Chapter Text
Scully dropped the washcloth into the now lukewarm bowl of water.
It had been ten, painfully uncertain, minutes since Mulder’s eyes had rolled back in his head and he had slumped unconscious to the mattress.
Scully had, in a word, panicked. There was no one there to see it so she didn’t bother to try and suppress it. Quickly, she’d searched his neck for a pulse, gritting her teeth at how fast his heart was racing. Of all the stupid, reckless, goddamned idiotic things to do…
Satisfied that he was in no immediate danger, Scully had weighed her options. She sat down on the bed, her hand absently going to stroke the hair stuck to Mulder’s forehead. Determining the type of drug was important, almost as important as ensuring whatever it was caused no irreparable harm to her partner.
Eyes sweeping the darkened room, Scully had leaned over and turned the bedside lamp on. As expected, Mulder looked even worse in the low light. Whatever drug he’d taken, seemingly willingly, it was wreaking havoc on his body. He shivered despite the sweat that still clung to his skin, whimpering at whatever his subconscious was fabricating for him. Scully eased a blanket across his legs and pulled it up over his chest. There were just too many hallucinogens and drugs to even consider a quick identification, too many that caused fevers, hallucinations, paranoia, headaches, heightened emotional states…
Scully bit her lip. She really should take him to a hospital. But the broken shards of his voice telling her that “she’s coming back” had her reconsidering, against her better judgement. She’d do what he asked…so long as he didn’t take a turn for the worse in any way.
“No, no please,” Mulder mumbled, turning his face into the mattress. Scully returned her hand to his forehead.
“Shh, Mulder, it’s okay. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
His distress quelled beneath her touch and he leaned into her palm, humming contentedly.
Scully sighed and shook her head.
“I’ll never know why you do these things, Mulder.”
After that, she’d left and returned as fast as she could with a bowl of cold water, a washcloth, and her medical bag.
She dipped the cloth into the water, soaking it through, then squeezed the excess water out. Scully meticulously wiped the sweat from Mulder’s face, neck, and chest that was visible above the blanket. She lost herself in the repetitive nature of it. Her mind whispered quietly of how she wished to ease his pain with each swipe of the fabric, each scar cleaned, each brush of her fingertips against him. He seemed more peaceful, by the end, his skin no longer feverish, just very warm.
Scully placed the bowl and washcloth on the bedside table and returned her hand to smoothing back his hair.
Mulder’s eyes blearily blinked open after exactly eleven minutes and thirty four seconds.
The relief at seeing him awake had her heart leaping from her chest. Scully couldn’t help the smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth. She placed the back of her hand to his forehead again and made a small affirmative sound. It was harder than anticipated to take her hand back and stop touching him.
“Mulder?”
He groaned in response, a shiver racing up his body.
“Sc-Scully?” His voice was gravelly and he coughed. With a wince, he brought a hand to his face and pressed his thumb and forefinger against his eyelids.
“Last time I checked,” she replied, arching an eyebrow at him.
“You’re…here?”
Scully’s gaze narrowed at the breathy lilt to his words, the goosebumps that raced across his skin.
“Yes, Mulder, we’ve had this conversation already. Are you here?”
He ignored her question, choosing instead to curl away from her and push himself up to a seated position. The blanket pooled around his lap. Scully pressed her lips into a thin line at the mottled patchwork of scars that adorned his back. A grotesque summation of their history together; wounds he’d gotten unnecessarily, ones she’d helped care for, old and new alike. She wondered what the ending of the story those scars told about them would be.
“I…I don’t know, Scully.” His voice was quiet. Vulnerable. “I know…I’m here, sitting on my bed, one second, and then the next…” Mulder dropped his chin to his chest, intertwining his hands behind his head. “12 hours. Then the effects are gone.”
