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Edges of the Night (Chapter 11)

“She’s waking up.”

Scully blinks groggily, her heavy eyelids struggling to open. As she drifts into consciousness, the part of her brain that has years of medical training tells her she’s coming off a morphine drip because of the way her entire body itches from scalp to toes. She raises a hand to scratch and startles when her wrist meets resistance. Her eyes fly open and she glances down in horror.

She’s in some sort of bed, her hands handcuffed to railings lining the sides, and she can’t move them even an inch off the mattress.

Her heart dutifully starts to pound in her chest, but she’s momentarily distracted by a throbbing pain rising from her left shoulder. She shifts around to try to get a good look at what’s hurting, and that’s when she realizes she’s in a hospital bed.

She blinks in shock. It’s been a surprisingly long time since she’s woken up in a hospital. When she worked on the X-Files, it was unusual if a month went by without either she or Mulder enduring some sort of hospital visit. But she’s hard-pressed to recall even a single time she got hurt in San Diego. Hospital administrators usually don’t have to deal with on-the-job injuries.

Her shoulder throbs again and she winces. She’s wearing a standard-issue hospital dressing gown, and with some maneuvering, she manages to slip the sleeve off her shoulder. At first, she is confused to see a thick bandage covering her shoulder, but then she remembers. The gunshot. She was shot.

How did she get to a hospital?

Who performed the surgery?

And who handcuffed her to this bed?

And where is—

Mulder.

What happened to Mulder?

If she wasn’t panicking earlier, she’s panicking now. Adrenaline floods her body. Beside her, a heartrate monitor starts beeping loudly.

She glances around, startling when she notices that she’s not alone. There’s a woman standing nearby, dressed in medical scrubs and wearing a mask over her nose and mouth. At the door stands a man. He’s watching her with a neutral expression, but she doesn’t miss the Sig strapped to his hip.

“Where am I?” she croaks, her eyes darting around the room.

The space she’s in gives the impression of a small, private hospital room. To her left is a window blocked with heavy curtains; she can’t tell whether it’s daytime or nighttime outside. Her arms are hooked to a set of IVs. It takes one experienced glance at the drip bags to tell her she’s receiving a combination of fluids, antibiotics, and morphine. Nothing strange, nothing deadly.

In front of her, most curiously, is a television set, beside which stands a camcorder balanced on a tripod.

“Where am I?” she repeats, her voice a little stronger. “Where’s Mulder?”

Infuriatingly, no one responds. The woman ignores her to rifle through a medicine cabinet and when she finds what she needs, she approaches the bed and applies a blood pressure cuff to Scully’s arm.

“Where the hell am I?” Scully once again demands through gritted teeth.

The woman’s eyes shift briefly to hers and Scully tries to scrutinize her, searching for clues and finding none.

“Where am I?”

But the woman remains silent, inscrutable.

How many times can she ask that question without an answer?

The woman leans over to grab a remote control that’s sitting on the bedside table. She points it at the T.V. and the screen slowly fades from black to color. For a moment, Scully can’t tell what she’s looking at. The image is fuzzy and grainy.

The woman sighs aggravatedly and gestures to the man at the door.

“Picture’s not clear. Can they see her alright?”

Can who see me?

Scully’s eyes pinball around the room and she realizes with a start that in her initial survey of the space, she failed to notice the blinking light on the camcorder. She’s being videotaped. Her mouth falls open in protest when suddenly, the picture on the T.V. screen clears. Blood rushes from her head and somewhere in the back of her doctor’s mind, she knows her blood pressure cuff is about to return a very alarming reading.

Because on the screen, as clear as day, she sees him. Mulder, sitting in a chair in a darkened room, his head hanging defeatedly in his hands.

“Mulder!” she calls, and to her shock and surprise, he lifts his head as if he’s heard her.

“You’re awake,” he breathes, and relief crosses his features as he jumps up to stride towards the camera.

She tears her eyes from the screen and shoots the woman a questioning look. “This is happening in real time? He can see me and I can see him?”

With a dismissive nod, the woman turns and starts searching for something in a nearby hospital trolley.

“Scully, Scully, how do you feel?” Mulder interrupts, his voice frantic. “Are you okay?”

She shakes her head helplessly. “I don’t know where I am. I’m in a—a hospital room, I think—hooked up to IVs, they’ve performed surgery on my shoulder—”

But before she can speak again, the woman has returned to her bedside with a roll of duct tape.

