The Choice III: Return by Leigh Alexander leigh_xf@geocities.com First posted: April 2, 1996 RATING: PG CATEGORY: SA SPOILERS: None KEYWORDS: Mulder/Scully UST SUMMARY: In the hospital, Scully maintains a bedside vigil. DISCLAIMERS: 1) Dana and Fox belong to Chris and Ten Thirteen Productions and the other Fox. Absolutely *no* copyright infringement is intended - I'm not doing this for money, I'm doing it for love. I *love* these characters, I wouldn't want to hurt them! :) 2) OK to archive, but if it's going anywhere other than Gossamer, please drop me a line just so I can keep track. 3) Feel free to distribute and discuss this, as long as my name and addy remain attached. INTRO: I really need to thank my fantastic editor, Eve. Without her help this story would be riddled with dots and be occasionally incoherent. So thanks again, Eve. In this part of the sequel, I have used "//" to signify passages that involve a "different state of awareness", and that's all I can say without giving anything away. Also, any similarity to a certain episode (once again, can't say any more without revealing the plot of this story) is entirely intentional, and not just a sign of laziness on my part. ----------------------------------------------------------- The Choice III: Return ----------------------------------------------------------- Mulder. It was Mulder. Lying in the hospital bed, IV drips attached to his body, wires monitoring his breathing and his vitals. He was almost unrecognisable... As in her dream, Scully's sense of the outside world was distorted - she was no longer aware of Skinner's presence, she couldn't hear the steady hum of the life-support system, couldn't see the various lights that danced across the machines. All she could see, all she could hear, all she could think about was Mulder. She slowly moved towards the bed, unable to tear her eyes from his body. She couldn't believe it - it wasn't possible, not after all this time... it couldn't be him. She stood beside the bed and lifted her shaking hand - she had to touch him, feel the warmth of his body, to believe that it was really him, and not just some figment of her imagination. She lowered her hand slowly onto his forearm - his vitality soared through her veins; from her tingling fingertips to deep in the pit of her stomach she felt the beating of his heart pound through her. He was alive. Mesmerised, her hand travelled up his arm, along his shoulder, beside his earlobe, and finally reached his face. She ran her fingers along his jawline, the gesture reminding her of their last meeting.... the meeting that she had thought would be their last. She closed her eyes, needing to absorb the moment, needing to register his presence, just as she had needed to register his absence. Slowly her senses became aware of other things; the noises that she had succeeded in completely blocking out, gently weaved their way into her consciousness. The slow bip of one of the monitors finally grabbed her attention and she opened her eyes, staring at the offending machine intently. She started to notice other things - the amount of tubes and wires that protruded from Mulder's form; the thinness of his once fit body; the difference in his hair - it was much longer than it had ever been, and unkempt, as though it hadn't been cared for in years. And his breathing - its shallowness suddenly frightened her, the deepness of his slumber awakened more fears. She moved down to the end of his bed and picked up his chart. The feeling of joy that had started to creep into her psyche was abruptly wiped out as she stared at the information in front of her. Scully turned towards Skinner, who was standing exactly where she left him. His face was its usual expressionless self, although she detected a faint wave of sympathy emanating from him. She looked at him, the pain in her eyes causing his jaw to tense. She started to speak, but her voice had dried up, and she had to clear her throat and swallow before trying again, "What's wrong with him? Where was he? Why is he like this?" "He's suffering from severe exposure, Agent Scully. He was found in the woods outside of Squonalmie, Washington... No- one knows how long he'd been out there for. They... the doctors, they..." The words that he had to speak were obviously coming to him with difficulty, so empathetic was he to her pain. He continued, his voice as rigid and tense as always, "They don't believe that he's going to make it..." He averted his eyes from hers as he spoke, only venturing a flickering glance at her face at the last moment. Even in the dim light, he could see that she was ashen. She had known, of course, as soon as she had read the charts, just what state Mulder was in, but he realised that she had needed to hear it said aloud, in order to understand and accept it. She turned her eyes back towards her former partner, noticing for the first time just how pale he was. Her eyes filled with tears before she could stop them, and she tightened her lips together and shook her head, in an attempt to push them away. As she stared at him, another thought slowly dawned on her, and she murmured - without taking her eyes off Mulder, "Was there anyone with him?" There was no reply. She looked over at Skinner, who wore a puzzled expression. She continued, "A woman... was there a woman with him?" Skinner looked at her with a stunned expression: the knowledge hitting him with an intensity he rarely experienced. He swallowed and then said; "Is that what he was looking for, Scully? Is that why he left? His sister?" She nodded, and replied bitterly, "Of course it was." He moved a step closer to her, as though to comfort her and she shied away, merely repeating her earlier question. "Was there?" He shook his head