Scully’s eyes widened. Her mind jumped back to the case they had just closed in Montana. What began as straightforward killings in the shadows of Bears Paw Mountain ended in a wild goose chase, leading them to a secret group charged with protecting the rural town by way of ritualistic sacrifices. The sheriff’s deputy had been in on it, leading the FBI agents astray for far too long. Mulder finally connected him and a local healer, who had been assisting with the case, to the mysterious cult. There had been a standoff, and it hadn't ended well. The healer jumped in front of Mulder to stop the deputy’s wildly-fired bullet as Scully tackled the crazed man down the stairs. By the time the paramedics arrived, there was nothing to be done for the old healer, blood pooling beneath him and coating his lips. Mulder had knelt next to him as his breath finally left him—they were alone for no more than a few minutes.
12 hours. 12 hours. That was what the local healer had told them about the drug Scully identified in all the victim’s toxicology reports. Each one had been given a medicinal herb—though Scully had argued the medicinal quality of it at the time—that would aid them on their quest towards enlightenment and initiation into the cult. ‘To see the truth beneath the lies, to unearth the footprints left behind, and reveal the footsteps yet to take,’ he’d said.
Scully whirled around, searching the bedside table.
She found it on the floor, partially hidden underneath the bottom of the table: a small blue vial that was completely empty. Her heart sank.
“Mulder, you didn’t…”
The man in question staggered to his feet, pulling once again at his hair. Scully turned and deflated at the glassy look that had returned to his eyes.
“Mulder?”
“I can’t resist the truth, Scully,” he said, gazing upwards, an absorbed look on his face. “She was here, and my father, and my mother, and you. Taking the pieces of me I carved out for each of you. But it was never enough, I gave and I gave, but…I lost them all. I lost them all.” A sob choked off the end of his word. “And I’ll lose you too,” he whispered after a moment. “Just like everyone else who leaves or dies or disappears. Taken. Taken away.”
Mulder wiped at the tears on his cheeks and pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes.
“I don’t know if I can bear to lose anyone else. If they take you…there’ll be no more light to guide me from the darkness.”
A mirthless laugh escaped his lips.
“And maybe I deserve that. The darkness. Alone. Without the truth.”
His admission was a quiet, shattered thing; its wings snapped and discarded, like all broken things always were. Like he thought he deserved to be. Discarded because he was broken. Never enough for all those he’d lost. Things taken from him he’d never heal from.
Scully watched him collapse down to his knees, head bowed. In any other situation, she might make an observation about how he looked like he was praying. But the comparison, instead of seeming ironic or conical, was twinged with sadness. The man before her, her partner, her friend, was unmoored and lost; broken in places he thought made him unlovable, trapped in his self-destructive memories, on a blind mission to prove his faith to the truth.
His pain made her physically ache. Her inability to fix it left her unsatisfied and angry.
“I can’t find her, Scully. She was here but now she’s not.” A wail was pulled from deep within the hurt places inside his soul. “I have to find her.”
Mulder stumbled to his feet. Though his knees buckled, he forced himself to remain upright, eyes picking apart the room as if she was hiding there.
She. Samantha. Scully shadowed Mulder’s frantic search, following him from room to room. When at last he staggered into the kitchen, he must have realized it all was for naught.
“But she was just here. I saw her, I saw…” Mulder bumped into the kitchen table, knocking a few books, a mug, and a water glass onto the floor. Scully winced as both the mug and glass shattered against the hardwood.
“She was here!” He yelled, his despair unending.
“Wait, Mulder, don’t-”
But as was the case for the last several minutes, Mulder gave her words no heed. He stepped barefoot through the shards of glass and ceramic, registering no pain. Scully heaved a frustrated sigh. She pushed as many of the pieces underneath the table as she could, reminding herself to clean up the mess once Mulder was coming down from his hallucinogenic high.
“Mulder, stop!” Scully cried, following the streaks of blood along the floor. She reached the living room and caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Mulder was in his office.
She approached the room slowly. He appeared a man possessed; tearing through his things, upending boxes and drawers, expression wild. He didn’t stop until his entire floor was scattered with papers, newspaper clippings, old photographs, and books. With each pass of the room, smears of blood from the multitude of cuts that adorned Mulder’s feet left behind a morbid trail. He was going in circles. Over and over again.
