Chapter Text
Chapter One
Mulder paced the harshly lit hallway like a caged tiger, ready to strike out at the first opportunity it got. Anyone who happened to pass him would glance at him cautiously, taking in the tightly pursed lips, the hand that combed through his hair every few minutes and the eyes that barely left the closed door nearby and could see that he was furious. They would simply lower their eyes and scurry on by, hoping that he wouldn’t notice them and ask questions they didn’t have answers to.
If truth were told, Mulder hadn’t noticed anyone who passed by, so focused was he on the room ten feet away, where his partner was currently being examined and subjected to a rape kit. It’s okay, she had told him quietly when he had looked at her in horror and she could see even more guilt piling onto his shoulders, nothing happened, it’s just standard procedure for female agents.
Mulder had nodded silently, rubbed her back and disappeared from the room, leaving her alone with two kind faced nurses. He didn’t want to think about how many times she had been subjected to this examination over the years. Outside the room, he had locked eyes with her through the blinds before they were closed, seeing the pain that resided within them. That was thirty minutes ago and his frustration was growing exponentially. He just wanted to be in there with her, hearing for himself that she was fine and was going to be fine. Instead, he was relegated to the antiseptic scented hallway, waiting like an obedient puppy to be allowed back inside the house.
He sighed and sat down heavily on one of the three hard blue plastic chairs that lined the wall, rested his elbows on his knees and rubbed his face harshly. He was angry. Angry at Padgett for instigating the whole mess, angry because Scully had suffered once again and angry with himself for not acting sooner. He should have known that something like this would have happened. He was a profiler for gods sake. He had known that Padgett was in love with Scully from the start, had seen how he looked at her, had read what he had written about her. She had even told him that his new neighbour had been effectively stalking her.
And yet, Mulder still hadn’t seen it coming.
Even after Padgett had confessed Scully’s apparent secret for her in the prison and Mulder had seen the disappointment on the other man’s face at the realisation that she would never love him back, he still hadn’t anticipated that Padgett would go after her. He had still been racked with misplaced jealousy over what had been written about her and The Stranger in Padgett’s book, even though she had told him, needlessly, that it was nothing more than a terrible work of fiction. He still couldn’t believe that he’d had the nerve to ask her if it was true; he didn’t think he would ever forget the hurt he saw in her eyes.
Mulder blamed himself for this latest hospital visit. It had been his decision to let Padgett go, so how could he not? He had been the one to run out of the apartment to chase down his neighbour and leave her alone when the accomplice was still out there. For all he knew, Padgett had contacted Naciamento on his way home from the prison to direct him to go after Scully.
Mulder rubbed his face harshly again and his eyes followed a nurse as she hurried past. As she disappeared into a room further down the hall, he leant back in his chair and stretched his long legs out in front of him and glanced again at the closed door opposite. Impatience bubbled inside him. His foot began to tap in annoyance against the tiled floor and it eventually forced him from his seat to begin his route back and forth in the corridor once again.
As he walked, his mind turned as it usually did in circumstances such as these, to his partnership with Scully. He honestly had no idea why she stayed. She could have and should have gotten out years ago, before she invested far more to their department than any one person should have. She shouldn’t have had to make the sacrifices that she’d been forced to make. She had lost her sister and her ability to have children because of the quest he himself had started long before she even contemplated joining the FBI.
After the fiasco over the previous summer when she had very nearly quit the Bureau altogether and before she became thoroughly reinvested in the work, Mulder knew that he should have let her go. He should never have made a clumsy pass at her and instead let her walk away from him and the Bureau to have the life she wanted and deserved. Instead she withdrew her resignation and, despite the two of them being reassigned under Alvin Kersh’s purview, their desire to stop the Syndicate’s plans from coming to fruition was reignited.
So, he had accepted that she wanted to stay. Accepted that she wanted to continue their search for the truth, despite not having access to their files any longer. Accepted that she would fly under Kersh’s radar with him and go off to some undisclosed location at short notice to investigate a possible lead.
Because that was what they did. They fought the fight together. Nobody else could or would ever understand their lives and the truth was, that nobody else cared. As far as the world was concerned, he and Scully were a few fries short of a happy meal; why else would they pursue the cases they did if they weren’t?
