Office of Dr. Keith Morrison

Friday

31st January 10.30AM

Mulder sat at the end of the long couch and stared at the painting over the fireplace. Dr. Morrison was pouring a cup of water from a jug and placed it on the end table next to Mulder, then poured one for himself before sitting in his own chair.

"So." He sipped his water then placed it on the mantelpiece before turning his attention fully to Mulder. "Is there anything in particular you'd like to talk about today?"

Mulder could only snort.

"Nothing?" Dr. Morrison waited a moment for Mulder to answer then was about to speak when suddenly Mulder's voice broke the silence.

"Did you know that I graduated from Oxford University?"

"No I didn't."

Mulder wasn't sure if he believed him but continued anyway. "I graduated with first class honors…summa cum lade."

Dr Morrison waited for Mulder to continue, not wanting to press him and leaving him to dictate the pace.

"No here's the punch line...I studied psychology." Mulder sneered and turned to look out the window. "I mean I studied it so well I was recruited by the FBI to be a profiler and yet here I am." He gestured around the small room. "Can't even sort myself out."

"You see it as a sign of weakness that you are here." It wasn't a question and Mulder wasn't prepared to respond. "You think that anyone who needs help is weak."

"I think that I'm wasting my time here. I'm wasting your time and worst of all,- I'm wasting her time."

"The lady who accompanied you on your first visit." Another statement. Mulder was beginning to feel the furling of anger at all the definitive statements Dr Morrison was making, as if he could read Mulder so easily after only meeting him once before. "She is your…"

"Friend. My best friend." Then after a moment he added, "My only friend."

"And why do you think you are wasting her time?"

"Because this won't work." Mulder stood and walked over to the window. The snow was still falling and he wanted to watch it hit the ground feeling jealous of the way it melted so easily into nothing on the road. "I'm sitting here of my own free will. I made the decision to seek her out, to seek you out. To seek help out. But it won't work."

"Why not?"

"Because it's me." He turned to face Keith and rested his back against the window. It was cold and damp, old wooden windows letting the condensation gather. He felt it soak into his sweater and begin to dampen his shirt but he didn't care. "I want to get better. I want to be able to deal with everything I see, what happened to me…and hear and feel but some defense mechanism that I've built up over the years won't let me."

Dr Morrison waited for Mulder to continue but when he seemed to stumble he probed. "What kind of mechanism?"

"The kind that stops my voice from letting out certain words. Letting me speak of …what happened.." He walked back to the couch and sat down again but this time on the edge of the cushion as if he wanted to be ready for a quick escape. "I sit here and I look at this picture," he pointed up the farm scene over the fire. "And wonder if there is an ulterior motive for it. If it has a hidden meaning and my comment on various aspects of the room might mean something. The hap hazard decoration is actually carefully placed ornaments each significant to certain characteristics of the viewer depending on which one he or she comments on. I sit in silence wondering if it means something whether I break it or not. I'm constantly working on overdrive to anticipate any emotion I might have so I can barricade myself against it, to the extent that its only a remote feeling -as if I'm watching someone else experience it."

Dr Morrison watched Mulder look around the room, his eyes glancing at all the different trinkets left behind by various other therapists.

"Everything I do is to stop myself from feeling. Everything I do, everything I say."

"What do you feel?"

"Nothing."

"What about her?"

Mulder didn't need to ask who he meant and he cursed himself for letting her slip into this room at all. This wasn't supposed to be about her but then he mused, maybe it was all about her. Wasn't she the reason he came back. The reason he was going through this. The feel of her hand on his skin, her fingers in his hair and her lips on his flooded through his body and he had to take a deep breath to focus his mind back on where he was.

"She is the only chink in my armor." He said it with a crooked smile that didn't reach his eyes but encircled his heart.

"So you feel for her?" Mulder's silence was consensus enough. "How do you feel about her?"

"Sad." He slumped back into the couch and closed his eyes. He knew Dr Morrison was talking him into a corner and he knew the path this conversation was going to take but he couldn't help it.

"Sad? Why?"

"Because she needs more than I can give her."

"Has she said so?"

Mulder laughed. "Scully would tell you she doesn't need a thing. She is too independent. But she does need it." His voice sobered and lost any trace of humour it had. "She needs someone to care for her…love her."

"Do you?"

"I can't step into that role." Mulder avoided the question and although he knew Keith would see this he hoped he wouldn't push him. "I feel like I'm on borrowed time."

"How do you mean?"

"I died that day." His words sank into the room through a thick, heavy silence. "But I got lost in the abyss and now I'm just barely surviving. But it won't be long before they find out I'm missing and come after me."

"Is that why you are hiding? Do you see your emotional release as a beacon for them to find you faster?"

"Yeah," Mulder sneered again. "How dare I try to live again? How dare I try to get over this? This brandishing was supposed to last forever and I think reliving it would only make it worse."

"Reliving it?"

"I was in that cell for what felt like years. They told me later it was only a month or so but time there didn't matter. Nothing did. It was a dream. A bad dream -but just a dream. And as long as I can convince myself of that then I'll be fine." His voice was low, barely audible. "That's how I survived in Seattle for so long. With nothing to remind me of that past life there was nothing to tell me any different. I made new friends out there but didn't let anyone get close. It was almost 4 years without any human contact until last month, when she turned up."

"You knew her before?"

"We were partners in the FBI for years prior to …all this. Then I moved to Seattle." Mulder shook his head. "I ran away to Seattle, without saying goodbye." He remembered packing up his apartment and writing that letter to her. "But then she turned up unexpectedly, by coincidence. I'm not sure who was more shocked, me or her." He smiled ruefully now as he remembered her face as they came face to face. "She was the first one to touch me. The first one I allowed to touch me. Shit…I couldn't keep my hands off her." Lost in thought for a moment Mulder allowed himself to bask in the feel of that first kiss in Seattle, grabbing her so roughly like they were in an old movie. "But then it all came flooding back to me. Why I had left and why I had left her behind."

