TITLE: "Too Little Too Late" ~ an X-Files by A Once Told Story
SUMMARY: My very first one-shot. Mulder is seriously wounded in a manhunt and now the suspected murderer holds Mulder hostage, threatening to kill him if he is not allowed to escape. Meanwhile, Scully is on the phone with Mulder and the suspect to try and bargain for Mulder's life.
WARNINGS: Implied character death.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own anything from, surrounding or related to "The X Files" what-so-ever. I only claim the rights to this text as a whole.
The constant rain had already soaked the sandals she'd worn when arriving to this place, now Dana Scully was feeling the cool water on her toes inside the police officer's sneakers. She was pacing under the cover of the orange tent roof which really did not give much protection from the rain at all, all the while listening to the constant breathing in her headset. She wrapped her arms and the damp coat tighter around her chest, hoping to keep out the cold that was really coming from inside. She gazed up at the timeworn facade ahead, searching for movement through the busted windows like she had for the past hour-and-a-half. No sign of anything, no lights, no movement. There was only what light reflected from the giant spotlights brought up by the police to illuminate the alley in front of the abandoned industrial building.
There was a weak cough in her headset, a close but yet so very distant sound that sent chills down Scully's spine. It reminded her of exactly how helpless she was right now, how little control over the situation that she had.
"Scully?" His voice was so weak, so tremulous that she could hardly recognize it as his. "You... still there?"
"I'm here, Mulder, I'm here," she replied assuringly, hoping that a strong voice would send some kind of comfort to her partner. "Hang in there. How are you?"
She heard Mulder tried to move, grunting in obvious pain as he did. "It won't... stop bleeding. I'm gonna bleed out, Scully."
The words cut into her, piercing her heart with fear that they would become reality. That they had become reality. She could handle putting on a strong face for Mulder's sake, to make him feel the slightest better. But the clock had ticked away so fast, the situation escalated to such a level that not even Scully's screaming heart could deny the obvious facts. Mulder was dying, and from the looks of it now, all she could do was wait and listen and try to keep her partner awake for as long as she could.
As she turned around, Scully faced local officer Channing and the plain but compassionate face that she carried. Next to her stood the commander for the SWAT teams that had been called in. Commander Haydon was in charge of negotiations with the suspected murderer that at gunpoint held Mulder hostage. So far, the suspect would not get on the phone with anybody. Twenty minutes after he had hid himself and Mulder inside the building somewhere he had allowed Scully to keep Mulder on the phone as an insurance that he was still alive.
She'd seen him get shot, right in front of her eyes. Mulder had followed the escaping suspect into the building where a stray bullet had caught him in the stomach. Had she just ran fast enough, or reacted sooner, this might never have happened. She'd been so exhausted from the long chase that her partner had outrun her. The shot echoed through her head, a sound rocking her to the core. Then the thump of Mulder falling to the ground and the suspect locking the doors around them.
She could still hear the madman's maniacal shouting from inside, etched straight into her memory.
"Come inside and I'll blow his brains out!"
A sob rose from her throat, but she swallowed it like the ball of fire that it felt like. "Mulder, will he still not talk to us?"
There was a brief moment of silence in which not even Mulder's shallow, uneven respires could be heard, her only indicator that he was still with her. Scully found it hard to breath herself until the sounds returned in her ears.
"He says he wants... the SWAT teams c-called back."
Another round of coughs. From the sound of it Scully suddenly felt sure that Mulder was coughing blood. Her heart contracted with pain - she was losing him. She gazed at commander Haydon, who in his own headset heard every word they said. There was a reflection of her fear in his hazel eyes, eyes that at that moment reminded her of Mulder's. Haydon feared for the success of his mission, possibly for the life of another employee of the government. Scully's fear was the same, and still another. She feared for a man who she could not even begin to imagine what she'd do without. A man who, even in the most difficult times of her life, gave her a reason to get up in the morning.
A man she'd learned to trust and grown to care for more than anything.
The entire crowd of police and SWAT's in the alley came to an abrupt halt, as did Scully's heart, when a gunshot rang out. She locked her eyes, wide open with fear, on the building locked entrance. A heat went through her paralyzed body, followed by a chill so cold she thought it had drained all life out of her. Fear kept her terrified mind from thinking, her breaking heart from beating.
"Mulder! Mulder, are you there? What's happening? Mulder!?"
"He says it was a warning shot." The relief rained over Scully like the million droplets of water from the darkened heavens above. "Next he'll-"
There was another grunt from Mulder and his rugged breathing vanished again, soon replaced with another voice. Scully could never have imagined that the guy who called out a death sentence on her partner just a couple of hours earlier could generate such a silky soft tone.
"Next I'm going to shot the agent if you don't call back your forces from the roofs."
Beside her, commander Haydon mouthed the words "keep him talking" while giving hand sign orders to his attack teams. Scully forced herself to focus on this one task she was given, telling herself that she could still save Mulder's life.
"Sir, I am special agent Dana Scully and I-"
"I don't care who you are. I don't care what you want..."
From the corner of her eye Scully could see that one of the snipers on the neighboring building's roof lowered his weapon and left his position, but another team was moving from the opposing building into the hostage site. What the hell are they doing, she thought with a growing panic in her chest. Were they risking a bullet to Mulder's head in order to get to them?
"... I ain't afraid to use this gun if I don't get what I want."
Keep him talking, keep him talking, keep him talking. Pull yourself together, Dana. You must do this.
"I don't doubt that you are, sir, but I think you have not failed to notice that your hostage is dying from his injuries. We have paramedics here, if you would allow us to send two of them in we might be able to save agent Mulder's life."
There was no change in the suspect's dead serious tone. "Nobody is coming in here until I am at least three miles out of here with nobody following me."
The SWAT had entered the building, now working their way down to the entrance hall where Mulder and the suspect were assumed to be. Scully's heart beat faster by the second, adrenalin regenerating her body heat but not being able to quench the icy cold that still emerged from fear.
Keep him talking.
"I am asking you to rethink this, sir. It is highly possible that your hostage will not survive that long and you will have no leverage if he doesn't, will you?" Now she was beginning to sound worked up, and that would not help with the situation. "You would stand accountable for the death of a federal agent."
There was a pause. She had caught the suspect's attention.
He let out a breath she had not realized she was holding. "Listen. He is not dead yet. You can turn this around. We can still save him..."
The first tear fell from her lashes when the words were spoken. It ran down her rosy, cool cheek, leaving a trace of heat after it that, mixed with rain and wind that continued to blow relentlessly, soon became an even icier cold. Scully could feel her pulse slowing down until every heartbeat seemed like it passed in slow motion. A straight face could not hide the tears that were impossible to stop.
"We can still save him," she repeated, more to herself than to the man who was taking everything away from her. She was struggling for words, fighting not to start begging this homocidal stranger to spare Mulder's life. She saw into the building, saw the man standing there with the phone in one hand and the gun in the other. She saw Mulder, her Fox Mulder, draining away on the floor, more lost to her for every second of inaction that passed.
"Please," she heard her voice whisper in her head. "Please."
"FREEZE!"
Gunshots. Four or five fired shots. A scream. Running footsteps and a struggle. Another scream, a call for help. Then nothing. All this within a few moments. Moments that could never be reversed or taken back or changed.
Like the moment when a stray bullet robs a man of everything.
Like the moment when a stressed mind's decision causes a life to fall apart.
Like the lost moment that causes a rescue to be just a slippery, short, life-important moment too late.