A/N: This fic happened because OH MY GOSH Y'ALL I just watched the X-Files movie (1998) and it was so awesome. The hallway scene, the ship under the ice—just ugh, wow, yes please. I still wondered how they got from "huddled on the ice" to "perfectly fine in D.C." so, you know me, I wrote a fic. Ta-da…
Enjoy, and let me know what you think.
All rights belong to the creators.
-moving darkness, warped sound, weight on his chest, breathing, shifting ground below—
A bright light.
His ears popped and his head snapped up and the woman crouched in front of him in a flight suit switched her penlight to shine in his other eye.
"I said, are you with me, sir?" she shouted. Even shouting, her voice was barely audible.
Mulder nodded. He didn't trust himself to yell loud enough to be heard, at least not without throwing up all over this woman. The floor bucked again and he shifted his head to look around. Helicopter. He was in the cramped bay of a helicopter, strapped—somehow—to a cargo net against the sidewall.
Something crinkled by his ear. Foil blanket—no, blankets. More than one was wrapped around him.
"How did you find us?" he yelled, and immediately regretted it. He swallowed fast, over and over.
"There was a disturbance in the force!" he thought she replied, but no, that couldn't be right. He tried to sit up, reach an arm out to get her attention again. He needed to ask her something, something important. The weight on his chest held him back.
Find us. Us. Something important.
He looked down. Amid the foil folds, damp red-gold hair and a bluish-white hand clutching his jacket. Scully. He got his arms to obey him and pulled her even closer. She was breathing, she was here. Scully was okay.
The woman noticed his movement and crab-walked over. Her name badge, he saw in the dim light, read "S. Carter."
S. Carter nodded at Scully. "She wouldn't let go of you! She keeps saying something, but we couldn't make it out!"
He lowered his head, straining to hear Scully's voice over the helicopter rotors. He wasn't sure, but it sounded like she was mumbling a continuous mix of Hail Marys, Our Fathers, and the elemental table. He rested his forehead against her hair and closed his eyes. He had really found her. She was safe now, and that was all that mattered.
Well. A giant alien mother ship hidden under the ice mattered a little bit. But mostly just Scully.
"Blessed art Thou among women…" Scully whispered.
Mulder drifted away into the darkness, feeling strangely warm again.
Dana Scully wrapped the scratchy hospital blanket tighter around her shoulders and snuck into the hallway. The industrial tile was cold beneath her sock feet. Everything was cold. Scully wondered if she would ever feel warm again.
The room next to hers was empty. Scully hitched her collection of blankets higher and continued down the hall, trying to look as purposeful as a bedraggled woman hoarding six blankets could manage. No one passed her. Far ahead, she could hear beeping and phones ringing and human voices, and the rush of an elevator door.
She found him, three rooms down. Alone and asleep, guarded by the same battalion of monitors and IV drips she had disabled and left behind.
He didn't stir when she entered, or when she touched his leg. She nudged a chair as close to the bed as possible and deposited herself in it, tucking her legs up and wrapping herself so thoroughly in blankets that only her face remained exposed.
Another hospital bedside vigil. She could hear Mulder's voice inside her head: We've got to stop meeting like this, Scully…
The doctors had said they were worried about his heart, which meant now Scully was worried about it too. The seemingly mundane risks of overdoing it while shoveling snow paled in comparison to the epic strain Mulder put on his system in the Antarctic. To rescue her.
In her own case, the doctors had poked at her and stared at her and one of them had shaken his head and muttered, "Immortal, maybe? IDK." The nurses kept eyeing her as if she might spontaneously combust. Clearly, she would have to run her own tests to get any answers at all. Just as soon as she stopped feeling like an icicle.
She snaked a hand out of her blanket cocoon to brush the hair off Mulder's forehead, where it was drying and sticking.
I need you… You make me a whole person…
What the hell was she supposed to do with that?
If she left, what did that make him? Half a person? A third? How much of a person was she?
Not that she wanted to leave him. Far from it. But staying should be a free choice, made out of trust and respect, not guilt or fear of what might happen if she left him alone for more than two days.
He shifted under her touch. She hesitated and withdrew her hand. "Mulder?" she said softly. "Mulder, it's me."
He opened one eye and then the other, and tipped his head to squint at her. "Hi, me. What're you doing out of bed?"
"I've stolen all the blankets and I'm hiding from the nurses."
He nodded and closed his eyes. "You go, girl."
She checked the monitors, reassuring herself with numbers and the repeating spikes of heart activity. He would be okay. They both would. She could run tests, determine the origin of the—
"Scully?"
She inhaled sharply and looked down. "Yes?"
"Just making sure—you're still there." His eyes remained closed, but he patted hazily at the edge of the bed, searching for her. She caught his hand, tucked their fingers together, and tugged it into her lap to hold.
"I'm here," she confirmed.
Three breaths went by. "Will you stay?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
She respected his belief and his dedication. She trusted him with her life—and more than that, with her soul. And if there was some guilt and worry mixed in, then perhaps, as her mother said, that's what love was made of.
"I'll stay." She squeezed his hand gently. "I'll stay as long as you need me."
The silence stretched so long she thought he was asleep again. Then his fingers gripped hers tighter.
"I always need you, Scully."
Walter Skinner concentrated on breathing mindfully and keeping his hands at ten and two on the steering wheel. The urge to just haul off and shout at people grew stronger every day. Not that Agent Scully deserved to be shouted at (today). She was just the closest person to hand.
"You really didn't need to drive me, sir," Agent Scully protested from the back seat.
"We're going to the same place," he pointed out. "And considering everything that's happened, I would feel better knowing you at least made it inside the building in one piece." Also, I promised your mother I wouldn't let you drive for a few days, he added silently. Your mother, who keeps calling me. At work. I need to speak to the switchboard operator.
He cleared his throat and tried to catch Agent Scully's eye in the rearview mirror. "Have you made an appointment to talk with someone?"
She shook her head, her gaze fixed out the window. "Talking about it won't help. I just feel so angry. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of people with me in those pods. And they're all dead now. No one will ever know."
She kept speaking. Skinner always felt uneasy when Agent Scully got going with the alien science thing. He didn't fully understand it—he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to understand. He always wanted to tell her to "hold that thought," and then go find Mulder for her, so his two agents could work their weird science magic together and leave him on a safe plateau of plausible deniability, from which he could defend them against the inevitable repercussions of their actions.
Like these endless hearings.
But she was talking, and traffic was slow, and his ear was cheaper than therapy, and so he listened. And the more he listened, the angrier he got right along with her, so that by the time he pulled up at the side entrance to the Hoover building his knuckles showed white against the gray vinyl steering wheel.
Breathe mindfully. In. Out. In—ah, fuck it.
Scully paused with her hand on the door latch. "I suppose you're going to tell me not to bring this up at the hearing."
"I can't counsel you on what to say or not say, Agent Scully." He put an arm over the seat back and turned to face her. "But I will say this—anger is a force. Anger gets things done. Control it and use it to your advantage, Agent Scully. Don't let it control you."
She nodded once. "Thank you for driving me, sir."
He pressed the unlock button. "I'll see you inside."
He waited to make sure she got inside safely, and watched her steel herself for what was to come. Her back straightened, her chin lifted, her stride lengthened, as she walked forward to face the future.
God help them all.