A/N So for the past few months I've totally gotten back into the X-Files which is kind of a good thing because, on the one hand, it's totally awesome, but on the other hand, it's kind of been consuming my life. Anyway, I just re-watched season 5 episode 3, "the Unusual Suspects," and although I remembered that she never appeared, I kept hoping Chris Carter would throw in a Scully cameo (especially since Mulder gets sent to a hospital it would've been soooo easy and soooo perfect), but anyway, since that didn't happen, I decided I had to write my own. And I threw in a little "Triangle" as well because its my favorite episode, and why not? Anyway, don't expect too much; I wrote this between 2:30-3:30 am. Enjoy.
She doesn't realize it until five years into their partnership—she's met him before. He's lying in a hospital bed, drugged out of his mind, and she's still frantic from the hours she spent searching for him after he ran off to the Bermuda Triangle to search for a goddamn ocean liner that disappeared fifty goddamn years ago (without telling her, she might add). He grabs her arm as she leaves and says he loves her. She rolls her eyes, says "Oh brother," and starts to leave again when suddenly she remembers.
It was a decade ago, 1989. She was in her third year of medical school and had just completed Dr. Daniel Waterston's Infectious Diseases Seminar. And begun seeing him extra-curricularily. He had been invited to give a guest lecture at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and had casually suggested she accompany him as an assistant. She accepted, because she was young and falling in love and didn't realize that by "assistant" he meant that she would be stuck in an unfamiliar hospital for hours on end as he caught up with old friends.
Of course, as a third year med student, being stuck in a hospital wasn't exactly the worst fate imaginable and as a curious young woman eager to know more about her selected field, Dana Scully quickly immersed herself in the happenings around her.
The (male) doctors seemed happy enough to let a pretty young med student shadow them, and she spent a number of hours moving from one ward to another learning everything she could about the workings of a hospital. And that's how she ended up in the psych ward at the exact wrong time (or the exact right time, as she would come to view it a decade later). She was reading a patient's chart at the nurses's station when she heard a commotion down the hallway. Unable to resist her investigative spirit, she quickly made her way over to the room that was the source of the disturbance. After a moment, it became clear that a patient had "flown the coop," so to speak.
As it turns out, doctors and nurses have serious jobs to attend to and cannot spend time searching for a disappeared psych patient who's been experiencing hallucinations and erratic behavior. It also turns out that, along with orderlies and the odd janitor, any 25 year-old women with three years of medical training currently doing nothing but sitting around waiting for their boyfriends to finish a lecture are roped into searching for said patient. And that's how Dana Scully found herself pacing the hallways of the Johns Hopkins Psych Ward searching for a Mr… Dammit! What was his name? She couldn't quite remember, something that started with an "M." Moyer? Mueller? Something like that. Well, it hardly mattered: she doubted there were too many six foot men in their late twenties and hospital gowns currently running unattended around the ward.
As luck would have it, Dana Scully received the immense honor of being the first to stumble across the aforementioned six foot tall, hallucinating man. She was trying to get into the rear stairwell to see if he had gone to another floor, only to find the door blocked by something. A quick look through the narrow window told her that that "something" was actually the crumpled body of a grown man in a hospital gown curled into the fetal position, back braced against the door, shaking and mumbling incoherently.
"Sir," she said apprehensively, but he didn't seem to hear her. She said it again louder, this time banging the palm of her hand against the door, but he was too out of it to acknowledge the world around him. She shoved her whole body weight against the door, but her 5'2'' frame seemed unable to quite get the job done, especially since the man blocking her was wedged quite neatly between the door and the stair railing (to be fair, this was most likely due more to his lanky limbs rather than intentional thought on his part). She called for help down the corridor, still shoving against the door, hoping she didn't hurt him in the process.
