TITLE: Bad Fox One - Full of Emptiness

NAME: Mik
E-MAIL: ccmcdoc@hotmail.com
CATEGORY: M/Who?
RATING: NC-17. M/Who? This story contains slash i.e. m/m sex. Not suitable for children, Baptists or Republicans.

SUMMARY: First time M/Who? If you ever wondered how Scully came back.

ARCHIVE: Only with my permission.
FEEDBACK: Feedback? Well, yes, if you insist.
TIMESPAN/SPOILER WARNING: Okay...uh...if you haven't seen every single ep of X-Files by now you have no business reading this. G'way.

KEYWORDS: story slash angst Mulder Who NC-17
DISCLAIMER: All the X-Files people and all the Whovian people belong to other people and I'm making no money by twisting their bendable little bodies into odd shapes, I'm just having fun. And all your base are belong to me.

Author's notes: I'm new to this specific mutation of fanfic, and if I've appropriated a title already in use, just let me know and I'll fix it. I tried researching to find if it had been used before, but you know how unreliable the internet is.

If you like this, there's more at https://www.squidge.org/3wstop

If you didn't like it, come see me, anyway. Pet the dog.

Bad Fox One - Full of Emptiness

by Mik

To say that Fox Mulder was in a funk would be the same as suggesting that the twenty-fourth of August in 79 AD was a warm day in Pompeii or that Donald Trump, whenever and wherever he was, was having a bad hair day.

The former wizard of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was spending his morning as he had done nearly every morning for the last four years, staring into a half empty coffee cup that smelled as if it had been sweetened with something other than Equal. His shoulders lifted and fell in a sigh. Occasionally he blinked. Other than that there was very little sign of life. Hours would pass, as they always did, without his acknowledgment. Eventually, as the shadows crossed the floor and climbed up the opposite wall, he'd stir himself, shuffle downstairs and out into society long enough to stop at a bank machine, and a hamburger stand which, over the years had become as dilapidated as his apartment, as his own thoughts; cluttered, dirty, disorganized.

His family was all gone, his job was gone. Some said his mind was gone. Five years ago, someone snatched his partner and she had never been recovered. For years he tried to maintain she was still alive, that if she were dead, he would know it. Some people speculated that she had been murdered, others derisively suggested she'd 'disappeared' herself to get away from Spooky Mulder. He even considered this possible, and it compounded his misery and guilt.

His grief for her began to color everything he did. He'd abandon cases because someone might have seen her in a diner on Prince Edward Island, or surfing in Hawaii. He spent every cent he had on airline tickets, fliers, websites, and phone calls. He cut off every friend except those who had resources he could tap. He rarely slept, barely ate, took less and less interest in his appearance, until he appeared at the Bureau one day in a suit stained with coffee, mud and axel grease, with a four day beard and unkempt hair. It was then he was taken in for psychiatric observation. And it was then he left the Bureau.

Without a job, without the resources the Bureau provided, without the cash to go wherever someone claimed to have seen her, he became a prisoner of his apartment, and worse, his thoughts. No iron bars could be more effective than the words 'what if...'

No one came to visit this prison. Five years of newspapers, magazines, grocery coupons, credit card offers, unopened birthday cards and pizza cartons did not leave room for tea parties. And if the clutter didn't discourage guests, his pets, roaches, ants and rats, did. And so, this brilliant mind, the man who brought down Monty Props, was decaying, slowly and alone.

The shadows had shifted. He roused himself from the what ifs and whys, wiped the day's ration of tears from his cheeks, and left to collect his daily allotment of cash and pick up his daily meal.

He deliberately chose that detergent challenged venue because it offered the cheapest meal he could get in walking distance from Hegal Place. Upon his release from the Institute of Living in Connecticut, his mother had arranged an annuity for him which allowed him only so much cash each day for necessities. He was determined to be ready the next time he got word of a Scully sighting, and to do that, he starved himself and gave up every other comfort and squirreled away as much of each day's ration, so as to have available cash for his departure.

