Notes: They left a lot out of this sequence, and I thought it needed some fleshing out. I tried to stay as true to the movie as possible, but did take a few minor liberties. Big thanks to Jonatha for reading over this for me. Enjoy, and as always, your comments and criticism are loved!
Mulder's feet struck the dimly lit metallic floor with a clang. He crouched, surveying the scene, his pinprick eyes adjusting to the dim light. He didn't know what he expected to find buried beneath all the ice, but it wasn't this. His mind's eye had fancied a highly quarantined underground hospital with white walls and white floors and white ceilings matching the outside snow. He would find Scully in the furthest room off the furthest hall, dressed in a white hospital gown on a white bed with white booties, her expression serene, eyes closed, head cushioned by a white pillow and the spray of her red hair. He would fight through tall, zombie-like men in white to retrieve her, administer the vaccine, and then the two of them would escape the infirmary, guns and eyes blazing in the name of justice and discovery.
This fantasy quickly receded.
Whatever the case, Mulder had not anticipated the scenery sprawled before him. The nameless man who gave him the vaccine had mentioned an "alien environment," but even Mulder was not naïve enough to believe he would simply drop into a literal alien world.
His mind raced, filling with possibilities. Was he alone? Were they watching? He swung his flashlight about, its beam reflecting off the translucent green pod-like objects lining the walls. The floor was metal, the ceiling low, the pathway narrow, the light dim. The air was a few degrees warmer than the air outside, with a higher moisture content that relieved some of the numbing pain from the cold, dry air upon his bare face and exposed eyes, nose, and lips.
He hesitantly brushed the ice from a nearby pod, revealing the pallid, sickly face of what was once a living human male. A peculiar umbilical cord extended from his lips to somewhere behind him. While Mulder knew there was no hope for his man and he needed to move on to try to find Scully, his curiosity demanded further investigation. His hand traversed downward, brushing flakes from the surface as he descended, until his flashlight revealed a set of black, slit-like eyes, pointed chin, and pinched nose. Mulder's heart skipped a beat. He forgot to breathe. Here it was: biological evidence. Here was the living affirmation of his life's quest. If only Scully could—
Scully. This would be Scully if he didn't get to her quickly. His head jerked upward, the flashlight's beam swinging ahead of him. There would be time for observation later. He needed to find Scully now.
Mulder continued his cursory survey of the alien environment, never allowing himself to think about a single aspect for long. There was no time, he kept reminding himself. No time. Find Scully first. All the pretty green lights, the glowing walls, the smoky condensation, would mean nothing without Scully.
He came across a big room, cavern, really. All smoke and pipes and more eerie green light. It was all angles and lines. Metal twisted from an apex far above his head down the sides of the cavern, weaving itself like a living thing. The smoke was its breath, the gentle humming its speech. It was mesmerizing, like the beautiful abstract industrial artwork he didn't understand. Mulder understood this artwork and the striking regularity and symmetry of it all, the enormous expanse, the towering central tower. The way the floor beneath him vibrated with increasingly greater intensity the closer he crept to the center, and the quiet song those vibrations buzzed into his frozen ears. The pods moved along paths near the bottom of the roiling dry mist, hanging from their tracks like sleeping bats. The entire scene struck a chord within Mulder, as if he had finally reached some long dreamed destination. There was a moment, the breath knocked out of him, where he simply stood and admired the grandeur.
As Mulder pulled out his binoculars and broke his own reverie, the irony was not lost on him. He could not enjoy this as a simple slideshow; he was a man on a mission. His gaze searched for something, anything, out of the ordinary, that would give a hint as to Scully's location. He found it; some kind of cart that looked roughly human-sized. If he squinted and used a smidge of imagination, that white splotch looked like Scully's white blouse, the dark bit could be her jacket, and – was that a glint of gold? The implausibility of being able to discern such a small detail from such a great height didn't even cross Mulder's mind. He knew, with the same dumb faith he had in this last-ditch vaccine, those clothes were hers and she was nearby. This realization was enough to send him scurrying over the edge of the platform onto a ladder whose metallic rungs, slightly too close together to be for his tall human frame, were slippery and cold on his bare hands.
