by Justin Glasser
Disclaimers and Acknowledgments in section 00/10
*****
Somewhere in Antarctica
Day Three
When Dana had been five, she had her appendix out following an acute attack of appendicitis on her second day of kindergarten. Her mother had brought her *Madeline* by Ludwig Bemelmans, and, although she hadn't really liked the book, Dana had been fascinated by the scene in the hospital when Madeline realizes the crack in the ceiling looks like a rabbit. Lying on her back in a hospital bed a million miles from anywhere, an older and wiser Dana Scully found herself wishing for a rabbit made of ceiling cracks. Her ceiling was bare and blank and white. Precise. Military.
She wasn't sure quite when she had regained consciousness: she had simply faded from black to grey to white and realized somewhere along the way that her eyes were open. She could see the tips of Mulder's white socks crossed at the bottom of her blankets.
"How long have you been here?" she asked.
"Hey. Morning, sunshine." Mulder pulled his feet off the bed, and sat up, elbows on his knees. "How long have you been awake?"
She shrugged. "I come and go."
"Talking of Michelangelo?" he asked, leaning in close. She saw that he had shaved. That door in the far right wall was the bathroom, probably.
"You feel okay?"
She nodded. She did, although she had the groggy feeling of someone who's had too much sleep. She wanted to get up and run around the room, to lift something heavy, but it didn't seem worth the effort to get out of bed.
"They brought breakfast a couple of hours ago, but you weren't up for it. You didn't miss anything."
It was just as well. She wasn't hungry. She felt like she couldn't ever eat anything again, although she knew she looked horrible. Too skinny. Bony.
"How long have you been here?" she asked again, although she thought she knew the answer.
"A while," he said, suddenly not looking at her.
"You spent the night in here."
He nodded.
"Mulder, I'm fine. There was no need--"
"I didn't do it for you," he blurted, slumping back in his chair. "I . . . " His fingers folded into a temple under his chin. "I wanted to be sure you were still here."
She fought back the urge to sigh. He had slept in a plastic chair next to her bed last night, and he would probably be doing it again tonight, and she probably couldn't do anything about it. "You wouldn't happen to have a piece of paper and a pencil around here, would you?"
Mulder leaned over near her and she heard a drawer slide open. "Ta da! You gonna write me a love letter, Scully?"
She took the paper from him and drew an upside down L on it with the mechanical pencil he had given her. "Nope," Scully said, meeting his gaze. "I'm going to kick your ass at Hangman."
*****
Report 7 of --
Operative 7477108N
1147 hours
Night observation record indicates no unusual activity. M subject remained in room for entire night. Anticipate serious resistance from M subject re: separation. Do not, repeat, DO NOT attempt to execute separation unless Plan A cover is blown.
M subject's morale improved since F subject's recovery became apparent. M appears active and engaged with F subject. F subject's morale undeterminable at this time.
F subject regained consciousness at 1145 hours today. Readings indicate normal sleep pattern. Elimination pattern normal considering limited food and liquid intake during captivity. Unable to assess physical condition further without examination. Preliminary examination scheduled for tomorrow at 0900 conditional on F subject consciousness.
Interaction between subjects appears normal re: information in prior entries. M subject continues to observe F subject at all times, but this behavior within normal parameters. Subjects engage in conventional conversation and juvenile word games to pass the time (suggest other diversions added into room to prevent overt speculation on situation). Recordings of interaction on tapes 8387+.
Estimated trial initiation in 18-24 hours.
This concludes report 7 of --.
Next scheduled filing at 1500.
Operative 7477108N.
*****
�So tell me, Mulder,� Scully said, drawing a little circle for the hanged man�s head. �What was it like to go to school abroad?�
He looked up at her, shocked. �Why?�
�I went to--the only time I�ve ever been abroad was with my family. What�s it like to go on your own? Your turn.�
�L.�
�Nope.� Scully drew a small neck on the circle.
�Neck before face, Scully. That�s cruel.�
�Mulder.�
�It was a learning experience. Something that everyone goes through, I guess. M.�
�No m. That doesn�t sound like a lot of fun.� Her pencil made a dot for an eye.
