Eight

Mulder woke up with the worst headache he'd had since his concussion brought about by Eddie's 'gentle shove'. There was a throbbing pain just behind his eyes, and he knew it was different and worse than the dehydration headaches he had suffered in the desert. Then again, he thought, perhaps he was not as badly injured as it seemed. He could still think clearly despite the pain; he was not confused or dazed like he had been after hitting his head and regaining consciousness beside Scully after that day in Antarctica he would rather forget.

Scully. Mulder swallowed a groan as he struggled to open his eyes, not sure where Scully was. He tried to remember what had happened before he had gone to sleep which could have caused such an insistent, agonizing pain in his head. Antarctica, he thought. He had gone to his home with Scully there in the second tower, and they had talked about asking Eddie if they could leave once the supersoldiers no longer controlled who got into the human colonies, or if people at the processing centres could be persuaded to let in another doctor. Mulder had crawled into bed at some point and all he remembered after that was Scully kissing him on the forehead and telling him she would handle it, and to go to sleep.

So he had and then he had woken up with her over him, shaking him, and she had not been the only person or thing shaking him. The whole complex had been trembling. An earthquake, he supposed, though Antarctica was not known for tectonic shifts. It was not exactly the Californian San Andreas.

As Mulder ran through the events that followed in his mind he realised why his head hurt so much. He had inhaled something to knock him out. Ether? He was not sure he remembered clearly. He had thought ether was a solvent. Scully had lost consciousness before him, he remembered her hand going slack in his, and then he had succumbed. Had he fallen? He thought he had been kneeling. His headache was probably from hitting his head on the hard floor as well as the liquid solvent that had knocked him out for God-only-knew how long.

As he stared upwards, he discovered he was in the dark. He knew he was lying on his back and a tilt of his hips told him he was on a mattress. He was pretty sure there was a pillow under his head, but it was hard to feel anything back there when the pain in the front was so distracting. He was pleasantly warm, and he felt like something was holding him down, but he did not have the strength to investigate. His arms felt almost numb, but not from cold.

Mulder fell quickly back to sleep, his last reassuring thought being that if he was really in bed, he probably was not buried under Antarctica in the wake of the earthquake.

He woke again hours later only to discover his headache was not as bad as it had been. Suddenly it felt more like the dehydration headaches he had experienced more than a year previously. In other words, he could deal. He felt like he had a major hangover. But he could wiggle his fingers and move his hands, so he was reassured that whatever was wrong with him was simply the after-effects of whatever had been used to knock him out.

He was even more relieved when he turned his head sideways to see a crop of orange hair on the pillow beside him. The bed was not very big, perhaps a small double. Scully was on her side turned away from him, facing the wall which the bed was pressed up against. He rolled onto his side with a groan and rested his large hand on the rise of her hip under the sheet which covered them, but she did not stir. He watched her torso moving with every breath and pressed his lips together when another gentle squeeze of her hip yielded no results.

"Scully," he mumbled, his voice low and croaky. Nothing. She was out, he realised. Worry began to stir in his stomach because he was awake and she wasn't, but he tempered it with what he knew Scully would have said when presented with such a situation. They had inhaled approximately the same amount of some kind of ether, but they were certainly not the same size. She was tiny compared to him, nicely soft and curved but compared to him, petite. So it was likely she would take longer to sleep off the effects of the drug they had been given.

That only served to reassure him until he began wondering how easy it would be to overdose on any type of ether, and whether the type they had been given had been pure or in a solvent form with other added chemicals, and whether she could have had a reaction to one of them.

Mulder pushed himself up to sitting in the bed, ignoring the headache as best he could, and leant over her. Her hair was out and incredibly tangled, and he reached over to carefully draw it away from her face. Her cheeks were flushed but she seemed to be sleeping peacefully. Mulder sighed. He knew there was nothing he could do until she woke, and he needed a drink and to use the bathroom, so he would have to leave her to investigate where they were.