His feet slipped after misjudging the distance between the rungs. In his haste and lack of a solid grip on the cold surfaces, Mulder's fingers could not carry his body weight. With a loudly uttered curse word, he lost grip and tumbled downward to what he believed would be inevitable death. As he fell, he saw, instead of cliché past memories, his future pass before his eyes. He saw himself on the cold, hard floor at the foot of the ladder, spread eagle, arms and legs twisted grotesquely, head in a pool of rapidly freezing crimson. He saw Scully, an alien growing in her abdomen, emerging by ripping its claws through her pale, dead skin, and finally twisting to face its human host –
His fingers caught on a ledge and the flood of premonitions halted. His other hand caught the ledge and, with a renewed vigor, he swung himself on to the nearby platform. His fears would not come true. His fears would not come true. With tunnel vision, he climbed down to the level on which the cart lay forgotten. What twisted chance of fate had helped him land right here he would never know, but the clothes were hers, certainly. His flashlight again caught the glint of metal. Tanned fingers slipped beneath its cool surface, lingering upon the soft inside collar of her blouse.
The smooth metal brought back sensory memories of previous rescues. Twice he had rescued this pendant from otherwise sure oblivion. As Mulder put it in his pocket, he was again struck with a wave of pleasant irony. Of all the ways he could have entered this thing, he managed to enter at an angle such that he found her precious necklace.
It proved she was nearby, but just how near? He bolted to the maze of green pods nearest him and started down the first row, glancing at their faces as he trotted by. Nothing. He turned to the next row. So many people's faces, each staring at him with open, red-rimmed, lifeless eyes. Hopeless eyes.
This was taking too long. He would never make it down all these rows in time. He skipped a few, going with his gut that Scully would be on a later row. He pictured being on this search with her. She would chastise him for abandoning organized search methods, but he knew she wasn't on any of those. He stopped and turned. This row. His flashlight swung left, right, left, right, left –
Scully.
She looked even worse than he imagined. She was pale. Deathly pale. The green light emitted from inside the capsule seemed to suck all the pigment from her face and shoulders. Her hair fanned about her face, the once full, bright red now a faded, stringy brown in the unflattering green light. A cord extended from her mouth, pulsating in a situation-fitting unearthly manner. The worst parts of the scene, by far, however, were her eyes. Like lifeless, shadowed marbles, they stared at the Reaper. He could see thick, dark black rims beneath them, and although her eyes were open, those bright baby blues looked for the world like death himself.
He stared. What now? Could he wake her? His fists pounded the hard casing to no avail. He had to get her out of here. His flashlight rapped against the casing. Still nothing. He needed something heavy. Something heavier than a flashlight. His quick mind spun in circles, analyzing his recent travels. Something heavy.
The answer came suddenly and obviously: the tanks on the side of the cart. He sprinted back and struggled to unhook the tank. His numb fingers could barely bend into a fist. He inwardly chastised his stupidity in neglecting to bring gloves.
As if his journey back to Scully's side took no time at all, he found himself thrusting the tank at her face. What if he went just a bit too far? What if he broke her nose? He would never forgive himself. He slowed down, ignoring his inward dialogue's constant instance of hurry. Something was wrong. The air had changed flavors. Whoever "they" were, they knew he was here.
As the enclosure was punctured, the clang of the oxygen tank reverberating through his metallic surroundings gave way to the loud roar of rushing, escaping liquid. The fluid flowed freely against his fingers, down his arms, to the floor where, seeking a state of equilibrium, it loudly sloshed into the grating's tiny holes.
Mulder's fingers gripped the rough edge of the surface in a desperate attempt to reveal Scully's face. The hard substance felt like fiberglass to his fingers, scratching and chafing as he jerked piece after jagged piece away from his partner.
Mulder's eyes flitted back and forth over hers, over her entire appearance. She looked even worse without the liquid. Frightened. Sad. Tired. The cord in her mouth – could she breathe? – seemed not only grotesque, but also painfully uncomfortable. There was a moment of hesitation when Mulder did not know what to do next. He was torn between injecting the vaccine or ripping that cord from her throat while shaking her for dear life.