Mulder smiled. �Fun, Scully. You�re advocating for fun?�
�Sometimes I wonder about you. About things you might have missed because of your sister. Guess.�
�M.� He shook his head. �Sorry, um, t.�
One t.� She filled in the fourth of the five blanks. Mulder clasped his hands over his head in a victory salute.
�You don�t have to worry about me, Scully.� He wasn�t watching her anymore.
Sometimes I don�t think I have a choice, Mulder.� She felt herself leaning over, tilting her head toward him in the way she knew she did when she was trying to get something out of him. She saw the smooth thin column of his neck, the dark hair vulnerable at the back of his head. She didn�t touch it.
This wasn�t what she had intended when she had asked him about England. She had meant to stay on the light and easy path of reminiscence, and instead had wandered into Mulder�s dark wood of secrets, like Little Red Riding Hood tripped up by the wolf. Mulder�s pain often caught her by surprise. It saddened her.
�Hey, who rescued who here?� he asked, returning her to the primrose path.
�Oh, we;re playing that game now?� She smiled. �Think back, Special Agent Mulder, to a time about five years ago when two young FBI agents found themselves investigating the disappearance and sudden re-appearance of one Colonel Budahaas--�
�Okay, okay.� He held up his hands in surrender.
�Guess.� She poked the paper.
�N.�
�Nope.� The one eyed hanged man earned a body.
�So we�re even.�
�I�m up thirteen games to none, Mulder.�
�Nobody loves a smartass, Agent Scully.�
She leaned over and put a hand on his arm. �You just keep that in mind. Guess.�
�O.�
He went on to lose the game, spectacularly.
*****
It's no secret among my co-workers at the FBI that I have an eidetic memory. Anyone with access to my records knows that my I.Q. tests well into the genius range, that, in the limited and circumspect ways in which we measure the human intellect, I am considered one of the *creme de la creme,* the cream that rises to the stop when we stir the human brain. To be blunt, I'm fucking smart.
And my partner, who is no mental slouch herself, has just beat me fifty games out of fifty at Hangman without once resorting to what I would consider the unfair tactic of using medical jargon for her words.
I would hate her if I could.
As it stands, I am remarkably, almost foolishly happy. Scully is napping again. She drifted off after cleaning my clock with the word "ephemeral" despite the fact that it has three "e"s which is almost the required first guess in the game of Hangman. It's an unwritten rule, like the one that says you put the x in the center square in Tic-Tac-Toe. She seems better.
As long as she continues to seem better, then I'm content to wait out the next eleven days in this sad excuse of a quarantine--no t.v., no books, no one else to talk to. When we were in the Arctic, we had cable and books and cards. Comparing the two is like night and day, pun intended. I shouldn't complain. At this moment, I couldn't ask for anything else.
Maybe a better chair.
When she's asleep, I think about the things I saw after I fell through the ice. A long time ago, while I was at Oxford, I wrote a paper on the psycho-social effects of fairy tales. During the course of my research, I was surprised to discover how different the original fairy tales were from my memories of them, how much more brutal and frightening they were. I was particularly shocked by a version of Sleeping Beauty in which she is kept as an ornament by the prince, and, still asleep, gives birth to two children. That's what those people down there in the ship reminded me of, postmodern Sleeping Beauties, gestating and giving birth, without a prince to wake them.
Which, if I want to take the analogy that far, means that I am Scully's prince. She'd love that.
I have a room of my own, next door, but since she woke up I haven't been back there, except to retrieve the limited toiletries I�ve been provided with. As foolish as it sounds, I'm afraid to turn my back on her. Although intellectually I understand that there is no way that Scully could leave at this point, that she's too weak, and that we are virtually trapped here under quarantine, I still almost ran back from my room, disposable razor in hand, afraid that when I pushed open her door there would be nothing but a neatly made hospital bed.
Considering what we've been through, it wouldn't be unheard of.
*****
A dream.