His smile faded, the colour drained from his face and his eyes lost focus. He sat forward and clasped his hands together.

"They told me she was there." His voice was low, barely a whisper and Keith had to strain to hear him. "They told me…they caught her too. He said he would…"Keith waited in silence for Mulder to finish his thoughts. Mulder's hands gripped tighter, his knuckles white, his fingers pressing into the back of his hand, leaving marks. "I thought if I let him… If I didn't fight it…" His tears spilled over his cheeks, unnoticed. "If I didn't fight they would leave her alone. As long as they were with me, they were not with her."

Mulder held his breath. The words that had been floating in his mind, infecting him were finally out, but he felt no better.

"So you were protecting her." Mulder made no response to Keith's words. "Everything you did in there, against your will as it was, you were doing it to protect your partner. Do you see that?"

Mulder shook his head. His lips were clamped tightly shut, as if he were afraid that he might say more.

"When you left her, what did you feel?"

"Shame. Hot searing shame." Even now Mulder could feel his face redden and he closed his eyes over until the heat from his cheeks receded.

"You haven't told me what you are ashamed of."

"You've read my file. You know what's happened to me."

"I do know but that's not what I said." Keith watched Mulder's struggle and even though he knew today wouldn't be the day, he saw a vast change in this man even from the first session they shared.

"To acknowledge it is to admit it was real."

"Hiding from it is to give it power." Keith sat forward. "It was real. It did happen and you know that but you won't face up to it because you are afraid."

"You're damn right I'm afraid. I'm terrified." Mulder stood again and started to pace the small room. Feeling caged in and needing to escape. "I know that I'm handling this badly. I know as a psychologist I need to turn towards this pain and stand up to it, feel it until it's spent before I can carry on like I have a life to live but I can't. I just can't do it."

"What's stopping you?" Keith sat back into his chair and took the water from the mantelpiece sipping before the continued. "Where is the command to stop coming from?"

"From my fear." Mulder spoke without hesitation.

"And you live in a shadow of fear. How hard is it to stay protected like that? To never be able to relax or enjoy the moment for what it is rather than what you fear is coming next?"

"How hard is it?" Mulder scoffed as he pulled the cuff of his sleeve up and showed him the scar. "I spent a month in the worst kind of hell. The worst. Then when I thought I was free, when I thought I had escaped I realized I was still there. A different city, surrounded by strangers but I was still in hell."

The room held up to their silence, soaking it in like it had done many traumatic silences before. Mulder stood up and grabbed his jacket unable to take the strain anymore. "I am still there."

"Are you?" he said before Mulder could leave. "Do you think it's made a difference that you've come back to DC?"

Mulder looked over at him and frowned. He hadn't thought about Seattle. Everything had been so rushed, emotional and crazy since he stood on her doorstep on Christmas Eve. Hell everything had been spun upside down since he felt her body quivering beneath him on his bed in Seattle. That thought settled his need to run and for a moment he just leaned against the door jam unsure if he wanted to retreat back into the room.

"Yes it's made a difference." His voice was soft but he wasn't speaking so Keith would hear him, he was uttering words that had been stuck in his mind and throat for so long they had become stagnant. "It's made a difference to have her so close and accessible that all I need to do is reach out and touch her." Unconsciously the door closed and he stepped back into the room but rather than taking a seat on the couch he went to the window and touched his forehead against it. "I can't live in a cocoon and ignore her, try not to think about her, about touching her when she is so close and willing."

He smiled and even let out a little laugh but it was a tortuous sound.

"How do you feel when you touch her?"

Mulder didn't recognize it as Keith's voice. Just a question that floated through the air, a question that pinned down the answers he was imagining.

"Alive."

"How about when she touches you?"

Sprung from his trance like a coiled snake Mulder turned and his eyes pierced Keith with a stare. "I feel nothing."

"Nothing?" Deflated Mulder slumped against the window again, this time with his back.

"I want to feel nothing." He glanced up at Keith as if to check that he was still there then quickly looked back to his feet. "At first its amazing…and everything I thought it could be."

Silence permeated the room and Keith waited for Mulder to continue then when he didn't he prompted him. "And then…"

"And then I'm back there. And I want to die."

Keith took a sip of his water and Mulder wondered if the action meant something. A simple gesture after a heart wrenching confession to show him that this was nothing, this was common day occurrence and there was nothing wrong with him. Then he realized that he was just thirsty and forced his mind to relax.

"So as the sexual aggressor you feel fine." Keith sat forward and looked up at Mulder, capturing his wandering eyes only for a few seconds. "You feel alive. But as soon as the tables are turned and you become the submissive your world changes."

"Everything changes." He felt his frustration build up and clenched his teeth as if he could dampen them that way. "I want to stop touching her because I know she will want to touch me back, but I can't help it. Every time I see her I want to touch her." Mulder stood away from the window and started to pace again. "I need to touch her."

"And when you let her touch you what do you see?"

The room plunged into darkness as Mulder screwed his eyes tightly shut against the barrage of images that exploded into his mind. Concrete walls and floors, a slot of light from beneath a heavy door and the clanking of chains around his feet.

"I…I see him." His arms came up to wrap around his chest. "I smell him. I hear him. I feel him."

"What does she smell like?"

The change in tact stunned Mulder into a momentary silence. He wondered what route Keith was taking with these questions but decided, again, not to psychoanalyze himself or every moment in Keith's office.

"She smells great. She uses this perfume, and it's so subtle that I can still smell the soap she uses behind it." Slowly Mulder's eyes loosened and even opened a bit. "She smells like home."