After a split second decision, he pulled the vaccine from his pocket and turned the vial upside down, as he had seen Scully do so many times before. Inject the needle. Pull out the plug. Remove. Squirt to eliminate air bubbles. He spit the cap from his mouth as he tucked the cloth back into his pocket. His trembling hand pushed the needle into the soft skin just below her collarbone.
He pulled it out and let the spent needle fall to the ground alongside its cap. The moment of silence and stillness that followed dragged on forever. Mulder's thoughts vaguely referenced a god in whom he did not believe or trust. He asked – pleaded, really – that Scully's god help her, as he knew she would if she were able. She blinked violently, rendering Mulder's thoughts useless and forgotten. The fluid inside the cord drained, sucking with it an alien life force.
"Scully?"
He lifted a hand to remove the cord only for a tremor to throw him against a nearby pod. His head hit the casing violently, the pain of mild whiplash shooting through his neck. His eyes closed for two seconds or a minute, he didn't know which. Gagging brought him back to reality, pried his eyes open against their will. Mulder's hands grabbed the cord and pulled. It was longer than he expected, its surface slimy, like a cheap sticky hand from a twenty-five cent vending machine. All the while as he pulled, she gagged. Her eyes flitted, hardly focusing upon his face. Could she see him? The cord kept coming and coming with no sign of ending and Scully kept gagging and she couldn't breathe and were her lips turning even more purple?
With a sickening pop of released suction, the cord finally broke free.
"Breathe! Scully, can you breathe?"
When she did not respond, he stepped closer and wrapped a hand around her cold, damp neck. As if on cue, a final gush of liquid spewed from her pale lips. Mulder could feel the heat of her few labored breaths on his cheek. Her mouth opened and closed as she tried to form words with her frozen lips. Mulder's hand moved forward to her cheek, the slimy residue rubbing off onto his hand, before she stammered through shivering lips, "Cold."
"I'll get you out of there."
He picked up the tank and smashed now from the bottom, the pressure release shooting liquid onto his pants. He smashed his way up, pausing only once to wipe an errant sprayed water droplet from his eye. It wasn't until he went to tear away the casing that he made a startlingly blatant observation.
Scully was naked.
He paused, blinked, and swallowed. It was obvious. Her clothes were lying in a pile fifty yards away. Rationally, he had known he would find her in this condition. However, his tunnel vision had been merciless. Until this point, he had only allowed himself to think about her face, about what he had to do when he reached her. Now, on the same eye level as her bare thighs, those shaking, pale, slender thighs, Mulder froze – and not at all from the cold. It took all of three seconds for his mind to wrap back around the situation: three seconds, in which Scully stood shivering, staring at the crown of Mulder's head. Three seconds to determine his necessary course of action.
She would freeze outside without clothing. Heck, she would probably freeze before they even got outside. Her own thin blouse and slacks would offer negligible protection against the elements.
Without a second thought, Mulder ripped his parka open, the zipper squealing and the snaps popping loudly in protest. The onset of chill to his chest was immediate and startling. He slipped his arms out, and the cold took every inch it could get, snaking through his collar, beneath the cuffs of his jacket, seeping like a live animal bent to strangle his last breath.
If he was this cold, he couldn't imagine what Scully was feeling.
Mulder laid the parka on the floor, then turned to Scully. Her eyes were closed now. Her once violent tremors had subsided into the intermittent quiver of her lower lip. She was reaching an advanced stage of hypothermia.
He wrapped his arms around her upper back, pulling her against his chest as he carefully lifted her from her would-be grave. He kept telling himself, focus on the task at hand, focus on the task at hand, but she was so close to him he could smell her, that lingering Scully smell ingrained into her hair from her shampoo. Although adrenaline levels were running on high, she was beautiful and she was naked and he was a man and all this added up to clouded judgment and vision and a general lack of focus.
He tried, though, to concentrate on what he was doing. Focus on the task at hand. His rigid, frozen fingers were smoldering coals compared to the temperature of her skin. Stiff goosebumps combined with a chalky residue from whatever had been dissolved in her suspension liquid made her skin hard to the touch. Her body weight pressed limply against his chest. God, she was so light. He'd picked her up before, but the fact still startled him. She seemed lighter now than ever, despite her complete dependence upon Mulder to lift her. Perhaps it was the adrenaline surging like lightning through his veins, or perhaps she truly was frailer than before. Perhaps the alien environment had extracted something physical from her system.
