I don't own Scully, Mulder, Fowley or any of the places mentioned in this story. I don't own anything but the ideas and words and I hope you like them enough to ask for more. But don't pay me because then I'll get into trouble.
I wrote this for my dear friend, Lily, who asked for a post-FTF fic where Scully has a 'psychiatric condition'. This is what came of that prompt and I have to say, it's probably my favorite thing I've written in a long time.
As always, please review - I thrive on the feedback and I can't get better at what I do if you don't tell me where to start!
Love you, Lily! I hope it's everything you wanted and more!
MWAH!
Firefly
He's staring at her again. Why does he do that? He's always looks expectant - like she's supposed to do something or say something and she just doesn't know what it could be.
He is always around, though. When the bird lady came to talk to her, he sat on a stool in the far corner of the room. Sometimes he sits in the chairs in the hall, peeking through the door when the other lady comes to give her medicine or make her do the tricks. Sometimes it's creepy and she wakes from nightmares and he's standing beside her bed, his hand pushing hair from her face. Those are the times she can hear him shushing her and saying something she doesn't recognize. She doesn't like those times at all so she tries not to have nightmares but she has them anyway.
But it's his stare that really bothers her. She can't get away from his stare. Stuck in the uncomfortable bed, her hands and feet tied down - she's a circus animal chained to pole and made to do tricks for the gawker. Now, Dana, I'm going to loosen your restraints. Can you put your hands in your lap? Good! Follow my finger with just your eyes. Good! Now, touch your nose with your right hand. And now your left. Good! She gets agitated easily when they make her do the tricks. Their condescending voices, the patronizing tone and the stupid restraints and the way he watches her - if they'd just let her get out of the bed she could get out of this place.
But they won't untie her all the way. They loosen the belts around her wrists and ankles, unbuckling the one across her chest so she can sit up, but she's never free. And they won't tell her how long she's actually been in the place. She thinks it's been a long time but she doesn't really know. Some days, she doesn't remember waking up at all - its like her day starts in the middle. Everything is quiet and black like in sleep and then suddenly she's in a room with people and doing the tricks and everything seems ordinary and calm except in her head.
In her head, there's lots of cold and things are chasing her and she can't see shapes or colors and nothing makes sense. It's dark and loud and wet and she gets afraid. Then a quiet happens so suddenly she thinks maybe she's dead but after a while it's comforting and soft, like a blanket, and she likes it. Then it's the middle of the day again and the tricks and the gawker and when will the stupid clock stop ticking? Tick tick tick. That's all it does all day long, like it doesn't have anything better to do. Tick tick tick. Stop it, stupid clock!
She's screaming but she doesn't remember why. They are running to her, their hands reaching for her and their faces stern and the man in the white coat has the big needle again. Her hand is grabbing something soft and fleshy and she sees the lady's eyes bulging and her lips are a pretty shade of purple. The gawker is there, his face terrified and wrinkled with fear and she doesn't understand. She barely feels the needle, as usual. But the medicine seems stronger this time and she feels it much more quickly than before. The room gets the watery look and starts to sag in all the wrong places and then she's asleep again.
"Mr. Mulder, you have to understand. These things take time - lots of time and patience."
"She's been here for six months, doc, with little improvement that I can see. She still doesn't talk unless you count the screaming. You've still got her tied to that bed. For godsake she just tried to kill Susan! I just don't understand why nothing is changing."
His voice starts to rise and his gestures grow in their scope. He is frustrated. Sad. Scared he's never getting her back. For six months, he's practically lived at the George Washington University Hospital Psychiatric Ward, sleeping in chairs in the hallway outside her room and only going home to shower and change his clothes. Somehow he's managed to keep his job. The X files are still being investigated, but with little help from him - they replaced her with Diana Fowley months ago.
He can hardly bring himself to walk into the Hoover building most of the time. On the really hard days, he doesn't even try to go to the basement, opting instead to sit on the couch in the corner of Skinner's office. Diana brings up the day's paperwork and he methodically dots the I's and crosses the T's. She brings him a sandwich from the lobby deli and Skinner tries to talk to him about anything but her. But it's all just noise, static between his ears until the work day is through and he can go back to GW. Back to her.