Shambling back toward the inelegant building, mumbling bits of information and rumor, trying to force squared edged facts into rounded holes of possibility, oblivious to wind driven dust and debris in his face, a sound like rusty nails on a guitar string assaulted him, causing him to cry out in pain, drop his supper and cover his ears.

The sound stopped. He looked down in dismay. The hamburger had been dumped from its styro box and was scattered on the sidewalk. For a moment he thought he'd leave it and go back for another, or just go home and get drunk, but the moment passed and he knelt to scrape up the mustard smeared patty and stale bun and put them back in the box.

"Oi. Is this the Capitol?"

Mulder decided he could do without the pickles, since they landed in the weeds that grew in the cracks of the sidewalk and he didn't even want to contemplate where the onions had landed. "Yeah. I'm Bill Clinton. You must be Tony Blair." He didn't bother to look up. "And that's the White House, on the corner."

"Seriously." Shoes invaded his peripheral vision. "The steering's gone a bit wonky. I was aiming for the U.S. Capitol."

"You're close." Mulder stood, wiping the mustard on his filthy trousers. "This is Virginia." He lifted his eyes to the stranger's face. Clean shaven, closely cropped brownish hair, wide open, earnest eyes, big ears, and an expression of curiosity marred by the first thoughts of alarm. "You're not Tony Blair."

"No, I'm not," the stranger answered confidently. "I'm the Doctor."

"The doctor?" Mulder echoed, stiffening. "Who sent you? My mother? Tell that woman to-"

"I don't even know your mother. I don't know you. I just wanted to see the U.S. Capitol."

Mulder wasn't having it. If his mother hadn't sent someone to evaluate him, who had? "I don't know who's behind this but I don't need to be evaluated, monitored or examined." He jabbed a mustard stained finger in the air dangerously close to the stranger's chest. "I need to be left the hell alone."

The stranger backed up a step. "Then be alone. Just point."

Mulder pointed, with his middle finger, but it was in the general direction of Washington, D.C.

"Ta." The stranger turned on one heel and strode toward a structure that, at first glance looked like a wooden port-a-john.

"What's this, your TARDIS?" Mulder mocked, following the man in the leather jacket. "And they think I need to be monitored." He paused. "Oh, I get it. The Doctor. Ha ha. How'd you get away from your keeper? Or is this one of those reality shows?"

The stranger stopped, key halfway into the lock. "You know about the TARDIS? You know who I am?"

"I read," Mulder said indignantly. "I watch cable." He shrugged. "Of course Scifi Channel edits the crap out of them, but I've seen a few episodes."

The alleged doctor turned, brow puckered in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"Doctor Who. You know..." Mulder whistled, badly, a few bars of the theme song. "The TARDIS, K-9, the Dalek-"

"How do you know about the Dalek?" There was a note of panic in his voice. "There won't be more Dalek in the States for another..." he glanced at his wrist, "thirteen years."

"Oh, yeah? Watch C-Span for a while, you'll see." Mulder wanted to go, but it was a rare pleasure to find someone whose mental teeter totter was more off balance than his own. The doctor was still frowning at him. "You know...government in action? The Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network?"

"Oh." The frown smoothed out. "Oh, you mean telly." He pushed the key fully into the lock. "Well, that's just a fictionalized, and I might add unauthorised accounting."

"I see. And you're the real Doctor." Mulder sneered. He didn't care if he sneered. The guy was a lunatic.

"Where do you think those ideas come from?" He turned around and leaned against the door. "They had to come from somewhere, didn't they? They didn't just pop out of some bloke's imagination. I mean, come on...humans just aren't that bright."

"No," Mulder muttered, rubbing a finger over the battered wooden frame of the old fashioned call box. The detailing really was quite clever. "Of course not."

"Wireless communications, ethanol fuel, radiology," the Doctor was ticking things on his fingers, "overnight shipping, teleportation...oh, wait...you haven't had that yet...anyway, all alien technology."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I used to watch Star Trek."

"Posers," the Doctor sniffed.

"Of course." Mulder lost interest in his hallucination. "Well, you were on your way to Washington. Don't let me keep you."

"Right. Well, nice to meet you...?" his voice was prompting.

"Mulder." Mulder would have accepted his proffered hand, but he had the box with what was left of his supper in his hands. "Fox Mulder."