It was then Mulder realised that he could 'see'. When he had woken up the first time it had been dark, as though night, and suddenly it was light. It was not the same light as in the complex in Antarctica. It seemed brighter somehow, or more real. He turned his back on Scully as quickly as he could and surveyed his surroundings.

He gasped when he saw their matching backpacks sitting against the cement wall directly opposite their bed, purple for Mulder and orange for Scully. They looked exactly as Mulder remembered leaving them, partially open and filled with their old clothes and toiletries. He risked tilting his head backwards slightly so that he could look upwards to where he expected there to be a window. A small, rectangular window with thick glass was filled with the bright blue of the outside sky, and tears stung Mulder's eyes when he realised they were back.

Or had they ever left?

No, no, they were definitely back. Surely he could not have hallucinated a year of their lives. He risked a glance at Scully, and content that she was deeply asleep, he stood and hurried out of the open door towards where he remembered the bathrooms to be. After relieving himself and taking a hot shower, he dried himself with the towel hung on the rung he had once claimed as his, and hurried back to their 'cell' with the white towel wrapped around his hips and his clothes bundled in his arms. He guessed he had been gone no more than ten minutes, and he knelt at their backpacks on the floor to look for clothing.

He remembered in the bottom of his bag he had kept a clean t-shirt that had never been worn. It was white and perhaps a little thin but he pulled it on happily anyway, looking through his old toiletries. He had not seen his brand name deodorant since leaving. What they had been provided with in Antarctica had worked, but Mulder had used the same brand nearly all his life. Holding the bottle again filled him with nostalgia and made him smile.

After again retreating to the communal-designed bathroom and shower facility to shave, he finally returned to their bed and rolled Scully onto her back so he could get a better look at her and hopefully try to rouse her. He HAD to show her the blue of the sky. He wanted her to see their backpacks. He wanted to show her how somebody had carefully stacked their undamaged photo frames and album and diaries up against the wall just beside them.

"Scully," he urged, shaking her shoulder firmly and resting his other hand against her neck, searching for her pulse. It was steady and strong, but he knew it could be another several hours before she woke. He wanted to go exploring to make sure they were really back at the processing centre on the island, and not just in his open room experiencing some sort of manipulation of the physical world. Scully would be able to tell him. She would just know.

Mulder was about to give up on trying to wake her after a long while of calling her name and shaking, when she groaned. She sounded like she was in as much pain as he had been when he had woken in the middle of the night. He squeezed her shoulder and she groaned louder, regaining consciousness reluctantly, as though she was being dragged awake after a long surgery.

"Wakey-wakey," Mulder sung happily, releasing her shoulder to hold her nearest hand on both of his and bring it to his lips. "I know your head hurts sweetie, so keep your eyes closed because it's bright in here."

"Alive?" Scully asked. "Can't move-"

"I was like that last night," he promised her. "I reckon we got a huge dose of that ether. What is it? I thought it was-"

"Used to be...general...anaesthetic," she hissed, cringing in pain. Her voice probably sounded loud to her ears, he realised, and he remembered to whisper the next time in case his words had also hurt her.

"Oh," he replied softly. "I don't know how long we've been knocked out, but we're alone here for now. It's safe. We're safe. Are you hot, cold? Your cheeks are badly flushed."

"Um...hot," she mumbled, and Mulder lowered the sheet to rest over her hips. He watched her eyelashes flutter as she struggled to wake up. He stroked her bright red cheek gently to both encourage and relax her.

"Take your time. You probably feel like you've been hit on the head with a hammer, cos that's how I felt. It's passing slowly."

"Strong dose," she agreed. "You okay?"

"Bit of a headache still," he conceded. "But I had a shower and a drink and I'm gettin' there."