They won't let him stay in her room because it upsets her more. She still doesn't know him and the thought makes him cry every time - he thinks about it much too often. His eyes have developed a slight but permanent redness, the bags underneath carrying the full measure of his loneliness and despair. She doesn't know him. And like everything else horrible that has happened to them in the last five years, he believes it's all his fault.
Skinner was sitting beside his hospital bed when he regained consciousness. The Assistant Director had a grave look on his face as he recounted the details of their rescue from Antarctica. An Australian SAR team from Casey Station located them on the ice pack about one hundred yards from a massive crater. He was unconscious and barely breathing. She was only semi-conscious, the muscles in her arms rigid as she held him tightly against her. The SAR report stated she struggled violently when they tried to separate him from her - the bones in her right arm broke with the force of her resistence.
While his recovery had been slow but text-book, hers had been anything but. Her unexplainable behavior at the rescue site forced the SAR team to put her in a chemical coma for safety aboard the medivac. At the hospital, her body temperature stabilized and the medications were weaned but she remained unconscious for weeks. Her vital signs continued to fluctuate despite her outer improvements and her heart fell into ventricular fibrillation twice, requiring electro-cardioversion. After nearly two months in the Cardiac ICU at GW, she was finally stable enough for a room in a step-down medical unit.
But it quickly became apparent that all was not well. After regaining consciousness, she didn't speak except in blood-curdling screams. She stared blankly at the walls and was only minimally responsive to any external stimuli. She suffered from nightmares, waking at all hours of the night or day screaming, shivering and drenched in sweat. They had to feed her intravenously because she wouldn't allow anything into her mouth, and she had to be put into restraints. There were even horribly violent physical outbursts, where she injured several staff and even broke her own leg. That's when they moved her to the psych unit. They put thick leather belts lined with sheep's wool on her wrists and ankles - a larger belt lay across her chest above her breasts to keep her from raising her torso off the bed.
He shakes his head to try to regain some focus, some balance - it doesn't work very well.
"Doctor Green, I'm going to wind up in a bed right next to her soon. I don't know how much more of this I can take. Something's gotta help. There's got to be something I can do or you can do or we can do together to bring her out of this."
His heart is already broken, shattered into tiny pieces the first time she looked right through him with her fractured blue eyes. Every day she doesn't see him, he dies a little more inside.
"I don't have that kind of answer for you, Mr. Mulder. I've told you this before - I don't know if Dana is still in there. But I'm not giving up looking for her. And you shouldn't either."
He stares into the empty future in front of him.
"Her name is Scully."
She's falling. There's darkness below and smoke and wet and she's going to fall forever. Above her hovers a monster with sickened grey skin that looks like it melted and he's chasing her down the rabbit's hole. She's Alice in Nightmare Land - all around her, nothing is as it shoud be and it's all dark and scary and wet and she thinks maybe this is what her hell will be. Good Catholic girls didn't wind up in places with melting monsters - she must not have been a good Catholic girl after all.
There's a light above her, bright and white and probably God about to tell her all the bad things she did. But she doesn't hear anything. No great trumpet blast to herald in The King of Kings. No choir of angels singing praises unto The Lord. Quiet. Except for that damn clock. Tick tick tick. She hates that clock. In fact, she's decided she hates time. It just moves past without so much as a by-your-leave and she feels wasted.
What was she about to do? It feels like something important but she can't remember. Opening her eyes, the familiarity of her room fills her vision. No more melted monster. No more smoke. Another nightmare and of course, the staring man is standing close by. Something feels different this time. Just a little, but different. His hands are not on her face. He's not talking to her. He's just staring. What's his name? She thinks hard and tries to remember if the bird lady ever said it. She can't remember.
He always looks sad, like he's staring at a very sad thing and it only makes her more irritated because she doesn't want to be a sad thing. She wants to get out of the damn bed. She wants to leave and put on shoes and walk in a crowded place. To scratch her nose when it itches and put the tv on whatever channel she wants. She hates Oprah. Why do they always put it on Oprah? She talks like she knows everything and nobody could really know that much. Tick tick tick.
She shifts her eyes to look at him, something she readily avoids most of the time. He has a big nose. Not too big and she kind of likes it - it fits nicely underneath his chocolate eyes. His ears are proportional, not like the huge flappy ones on the man in the white coat, and his eyebrows are a little darker than the deep brown mop on top of his head. Jesus, has he ever been to a barber? Or shaved?