Finally, she got it open far enough to reach a hand through. She did, not quite sure what it would accomplish since she could only reach his side. Not knowing what else to do, she patted him awkwardly, trying to make sure she hit hospital gown and not bare skin. Although simple, the touch did seem to calm him down, as his mumblings slowly turned to deep, ragged breaths. After a moment, she added soft words to the pats, telling him everything was going to be all right. Soon, his shaking stilled as well.
Fortunately, a few minutes later, a couple of orderlies came to her rescue, managing, between the two of them, to get the door all the way open. Unfortunately, by forcing the door open completely, all semblance of calm she had managed to instill in the man was destroyed. The orderlies pushed her to the side, and burst into the stairwell. A brief struggle ensued, but she was too dazed to follow what was happening. By the time she shook herself out of her stupor, the orderlies had injected a sedative into the man's arm and he was hanging limply between the pair, head lolling down so she couldn't make out his face.
A nurse came barreling down the hallway pushing a wheelchair in front of her. Unceremoniously, the orderlies slouched the man down into the chair and began to wheel him back towards his room. Before they had managed to get a few steps though, the man reached out behind him and grabbed her wrist. The orderlies stepped forward, but she stopped them by holding up her free hand.
He looked at her—his eyes staring straight into hers. She was lost in them, their depth and the absolute panic she saw there. "They're here," he said, the first coherent words he had spoken.
She didn't know what to say. Logic told her that the man was hallucinating, he had no idea what he was talking about, but the sincerity and fear in his eyes and voice made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She opened her mouth to respond, but before she could say anything, one of the orderlies broke his grasp on her wrist and in a moment they were gone, turned down a corner.
She knew she should follow them. She knew she should find his doctors and appraise them of the condition she'd found him in, but she couldn't move. She felt her knees buckle and she slid to the floor. She wasn't quite sure how long she sat there, her wrist still tingling where he had touched her.
Finally, she picked herself up and found Daniel. As it turns out, out he had been ready to leave for an hour and was looking for her. She was silent on the car trip back to the hotel. He tried to ask her about her day, what she did, but she only gave him monosyllable answers. After a few such attempts, he decided that she was mad at him for abandoning her for hours, and she let him think that, because how could she explain to him—a gifted doctor, a man she esteemed and admired—that after what she experienced that day, she'd begun to seriously reconsider her decision to become a doctor. She wasn't sure she could handle working in a hospital, dealing with patients like him for the rest of her life. She stayed silent, and tried not to think about the man's eyes.
A year or so went by. The feeling never changed. Eventually, she'd tried to talk to Daniel about it, but he simply raved about ruined potential. When an FBI representative approached her about joining the Bureau a few months later, she jumped at the opportunity, moved to Washington, and began a new life. Four years after that, she found herself riding the elevator all the way to the bottom of the J. Edgar Hoover building and picking her way through the basement to an office labeled Fox Mulder. She went in and he said, "Sorry, nobody down here but the FBI's Most Unwanted," and she knew there was no going back. Somehow (she can hardly believe it now) she never connected Spooky Mulder with the man she met so many years ago in a stairwell in Baltimore.
Now, Mulder's eyes are happy and slightly punch drunk. They get serious as they notice her expression though. "Scully, are you okay?" he asks, and she wonders if he's really as out of it as he seems. He's still holding her wrist.
She smiles. "Yeah." After a pause she adds, "I'll tell you later."
He seems content with that answer and lays back in his bed, still refusing to let her go.
She thinks that when she sees them again, she'll ask the Lone Gunmen if Mulder ever spent time in a psych ward in Baltimore in 1989, though it seems slightly pointless since she's as sure of this as she's ever been of any science. with her free hand, she brushes his brown hair back from his forehead and kisses it lightly.
He smiles, and she decides to sit with him a while longer. Just in case.
A/N there you have it, I had originally intended it to be entirely humorous but it kinda got a little serious in the middle there entirely of its own accord. Please leave review, or favorite if you liked it! I might be publishing more X-Files stuff simply because it's all I seem to think about these days.