"Sleep with me more," she urged, flexing her fingers in his hand for the first time, as though she had only just realised she could feel them. Mulder did not need any persuading; as much as he wanted to walk around outside he still felt sluggish and achy and he did not want to walk around alone. He wanted Scully with him to investigate. She was his buddy, he reminded himself as he lay down on top of the sheet, hot from his shower, and pulled Scully into him, rolling her onto her side so that her face was nestled against his neck. She mumbled something he could not understand, and fell quickly asleep. He followed.

xxx

Scully could not remember a time when she felt as sick as she did when she woke up. She was overheated and clammy, and even before she opened her eyes she knew it was because she was covered in a sheet, wrapped in Mulder's long arms and pressed against his broad, hot chest. The smell of clean but stale cotton assaulted her sensitive nose and she found herself snuggling her face in closer despite the heat of his body. Mulder smelt clean underneath his clothes too, she realised. It was all oddly comforting and reminded her of before the invasion.

He moved as she nuzzled his chest, and she hummed when she felt his fingers tangle in her long, thick hair. Mulder's fingers were gently massaging her scalp but he made no move to talk. She was not sure if he was truly awake. She took a deep breath and evaluated the state of her health as they remained silent.

Symptom number one, Scully had a killer headache. She remembered having a bad headache after her medical test at the processing centre, a result of eye strain and stress and exhaustion, but this seemed different. She knew she was dehydrated but this was no simple dehydration-induced headache. Her nose was also stinging and it was not because of the cotton of Mulder's shirt or the soapy smell of his skin. It was as though she had inhaled-

She HAD inhaled, she remembered quickly. Diethyl ether. And a lot of it. She had passed out quickly on the floor of her research lab in Tower One and Mulder had been holding her hand, and the earth had been shaking.

Her arms and legs felt weak as she moved against Mulder's body, testing her limbs' response to her brain's instructions. Mulder reacted to her movements as naturally as she could have expected, wrapping his other arm around her hips and drawing her to him, slipping his legs around hers until she was confused about where hers actually were. She felt him aroused against her and assumed he had just woken up, and she pressed a gentle kiss to his chest as she smoothed her hand over the thin cotton.

White cotton, she identified as she finally opened her eyes. Her lids felt heavy and it was a struggle to keep them open, and she wanted to lift her head and ask him if he felt as awful as she did, but she was not sure she was strong enough. In a display of telepathy that they often appeared to possess, the hand tangled in her hair pulled back gently to tilt her head up so that she could see him. Or so that he could see her, she realised when she saw the relieved smile on his face and the glimmer of tears in his brown eyes.

"Hi," he greeted softly. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I got hit in the head with a hammer," she replied, frowning. The answer sounded familiar but she could not remember saying it previously. Mulder only grinned at her. "You been up long?" she asked.

"Twice before this time. This time I've been up for I suppose only a quarter of an hour, somewhere around there. Not too long. I've just been thinking. I think the headache is just from the drugs. Are you hurt anywhere else?"

"Don't think so," she mumbled. "Feel pretty wiped out."

"Thirsty?" Mulder asked. She licked her lips, nodding. "You're still all flushed Dana," he added in a concerned whisper, leaning forward to drag his lips over her cheek. "Been that way for hours now." Scully wasn't sure if he realised it, but kissing her was not going to take away the redness. She smiled, distracted, when she realised he had shaved recently.

"Mm, you're all soapy," she told him happily, wrapping her arms around his waist and hugging him as he rolled onto his back and pulled her half on top of him, tucking her head under his chin and enjoying their closeness. It was not something that had really been happening between them in recent times, not with work in Antarctica so stressful and not with the delicate emotional balance that had come to rest between them. But Mulder was happy with their newfound location and he was just waiting for the right time to share the news with her. Her eyes were fluttering open and shut and he knew she was still probably tired and weak; there was no rush. Hopefully they were in no immediate danger.

"It's late afternoon," he told her, pressing his lips to her temple as she shifted suggestively against him. He was not even sure she was conscious of her actions and they were both not feeling the best, but it was not hard to remember back to what had gone on in that room the last time they had stayed there. Good memories, Mulder recalled with a grin and a silent prayer of thanks for his photographic memory. Scully hummed and allowed him to pull her astride him, but she settled lazily against his chest and he held her like a child not a lover.

"We survived the earthquake," she whispered into his neck.

"Yeah," he promised. "They knocked us out to evacuate us. Sort of like how we got there." She nodded slowly against him, absorbing his words.