He's staring again and just before she gets agitated she realizes she's staring back at him. The irritation stops suddenly, like a car hitting a brick wall. That's never happened before, but then she's never looked at him this way either. Their eyes are locked together and she thinks for a second that she's looked at him like this before. The moment of calm fades quickly though and she can't pinpoint the feeling but something is tingling on the back of her neck and it's making her nervous. It feels like the way ants look when you step on their ant hill - chaos and panic and ants everywhere and she feels like they are all starting to sting her.
She's screaming but this time she knows why and she doesn't remember remembering but she knows she's screaming his name. She feels cold all over - and wet. The room is turning watery again and her throat feels full, her breath choking in and out. Why is everything melting? He's leaning over her bed and hovering too close. His lips are moving - they are really beautiful lips she thinks and maybe she'll tell him so. But not now. The smoke creeps in from the edges of her vision and she thrashes her head back and forth trying to see the melting monsters. They come with the smoke and the cold and the wet and they steal her breath.
Jesus, she looked right at him. Stared right into his eyes. And then she flipped out again, but she was looking at him like she actually saw him. And she wasn't just screaming this time. She was screaming his name. It's the first word she's said in almost eight months and despite the terror behind it, he can't help but feel a flicker of hope.
She's still in there.
Waking up is agonizingly slow, like pouring molasses from a glass jar in winter. She wouldn't mind so much but she can hear low voices and hushed whipsers and she hates being talked around. Concentrating on her hands, she forces the darkness away from her brain and searches for something to hold on to. She finds something warm and soft. It feels safe and she grabs tightly and squeezes, using the stability to finally break through the fog and open her eyes.
The staring man is Mulder. That's what the bird lady called him. And her name was Fowley - like fowl. Birds. The Bird Lady. She didn't care for the bird lady so she forgets about her quickly. But Mulder. He's there, staring again but she doesn't feel the ants or the cold and she's not annoyed. His eyes are softer than before, moist around the edges with fresh tears and she doesn't understand until he moves his fingers in her hand. Soft and warm - and safe. She doesn't let go.
It's been six weeks and three days since she said his name and held his hand. She's come a long way since then and now they are talking about out-patient therapy and letting her go home. Watching her improve has been bitter-sweet. The woman she was before isn't the woman he sees every day. She's still as beautiful, with her auburn hair falling around her face, those bewitching blue eyes and that ridiculously determined chin - everything appears the same. But she is not the Scully in his memories.
She's medically stable, her wounds healed and cardiac issues long-since corrected, and she has reached therapeutic levels on her psychiatric medications. Her outbursts are few and far between these days, and rarely violent - he calms her easily when she's frightened. She made them take the clock out of her room which he thought was strange until she said it made her think of lost time. But she doesn't know why.
She has no memories of her life before. The early therapy sessions, the ones after she started talking again, were horribly painful for them both. She sat in her chair, head bowed low, hands trembling in her lap, and holding her breath unconsciously while the doctor probed about the nightmares - about her past. Did she know what the monsters wanted? Did she recognize what she called The Rabbit's Hole? What about before? Did she remember her work? Did she remember her partner? Being a doctor? Her mother?
There were several break-downs during those first few weeks. He watched in tears as she struggled to come to terms with the fact that she simply had no idea who she was before. Her own tears fell unincombered, something he'd seen only a precious few times before - each one burned a scar on his heart. Now, watching her move uncertainly through a life she doesn't remember, he wonders if he shouldn't get as far away from her as possible - everything that's happened is a direct result of his very presence in her life. He wants nothing more than for her to be safe. Happy.
He thinks of all she's lost in their time together. So much more than the time ticking away on the clock. What's left for her to lose? Her spirit - the thing he cherishes most about her and which he can still see hidden behind her fears. She's still a fighter, and he knows he won't be able to live with himself if that is taken away, too.
He has made up his mind again - he'll leave after she's discharged and setteled into her apartment. After her therapy schedule is arranged and Margaret gets moved in. He won't make a production of it. He'll visit, spend one last day drinking in every detail of her, and then he'll just be gone. And she'll live the rest of her life in a safety he has never been able to provide.
