~January, 1991~
Scully rubbed her hands together frantically as she walked to her car. Despite her gloves, she couldn't shake the chill from her body. Scarf wrapped tight, coat wrapped tighter, she reached into her purse to call Mulder, who had been left home with Anna after she got called into the hospital to work late. A semi truck driving down the wrong side of the highway. A lot of people were hurt.
It was nearing 3 a.m., but she knew that even if he wasn't exactly awake, he would answer her call. Mulder could be a bit overbearing sometimes, especially when she got called in to work late at the hospital. For all of the time he knew her and she worked in a bar, he still was worried when she worked after dark. He couldn't wait until she started her own practice, which was her goal, and she got to establish her own hours. That was years away, though.
"Scully?" he asked when he answered the phone, knowing it would be her. It sounded like he had been sleeping and had been woken with a start. He wouldn't have been mad if she didn't call, he didn't treat her like a child. But Scully knew that he felt better when she did call. She preferred he called when he was on assignment out of town. It was nice to be cared for.
"Hey. Just walking through the parking lot now."
"Great. Were you busy tonight?"
"Really busy. There were four people that came in from the wreck with fatal injuries."
"I'm sorry Scully," Mulder told her, knowing how much she hated it when she couldn't save someone.
"I'll be okay. As soon as I get to see my baby. Was she good?"
"Perfect, just like she always is. But she's getting too big for that crib." Anna had recently learned how to climb out of her crib herself, and they were worried that she was going to end up hurting herself one day. Truth be told, although she was on the small side, she was getting too large for the crib. It was just hard to admit that her baby wasn't a baby anymore.
"I guess we'll have to hit up some furniture supply stores this weekend then. Hopefully our jobs don't—ooompf!" A sharp pain radiated through the back of her skull, and she knew instantly that she had been struck. With something. Her vision blurred and her legs gave out. She hit the pavement beneath her without ever seeing the face of her attacker. This all took place within the span of a few seconds.
Meanwhile, Mulder was on the other end of the line, screaming Scully's name because he knew something was wrong. It wasn't just a bad connection that came between them, he'd heard something make contact with something else, her cry out in pain, then a large thud. He knew she'd been attacked, and Scully had hardly hit the ground before he was gathering Anna out of her too-small crib and on the phone with the police. Mulder explained the situation, buckled Anna in her car seat, and raced toward the hospital.
He knew now how she felt when she had to pull up to the hospital on various situations for him, not knowing whether he was alive or dead. Mulder suspected it was a little different for him, though, since he was actually in love with her, while she only saw him as her best friend, but it was not the time for him to argue semantics with himself. The police had only just arrived when he pulled up, using his badge to his advantage in getting through the officials to the paramedics. There she was, on a stretcher in the back, head wrapped in bandages. His heart dropped upon seeing her.
"Are you Agent Mulder?" an older male officer asked him as Mulder stared, wide-eyed, at his friend. His everything.
"Yes," he said shortly, not taking his eyes off her.
"I'm Officer Carol, I responded to the call."
"What happened to her?"
"Whoever it was hit her in the back of the head with a brick. She never saw it coming. Took her purse and ran off with it. We're checking the hospital surveillance to see if we can get a lead off it, but nobody saw anything."
"How was she when you found her?"
"She's suffering a concussion. There was a lot of blood but once they cleaned her up, not a lot of damage done. They'll be taking her in soon and admitting her, probably having her stay the night."
"You'll keep me updated with your investigation, right? And if you need FBI resources, I'll be able to provide them to you—"
"Mr. Mulder, I understand that she's your girlfriend, but this was just a simple mugging. Her purse is most likely not even a mile from where we stand now and her cards will show up once whoever did this to her realizes that you've cancelled all of her accounts. Thank God it wasn't something more serious; that we aren't dealing with a rape or kidnap. You should be counting your blessings that none of your guys had to be called out here tonight," the officer explained to him. But it was not the time to cross Fox Mulder, and especially not the time to shed light on all of the horrible things that could have happened.
Anna had fallen back to sleep on his shoulder, despite being roused from sleep twice earlier. Not even with her baby eyes had Mulder wanted her to witness what was going on, so he had grabbed a heavy pink sleeping blanket before he left the house. Covering more of her head with it, Mulder stared the officer in the eye.
"Are you a religious man, Officer Carol?" he asked.
"I'd like to think I am, Agent Mulder."
"Well I'm not. Find this guy," he said before briskly walking toward his unconscious friend.
After calling Capt. and Mrs. Scully to relay the news to them, Mulder sat vigil at Scully's bedside, watching the monitors keeping track of her vitals to make sure that everything was just as the doctors and nurses said: fine. Anna continued to sleep in his arms, completely clueless to the world around her. Mulder was glad for that. When her grandmother and grandfather arrived at the hospital, just as shocked as Mulder was to be there, they offered to take her home before they left. But Mulder couldn't relinquish her to them, and they understood. He felt that Scully was going to wake up soon, and it would be better if the first thing she saw was her daughter.
His intuition was right, not two hours after her mother and father left her room, Scully's eyes started to open and her fingers began to jerk. Mulder grabbed one of her hands, so happy she was going to be back with him.
"Hey sleepyhead," he said sweetly when her eyes opened all the way. She scanned the room and decided to settle on him, obviously in pain. He hated to do it, but Mulder let go of her hand to hit the call button several times.
"How are you feeling?" Mulder asked as the nurses fussed around her. In her mind, he could see her asking them questions, wanting to administer medical attention to herself, but she had almost no idea of going on.
"My head," was all she could answer him with, touching the bandage.
"Yeah, you got hit in the head. But you're okay. Everything's okay now."
"What… happened?" she said slowly.
"Someone hit you and took your purse. But you're okay."
"I can't see straight."
"It'll take a few minutes. You were hit from behind."
She kept a tight grip on his hand as they were updated on her condition. If all went accordingly, she would be out of the hospital by that afternoon. It was still quite early, and Anna woke up for a third time before she was expected to. This time, though, she was able to cuddle up with her mother in bed, which he knew made Scully feel a lot better.
For a moment, Scully forgot that she wasn't supposed to lean her head back on the bed and suffered the pain of laying on her 32 stitches. She groaned.
"Why did this have to happen to me?"
"Scully, you could have been really hurt. I can't tell you how grateful I am that you weren't raped or…"
"Okay, Mulder, I get your point."
"I didn't know how hard it was to wake up on this end of the bed."
"Now you know what you've put me through."
"I'm just so. Glad. That. You're. Okay," he punctuated his words with kisses to each of her fingers. She never wanted to do this to him again if she could help it. His eyes were still worried and his actions were caring. Scully knew it was going to be a long time before either of them fully recovered from this ordeal.
She was sitting upright sleeping, resting her head on a delicate nest of throw pillows that Mulder had created for her when the door to her room popped slowly open. Mulder crept silently in, telling himself that he was going to watch her because of the dangers the concussion presented to her, but really only wanting to be close to her to know for certain that she was safe. 100% safe. The officer's words had made sense to him when he said them and they kept playing over and over in his mind. They were lucky that she had only been hit in the head with a brick and robbed, no matter how horrible it was. There were so many people out there that may have done exactly that and more. When the bed dipped, she stirred.
"Mulder?" she asked sleepily, and he noticed she jumped a little.
"Yeah, it's me. Go back to sleep."
"Why are you in here?"
"I just… I need to make sure you're going to be okay through the night. You know, with your head injury."
His wavered voice put a smile on her face. She put her arm around his head, which she had laid in her lap, and began to relax as soon as he did.
And that was how Mulder and Scully began sharing a bed.