Safe Haven
By Shoshana

I walk down the long hospital corridor and see familiar faces
sitting outside his room. They wave and meet me halfway as I quicken
my pace in hopeful anticipation. I came here straight from the
airport, eager to spring my partner from this God awful place.
Several hours before, speaking from a trans-atlantic flight, I had
persuaded his physician to discharge him to my care. They had
determined that he was no threat to others, displaying no violent
outbursts since he woke very early this morning. It was now late
evening and though the doctor would have liked to keep him for
observation, I strongly disagreed, citing Mulder's extreme aversion
to hospitals and my expertise as his personal physician.

Maybe I've become almost as good a bullshitter as Mulder is, because
it sure didn't take as much coaxing as I thought it would to convince
the doctor to release him. I had to promise that he'd undergo
further tests next week, a promise I'll keep despite inevitable
protests from Mulder. As long as they don't want to hold him in a
padded cell again, I don't see the harm in that. And anyway, Mulder
has no idea what I have planned for the next few days, plans I
hastily devised while still in my airline seat.

The guys greet me warmly, telling me Mom had gone home after sitting
with Mulder that morning. They had all taken shifts, guarding him
against unauthorized medication or visitors. Byers had stopped by
Mulder's apartment and packed a duffel bag full of a few day's
clothing, fed his fish, and retrieved his weapon from his dresser
drawer. Frohicke had rented a car and left it in the hospital lot
for me, and now he hands me the keys, patting my hands and saying,
"You are an amazing woman, Agent Scully." We all laugh at that, till
the supervisory nurse comes up with Mulder's discharge papers, which
I hastily sign, anxious to get this show on the road.

I tell the guys to just wait a couple minutes while I grab a
wheelchair and enter Mulder's private room, a room I had fought hard
to get him, along with a treatment plan that included fewer drugs and
fewer unwelcome visitors. Banning Diana Fowley may have been seen as
the actions of a jealous woman, but I was still not convinced that
she hadn't exacerbated his condition by slipping some drug into his
bloodstream. I could see right through her concern. I knew she
still worked for the Consortium, whatever still remained of it.

I wasn't sure what Skinner's role was in all this, but I now
believed that he was being threatened personally by Spender, Sr. and
his henchmen. They could murder him in the blink of an eye, and I
knew from his uncharacteristic actions the other day that he was
treading softly, still trying to help us all he could without losing
his life in the process. He would never have called me Dana, or held
my hand the way he had if these were normal circumstances. He was
trying to convey a message, convoluted as it was.

Mulder lies on his bed, fully dressed, appearing to take a cat nap
on his side. I approach with caution, even though I know he's had
his restraints off since this morning and the physician has assured
me that his preliminary psychological profile looked very good. It
is close to midnight and I imagine that he's still dozing off because
of the pain killers he's been prescribed. I softly whisper, "Mulder,
time to go now. You can wake..." My sentence is cut off, as he
swiftly jumps out of bed, hoists me into his arms and squeezes me in
a gentle, tight embrace. I am so startled that I am without words,
without the power to resist his affections. He carefully places me
back down, a huge smile on his face, no trace of barbiturates in his
amazingly clear, green eyes. He takes my hand, kissing it with care,
before trapping it between both of his large palms.

"Sorry if I scared you. I heard you come in and was playing possum.
It's not often that I get to surprise my ever vigilant partner these
days."

I laugh, trying to regain my composure. If I'm flustered now, it's
certainly a good kind of flustered. I'm so happy to see how well he
looks, virtually drug-free, and if in pain, hiding it cleverly. I
respond, "Quite the contrary Mulder, you've been chockful of
surprises the last few days. And I don't think you're through
surprising me yet. Now get in this damn wheelchair so we can leave."

"Aren't you going tell what you found in Africa?"

"On the way, we have a two hour drive."

"Drive where?"

"Mulder, get in the damn chair. I'll tell you on the way!"