He laid her upon the parka, cradling her neck until the last second.
"Scully, can you hear me?" He asked, kneeling over her, eyes focused upon her still face. When there was no response, he lifted a hand to her cheek, stroking lightly as he repeated, "Scully, you with me?"
Her eyes flittered open in weak response. They were glazed. She was staring somewhere over Mulder's shoulder.
"Good. I need your help getting this parka on. I don't want to break your arms."
Scully's eyes moved downward to meet Mulder's. Those bright blue eyes, made even brighter than usual by the green light, stared at him unashamedly, dependently, devotedly. Her emotions bled through. Mulder could discern from that singular moment of eye contact exactly what Scully was trying to say. Her chin moved almost imperceptibly, and, by some miracle, her eyes remained open, watching Mulder through heavy lids as he worked.
He started with her right arm, one hand on her wrist, the other on the cuff of the parka. It glided through with such ease that Scully must have been aiding. The parka was huge on her; her fingertips did little more than peek through the cuff.
Now the other arm. He focused his eyes on her arm and the task at hand. Slip her arm through the other sleeve, gently now. Focus. This was Scully, and Mulder did not gaze at Scully. He did not gaze at Scully's face, he did not gaze at Scully's neck, he did not gaze at Scully's breasts –
He was definitely gazing at Scully. His eyes traced the contours of her jaw line, down the curve of her neck, to her protruding collarbones. Goosebumps like those on her back lined her body. Delicate white powder clung to the fine hair along her torso, especially along the slightly thicker line of hair running down to her navel, past her navel, to the thick swatch below. His gaze continued that direction, down her legs, so long from this angle, to tiny painted toenails.
Past her toes, mist rose from the ground. Condensation from – what? Everything was melting. Water was dripping all around them. The floor shook as if the entire structure was preparing for departure. Mulder was suddenly aware that these environmental changes had taken place some time ago. A renewed sense of urgency jerked him back to the reality of their plight. They were sitting in the belly of an alien structure, alarms blaring around them, basked in green light and urgency, and he was taking advantage of the situation to gaze upon his naked best friend.
His hand grabbed the bottom of the parka. He zipped it furiously in the face of urgency, in a flushed attempt to hide his inappropriate thoughts, and in retribution against his crime. He thought himself such a terrible person as he proceeded to snap the parka, as he tied it as tightly as possible so it might do her body some good. He didn't deserve her. She trusted him and he couldn't shut out his biological desires or curiosity when her life depended on him.
He closed the last snap, just beneath her chin. Her eyes were closed now. How long had then been closed? Had she watched his momentary slip? Would she remember any of this later?
He stood now, bracing his back against the smooth surface of a nearby capsule to pull his thick outer pants over his boots. Again, the cold crept in, but he hardly felt the difference anymore. He was hot with personal rage.
Mulder knelt before her, holding his pants by the waistband. Being so large, they slipped without resistance up her legs. Each time his fingers grazed her skin – over her kneecaps, along the outside of her hips, her waist – electricity shot through his nerves, straight to his chest and brain. Despite the emotional detachment he was forcing upon himself, his heart beat faster; his breathing became more shallow. The proximity was almost unbearable.
He was about to stand, to begin their desperate trek back to the surface, when he caught sight of toes peering from the bottom of the too-long pants. He looked at them for an instant – really looked at them. Pale pink iridescent paint caught the gleam of the green lighting. Mulder's brow crinkled. He had never placed Scully as the type to paint her nails such a girly color. He could scarcely remember her ever wearing the color. Momentarily forgetting himself, he touched her big toe. God, it was cold, and he was suddenly sick at the thought of exposing such perfect little pink nubs to the snow. What had he been thinking? He ripped the boots from his feet and peeled off his thick grey wool socks. Somehow, they were warm and dry. He slipped them over her toes, regretting the loss of the pink splash of color.
Mulder pulled his own boots back over his bare feet. The numbing cold crept quickly into his boots, a dampness proving even more uncomfortable. His cold feet brought back a fleeting childhood memory.
