Chapter 7 Forced to Forget
Room 19 Shado installation, security sector
exact location classified
Scully walked to the door, stopped, took a deep breath. She went in. Edward Straker sat in a hospital bed, legs folded underneath him, one hand holding a large book, the other resting on his chest. His head was against a pillow, and his skin was so devoid of color she found it difficult to see the difference between the cotton, and his own flesh. He wore a cream jumpsuit, and a powder blue turtleneck , the color of it was diminished by the intensity of his own blue eyes. His usually perfectly groomed hair had grown to chin length so platinum strands curled past his ears. He was hopelessly thin. His flawlessly shaped mouth was set in the strict line she was so familiar with. He set down the book, and looked off in the distance at something only he could see.
Scully just froze when she saw the box on the wheeled table. The scent from the box told her what it contained.
He'd gotten up in one liquid gesture, moving with a dancer's grace. He shoved the book under his bed. He then crossed to a sink, and poured himself a mug of water.
"Is that box for me? Do you think you could give it to me directly, and then oh I don't know, tell me why you send them?"
The mug fell, shattered. The shattered remains mirrored the expression on his face.
"God. Da-na. Of course. Alec Freeman talked you into coming here, didn't he? He's forcing you to be a part of this. "
"If you keep speaking in riddles, I swear to God I'll put a bullet in your head!"
"Is that a habit of yours, shooting men who love you? "
"What the hell did you just-mrpffhhhh"
He'd gone to her, pulled her powerfully into his arms.
"Forgive me. I won't offer you any excuses. I will tell you this. My loving you is no riddle. You're free to respond anyway you want. Dana, love has no basis in science. I prided myself on my self control, and it all went to hell. You know what's funny? I feel more in control, I feel whole. Just give me a few minutes to hold you. To remember what this feels like. To know that I'm touching a part of my soul."
"Stop it!" She pulled away from him.
There was desolation in his eyes, but his expression turned stern.
"Dana, were you brought here against your will?"
"Your friend Freeman had me kidnapped by that goon Ambrose. Freeman said you were suffering. He said you'd run tests that showed you could trust me, but not Mulder. Is that why you had my coffee drugged, Ed? Was it so easy to get rid of a woman you'd used and then thrown away because it threatened your damn organization? "
"You don't know, do you? You don't know what it's like to be in the same room with you. Easy? Easy, you think it was easy? Why do you think I came, Dana? That was me with those stupid clothes! Look, damn you! "
He walked to the closet, pulled out the clothes she'd seen him in.
"I couldn't bear it. I'd gone through the motions, but I wanted to see you one more time. To try and understand what you'd done to me!"
"Alec told me it was you. What right do you have to claim I'd ever done anything to you? Do you even know what it's like for me to see you? The man I was forced to forget. The only man I-"
"You have feelings for Mulder. I saw it the day you were drugged. I didn't need to look at the reports. I thought he wasn't right for you. He's never recovered from what happened to his sister. The porn, the affairs, the humor, behind all that is a struggle, Dana. He does care for you. I didn't want to get in the way of your happiness."
"You bastard! Still making decisions for the little woman. Did it occur to you to ask me what I wanted?"
"You would have stayed with Mulder." Ed said sadly.
"Oh so you're a mind reader now?"
"Your career is important to you, but Mulder always has needed you. He draws strength from you. If I had made you choose it would have hurt you more. I wind up damaging you again. Did Alec tell you that once that batch of the amnesia drug fails, it makes it impossible for the subject to ever be given the more powerful drug again? Dana, I will see to it that you get back to Mulder. First, you need to trust me. If you ever cared for me, you have to trust me-"
"Trust you? Don't make me laugh. If I ever cared for you? Do you have any idea how crazy you make me, you rotten bastard?"
"Dana, would you marry a dead man?"
"What? That's it. You're insane. You're oohmm-"
He'd taken her and kissed her again. She began to respond. He moved away, held her, hands gently on her face, tilted her head so that he could easily look into her eyes.
"No matter what happens, no matter what you may think of me, or what's driven me all these years, just know this, Dana Scully. You're a precious human being in a less than precious world. I love you with such significance that it scares me. I'm assuming you know that Shado has your psychological profile, and that initially I believed that your tie to Mulder was so tight, you'd tell him if we offered you a position with Shado. He thinks we are the monster. We aren't. What I want you to hear is that I too am bound by computer reports and doctors and psychological profiling. I volunteered for a test and it proved I was pretty much wired to be emotionally attached to you. It was no drug in my system. It was just you and I. If you decide to go away, if Mulder is in your heart, I will let you go. I just never will be whole without you. I just will hate that crazy man for the rest of his life for having you yet taking you for granted. "
"Do you have any idea how utterly stupid you are? You'd just let me go?"