"Did we go on the spacecraft again?" she asked innocently.

"I don't know," he replied. Honestly he did not even know what they had gone on the first time. They had both been unconscious then too. "Maybe. We were drugged with the same quantity of ether though, so you take it easy. Don't force yourself up just because I am. It might take a while longer to get through your system. Just rest."

"Mm, kay Fox." Mulder grinned and found the bare skin of her lower back with the hand not holding her head, stroking her back soothingly at the sound of her childlike reply.

"I love you," he hissed, feeling tears sting his eyes at the realisation that though she had just sounded like a sleepy ten year old she was actually over forty, and more than half their lives had passed. Again, not for the first time but for the millionth, he had thought they would die, either in the earthquake or for other sinister purposes while they were unconscious. He could never have guessed they would wake up back at their processing centre. Mulder had no idea what was going on, but as Scully again drifted back to sleep in his arms he wasn't sure he needed to know right away. He was sure when the time came for them to know, they would.

xxx

The first thing Scully thought when she next woke was about how thirsty she was. It was an unfamiliar feeling. She had not gone thirsty since her time in the desert, when water had been rationed even once Shannon had been towing 'the raft'. And it was not just a little glimmer of thirst that reminded her to drink. What she felt was a life-threatening need for fluid. She groaned, opening her eyes in the dark. She was in a bed. She remembered Mulder beside her, she remembered falling asleep sprawled over him, but he was no longer at her side. The sheet was pulled back and she lifted a hand to the dent of his pillow. Still warm, she realised. Perhaps she had woken because he had gotten out of bed.

Scully suddenly had an intense desire to use the bathroom and decided since she had no idea how long it had been since the last time she probably should not try to hold it. Just one little problem, she realised as she sat up in bed and looked around in the pitch blackness of the room. Where the HELL was she?

She pushed herself to the edge of the bed and her bare feet touched a cold floor, potentially smooth cement. The bed was a double and quite low to the ground but very comfortable. She could not see how far away the opposite wall was, or where the door was. There was a patch of brightness on the floor just in front of her and she followed it upwards until she discovered a tiny window. On the other side there was a lighter kind of darkness. It had an early-hours-of-the-morning feel to it, but Scully had not seen a real morning in more than a year. If it was sky, it was more of a gentle blackness, nearly a purple-navy-gray, and she allowed herself to smile at her little fantasy. Perhaps she was in one of the old Antarctic research stations above-ground and it was approaching a winter daytime.

But that did not make sense, she thought. Just days before the Earthquake it had been light outside, constantly bright and sunny, and she could not have been unconscious for six months. Could she?

She was startled by the sound of bare, padding footsteps on the floor and gasped a little as they jogged towards her and then entered the room.

"You're up!" Mulder exclaimed. He had seen her silhouette in the dark, she assumed.

"Yeah," she whispered. "Where um, I need to use the bathroom."

"Can you walk okay?" he asked, hurrying to her and taking one of her hands, helping her to her feet.

"I haven't tried yet," she admitted, allowing him to wrap an arm around her waist and walk her slowly towards the door like she was an elderly hospital patient only because a part of her actually felt like one. "Mulder-"

"How is your head?" he asked, not allowing her to ask questions.

"Mm, a bit better. I uh, am groggy."

"Hot or cold?" he asked.

"Warmish," she replied. "Why is it warm when the floor is so cold?"

"It's warm outside," he answered. "I'm glad you're up. I've got a surprise for you."

"When did you get up?"

"I woke up for the first time more than twenty-four hours ago," he admitted. "You woke up for the first time yesterday morning, but I'm not sure if you'd remember. Then you woke up again late afternoon, and now it's early morning again, so you've had a fair bit more time to recover, which is good. I haven't left your side for more than a few minutes at a time, I swear. Been kind of drowsy still myself. I didn't realise that ether stuff was so strong."

"They might've given us something else," she mumbled. "Like when they knocked us out on the processing centre to bring us here, and maybe we've been asleep for a long time. I just know if I don't go to the toilet and then drink a large volume of water I'm gonna die." Mulder chuckled, at her unusual exaggeration brought on by the severity of her symptoms and the fact that she obviously still thought they were in Antarctica.