Mulder had thought that they were growing closer as they ran headlong into the unknown together, choosing to slowly change the nature of their relationship from friendship to something other than friendship. Mulder had anticipated that one of them would have the courage to take the next step after Scully had been shot in New York. He had gone so far as to arrange taking her to dinner once she had recovered enough to eat real food again and not the bland, boring food she was restricted to while her stomach healed. Somewhere fancy with real tablecloths, no laminated menus and no beehive hair wearing, bubblegum snapping waitresses he had told her. A grown up restaurant he had said, which had made her smile. Like a… date she had asked, blushing when he had nodded. Only, they had never gotten that far as Diana exploded back into their lives like a bomb and systematically destroyed all the progress he and Scully had made. He still wasn’t entirely sure that Scully had forgiven him for how badly he had treated her during the El Rico disaster.
“Mr. Mulder?” A soft voice broke through his thoughts. He turned to look at the owner of the voice and saw it was one of the nurses from the examination room. “You can go in now,” she said with a smile. “Dana is asking for you.”
Nodding his thanks, Mulder skirted around her and entered the room again to find a green surgical scrub clad Scully alone and standing next to the gurney she had just been lay on. The clothes she had been wearing sat in police evidence bags on the counter, needing to be checked over by forensics officers but Mulder knew it was pointless. There would be no trace of Scully’s attacker within the material. Dragging his attention from the bags, he looked at his partner and wasn’t at all surprised to see that she looked more exhausted than she had been. It had been a long few days for them.
“Hey,” he began carefully as he approached her. “Everything… okay?” She nodded and forced a tight smile for him and he noticed that she wouldn’t meet his eyes. He reached out and rubbed her upper arms gently.
She whispered his name as her eyes closed. “Don’t treat me like a victim,” she murmured, glancing up at him as she felt the hesitancy in his touch. “I’m not made of glass. I won’t break.”
Mulder swallowed hard and forced his own smile as he wrapped his arms around her and drew her into a hug. Relief swept through him when she laid her head on his chest and hooked an arm around his waist and held his elbow with her free hand. She may have said she wouldn’t break, but Mulder was certain that she already had. “Have they given you any idea of when you can leave?”
She nodded against him as she relaxed into the hug for a moment longer but then she extracted herself from him and climbed up onto the gurney, grimacing a little at the twinge in her lower back from when she had hit the floor. “The nurse has gone to sign my discharge papers.”
Mulder nodded and shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. “What did they say about the er… the blood loss?”
She shrugged and scraped her fingers through her hair, feeling them get stuck in the dried blood that had pooled behind her after the attack. She felt nauseous and forced down the bile that was trying to work it’s way up. “My blood volume is normal. It’s like I didn’t lose anything.” Mulder flicked his eyes to the evidence bag behind her where her bloody white blouse told a different story. “My ECG came back normal as well,” she continued, oblivious to his perusal of her bagged clothes. “It’s like it never even happened.”
Mulder nodded and hopped up onto the gurney next to her. “Are you sure you don’t want me to call your mom? Let her know what’s happened?”
She shook her head. “No, she um… she doesn’t need to know. It’ll only upset her and I’m fine.” She glanced up at him and sighed. “I just want to go home Mulder. I want to shower, sleep for a week and forget that Padgett and his stupid book ever even existed.”
Mulder nodded and smiled reassuringly as he wrapped an arm around her shoulder and tugged her to him. As she lay her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, he dropped a kiss into her hair. He was worried about her reaction to what had happened tonight. While running into danger wasn’t an uncommon occurrence for either of them, the impact this attack had had on Scully was. He couldn’t help but wonder whether she would fall apart again.
The door opened and two sets of eyes looked over to find a formally dressed Skinner entering the small examination room. Even at this time of the evening he was still as professional as ever. Neither Mulder nor Scully made any effort to move from their positions on the gurney and Skinner didn’t mention their closeness. It was nothing he hadn’t turned a blind eye to before.
“Sir, what are you doing here?” Mulder asked for both he and Scully.
“I had a call to tell me one of my agents was in the hospital. I was on my way home but I thought I’d better come down and see what was going on.” He flicked his eyes to the bags behind them on the counter and looked at Scully in her green scrubs. “Agent Scully, are you okay?”