“We’re not here to chat,” she says before slapping a strip of tape against Scully’s mouth.

“No, that’s not necessary!” Mulder pleads.

Scully whips her head back and forth wildly, trying to avoid the woman’s touch, but in the end, her bound hands put her at a distinct disadvantage, and she loses the battle. At her side, the woman gestures meaningfully to the man at the door, but Scully has turned her focus back to Mulder, who’s dragging his hands down his face angrily.

Curiously, Scully realizes that he isn’t restrained. In fact, no one on the other side of the screen seems to be doing anything to hold him back. She can’t quite tell where exactly he is, but it appears to be some sort of conference room. She spies a dark wooden round table behind him and a set of projectors towards the back of the room. There’s something vaguely familiar about the room’s furniture, but she can’t quite place it.

“You ready?” comes a voice in Mulder’s room, and he glances somewhere off camera.

Mulder huffs. “You said we could wait until I’ve talked to her, that was part of the deal—”

“And she’s awake now. Get on with it.”

A sound startles Scully, a sound she would recognize anywhere: the sharp mental clink of the safety releasing on a gun. She swivels her head towards the sound and terror sluices down her spine. The man standing at the door has approached the bed and now holds his weapon mere inches from her temple.

She swallows convulsively. On screen, Mulder stills.

And then—

“No, no, that’s not necessary!” he repeats angrily. “I’m going to cooperate, I swear! I just want to talk to her, you said I could talk to her—”

“You have two minutes. Talk.”

Mulder curses. “Five minutes.”

“Two.”

“Five—”

“Two—”

Mulder smacks his fist against something hard. “Four,” he concedes with a groan.

A pause.

Someone off camera sighs exasperatedly. “You have three minutes.”

Mulder’s eyes flicker back to hers, seeming to penetrate her gaze even across the distance. In his eyes, she sees a pain unlike any he’s expressed before: a deep, soul-crushing sorrow; a total, utter despair. And overlaying all of that, frenzy and fury.

“Scully,” he says frantically, stepping even closer to the camera. His eyes crease with agony. “You’re safe, okay? I know—I know you don’t feel safe, but you’re going to be okay. They’ve promised me you’re safe. When this is all over, Skinner’s going to come collect you and take you back to—to your life. Everything’s going to be just fine.”

Then why does she have the feeling that everything is not going to be just fine? Her stomach twists dangerously.

He hesitates for just a moment. “You know that I love you? You know that, right?”

She blinks and tears spill across her lashes, rushing down her cheeks and pooling across the tape on her mouth. She recognizes his tone, knows what it means. There is a finality to his words, a desperate, parting-type of energy beneath the surface.

Mulder is saying goodbye.

She wishes she could respond. He deserves a response, and she’s never felt so powerless to help him. Tied to the bed, doped up on morphine, and stripped of her voice, she can’t do anything. Filled with rage, she pushes her tongue out of her mouth and starts working to unstick the tape.

“Jesus,” Mulder continues with a wry smile, “this isn’t the way I ever pictured this conversation going.” He huffs a miserable laugh. “I always imagined something a little more romantic. At the very least, I never dreamed we’d have a conversation where you didn’t try to naysay me at least once.”

A joyless laugh bubbles up in her chest, shaking her entire body.

His veneer shatters, his smile cracking and head bowing. “Scully, if I could take back these past nine months, I would. I wouldn’t make the mistake of separating us. We’re not meant for—for separation.” He must see something off-camera, because his eyes flicker nervously somewhere stage-right. When he speaks again, there is a hurriedness to his tone, like he’s trying to squeeze every last drop out of this moment.

“Scully,” he continues, eyes darting back to hers, “Scully, this is it, okay? Just—just close your eyes when it happens. I don’t want you to see it. They’re going to give you a good life, Scully. That’s part of this deal, that you get a good life. You’re going to be safe. You’ll go back—” He swallows hard, then swipes angrily at invisible tears on his cheeks. “—You’ll go back to California. But you can’t—you can’t talk about this, not ever. Not even once. You hear me? They’ll hurt you if you let any of this slip. So just, just forget about revenge or justice or vengeance or any of that bullshit. Just live your life, Scully. Have a beautiful life, please, because this is for you. Think of me every now and then, will you? Don’t—don’t get caught up in what happens today. Let this whole thing go, get yourself as far away from this shit as you can. All I ever wanted was for you to be safe. Happy.” He curses loudly, his voice breaking. “My fish are yours, and the Gunmen, if you want them.” He laughs wetly, his eyes drifting to the ceiling. “Check in on them if you can.”