Mulder helped her to the toilet and in a sign of complete acquiescence she did not complain about him keeping her upright while she sat. From experience he knew she probably was in worse shape than she admitted, and the evidence rarely lied. He then insisted she have a warm shower. That she argued about. What she really wanted to do was drink water and go back to sleep, but he promised her it would warm her up and that he needed one too, and she again conceded. Not that Mulder had been game to take no for an answer. When he was supporting half her weight she truly had little choice.

Scully shivered as, after their shower, Mulder wrapped a large towel around her and gathered their clothes. She was amazed by the fact that it was completely dark where they were and he seemed to know instinctively where everything was and where to go. She squinted as she looked around, trying to make out shapes or a light source. She saw very little, and she suspected her vision was still blurred from heavy sleep. Once Mulder had dressed, he helped her redress in the dark and then they walked out of the bathroom area and back down the hallway.

Something in Scully gave her an acute sense of déjà vu but she could not place it, and déjà vu was not a feeling she enjoyed. Usually it was her mind referring her back to something pre-invasion, which made her sad, and as time had gone on the references had become more extreme so that if she tried, anything could remind her of something that had happened in her past. It was not a nice feeling. Déjà vu was only good when the memories were welcome, after all. Scully loved her memories, but she did not love remembering.

"This is very special," Mulder promised softly as he leant her against their bedroom wall and ripped their unused blanket off the bottom of the bed, folding it in his arms. "Come on Scully," he urged kindly as he took one of her arms through his and again began leading her along hallways.

"Mulder where are we going?"

"I wasn't sure you'd be up, so great timing on your part, Doc. We're going to the watch tower, if we can get in. I haven't checked yet because I didn't want to leave you too long in case you woke up in the dark and freaked out. You didn't, did you?"

"No," she promised. "You came back before I could." He chuckled, patting the hand wrapped around his forearm. They were walking slowly, but he could tell she was a lot stronger since her shower. "Mulder can we get water?"

"In the kitchen," he replied. After a few more steps he leant her against a hallway wall and told her to stay. He went inside a nearby doorway for a few minutes and then returned from another dark room with two bottles and a packet of something else.

"What's that?" she asked as he held onto everything and kept walking.

"Another surprise," he teased. "Do you think you can make it up some stairs or should I carry you?"

"I can make it, slowly," she shot back with a grin. "Stairs hey? I thought we were already above the ground."

"Just a few," he underestimated.

Mulder stayed on the outside of the spiral staircase, against the circular brick wall, so that he could support his own weight if he stumbled, and so that if Scully stumbled in his arms he could pull her into him and balance them against something sturdy. But she kept a firm grip on the railing as they ascended and they took one little step at a time, even though in peak fitness Mulder could have jogged up five at a time. Finally they reached the top, and it was everything Mulder remembered and had wanted to see again.

Mulder was not sure what sort of building the processing centre had once been. It looked a lot like some sort of prison, but the doors and windows were not barred, so perhaps it had even been a boarding school. What he called a watch tower might have been an observatory, or a guard post, but what it was to him was a tall, cylindrical tower with a room at the top that looked out across the desert to the ocean in the east, and out over the top of the centre to the sky in the west. There were no trees blocking the view because it had all been excavated by the aliens, but for once Mulder was okay with that; they would only have a better view.

"What do you think Scully?" he asked, excited at the prospect of watching the sun rise right over the Atlantic Ocean. Beside him, Scully let go of his arm and walked forward to stare at the dark water rippling in the distance. There was no glass. They were standing in the open air. The sky was definitely lighter since she had woken. It was lighter because she was above ground, but she was certainly not in Antarctica. She was in the Northern Hemisphere. She could see sand, and even though it was dark, it was a landscape that was burned into her mind's eye. She would see sand when she closed her eyes for the rest of her life.

"Oh my God," she whispered, refocussing on the water and the way the sky was a lighter purple along the horizon.