"Dana, listen. You have to do what I say. Do exactly what I say. Our lives, and other lives depend upon it." He let her go.
"Fine," Dana sighed. "Tell me whatever other unbelievably irrational story that's rattling around in your head. I'm used to the crazy, I have Fox Mulder as a partner."
"Dana, he's a good man. He just wasn't ready for what life threw at him."
"Oh and I suppose the great Commander Straker was? Running around full of a crazy drug? Sending flowers to a woman he forced to forget him? Right. Nothing wrong with that."
He smiled for the first time, and she felt her heart go supersonic.
"Don't even play that card, you creep."
"Card? What now?"he stammered, genuinely perplexed.
"You smiled at me!"
He chucked softly, took her hand.
"Dana, you can't stop me smiling at you no matter how hard you might try. Your face is like those white roses. Sensual, pure and elegant."
"Take your adjectives and stick them where the sun doesn't shine, Ed. And for God's sake, put some weight on! You'd blow away in a faint breeze. What idiot is your doctor? How can they allow-"
"Dana, will you please stop insulting me and listen to me?"
"If you loved me so much, then why did you stop? Why did you have to be real? Why couldn't it just go on so I could dream about a mysterious admirer who loved me? No, its just a damn X file! No, I'm just being a foolish woman who still remembers a little girl who would have been thrilled by all this? Once upon a time, remember? But there's no place in the life of Dr. Dana Scully for fairy tales. You know what drives me the most crazy about you, you bastard?"
"I've braced myself. Go ahead. Wound me fatally. Again, I should add. I seem to recall you shot me once."
"Wipe that grin off your face, or I'll wipe it off with a scapel, Edward Straker! You shot my partner, I seem to recall that! I was right the first time."
"I had no sense. I should have shot him in the head, now that I think about it. But do go on."
"You LOOK like a handsome prince, and let go of my hand. You stopped sending me flowers, and Mulder made fun of it. Why, Ed? Why did you stop? You wrote on the card I need you Dana."
"So Alec put that in the last box. Yes, I wrote that. I meant it. I do need you and you need me. You ask me why it stopped. I'll show you." He squeezed her hand briefly, stepped away and then without expression he peeled off the top half of the jumpsuit, let it fall to his ankles. He removed the turtleneck, took off his white cotton undershirt.
She gasped, used the wall to brace herself.
Across his chest from his left rib area to his right shoulder was one thick scar, obviously made with a blade of some kind. He'd been autopsied.
Alive.
"I'm sorry. You had the right to know." He slowly put his clothes back on, looking like he might faint. His breathing came in little gasps of air.
"How can you, how could you-"
"Live, Dana? Live after they cut me open? The doctors don't know. I have a theory, but no way to prove it. So I just need to survive. Now you have to help me make everything right again."
"Ed, who-"
"I was taken into a UFO. They forced me down, cut me open. They didn't-oh Christ,Dana. They took my vital organs. My heart. I wish I was dead. I should be dead. Dana, could you love a dead ma-"
"Oh my God. Oh my God. Ed, don't. Don't think about it. Ed!"
He had sunk to the ground, shaking uncontrollably. She hurried to his side.
"I'm going to call for a tranqui-"
"No! Oxygen, and syringe-in table drawer. Garden variety -anxiety attack -from reliving the trauma of- Hurry -you and I don't have much time. We have to stop-I can't breathe-Dana-uhh"
She'd plunged the needle into his arm, then she helped him onto the bed, put the nasal canula in place, turned on the oxygen. She stroked his hair. His breathing quieted.
"You need a haircut, Commander." she told him tearfully. He was beginning to respond to the drug.
"Still the insults, Doctor? I happen to agree. They-well they wouldn't allow me scissors at first. I was a suicide risk after what happened. Think you could cut my hair? I can't do anything about what a freak they turned me into. A man without a heart. Some of my own men and women were sure that's what I was, and now I am exactly that. I can at least look decent. We don't have a lot of time. Just do it quickly. There's a package wrapped in plastic in the toilet tank, it has my scissors from home, compliments of my Miss Ealand . Thank God, they haven't found it yet. Please, Dana. No more questions. We have so little time to save the world from the fucking aliens who turned me into one of them."
"You keep saying we're running out of time. What do you think is going to happen? Just tell me that, Ed."
"Alec Freeman has been my friend for almost fourteen years." Ed said solemnly.