She's been in therapy for half an hour when he arrives at the hospital to take her home. The session isn't going well and the charge nurse tells him she's been asking for him. Guilt filling his chest, he hurries to the therapy room. She's sitting in her usual spot, angled with her back to the corner and able to see both the door and the windows on the adjacent wall. When he appears in the small window at the door, he can see her looking expectantly for him.
"I'm sorry."
She gives him a weak smile, the one she uses when she's afraid but trying to make him believe she's not. He takes her hands in his. Her nimble fingers are cold and trembling and unsure, and he holds them with both of his, encircling them and gently rubbing them together. He brings them to his lips and softly kisses them while looking into her frightened eyes. She's searching his for comfort. Stability. She looks at him now in ways he can't remember ever seeing before.
Before, she was strong, and though he doesn't see her as weak, she clings to his presence in a way she never did not so long ago. For the rest of the session, she doesn't let go of his hands and he doesn't try to let go of hers. Slowly, the trembling stops and the warmth returns. When they are dismissed, she waits for him to lead her out of the room, something she hasn't done in a couple of weeks and it worries him. Something's not right. When they get to her room, instead of taking her bags to the car, he sits on the side of her bed and gently coaxes her down beside him.
"I'm sorry I was late."
"It's ok."
"Tell me what's bothering you."
He knows she prefers directness. It confuses her when the staff or her mother try to get answers out of her without actually asking anything.
"I was afraid."
Her hands are trembling again.
"Are you still afraid?"
"Yes."
"What are you afraid of?"
She takes a deep breath and looks at the floor, tells she's developed when she worries she's done something wrong. He shifts on the bed to face her more directly, looking into her eyes and gently squeezing her hands.
"It's ok."
"I was afraid you weren't coming back. I'm afraid you don't want to stay with me."
He thinks of his decision to leave, to spare her any more heartache and fear. He still believes he's the cause of everything that's happened to her, but he can see in the lines etched around her beautiful face that leaving would be the worst thing he could do to her now.
"Do you want me to stay with you?"
"I do. I feel...safe...with you."
"Then I will always come back."
And he means it. No matter what it takes, for the rest of her life, he will always come back.
Six Months Later
Journal Entry - September 14
My name is Dana Katherine Scully. I was a doctor. An FBI agent. A daughter and sister. I liked bubble baths and ate healthy things - he says I ate a lot of salads but I don't understand that because I don't like lettuce now. How did that change? If I am Dana, then what happened to all the things that made me?
I woke up sweaty again, but I don't think I had the nightmare. Mulder sleeps soundly beside me and he always wakes up if I have the nightmare. I wonder what his life was like before. Sometimes, not remembering anything about my past is more painful than the nightmares. I know he loves me - his eyes are truly the window to his soul and I can see myself there so clearly. I wish I could give him the memories I no longer have. He talks in his sleep sometimes and I hear my name and he's smiling and I wonder what he's dreaming. Are they good dreams? They must be - he never wakes screaming and sweating and afraid - like I do.
I feel guilty sometimes, not really knowing the person I'm supposed to be. He says I used to roll my eyes at him a lot, because he was spooky and didn't make sense and believed in things that were not scientific. I never roll my eyes at him now because nothing makes sense. Nothing except for him. He is the only thing that makes sense - the only thing that fits me anymore. My clothes are too big. He says it's because I was sick for so long and didn't eat real food. I believe him but I don't remember being sick. This apartment is too big with too many rooms and too much space. I get afraid when he's not here - I start to thinking the monsters are hiding in the other room. I know they aren't real now, but I still get afraid.
Sometimes I think it would have been better if I hadn't gotten well. Mulder says he will always be happy I got better, but I wonder. When I read through this journal and I see pages I don't remember writing, filled with words that don't make sense and angry scribbles, I wonder what kind of life he is living with someone who doesn't remember. He quit his job at the FBI to stay with me. His partner, Diana Fowley, came to visit with me when he had to go sign his papers. She said we met in the hospital, that I called her The Bird Lady, but I don't remember that. She said his work was the most important thing in the world to him, that she couldn't imagine him giving it up for anything - or anybody - but me.
