A/N: I don't own X-Files or Hannibal. Thank you to everyone who has read this story! :)

Freedom of the Trapped Soul: Restriction

"Scully?" his voice is a cracked whisper. He feels like he's been punched in the stomach then uppercut in the jaw. She can't look at him any longer. She kept this from him for too long, didn't want him to blame himself for another thing that went wrong. So many things had seemed to go wrong in their lives, it just wasn't fair. But she can't protect him any longer- not when she's afraid to go to sleep at night.

"If I don't do this, Mulder, the charges return."

"Scu-"

"I won't have you on the run again," she shakes her head, breaking from his grasp. She doesn't tell him that this isn't about her, it's about keeping a watch on him. She doesn't tell him that they know he won't do anything while she's practically a working hostage. She can't. So she says what she can say. "They'll kill before you even have a chance this time. Please," she intones, finally looking into his eyes again.

Her words are lost to him as he storms from her 'home.' "Don't wait up," she hears him sneer as the door slams shut. She shouldn't have kept it from him. How could she? How could she not when she knew he would do anything to save her, even if it meant killing himself to prevent… …this. In both paths, she has lost Mulder. At least in this one, he is alive. She collapses into the sofa and holds her head in her hands.

"Dana Scully," a voice booms from across the hospital wing.

"Yes?" she turns on her heels, red hair spinning behind her. The man meets her halfway and hands her a folder. As her brow knots he only says a few words before walking away.

"I'm confident you'll make the right decision."

She was confident that the real FBI had no idea this "undercover" case was going on. Hell, she wasn't even sure if it was a case or simply a chance to "keep tabs" on her as well. She sighed and figured that they knew about the vaccine she was developing.

Despite her apprehensions on the validity on the claim that she was undercover because of a recent string of murders, Scully knew that there was something amiss in Baltimore-It wasn't just a murderer. Based on the killings, she knew it would be a difficult task, but that the killer had to boast in some way. He was a narcissist, and although there was a slim possibility of her finding the killer (not that they actually expected her to), it kept her in place and kept Mulder alive.

She didn't expect to find Hannibal Lecter, or better yet, for Hannibal Lecter to find her.

Scully would laugh at the irony of being back in the FBI after Mulder nearly begged her for years, if it didn't make her want to cry. "Come back," he said. "I need you on this case," he claimed. And this case. And this case. And this case. He needed his skeptic. Men waking up without their limbs in Ohio, Girls and boys vanishing for 5 years from Indiana and returning the same age as when they left. She wouldn't budge. She was stone.

She's sure this isn't what he imagined, when he whined that he needed her back. Dana Scully, once again FBI puppet. The Dana Scully of 15 years ago would have raged, fought back, beat the system. This Dana Scully was tired, deprived, and had too much at risk to make such silly gambles. The tiny print "We know where he is" at the bottom of the file cemented her participation. Looking back, Scully assumes this recent case; this "capture the Queen" game is the result of the impending date. It was ,after all, late 2011. There wasn't much time left and his recent behavior had rocked the boat.

She told him not to release those files.

Scully would never tell him that he was to blame; he thought enough about that himself. Instead she blames herself, claims that this is punishment, a penance of sorts for depriving him of his son, giving her mother so much stress before she passed, giving up when she was specifically advised not to.

She's knows that there aren't microphones in her office, lest they catch the murderer but get caught without a warrant to listen to confidential recordings. Her phone however, she knows is bugged, and her office computer tapped, just in case she thinks they aren't watching and she tries to order any tickets online. As if the car tailing her to and from her office every morning wasn't enough indication of that. But her house…now that was a different story. If the Lone Gunman were still around, she sighs deeply at the thought, they would have already hacked the system and had the FBI watching reruns of Friends. But things were different now. They were waiting for the moment she attempted to jump ship. Like she could. Her only solace was the home that Mulder visited, never lived in. She personally looked through it once a week for bugs, more-so if Mulder came to visit a particular week. It was her place to lay, to sit and think about her life in as much peace as she was allowed. They would not take it.

She was a prisoner, stripped of everything, even her identity. No longer Dana Scully, she was Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier, colleague and recently turned psychiatrist to Hannibal Lecter.

Her hair rose on the back of her neck and her skin crawled when she first met Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a subtle smile paste across her face. Charming, pleasant, organized- demonic. She could see it in his eyes, so similar to Donny Pfaster's and yet so different. His eyes were polished, elegant, his veil secured in place. But she could see him. He was a murderer. When he first schedules his appointment, citing that he needs a 'fellow colleague' to talk to, she knows:

He knows that she sees him.

The problem with hunting a monster is that you have to look into an abyss to find it. And sometimes, it finds you first.

"I like you, Dr. Du Maurier," he had said, rising from his high-back chair. He was across the small office in an instant, and she reached to her back for a holster and gun that she no longer possessed. "You have someone you want to protect." His breath is hot on her face, and she suddenly wishes that the FBI gave a damn to truly bug her office. Hannibal's hand is tight around her wrist, twisting it. She grimaces. "It would behoove you to tread lightly." She is disgusted with herself when she lets out a sigh of relief when he releases her. In his chair was a neatly folded note from her book.

"Veil; no regard for human life," it read in her looped, elegant handwriting. That paper was elegantly ripped from locked notebook in her desk- the desk at her home. Gooseflesh rose to cover her skin and she shuttered, her hands shaking as she composed herself enough to drive 'home.' He was going to kill her.

She sits in her chair at 'home', her head pressed to her hands. Her palms press into her eye sockets to keep from crying. Mulder wasn't coming back. She waits until nearly 2 o'clock in the morning, and he still hasn't returned- the one thing to keep her sane, Gone. Mulder's words or warning, or protection, echo in her head. But he isn't here anymore and it could be too late once he returns.

She picks up the envelope that arrived with Hannibal's visit to her residence earlier this evening. She remembers his smile, the way he eyed her and thanked her as if nothing had happened between them. She remembers Mulder shaking in anger, begging her to leave from this investigation, remembers it vividly though the very scene was nearly 14 hours previous.

Her hand holds Hannibal's referral request, brought to her in the same hands that twisted her wrist nearly a week prior. Jeremy Summers. Hannibal simply cannot handle him as a patient and he believes that psychotherapy from a woman's perspective for this particular client would be best.

Bedelia, as she is now, knows better than to refuse his request.

She heeds Mulder's warning. Dr. Hannibal Lecter was after her.

A Cobra is sliding itself around her neck and the only thing she can do is be still.

A/N: How did you like this chapter? Where would you like to see this story go? Leave me a review!