His mother ushered him inside after a long day's play in the thick winter snow. The time was shortly before they lost Samantha, so she smiled as she untied the scarf from his neck. The smell of hot chocolate heating on the stove wafted to his nostrils. She unbuttoned him, untied him, freed him of the cold so he could soak up the warmth of their home. When she pulled his socks off, her face lit with a concern he rarely saw after that evening.
"Fox!"
He looked down to see blueing toes and realized he could no longer feel them. She drew him a lukewarm bath which he sat in until, painfully, the blood flow returned to his toes.
"Always wear two pairs of socks in the snow, Fox."
One of the few useful pieces of advice he remembered his mother supplying as a child, and he didn't listen. He didn't listen then, and he hadn't listened now.
He scooped Scully into his arms. A bright light penetrated the gloom in the direction opposite the way he had come. He took his chances and started that direction. He was glad now, as they dodged streams of rising misty smoke and rapidly melting icicles, that she was so light, even though his clothes added bulk. Her head nodded against his shoulder. He originally thought, as he carefully moved along the slippery floor, that her nodding was an involuntary reaction to the side to side motion produced by his walking, but when he turned his head to check, wide sapphire eyes stared back at him. A thin smile spread across her lips, crinkling the corners of her mouth as always. Her smile was infectious; Mulder's own mouth spread into a grin without his conscious thought.
They reached the ladder. White light, presumably reflected off the snow, lit their upward-tilted faces. It was a long way up. Mulder set Scully down, slowly, confirming her ability to stand before loosening his grip. Much to his relief, she stood on her own. With a single arm still wrapped about her waist, he helped her with one, two, three steps to the ladder.
"You first," Mulder stated as he pushed her forward. She complied immediately, grabbing the highest rung she could reach. He coiled his arms beneath hers, comfortably grabbing that same rung as his feet settled onto the lowest one between her legs. His face nuzzled in just above her right shoulder, lips close to her ear.
"I'll catch you if you fall," he whispered, and they began the long trek up the ladder. They quickly settled into a natural rhythm. Scully's right foot, left arm, Mulder's right foot, left arm. Scully's left foot, right arm, Mulder's left foot, right arm. Up and up the shaft they went, the light above their heads glowing brighter, the atmosphere growing damper.
Water skipped along the wall, not along the ladder itself, but down the rectangular impressions running the length of its surface. A handful of drops splashed onto their handholds, freezing to the cold metal on contact. At one point during their ascent, Scully's hand grabbed one such frozen pocket. The hand jerked away involuntarily, and her body careened perilously backward into Mulder's chest. He held on tight and, using his legs as leverage, pushed her forward once again. From that point on, his arms never strayed from her sides; her closeness more than made up for his protesting muscles. Her body sagged against his as a constant reminder that as exhausted as he was, Scully's strength had run out before even beginning this exodus.
By the time they reached the top, the craft's vibrations had escalated to intense tremors. Mulder pushed Scully over the edge, one hand still holding the ladder while the other braced her socked feet. The once-dry socks were now damp to the touch.
He heaved himself up beside her. Water flowed copiously from melting ice on the ceiling and the walls of capsules stretching hundreds of yards in the other direction. The cold river on the floor collected each drop and herded the masses down the shaft they had just ascended. He found her in this river, legs stretched to one side, head leaning against the curvature of the wall. She coughed, sputtered, really, the change in humidity and temperature wreaking havoc on her respiratory system. Her hands grasped desperately at her chest. The river threatened to overtake her, to sweep her away into a cold tomb.
"We gotta keep moving. C'mon!" he urged, crawling over to her motionless body.
"I can't," she pleaded, head lolling back further.
Mulder did not wait for her response before wrapping his arms about her small frame, extricating a lethargic Scully from the cold river. "Yeah you can." Appendages spent from the climb, breaking through her imprisonment, and carrying her to the ladder, he threw her over his shoulders. The image of Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders sprung to Mulder's mind.