slowly, regretfully - the realisation of the agony that she must have been going through finally hitting him. In the past two years he had often wondered what had really happened to Mulder, and he had always suspected that Scully had somehow been involved. He had been aware of the implicit trust they had in each other, and had assumed that whatever Mulder had been doing, wherever it was that he had been, she would have known. It was for this reason that he hadn't warned Scully over the phone just what it was she was about to see. He had wanted - needed - to see her reaction at the sight of her former partner. He now realised that she had been just as ignorant as he with regards to Mulder's whereabouts... and that all those requests for information that she'd filed, all the time off she'd asked for, all the unofficial trips to investigate his disappearance, hadn't been the smokescreen he had taken them to be: they had been her real and valid attempts to find Mulder. During the years that Scully and Mulder had worked under him, he had grown to respect and trust them both deeply. Towards the end, he had felt that the three of them had developed a genuine understanding - he knew that he could count on them to pursue a case right to the end, regardless of the ramifications, while they understood his limitations... and the lengths to which he was willing to go. It was because of this implicit understanding that he had been so shocked by Mulder's disappearance. In a way he had almost felt betrayed, but more than that he had been angry. Angry at Mulder, who he believed had finally pursued the wildest goose chase of all; and angry at Scully - for protecting him, as he had assumed she had. And yet, he had lauded her work, her ability, her strength, her intelligence incessantly to his superiors, until she finally got the transfer to VCU. He hadn't known himself the exact reasons for his desire to help her; no doubt it was related in part to the feelings of guilt that he never stopped feeling when it came to the X-Files, and his impotence in preventing so many of the tragedies that had befallen the pair. But that wasn't the only reason that spurred him: he was also keenly aware of the reputation that was attached to the basement office and its workers, and he knew that if he hadn't acted that stigma would have been stuck to Scully for the rest of her career. He didn't want that, and he knew that Mulder wouldn't have wanted that. He had tried to help her, and yet his help had only been interpreted as a hindrance. Skinner looked over at Scully, and a wave of sorrow swept over him... He felt genuinely upset to see the pain that she could no longer hide, and for a few minutes he seriously considered the idea of putting his job on the line and finally exposing the man they called Cancerman and his consorts. However, the idea was only entertained for a short time, and he quickly pushed it from his mind, as he contemplated Scully, and observed her grief. Scully moved back to Mulder's side, the pain searing through her like an ignited coal. Mulder was back, but he was dying... and Samantha... the object of his quest was still unattained - it had all been for nothing... She pulled a chair up to Mulder's bed, and sat down, grasping his hand as she did so. Skinner made a motion to speak, then - seeing that she was once again lost in the trancelike state where only she and Mulder existed - he had second thoughts, and silently left the room. As the door shut, Scully glanced at it briefly, her eyes blank, her thoughts elsewhere. After a short time, she returned their gaze to Mulder, and concentrated on the sensation of his hand in hers... focusing all her energy on that one point of contact. She leaned forward and whispered in Mulder's ear: "Don't think you can get out of it that easily, Fox Mulder. You're back, and there's no way I'm going to let you go..." ******************** She remained at his bedside for days on end, only returning home to briefly shower and change clothes. The days became a blur, remarkable only in their similarity. The same sense of despair, of hopelessness, that had engulfed her after Mulder's disappearance, took hold of her once more. And yet, she sensed that he was fighting it. She knew that somewhere deep inside him, there was an awareness of self, and she clung to this belief desperately. She talked to him constantly: telling him news of people they had worked with in the Bureau, updating him on world events, reading to him, telling him stories about herself, and sometimes allowing the words that she had never spoken aloud to flow softly out of her mouth, hoping that somewhere he could hear them, and know that she was there for him. She remembered when she herself had been sick... dying... She knew that she had had a vague awareness of things going on around her at that time. She had felt Mulder's presence, had heard his words to her, somewhere, deep in the pit of her subconscious. And it had been his voice, his words to her that had drawn her away from the abyss... she had clutched at the sound of his voice with a vicelike grip, using it as the anchor to pull her back into life. She only hoped that she could do the same for him. ******************** //It was the immobility that he became aware of at first. The sensation of being unable to move any of his muscles. He had tried to move his head, to see where he was, but to no avail: it stayed fixed in position, staring up at the pale blue sky that stretched above him. The first sensation to return was sight. But all he could see was the sky, and he soon grew sick of its eternal blueness, its neverending stillness. After a short while came the sensation of touch. He slowly became aware of his arms, his hands, and what they