She sat up and looked at her superior and as she did, Mulder’s hand dropped from her shoulder. He knew she felt uncomfortable at allowing their superior to see them so close, so he didn’t react. “Yes Sir, I’m fine.” Skinner glanced at Mulder who clenched his jaw at her use of those words. “I’m just waiting for my discharge papers and then Agent Mulder will take me home.”
Right on cue, one of the nurses from earlier came back into the room holding a sheaf of papers in her hand. “Excuse me gentlemen, I need to speak to Miss Scully alone, so if you could please step outside for a few minutes?”
Mulder squeezed Scully’s hand, which was gripping the edge of the bed like a vice and followed Skinner outside into the hallway. As Skinner closed the door behind himself, Mulder walked down the hall a few steps, rubbing his mouth roughly.
“What the hell happened Mulder?” Skinner asked quietly. “I’ve spoken to the detective in charge and I’ve had the official story. I want to know what really went on tonight.”
Mulder shook his head and sighed, not even sure if he could answer that question, but he appreciated that Skinner knew there was more to it than just the attack. The older man had come a long way in six years of being their superior. “Honestly?” Mulder said quietly. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Detective Andrews told me shots were fired in your building. Apparently the people across the hall from you called the police.”
Mulder sank into the same chair he had earlier wanted to kick down the hallway. Skinner followed suit and sat on the third, leaving a space between them. “Scully was…” He shook his head and tried again. “My neighbour, Padgett, he was stalking her. He’d been following her for some time, documenting everything she did and his obsession with her… he wrote her into his book.”
“What?” Skinner looked confused. “How did he end up living in your building?”
Mulder huffed a mirthless laugh and shook his head. “There was nothing to rent in hers and he knew she spent a lot of time at my place.”
Mulder exhaled slowly and ran his fingers through his hair, not sure how much to share, but decided that since Skinner had come down to the hospital, he deserved answers. Mulder began to explain as best he could about the case they had been working on, making sure to omit the details of the book and Padgett’s confession in the prison earlier that day. He rubbed his face again, hardly able to believe how quickly things had escalated.
Skinner nodded and glanced at the room where Scully was still speaking with the nurse. “Scully will corroborate this? She’ll sign a statement confirming that Ken Naciamento is the one who attacked her?”
That was the sixty four thousand dollar question, mused Mulder. “She said she doesn’t remember anything,” he said instead. “And besides, Naciamento is dead. He died several years ago in Brazil.”
“Mulder, the DCPD are going door to door in your building and adjacent buildings as we sit here. Are you trying to tell me that they’re wasting their time and they’re looking for a… for a ghost?”
A passing doctor heard Skinner’s final words and looked at the two men curiously. Mulder watched the doctor continue on down the corridor and then turned to his superior with a wry smile. “You might want to watch who you say things like that around. You’ll get a reputation.”
Ignoring him, Skinner sighed heavily. “She’ll have to give a statement about what happened. You both will. I suggest you come up with something plausible that won’t ruffle any feathers.”
The two men stared at one another. “You mean lie.” It wasn’t a question. Skinner gave Mulder a warning look, who in turn shook his head. “Don’t worry Sir, we won’t say anything that makes the FBI look bad.”
“Dammit Mulder, that’s not what I meant,” growled Skinner quietly.
“Then what did you mean?”
The door to Scully’s room opened and she stepped out into the hallway, effectively ending the conversation between the two men. She smiled without emotion at the nurse, who handed her a piece of paper and excused herself, looking for at both men who had stood when she appeared. She could tell that something was wrong but she was too tired to ask.
“Um, I’m free to go,” she said hesitantly, looking from one man to the other.
Mulder nodded and looked at Skinner. “Thank you for coming down here Sir. We’ll present ourselves tomorrow to give our statements.” Without waiting for a response, he turned back to his partner. “Come on, let’s get you home.”
They walked away and disappeared around a corner, leaving Skinner alone to think about what Mulder had told him. He had no idea what to believe when it came to those two anymore. He just hoped that they could come up with some kind of explanation for why Scully had discharged her weapon six or seven times and why there was a dead body sans heart in the furnace room of the building. As he began to head back to his own car, he removed his glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose, hoping to relieve some of the pressure that had begun to build. Those two always gave him a headache.