He glanced about him as he walked, taking in his surroundings. Aliens, awoken now, scraped at their containment shells. His mind flitted randomly over everything he knew about this place as his eyes flitted over the scurrying, grating movements of these unknown lie forces. Some kind of network had alerted the network to his presence in response to the vaccine's introduction. The structure itself was huge and somehow self-powered. This entire system must have required enormous amounts of energy. It was an engineering marvel. The possibilities of study and learning in this environment were endless.
The answer to every question he had ever asked was contained here. The defenses had not detected his entrance; he could have lurked for a few weeks, gathering his data and his proof. He could have emerged with everything he needed to thwart Cancer Man and his cronies. He could have had it all.
Once upon a time, he would have dropped Scully. He would have dropped her and reverted to his quest. She was one person in a planet of billions, to whom he had no relation, no legal or moral obligation to save. Once upon a time, he would have stayed, found his sister, saved the world.
As his mind drifted back to his current situation and the woman draped across his back, the realization hit him like a bulldozer. Mulder was Atlas. He was carrying the world on his shoulders: his world. If he so much as shrugged right now, she would fall. His entire world would come crashing down.
Never, not in a million years, would he shrug.
A thick cement pipe protruded from the wall above their heads, a thin trickle of water sprinkling down from its nadir. Although the chances were astronomical, it looked like the same pipe Mulder had entered. Even if it wasn't, surely it would lead to a similar exit. A scraping sound near his thigh brought a desperate thought: this may be their only chance.
It was too high for him to lift her. "Scully, reach up and grab that vent!" No response. The black beetle eyes nearest him twisted, pressing against the pod's exterior. It was going to break free.
"Scully, grab the vent!" he pleaded, louder this time. Still, no response. She didn't even shift. "Scully?" he asked, turning his head to see only the hood of his parka, face-down, wet tendrils of auburn hair strung out below. Something was wrong. He swung her lifeless body back over his left shoulder and laid her on the ground. Still, nothing. His fingers unzipped the first few inches of his parka, reached inside to feel the pulse in her neck. It was weak, it was slow, but it was there. He put his ear to her mouth, listening for a breath that never came.
The aliens growled around him, thrashing, angry in their confinement. The primal growls distracted Mulder for only an instant.
Before his mind told him no, and before he could overthink his actions, Mulder plunged his face downward the necessary few inches to encircle her lips with his. One hand pinched her nostrils shut, the other raised the base of her skull to open her airway. He exhaled a long breath and felt it expand her chest. Not all of his air at one time; her lungs were smaller and he could harm her. His hands moved downward to her sternum and pumped firmly. He knew he was supposed to push harder than this, he was supposed to not fear breaking her rib cage. Ribs could be mended, but life could not, the CPR instructor had said. Well, the CPR instructor could break his best friend's ribs if he wanted to, but Mulder couldn't do it. He couldn't remember. What was the ratio? Fifteen to every one breath? Thirty to two? Fifteen to two? Scully made him take the class. He did not pay much attention, knowing Scully would always be there to perform CPR if needed. Now she was the one who needed him and he wasn't able to help her and the whole circuitous situation would probably end in their joint demise and it was all Mulder's fault.
"Geez, breathe. Breathe!" Mulder's voice reeked of desperation. His eyes glanced about nervously. What number was he on? Ten? Fifteen? He had to give her another rescue breath.
She gasped and it was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard. His entire attention focused back on her, on that pale face lying against the lighted floor. Her head tossed back and forth as her throat convulsed, gasping for more shallow breaths. Her eyes suddenly jerked open as her mouth expelled a forceful swallow of phlegm.
Mulder wrapped his hands about either side of her face, stilling her movements. His fingertips traced her jaw line, pushed the hair out of her mouth and eyes. His nose nearly touched hers as he pleaded, "Breathe in. Breathe in, breathe!"
Suddenly, air was entering her lungs. Her chest heaved beneath him. As she replenished her oxygen-starved body, her lips moved fruitlessly against the air. The words came in a breathy whisper, her lips grazing the fine hair just below Mulder's ear.
"I had you big time."
And the smile, the smug smile, crept awkwardly across her numb facial muscles. They were about to be ripped apart by aliens, but he couldn't be mad at her.
"You had nothing," he whispered back, unable to let the moment pass by and unable to restrain his own awkward grin.