Looking at me like I should be planning to stay in the psychiatric
ward, rather than leave it, he sits down in the chair and I push him
into the corridor. The Lone Gunmen await us; I gather them around me
conspiratorially, emparting some last minute instructions. Mulder is
not amused, pursing his lips, and fidgeting in his movable seat.
Before leaving, I give each of our friends a big hug and affectionate
kiss on the cheek.

"Hey, that's more than I got from you, Scully!," Mulder mock whines.

The hallway rings with peals of laughter as everyone but Mulder
thinks this is hysterically funny, including myself. Langley looks
over at him and says, "Play your cards right, Mulder. You might be
deserving too." Mulder looks confused, deciding to drop it for now,
maybe overwhelmed by his first trip out of the room for hours. I
wheel him out, my all-male escort close behind, as we make our way
out of the hospital and to the car. We throw the duffel in the back
and Mulder and I pull out of the lot, waving goodbye to our friends.

"So, what was that all about?" Mulder asks immediately.

"You'll know in good time. Not to change the subject, but don't you
want to know what I found first?"

He looks over at me, a bit pouty, more than a little confused by my
mysterious attitude. "Yes," he says right away, obviously eager to
hear one explanation if not the other.

"All right. The artifact is part of a much larger structure. The
structure is submerged in the sand off the Ivory Coast at the
archaeology dig."

"A larger structure."

"A craft."

"Scully, are you telling me there's an alien spacecraft buried on
the beach off the Ivory Coast? And if there is, why the hell aren't
we on our way there now?"

"Yes, and you need to rest for a few days."

"Yes! I don't need any more rest, goddammit, not if this is the
truth we've been seeking for years!"

"I don't want to see a relapse. If what I believe is true, you'll
have a very powerful reaction to the characters written on the
surface of the ship, similar to the one you had from the rubbing. I
want you to wait, to deal with any new abilities you may have."

"Such as mind-reading?"

"Yes."

"I've been able to do it less and less as today progressed. I think
I subconsciously don't want to invade other's people's minds right
now. I have bad memories from the university. There were just too
many people around and it hurt so badly. Then I must have passed
out, because the next thing I knew I was in the apartment and I was
speaking to you on the phone."

"With Diana there," I said.

"Yes, but I don't need to tell you what I heard going through her
mind, do I?"

"I suspected as much, that's why she was banned from your room."

"Well, she must have injected me with something to cause my mental
hysteria, because I was calm and lying in bed when you called. I
heard her thoughts a little while after that, she was planning to
pump me for information about the artifact. It must have freaked me
out, because it's the last thing I remember. If I tried to get out
of there or attack her, she probably had orders to disable my brain
somehow. The first clear memory I have after that is when you came
into the padded cell and snapped me out of it."

"So, you're not reading my mind right now?"

"No, I'd have to concentrate to do so, and there's pain involved and
like I said, I wanted to stop for a while. We can test it later if
you want...," he said with a wry smile.

"Mulder, I'd rather you just listen to the rest of my spiel, first."
He nodded silently, urging me to continue. "O.K., the Republic of
Cote d'Ivoire has claimed ownership of the craft, since it's their
archaeological site. They have not released information to the
public and have complied with my request to bring in academic
scholars to study it. Chuck and the Lone Gunmen found me the
scholars, and Chuck will fly out there next week, on his own time. I
would never have been able to negotiate these arrangements without
them. And there is complete secrecy about the find, or so we think.
I may have been followed, but I was very careful to disguise my
airline reservations and any other transportation arrangements I made
along the way."

"How'd you get the money for this?"

"Your friends lent it to me. I had a little saved up, too."

"Oh, Scully. What did you do, rob your bank account for me?"

"Mulder, it's the least I could do. You got out of bed after being
shot in the head to save my ass in Antarctica. Was I not supposed to
look for the missing artifacts?"

"No, I guess not," he groaned begrudgingly.

"Well, anyway, even if Diana and company find out about the ship,
they'll have a hard time getting near it. The country's military is
posted all around it. They don't take kindly to outside interests
robbing them of their archaeological treasures, even if this one
might not be indigenous to Le Republique de Cote d'Ivoire ."