were resting on. His arms lay along the side of his body, his hands rested flat on the ground. Only it wasn't ground, it was fine and delicate, it slithered between his fingers, reminding him of his childhood... it was sand - he was lying on sand. His sense of smell came next, and with it he could smell the heat of the day; the saltiness of the water becoming known to him through its wafting aroma. Then he was able to taste the salt on his lips. Salt, mixed with something he couldn't quite define: something sweet, and warm, and passionate. And finally, eventually, his ears were assailed with noise. He could hear the dull murmur of unfamiliar voices... somewhere there were other people on the beach. He had a feeling they were out of his grasp, unable to help him - they had already moved on. But the noise that filled his head, that ingratiated itself stealthily into his consciousness and remained there, fixed, was the sound of the lapping waves. It was a rhythmic sound, steady and soothing... with something more, something deeper buried beneath their lull. At first this deeper sound was indistinguishable: it was a part of the waves, lending them depth and strength. Then, as time passed, it become louder and more resonant. Slowly this second sound began to disentangle itself from the waves, while still guarding their gentle, rhythmic beat as its background. It began to take shape, words began to form, a voice slowly emerged, and it all became clear to him. It was a familiar voice, one that he had heard almost every day for six years... and hearing it now made his heart ache, whilst every cell in his body tried to cry out to the voice, to make her hear his plea for help...// ******************** She hadn't noticed it immediately. When she had first seen Mulder lying in the hospital bed, her eyes had travelled the length of his body, absorbing almost every detail, and yet it hadn't been until two days later that her attention had been drawn to the tiny detail that she had missed. It had been hidden under his regulation hospital gown, its delicateness accounting for her oversight. And once she had seen it for the first time, she couldn't help staring at it every time her gaze drifted below his chin. Nestling in the hollow of his neck, was a tiny gold cross. The necklace. Her necklace. He had kept it, had worn it... She couldn't draw her eyes away from it; what was it she had said? A symbol... a symbol of their bond, of faith. Those had been her spoken words, and yet underneath, there had been layers of deeper meaning, words that she could have spoken, that were also inextricably linked to the cross... words like faith, trust, hope, and belief. Looking at the necklace now, circling the neck of a dying man, she couldn't stop the rush of anger from rising in her. If the necklace had, at that moment, been around her own throat, rather than Mulder's, she would have ripped it off and tossed it away. Faith? Belief? Hope? What good were those things, Scully thought bitterly to herself. Mulder was dying, goddammit, and it was all because of his damned "beliefs"! How could she have faith in anything if this was the result? How could she allow herself to hope for anything if all it got her was more pain? She had hoped desperately for Mulder's return, and her wish had been granted, but at a price. She felt no happiness, no joy, at the fulfilment of this hope. Her whole life had been structured around her firm and solid beliefs. Both her faith in science and in a higher spirit had guided her through some of the toughest moments of her life. She had believed in those two principles almost unquestionably. No matter how often she had veered from that path - at Mulder's insistence - she had always returned, her beliefs always stronger and more secure than ever. Until now. Suddenly, she didn't know what to believe in. She had believed in them, in their partnership, their bond... and that had been taken away. She had believed in her ability to fight against the predators that dwelt in society and in her own life... and that faith had slowly crumbled. She had believed that justice was possible, that people had to pay for their sins... and that had been proven wrong time and time again. She had lost her faith... in everything. ******************** The only time that Scully left Mulder's room for an extended period during this time was when she took his medical charts along to the Lone Gunman's office. She had seen little of the trio since Mulder's disappearance. One of them - usually Frohike - would phone her occasionally to check whether she had any more news on his whereabouts, and she had, on a few rare occasions, dropped in to ask for their help on a case she was involved with. They were still in the same poky little room they'd been in for the last eight years, and every time she went there, it seemed to have grown smaller, as their piles of paper, videotapes and equipment grew larger and denser. They had heard, of course, about Mulder's reappearance - even though the fact was still being kept a closely guarded secret. So when she walked in the door, she was treated with more than the customary warm welcome: the three immediately pounced on her, and demanded to know more information about their friend. She smiled sadly and told them that she didn't know anything, except that he was suffering from the after effects of severe exposure and was in a coma, weakening day by day. "I brought these along." She held out the files that documented all the tests the doctors had run on Mulder, along with his current medical status. As Byers came forward to take them from her, he briefly placed his hand on her shoulder. She looked at him and smiled gently, thankful for the comfort. However it was only a fleeting