opening his eyes. He didn't recognize the building he could see through the windshield.
“A small private hospital,” Scully told him. “I-- I didn't want to take you back to Georgetown Memorial.” Biting her lip, she turned away and unbuckled her seatbelt.
Mulder sighed. “Yeah. I wouldn't mind a long break from that place.”
Scully looked up at him, nodded, and got out of the car. He managed to unbuckle his seatbelt, but opening his door was still beyond him. Scully didn't leave him to wait long.
“Mulder, they're bringing you a wheelchair, okay?”
“Okay.” He hoped that whatever tests Scully felt like they should do wouldn't take long. Even with his need to know what had been done to him, all he really wanted at the moment was to sleep, secure in the knowledge that he was at least safe for now.
~~~~~
Mulder woke up slowly. Before his eyes opened, he remembered with a rush of relief where he was - and was once again inexpressibly relieved to hear no cacophony in his mind. The hospital room was wonderfully silent, except for the quiet familiar noises of hospital machinery. There was also the even quieter sound of Scully's regular breathing next to him.
Opening his eyes and turning his head, Mulder saw that she was in fact asleep, slumped in an uncomfortable-looking position in the chair beside him. She looked about as exhausted as Mulder had felt before he had finally been able to sleep without interruption. No wonder - she was probably dealing with jet lag on top of all the other stresses in her life the past few days. Or weeks. Hopefully, she had been sleeping now for more than a few minutes.
At that moment, Scully stirred and woke. Upon seeing him, she smiled and sat up, taking his hand. “How are you feeling, Mulder?”
“Still tired, but much better than I did last time I was awake,” he answered with a smile of his own. “How long have I been asleep?”
She glanced at her watch before replying, “Almost a day. It's close to 4:30 in the afternoon now.”
Mulder blinked. That information meant very little to him since, he realized, he had no idea what day it was. It had been a while since he had been able to track the passage of time. “I-- I don't know how many days I've been... away, Scully,” he confessed.
Scully looked down, then squeezed his hand. “You were in the hospital for over a week, all told. And then-” She swallowed. “Then you were missing for a day and a half before I could find you.”
“But you did find me,” Mulder pointed out gently. She nodded slightly, refusing to meet his eyes. Mulder wondered just what she had gone through while he was out of commission. Something big, he would bet. He reminded himself to ask her about it when he felt more recovered.
Silence fell for a few moments. He yawned. Maybe that hadn't been quite enough sleep yet - but he wanted to get in a couple of minutes of real conversation with Scully before he dropped off again. “So how am I doing? Any test results back yet?”
She nodded. “Everything looks good. There's no infection at the surgery site, no evidence of abnormal brain function, and no visible damage to your brain from whatever procedure was performed on you.” Scully paused. “And you still haven't been...”
“Hearing voices?” he supplied. She met his eyes, and Mulder shook his head carefully. “Nope. It's just me in my head now.” He allowed his continuing relief to color his tone.
Scooting the chair a little closer to his bed, Scully gave him another smile before continuing. “The doctors here want to keep you for observation overnight, and then do a few tests to make sure you won't have any lasting effects from your illness or the surgery.”
“Okay,” Mulder said, yawning again. “If everything still looks good, do I have to stay here?”
“I think they'll probably let you go,” Scully answered. She smoothed his blankets with the hand that was not still holding his. “Why don't you get some more sleep now, Mulder. You still need it.”
He frowned, but it was already becoming difficult to keep his eyes open. There was one thing he needed to say before he sank back into slumber, though. What was it? Oh, yes. “You should get some sleep, too, Scully,” he said, hearing his words begin to slur together. “Real sleep. You've gotta be exhausted.”
His eyes slipped shut as Scully tightened her grip on his hand. “I will, Mulder. Don't worry about me. Just rest.”
Mulder took a deep breath and allowed himself to relax. He was certain that if he found himself at the beach again, he finally knew what to do.
~~