"Oh, Scully. I just love it when you speak French to me," he
suggestively intoned.

"Ha ha, Mulder," I responded, trying to keep my train of thought.
"Well, anyway, not taking you to the site immediately is a good idea.
We would attract too much attention from our Consortium friends. I
sneaked through by myself; I doubt if we could do that together,
though. I'll call the guys periodically the next few days for
updates. They are expert at keeping things under wraps for now and I
have no doubt that they are trustworthy. Did you enjoy my Mom's
company?"

Mulder clears his throat a bit and says flatly, "Yeah, sure. It was
very nice to have someone so close to you there." I sense a reason
he would rather not discuss Mom right now, aware that he was probably
privy to Mom's thoughts about him, me, us, the future, whatever.

"Are you going to tell me where we're going, Scully?"

"We're almost there, Mulder. Just a few more streets down this way."

I pull into the resort, parking my car in one of the guest slots.
Mulder is dumbfounded, these are a lot better accommodations then we
ever got on the road. I smile at him mysteriously, open the trunk,
grab my bag and nod toward the back seat so that he'll grab his. We
check in as Mr. and Mrs. Grabow, a real couple who've been nice
enough to lend the Gunmen their credit card. We traverse a long
corridor, nicely carpeted, with handsome oil paintings gracing the
walls.

"Scully, how can you afford this? This is a very expensive place to
stay!" he says, genuinely alarmed.

"I think the Grabows owed Langley a favor. Don't worry, they can
afford it," I say glibly.

When I open the door to the room and he realizes there's only a
Queen bed there, I almost collapse with laughter at his shocked
expression. He is truly astonished, unable to conceive of any
innuendo appropriate to the occasion. I just smile, sit down on the
bed and wait for him to find his voice.

He sits on the opposite side of the bed and says, "Scully, are you
insane? Maybe we should head back to the psychiatric ward, huh?" He
says it playfully, but I can sense his unease and decide to move
swiftly to my loosely prepared speech.

"Mulder, when I first found out that the artifact implied that the
Bible came from an extraterrestrial source, I was frankly unhinged,
disturbed by that thought. But as things progressed and I saw the
evidence of the ship and gave it more thought, I knew there was
nothing that God could hand me that I could not deal with.
Extraterrestrial origins mean nothing, not if I believe that the
whole universe was created by God's hand, that there is a reason for
every development in that universe and in my little corner of the
universe. I guess you could say that I might possibly believe that
aliens exist, if only because they were created as part of God's
plan."

"You're telling me this... why?"

"Because I believe that I was able to walk into that padded room and
quiet you down and aid your recovery from whatever Diana did to you
only because of my strong faith. A faith I've developed by belief in
a benevolent God. That, like I said, only gives me what I can deal
with. And I can deal with alien spaceships and little green men..."

"Gray men," he corrects me with the utmost seriousness, his
expression remaining cautiously thoughtful.

"O.K., all right, gray men then," I laugh. "Anyway, I can deal with
these things because of my faith in a compassionate God and in, in my
love for..." I am all out of courage now. It's been a stressful few
days and I just have lost the guts to tell him. My eyes are downcast
now, unable to connect with Mulder's riveting gaze. Slowly,
tentatively, he walks around the side of the bed, and kneels down in
front of me, using one hand to lift my chin so that I can see his
glowing eyes.

"I think I can read your mind, Scully. And this time there's no
pain involved..." He grazes my cheek with his fingers, they are warm
to the touch, and I lean into his palm easily. I reach out for his
hand and pull him up beside me on the bed. If I thought my nerves
were shot before, this closeness is the ultimate test of my sanity.
I gulp a bit of air as we sit and stare at one another, hands now
entwined. I realize that he is just as scared as I am, maybe more,
considering what he's been through the last few days.

He's waiting, waiting for me to initiate whatever grand plan I have
for our lives. I want to say something to reassure him, to tell him
how much I'm in love with him at this very moment, but all I can
think to say is, "Mulder, let's go a bit insane."

fin

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