“Mulder?” Scully knocked on the door frame lightly.
Finally, finally, Mulder stilled. His shoulders shook, with emotion or pain or cold Scully didn’t know, and then he crossed his arms over his torso.
“I can’t see it.”
Scully frowned, taking one step into the room.
“See what?”
She stopped a foot away from him, though he hadn’t looked up or acknowledged her presence.
“The truth.”
Scully didn’t know what to say to that. He had taken an extremely risky gambit, ingesting an unknown drug to attempt to see some new truth or path, like the healer had told them. But it seemed to be a journey without an end, without meaning. Maybe all the drug had done was pick at healing wounds, twist the knife into old scars, tip the balance in favor of the darkness.
She stood silently, uncertain. She watched him shaking, holding himself together, as some war raged within his own mind. The drug deluding him with visions and promises that would heal him, while his conscious mind swung between rebelling against its effects and giving into its tempting promises.
“Scully.”
Mulder whispered her name with his eyes still to the floor.
“I’m here, Mulder,” she whispered back.
He looked up then and stared at her with such a look of heartbreak that tears sprung to her eyes.
“You are. You’re here.”
The light from the bedroom somewhat illuminated the office and it shone behind her; bathing her in a golden glow, an ethereal shimmer to her red hair and concerned expression.
“I’m…sorry you didn’t find the truth, Mulder,” Scully said carefully.
“She was never here was she? Or my parents?”
Scully shook her head.
“No footsteps or footprints or lies uncovered.”
“No,” Scully confirmed.
Mulder shivered and brought a hand up to rub at his temples. He looked lost amidst the chaos of his office; alone, hurting, searching.
“You cut your feet, Mulder.”
Mulder knit his brow and glanced down at them.
“Do they hurt?”
He shook his head. Scully reached a hand towards him, needing something, but stopped before she could touch him. She searched his face, hoping to find an answer to what had led them here. An explanation.
There were entire worlds swimming in his hazel eyes; swirling blues, greens, and browns always in constant motion, secrets hiding and desires burning and his belief unending. Mulder saw her, in ways no one else ever really had.
Scully raised her hand and placed it against the side of his face.
“Why did you do this, Mulder? I need you to tell me why.”
Mulder blinked slowly. And as he always did, he deflected.
“You’re angry,” he stated. “I see it in your face.”
Scully narrowed her eyes up at him. She stepped back, her emotions flaring at being called out so openly. “You’re damn right I’m angry, Mulder! It’s the middle of the night, you take some-some drug you know nothing about, and call me here, where I expected to find you attacked or injured or-or-” She wasn’t angry at him; well, she was, but it paled in comparison to how angry she was at her own fear, how angry she was at the unfairness in Mulder’s life that drove him to take that drug.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Mulder said.
Scully inhaled sharply through her nose. Was she a goddamned open book at the moment? Get out of my head, she thought petulantly.
“I never said I was-”
“-but you were. Are. Scared. For me. For…what this means for me. It’s plain as day, Scully.”
Mulder was looking at her, head cocked to one side, his face as revealing and honest as she’d ever seen it. Truth beneath lies, the healer had said.
“I’m-I’m not doing this right now, Mulder! We are not doing this-this profiling, psychoanalysis bullshit. You,” she stepped up to him and jammed a finger into his chest, “need rest, fluids, to sleep this drug off. And I need to see to the cuts on your feet. Tomorrow, ugh, today, much, much later on today, we can fight about whatever the hell this is. After we both get some rest.”
“Facts, rulesss,” Mulder slurred as he swayed a bit on his feet. “Prioritiesss.”
His eyes, as clear as mountain lakes, were hung with the stars and galaxies he never tired of staring at. Filled with flashes of life and longing and despair and pain and hope. The intensity of them stole the breath from Scully’s lungs.
A smile flickered briefly over Mulder’s face.
“That’s why I love you, Scully.”