She knows it is a dream, but there they stand in the hallway, and it's today, and his hand is on the back of her neck, and he looks like Mulder but she knows that if he kisses her she will collapse, enchanted, and something evil will happen to her. She wants to push away, but this is Mulder, her Mulder--
--but it's not, it's someone else, someone without a face, probing her, stabbing a needle into the back of her neck and his tongue into her mouth at the same time, and suddenly she knows that everything she was taught in medical school was a lie, that sexual intercourse doesn't make babies, but this does, this hot tongue in her throat, squirming and wet, and she feels her stomach heave . . .
*****
Report 8.1 of --
Operative 7477108N
1523 hours
F subject has just awakened from REM sleep and vomited. Sanitation crew has been notified. Sudden onset of illness presumably due to dreams, not any adverse reaction to captivity. However, further tests recommended.
M subject in attendance. Both subjects to be removed to M subject's room. Surveillance switch- over activated as of 1524 hours.
This concludes Report 8.1 Operative 7477108N
*****
It had happened so suddenly that he almost missed it. Her movement on the screen caught his attention and he looked up just in time to see her gag, the remains of her lunch spill forward into her lap.
Mulder (M subject, but he knew their names, of course he did) was on his feet in an instant, pulling the bedspread away and bundling it at the foot of the bed, then returning to her side. He leaned over her, rubbing between her shoulder blades, crooning into her ear. He'd have to send the tapes to the sound techs to decipher--the mics were good, but not that good--and he wanted to know what Mulder said. What did they say to each other? How did they get to this place where she would reach for him almost before she woke up? How did that happen?
She didn't cry, he noticed, although she seemed shaken. Her face was pale and her lips trembled, even after Mulder went and got her a wet (he presumed) wash cloth. She wiped her face, then leaned back into her partner's shoulder. Mulder didn't embrace her, something that should probably go into the report, but the observer didn't have the heart to start a new one. Sanitation would be there soon, and he knew they would break apart the minute they were disturbed. It was one of the many things he knew from watching them, from reading their files.
His records were supposed to be exhaustive, but there was only so much he could write down before his eyes throbbed in their sockets and his mind sagged. It made him expendable, he understood, if he included everything. If he told his bosses all he knew about the subjects, then they would have no use for him when the testing came to its culmination. He would not be needed to consult, and if he was not needed, then it might be easier to have him . . . disappear. It was a matter of life and death.
So to speak.
He tilted back in his chair and pulled his book back on his lap, glancing up only when he saw the sanitation crew arrive on the screen and his subjects pull apart. He smiled.
Clockwork.
*****
She only knew she had scared him afterwards, when they were in his room, seated on opposite ends of the bed. He had wrapped her in the bedspread and she felt young, like a little girl at a slumber party, although the room was exactly the same as the one she had left. All she needed was a hot cocoa. Then she saw him, really saw him.
Mulder was staring at her.
She smiled. "Mulder, I'm fine."
He shook his head. "You woke up sick--"
"It was a nightmare, Mulder. Really. I'm fine."
He continued to stare at her for a moment more, searching her face for clues, scouring her for signs of deception. She smiled again, but she was concerned. Mulder tended to be either overprotective or completely disengaged, and she preferred . . . no, she didn't, but it was easier to deal with the latter.
"I know you're worried, Mulder. Trust me."
Finally he looked away, rolling his eyes. "If I had a nickel for every time you said that, Scully--"
"You'd retire and support me in the manner to which I am accustomed." Scully reached out and took his hand. "I'm okay."
"Okay."
Scully released him and lay back against the pillows. She hadn't lied to him--she was okay--but she was also tired. She felt as if she couldn't sleep enough, as if she couldn't ever get enough rest, although when she woke she felt dizzy with lethargy. Maybe this time she wouldn't dream at all. If she were lucky.
"Hey, Scully."
"Hmm?" she murmured.
"If you throw up on my bed, do you think they'll move us to the penthouse?"
She was asleep before she could answer.
*****end 02/10*****
Feedback welcome at