"Yes, I know the two of-"
"He intends to kill me. That's what this is all about, Dana. He brought you here to allow me to have some happy moments, a hope that I'd have intimacy with the woman I love, before he kills me. " Ed paused, eyes filled with fear, eyes full of terror. "Get the package will you?"
Reluctantly, she did as he said.
"All right, here, but you must be wrong. Freeman is your best friend-"
"Dana, I know. He's allowed us to be with one another. Then he'll shoot me dead. Dana, this room is no ordinary room. It's a cell. It's my tomb. Dana,cut my hair. It's the height of foolishness, but I have my pride. If I can't stop him, I want to die looking like a Colonel again, damn my vanity, but that's the way it is. I've been locked up here. For my safety, he claimed. He let Miss Ealand visit me, he knew she'd never accept what was going on unless she was free to see me. So thank God, she became my last opportunity to get out of here alive before you walked through the door. Now you know the horror of room 19. Now we both are in danger." he fell into silence.
His hair dropped bit by bit onto the floor. He sat erect, every inch the Colonel, determined to win the war that now she'd been forced into.
She couldn't help but feel she was preparing him for his burial.
"Well, Doctor, do you approve?"
"You look like you again. You still need to eat. Wait, how the hell are-are you even eating?"
"Yeah if you can call a semi-liquid diet eating. Got a comb?"
"Why do I always fall for types like you?"
"Prince not so charmings?" He'd accepted the comb from her handbag, whipped away at his hair ackwardly. He was shaking badly and she feigned not noticing it. She sighed melodramatically and yanked the comb out of his pale hand.
"Heroes, you comedian. First Mulder, now you." She began to comb his hair into place.
"Heroes have to have fair, helpless maidens to rescue. You don't fit the bill."
"Oh this again? I'm not fair?"
"You're not helpless. And I'm no hero. I'm terrified, Dana. You've always helped me to be whole. You've always helped me to be human. I'll never be human again. Look at me, tell me what you see."
"I see the man I love. Now stop feeling sorry for yourself, and tell me what you're planning."
"Did you just say-" he smiled, eyes glowing, mouth set in a suggestion of a smile.
"Ed, get on with it!"
God. He's hot when he smiles, oh hell, that man could blink and be hot. Jesus Christ, I've turned into Mulder. I might as well suscribe to big bosoms weekly. A man with no organs. Living and breathing. Mulder would drool over this big of an X file. If Alec harms one hair on Ed's head, I swear I'll cut off his balls and make Freeman eat them raw. But I'm a scientist. Ed's hot. That truth is out there, Mulder. Poor Mulder. Forget Mulder, for pity's sake. Think about yourself for once. I need Straker, and I want Straker, and I love Straker, and he's an alien, and Mulder would have a stroke at hearing me say that, and I'm absolutely crazy. Crazy about a man I was forced to forget. So be it.
"Ed! You keep talking about time running out-"
" Sorry. Every time I look at you anew you get more beautiful. There's no explanation in rational science for that. What does your partner say? Right. Redheads are hot. You're hot . " Ed chuckled. "Yes, yes. Here's what's going to happen, and here's what I need you to do-"
As time went on, and Ed described what he planned, Dana Scully grabbed her cross, and held it tightly.
"Any questions?" he asked.
"I need you to do something for me. No excuses, no protests. Just do it."
"I trust you." he replied simply. "What is it you want me to do?"
Without saying a word, she took her necklace off her neck and put it around his.
"Ed, you're so damn thin. I couldn't do this otherwise. No. I don't know how you feel about faith, but we need a miracle, you need a miracle, and I want you to wear my cross."
"Dana, at one time I wanted to be a priest. I've never mentioned that, not even to Alec. He already has plenty to tease me about. When they pulled me aboard that UFO, I kicked and I screamed and I even bit. I was reduced to an animal. But before they cut me, in my only peaceful moment aboard that UFO , I prayed for God to take my soul. I don't believe in organized religion, I'm not sure as a scientist that I can understand God, but I've always known the power of faith. Maybe I'm here now for you. Maybe it wasn't His will that you forget me. Maybe you're destined to be at my side. Maybe we can convince Mulder together that I'm not the enemy. We have to have faith, and bloody mindedness. There's no going back for us. Faith." he smiled solemnly. "Have some of that patented, kick ass Scully faith."
"Ed, oh my God. What are we going to do?" Dana sobbed. He wiped her tears away and looked at her sternly.
"My darling, my sweet beloved Dana, I'll tell you what we"re going to do, we're going to win."
God. Even now, the heart they took from him is open to You. Let him be right. Let us-let me win.