He pulled her from the floor as the fragile pod casings around them shattered, filling the air with sharp translucent fragments and the ground with that greenish aqueous liquid. He tried to ignore the thin green fingers creeping from every orifice and focus once again upon their route to freedom.
"Grab that vent!" he yelled again, his voice barely audible over the shattering. She coughed, another enclosure ruptured. He thrust her upward, feeling only a moment's relief as she transferred part of her body weight to the vent. "Pull! C'mon, Scully, pull!"
Three more ruptured. Two heads protruded, their skin slimy and wrinkled, necks defined with veins.
Scully stalled in the vent now in a seated, hunched position. She called back to him, voice muted, "Mulder…"
Two more. He grabbed the vent and found some last ounce of energy, some last drop of adrenaline to force his weakened biceps to contract. He was almost there, his momentum strong, when his leg caught. He looked down; it was held by a single hand's death-vice. His eyes widened. He pulled upward again, kicking furiously, and the hand released its grip.
"Keep moving, Scully!" Mulder said as he clambered inside with her. As she had not yet moved, he had no room to enter. Heeding this request, she gasped as she crawled, her body swaying. Each placement of her arm and each movement of her leg sapped energy she did not have. "Go, go! C'mon!" he urged her. Growling, creaking, scurrying sounds reverberated up the shaft below them. "Almost there, keep going!"
He emerged from the vent into a depression in the snow and ice. Scully leaned on the bank a few feet away, catching her breath. Mulder glanced over his shoulder to watch an alien reach up the shaft behind them only to be blown back with a wall of the craft's exhalation of icy condensation. There was no time to lose, no time to think, no time to stall. They scaled the side of the bank, Mulder once again half-beneath Scully.
The next thing he knew, the sky was blue again, the ground white and flat for miles. Scully collapsed. His own body begged him to succumb and collapse with her. He had saved her, and he yearned for the quest to be over. In his exhaustion, the snow looked like fresh-pressed white sheets on the world's largest, most comfortable bed. His body yearned to lay there beside hers, perhaps holding her closely, and take a well-deserved nap.
A sickening crack shifted Mulder's attention to his right. The ice behind them split before his eyes. The black crack snaked like the mouth of a malevolent animal aiming to swallow them whole. His mind ran through a range of profanities his lips were too cold to utter. He grabbed Scully and threw her arm over his shoulder for what seemed like the twentieth time in the past ten minutes. Then, stopping only to watch the white tented domes of the operation disintegrate into the ice, they ran, or rather, attempted to run, as neither of them were, by this point, in any such condition to even be walking.
The ground dropped from beneath them. They fell, into the snowy cloud, into the depths of the crater, their only physical contact and his only reminder of reality her hand around his shoulder and his around her torso.
When Mulder fell inside the craft, his mind contemplated a future without him. Now, as he plummeted holding that future, his thoughts drifted to the past. Like a dying man, his life flashed before his eyes.
Samantha's abduction. His mother leaving him home alone for two weeks when he was fourteen. High school graduation and the relief of parting. Oxford whizzed by in a blur of pretty women, late nights, and regret. Tens or hundreds of gruesome, bloody bodies in the violent crimes section. Getting into the heads of countless murderers and losing a bit of himself each time. Nights alone spent battling his primal desires. The desire to kill. His videos. Reassignment to the X-Files. Diana. More pain, more hurt. Losing Diana. An endless downward spiral of hopelessness. His early partnership with Scully and how he distrusted her. Scully winning his trust. Deep Throat. Scully's abduction and hovering over her comatose body. Cowering in a shower stall with Scully, waiting for sure death. Stuck on that godforsaken ship with the body of a centenarian. Scully shooting him. Trapped in limbo between life and death. Bees. Bambi. Black oil. Cancer. Faking his death. Scully helping him fake his death. Breaking into the Pentagon. Finding a cure for Scully's cancer. Losing his faith, finding it again. Closure of the X-Files. Scully pulling away from the bomb. Being really, really close to Scully's face. Smelling Scully. Holding Scully's hand.
That last bit sounded pretty good, actually.
And then they were laying face-first in the ice. Pain radiated through Mulder's kneecaps, as they struck the packed snow. A wind blew over them, whipping his hair and the fine hairs of his parka that framed Scully's pale face. He glanced up, his eyes protesting against the rapid pupil dilation in the bright light.