I watch him sleeping and it feels natural, like breathing - I don't have to concentrate on it like I do so many things now. I watch him and he sleeps and his eyes flutter and sometimes he reaches out to touch me and his hands feel like something I've always held. When I look at him, I don't remember what I saw before, but what I see now feels like home. I see his eyes and his lips and I can see his heart when he smiles at me. He told me once he's always loved me, even before he knew it, and that nothing about what happened to me changed that.
But he's never said that I loved him. I wonder if I did before. All these months I've spent trying to remember loving him, but I don't. I feel the most guilty that I can't share that memory with him. I know he wishes I could. He never says 'I love you' and I think it's because he doesn't want to push. He doesn't want to force me to say it back. I wish I could tell him. I wish I could tell him I love him now, but I'm afraid. Will that be enough for him? He's fought so hard, wanting me to get back what I lost. What if I can't? What if who I am now is all I'll ever be? Does he love this me, or only the me from before?
Somewhere in the Future...
She is as beautiful as he's ever seen her. Walking along the shore with their fingers intertwined, he watches her stare at the horizon, the ocean breeze sending whisps of auburn hair floating around her face. He loves how her slight frame hardly makes bare-footed impressions in the damp sand and he smiles internally at the simplicity of their existence. She's been especially quiet on this walk and his curiousity is getting the better of him.
"Penny for your thoughts."
Without taking her eyes off the horizon, she smiles as the waves leave kisses on her naked toes.
"I'm thinking how much I love it here. How much I love watching the waves just appear, rising up against gravity from the emptiness of the surface, and then vanish like ghosts when they reach the shore."
Her voice is refelective. He's wants to dig deeper but he knows if he waits, she'll empart more of her beautiful mind than he could ever uncover with any probing question. So he waits.
"The waves...they both frighten me and give me hope. My life, my past and the things I'll never remember about it - that's my ocean. A vast, empty horizon that holds secrets I may never know. But out of that emptiness, here I am. Against all the odds. And now I have new dreams. New hopes."
They've stopped walking now and she's turned to face him. Looking down at her face, glowing in the setting sun light, his breath escapes in silent awe. She is every bit as strong and resilient as she was the day he met her. And after all thats happened to her, she is still the only woman in the world that can take his breath away simply by being herself.
"And what are your new hopes?"
She doesn't hesitate.
"I hope I'm as happy for the rest of my life as I am right now. I hope the life I've built is one that always feels useful - that I always have a purpose. I hope my mother knows I'm certain of her love and that she is always certain of mine. I hope the people I hurt in my first life have learned to forgive without the apologies they deserved. I hope I live this life in a way that brings honor to my first one. That I can never be accused of wasting my second chance. That I get right in this life what I may have gotten wrong in the last."
Her left hand leaves his right and she puts the warmed palm against his face. He leans into it, always feeling electricity when she holds him this way. He raises his hand to cover hers and moves it a fraction to place a gentle kiss into her palm.
She looks down to their feet, where the waves disappear over the sand as if they never existed at all.
"I vanished once. And there's a part of me that will always be afraid it could happen again. But you were there when I woke up."
When she lifts her face to him, the moisture on her cheeks shimmers in the fading light. Her eyes are bright and alive and he thinks again that he is seeing the most beautiful version of her yet.
"I want to tell you thank you. But more than that, I want you to know I believe I wouldn't be here today if it weren't for you. I can't imagine how hard it must have been for you to look at me every day - to see the woman you knew and know she might never return. And when it became obvious, you still stayed with me. As much as it must have hurt, you never left my side. You gave me something to hold on to, something to count on - a touchstone."
He can't help the tears that fall down his face. Leaning down slowly, he moves his lips in whipsered softness across hers, tiny kisses touching every inch of her perfect skin. There is so much he wants to say, so many things he wants to tell her, but his voice isn't cooperating. So he lets his body speak for him, taking her in his arms and lifting her smallness from the beach. Holding her tightly to his chest, he burries his face in the tender flesh of her neck and breathes in the scent of her. When his voice finally returns, he says the things he's been afraid to say.
"I love you. Everything you were before. Everything you are now. You've mourned for memories lost for long enough. Now, we make new memories. Of this life. Our life."
As the setting sun burns it's way below the ocean horizon, she kisses him as if it's the first time and smiles.
"Mmmmm. Our life."
The End