gesture, and he quickly slipped back into his regular business-like mode, casting his eyes over the files, and passing the pages over to his partners as he was done. Scully watched them intently as they read. She didn't know if they would be able to find any clues in the information, but at this stage, she was willing to give anything a shot. Her desire to know where he had been was just as strong as it had been during his absence. The questions that she would always have assumed being solved upon his return still hung in the air - unanswered and unknown. Byers made a small sound - something on the page he was looking at had caught his attention. Langly and Frohike quickly moved to his side and studied the information he was holding. Scully looked at them with a puzzled expression on her face. "What is it?" She asked, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice. "What have you found?" The three ignored her, they were too caught up in their own whispered conversation. Byers looked at the two men with his usual non-committal expression. "Do you see what I see? What do you think?" Langly and Frohike didn't reply, merely answering the question with a similar knowing expression. Scully repeated her question, "What is it? What's going on?" They studiously avoided her eyes, none of them wanting to let her know what they had found. She stared at them in frustration and then marched over to where they stood, and grabbed the piece of paper out of their hands in the hope that she could figure out what it was that had drawn their attention. Frohike glanced quickly at the other two and then stepped forward, placing his hand on the edge of the piece of paper, "You won't understand just by looking at that, Scully." She glared at him, "Then tell me, goddammit!" It was Byers who finally responded, in his usual calm way; "Agent Scully, we've seen this before..." "Seen what?" Her eyes scanned the page in front of her, trying to assemble some sort of meaning from the array of information on the page. "It appears that someone's been running some sort of tests on Mulder - his immune system is being slowly eroded by what appears to be the by-product of... branched DNA." She didn't understand what he was saying, didn't immediately see the link - so he continued, "Agent Scully.... Mulder appears to be suffering from exactly the same symptoms that you were when you... uh... reappeared..." She looked anxiously from one face to the other, as the information slowly sank in. "You mean..." "... that Mulder seems to have suffered the same fate as you did six years ago, " Byers finished the thought off for her. "So, you know what it is, then - you must know how to cure it...?" She grasped desperately at straws. Byers shook his head slowly. "Agent Scully, we still don't know what happened to you when you disappeared - we certainly didn't ever come up with a workable hypothesis with regards to your condition on your return. As far as we're concerned, your recovery was inexplicable - a medical miracle. I seriously doubt that Mulder will be able to recover from this, given the added symptoms of exposure that are weakening him still further." Scully tightened her lips together. She heard the words, but their meaning refused to take hold in her brain. She couldn't accept what he was saying, couldn't allow herself to believe that after all these years of searching, after everything she'd been through, after everything that Mulder must have been through, that he would just die - like this, not with a bang, but with a whimper... Not Mulder - this couldn't happen... It wasn't until Frohike placed his hand on her upper arm that she realised she was crying. The action startled her, and she shied away abruptly, not wanting to be touched - not in that way... Mulder had touched her like that... She cast a final, aching look at the trio, and then turned around and walked quickly out of the room. The piece of paper that she had been holding slipped out of her hand unnoticed and slid silently onto the floor - the only indication that she had ever been there. As she ran down the stairs, the tears pouring down her cheeks, Scully was suddenly reminded of another time that she had come barrelling out of that tiny room, and had sprinted down the cramped stairs. After she had found out about her sister, she hadn't been able to register any logical thought, and if it hadn't been for Mulder, she probably would have been running to her own death on that painful occasion. The memories were still chasing each other in her head as she pulled open her car door, and threw herself into the seat. Mulder... if it hadn't been for Mulder... She didn't know how many times she'd said that to herself - even when he had been gone, she had repeated it like a mantra: Mulder had always been there for her, and she knew that he always would be... At least, she *had* known. How could he be there for her now, if he was dead?? She leaned her forehead against the steering wheel and gave up trying to hold back the tears. They flowed for what seemed like an eternity. The pent-up grief that she had managed to repress until now, bursting forth like a breaking dam. There was no hope... Mulder was dying. All those years... all that time they spent together... he was her partner. All those wasted moments, when they could have been partners in a more intimate way... She stayed like that for a long time, the tears pouring down her cheeks, her body shaking with the release. And then, when they were finally quelled, Scully turned on the ignition, and drove back to the hospital. ~ THE END ~ ----------------------------------------------------------- = to be continued in The Choice IV: Awakening = Thanks for reading. Comments are welcome. leigh_xf@geocities.com