Off camera, someone else seems to be demanding his attention because Mulder’s eyes briefly flit away.

“I—it’s time, Scully.” He looks back at her with a turbulent expression. “You’ll never be alone, not from this moment on. You know I’m crazy enough to believe in things like that, so I hope you know that I’m going to find you, even when I’m dead, I’m going to find you and be with you. Watching over you, protecting you—” Hands grab at Mulder’s arm and he shoves them off violently. His eyes are wild things. “I love you, remember that. I have loved you all this time—”

There’s a shout and Mulder disappears from the screen. The duct tape is peeling from one corner of her mouth, a mixture of her tears and saliva working to unglue the sticky tape. But Mulder is gone, and she can’t even tell him that she feels it too. She slams her fists angrily into the bedsheets, wincing as pain shoots up her wrists.

On screen, the camera suddenly fumbles, then rights itself, and then the picture starts to move. She realizes someone must have picked up the camcorder and started walking with it. Her hands curl into the blankets on her bed.

The camera angle shifts and she sees a door, Mulder standing in front of it, his back to the camera. Someone presses something into his right hand and speaks into his ear. He nods tightly.

The door opens and Mulder straightens his shoulders, then begins to walk.

The cameraman follows him at a distance as they walk down an empty hallway. The floor looks waxy and polished, sparkly and clean.

And she recognizes the tiling. Her heart lurches in her chest.

They’re in the Hoover Building. They’re at the FBI.

And Mulder has a gun in his hand.

Her stomach twists dangerously and bile builds at the back of her throat. It’s clear that these people—whoever they are—are about to get their final wish after all. With a gun pressed to her own head, they’ve assured that Mulder will commit the final, terrible act that will send him and the X-Files into disrepute forever.

With a sinking heart, she realizes that it was likely never their intention to torture her or send her to Mexico for experiments. It was all just leading up to this moment, to Mulder walking down this hallway, to destroying himself to save her.

The room around her goes deathly quiet as they follow Mulder and his cameraman through the Hoover Building. She watches him enter the bullpen, sees their coworkers glance at him dismissively, then in alarm when they notice the weapon in his hand.

Shouts go up all around the room as Mulder raises the gun to his temple. She can see, even through the grainy film, that his hand is shaking. He starts speaking, spouting some sort of nonsense about the X-Files, conspiracy theories, monsters. A security guard starts rushing towards him.

Don’t watch, her mind screams, but how could she look away?

The entire world falls under a spell of silence as Mulder’s finger inches closer to the trigger. The security guard seems to move in slow motion. The office workers are suspended in time. Her own body goes completely immobile. Her lungs refuse to expand or contract; her eyes can’t blink; her muscles won’t move.

She is seconds away from tragedy, and yet she can’t do anything, anything. She can’t even tell him that she loves him too.

It’s this realization that wakes her up. The duct tape falls from her lips and she screams furiously, yanking against the handcuffs so hard she feels them bite into her skin. The woman beside her lunges to shove her down into the bed but her eyes never leave the screen. Mulder’s head turns just slightly, just enough as if to say I hear you, Scully. I hear you.

“Mulder, please—”

The picture onscreen jolts violently and then goes dark. Inside her hospital room, everyone freezes. From offscreen, Scully hears shouting, unintelligible words, and then the heinous, hideous bang of a gunshot.

She screams in fury and bucks forward, kicking and yanking and twisting as violently as she can. The woman slams her into the mattress again and then hits a button, and Scully wails as morphine starts to drip into her body.

Her eyes grow heavy too quickly.

“Is he okay?” she moans, just as the door to her room opens.

Somewhere off to her right, there’s a tense exchange of words and vaguely, she thinks she recognizes a familiar voice. With enormous effort, she turns her head to the side and squints at the door. Tears track down her cheeks and soak her pillow.

She doesn’t know whether to feel relieved or betrayed. Because before her stands Walter Skinner, his bald head damp with sweat, his muscular forearms tense, his eyes tight with anger.

And behind him, looking for all the world like the three stooges that they are, are the Lone Gunmen.

The breath leaves her body as Melvin Frohike shoves his way past Skinner and leans over to press a kiss to her cheek.

“We’ve come to get you, milady.”

#mulder x scully #dana scully #the x files #x files fanfic #txf #x files #msr fanfic #xfiles fanfic #msr #fox mulder

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