The biggest mothership of them all hovered behind them, for an instant an unmoving black cloud against the bright sky. It lurched forward, toward them. He watched, dumbstruck, as it floated over their heads. He gazed into its belly, into the green tracks of light and gaping black crevices carved into its sides. Not thirty minutes prior, he had been inside that thing. Scully had been inside that thing. It was mind-boggling and unbelievable and the only person here to substantiate his claims –
"Scully, you gotta see this. Scully?" He rolled over onto his side to see her, face-down in the ice, red lines on her forehead, a tendril of her auburn hair waving in the wind. He suddenly realized how very cold he was. Was she warm, her forehead pressed against the ice like that? She couldn't be. He knew he wasn't warm. He was freezing. He was cold. The will to fight drifted out with his body heat, radiating uselessly into the empty Antarctic. His mind slowed past the point cognitive function. He set his own forehead against the ice, and his eyes closed.
Blackness. Silence. The passage of time.
Something was rubbing his leg. He was laying on something, and it wasn't ice. There was pressure on his head, a light pressure. His eyes opened. It was bright. They closed again. The rubbing continued. This was the afterlife, and he was on his way to Hell.
"C'mon, Mulder. C'mon, Mulder."
Maybe not Hell. That was a nice voice, comforting, familiar. The voice reverberated from very close to his skull. He could feel the very vibrations of the speech. Maybe he was dreaming. The speech continued, a background song in the silence of his frozen ears. His eyes fluttered open again for longer this time. He was instantly very aware of a dull pain in his arms and legs and a sharp pain in his upper back. He groaned.
"Mulder?" The stroking stopped. "Mulder, we need to get up. Can you stand?"
Mulder's hazel eyes opened, this time permanently. The light bloom diminished, bringing to focus a vaguely humanoid silhouette. The brightness framed the parka fringe about her face like a fuzzy halo. Maybe there was a heaven after all.
The next thing he knew, he was leaning upon someone much shorter than him, pain shooting up his legs with each step. They walked beside a single trail of footsteps.
One hundred yards later, Mulder realized he was leaning on Scully.
Another hundred later, he remembered that he had made these footprints they were following.
Scully led the duo, the roles now completely reversed. Their relative energies seemed to function symbiotically. With Scully incapacitated, Mulder had risen to the occasion. Mulder's frozen body preempted Scully's rescuing actions. Now they struggled together across the barren terrain as if both drew from the same energy source.
Somehow, they made it over the low mountain ridge. Each step brought increased blood flow more memories of the recent events back to Mulder. He thought about stopping, turning around, and rummaging through the ruins for some substantiation of these unfathomable memories now flowing into his overloaded skull. He kept walking.
Tracks crossed randomly in the snow around Mulder's Sno-Cat, interspersed with oddly placed footprints. Soon they were next to it, and Scully removed her hand from Mulder's torso as she leaned, spent, against its hard metal frame. "Can you drive?"
"Yeah, I think so," Mulder nodded, opening the door. "Ladies first."
The corner of Scully's mouth twinged upward. She clambered into the vehicle and shimmied across the driver's seat while Mulder climbed in behind her. He slammed the door shut and went to start the vehicle before he remembered with great clarity the engine sputtering to a stop for lack of fuel not an hour prior.
"Shit. I'm out of gas, Scully." He closed his eyes and threw his head back against the headrest. Now what? Could he radio for help? It would be hours before anyone could reach them and in the meantime they might freeze to death.
"Mulder, the ice is playing tricks on your mind. You have a full tank."
His eyes shot open and focused upon the gauge. Sure enough, the arrow pointed all the way to the F. "How did –" he glanced frantically about the cabin, searching for a clue, some kind of trace evidence. He found it in the ashtray, a single half-used cigarette, bent in half. He would recognize that brand anywhere. His forefinger and thumb plucked it from the tray and flicked it out the window. When he turned his attention back to Scully, he found two blue eyes watching him. She smiled grimly.
Mulder sighed lightly as he set his hands on the wheel. "C'mon, Scully. Let's go. I think you have a hearing to attend."