"I think we have an hour or so before the real show starts," Mulder told her. "This bench looks pretty sturdy. I think we'll be able to sit on it and watch. If we sat on the ground we wouldn't be able to see so-"

"We can stretch out along it," Scully observed, running her hand along the length of the wooden bench that was between her and the open window. It was not too narrow.

Mulder wasted no time in helping her up. She was able to lean against a support beam and Mulder sat opposite her, their knees raised and meeting in the middle. He threw the blanket over them both and enjoyed the look of awe on Scully's face as she stared at the ocean. He'd had a little longer to get used to the idea than her, and he understood was an extreme change it was from Antarctica. They were back in the desert, on their island, and all alone.

"Here," he told her, retrieving one of the bottles from beside him and handing it to her. "That's water, and I also picked up a bottle of warm lemonade for some sugar. So we can have half and half, sound good? And I got us a block of chocolate." Scully's mouth dropped open in surprise as she accepted the bottled water and stared at him. "Nothing's changed," he told her. "It's all just how we left it. Our packs are still in our room, and they put us right back into bed side by side. I woke up right beside you."

"They put us to bed together?" she asked.

"Obviously they know we sleep together," he answered with a shrug. "You looked comfortable. Nothing out of place. I reckon Eddie must have insisted on carrying you. Everything is unlocked, far as I can tell, and our photos and diaries are in the room, and it's all just the same, Scully."

"I thought there was something familiar about the shower," she admitted. "How long- I feel like I've been asleep for days."

"I think it's the drugs. I don't think it's been very long. That being said, I had this moment once I realised where we were, when I wondered whether we had ever even left! Antarctica really happened, right? We're not just dreaming it? Because the last thing I remember about the processing centre was being in the exam room with those motion sickness patches they wanted us to put on for the 'trip', and then we woke up in bed here drugged to our eyeballs."

"No, it really happened," Scully insisted. "I remember everything. I remember those women dying, I remember nursing you with your concussion, I remember doing all that research and testing the magnetite formula with Eddie and learning about their plague and stockpiling... Oh no," she whispered. "The earthquake, Mulder, all those vaccines and soaps and all the chlorine we produced and had ready to move. Do you think it's all destroyed?"

"I hadn't even thought of it until now," he admitted. "I don't think it was a normal earthquake. Maybe they came under attack? They had just sent the magnetite formula away, as far as we were told, so maybe the supersoldiers did have a way to fight back? And Eddie and Michael knew they could evacuate safely and wanted to get us out as well?"

"We were always on the back foot there," Scully mumbled. "Maybe that's part of what started to get to me."

"How do you feel about being back here?" he asked. She laughed.

"Wondering whether it's real, like you," she conceded with a shrug. "Whether any of it was real. I feel like it was, but maybe it was a test. We might never know. Also, being alone here is frightening. What are we going to do?"

"I think once we're up for a wander we should try to get out and back to the coast. It's not far, obviously," he reasoned. "And we arrived there. Maybe there will be a way to get back."

"Get back to where?" Scully asked. "We know everyone got to a colony in South America, but we don't have an exact position and even if we did-"

"Yeah I know," Mulder agreed softly. "I haven't done much exploring. Maybe there will be a message somewhere. If Eddie was real, I doubt he would have dumped us without a message. We were definitely put through the ringer by two old dudes here, that part was real, so whether they were aliens or not there must be something somewhere to tell us what to do."

"And if not?" Scully queried.

"Then...we might be able to swim to the mainland."

"Swim," Scully drawled sceptically.

"Well they took everything on the land. What's to say they didn't claim the Northern Hemisphere's share of sharks and jellyfish?" Mulder taunted playfully. "It's not 'that' far."

Scully laughed, rubbing her bare foot against the soft inside of his jean-clad thigh as he grinned boyishly at her.

"Of course it's 'not far' Mulder," she teased. "And we just slept through another trip in an alien spacecraft because of motion sickness!" They giggled, sharing their drinks and chocolate before sitting back to watch the sun rise on a new day, something which in their own minds, regardless of reality, they had not witnessed in a very, very long time.