The Doctor looked almost relieved. "Right." He pushed the door open. "Tara."

The wind began to swirl dust and tiny bits of debris into his eyes, and that rusty key sound made his ears ache, but Mulder stood there and watched the blue call box fade in and out before it disappeared completely. He sighed heavily. "I need to start taking my meds."

In the wake of what he suspected was his first episode of peduncular hallucinosis, he'd lost what little interest he had in food. Dropping the box in a rusty fifty-five gallon drum, the closest thing that lot had to a garbage bin, Mulder shuffled back toward Hegal place, and the decay and despair that awaited him.

"Oi. The Fox Mulder?"

Mulder turned around. The Doctor was leaning out the TARDIS door. "I wasn't aware there was more than one," he muttered. Behind the anachronistic call box, someone was already prowling through the drum for Mulder's leavings.

"What happened to you?"

"I beg your pardon." Mulder didn't think it was very fair that his psychotic break was so judgmental.

The Doctor stepped out and sauntered toward him. "You were brilliant. Fantastic. First in class. You used to work for...." His face scrunched up in concentration, "the efffbeeeyiii. What happened to you?"

Mulder took a step back. "Figure it out for yourself, if you're so smart. Use some of your great alien technology and figure it out for yourself." He turned on one heel and shuffled away.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The apartment held no welcome for him. It was just the room behind the door which he shut on the world. He had lived like this for so long, he no longer saw the filth and squalor, it no longer seemed unreasonable to have stacks so high the only way to maneuver was to walk sideways, it no longer mattered that the only place to go was the kitchen table, where a small area had been cleared away, just enough room for his permanently stained coffee cup and a bottle of Jim Beam.

He settled down in the protesting chair, willing the memory of that odd and uncomfortable encounter to depart and leave him to his supper of whiskey and three day old coffee. "I'm losing my mind," he crooned, resting his head on the tabletop. "I'm losing my mind." He felt more tears burn his eyes before splashing to the tabletop. He wondered, not for the first time, how agonizing a death by starvation would be.

He didn't get a chance to find out.

There was a thud at the door.

Then another.

Then two more, so close together as to be smashed together in a single sound.

"Leave me the fuck alone," he muttered. "Go away!"

The thudding began again. "Get the hell away from here," he screamed.

He heard someone try the door and tried to remember if he'd even bothered to lock the door. But of course he did, he might be losing his mind, but he was still paranoid and obsessive. There was a funny whine that tickled his ears, and then the door swung open. He stood up so sharply, the wobbly chair crashed backward, breaking one of the supporting rungs. He ignored it and struggled through the newspapers and pizza boxes, ready to fight for the right to suffer alone.

The man who had called himself the Doctor was standing in the space defined by the arc of an opening door, looking sorrowful, horrified and at the same time triumphant.

"What do you want from me?" Mulder demanded.

The Doctor's eyes were warm and full of feeling. "I'm so sorry."

The words hit Mulder so hard he clutched at his chest. No one had said that to him before. No one else had understood. "Thank you."

"They never found her?"

That was another, more painful blow. "Please." Mulder backed up a step.

"It was an alien abduction," the Doctor assured him, taking a step forward.

"Pleeeese," Mulder whined, backing up several steps.

"There are still trace amounts of radiation along Skyland Mountain," he persisted, following.

"Please, stop." Mulder pressed his hands to his ears.

"I recognised the signature. It was the-"

"For the love of God or whatever you call holy, stop!" Mulder staggered backward, falling into what was once his coffee table and for the last five years had been a staging area for any clues to Scully's whereabouts.

The Doctor held out both hands to help him up. "From what I learnt about you, I thought you always wanted the truth?"

"Yeah, well..." Mulder evaded his outstretched hands and settled on the arm of his futon, "there is wanting the truth and there is needing to stop banging my head against a wall."

The Doctor's face softened into a goofy smile.

Mulder glanced over his shoulder to see what would make his delusion smile. There was nothing but the tattered poster that once hung in his office.

"You humans are so funny." He made a wobbly circle with his hands. "That's not what spaceships look like. In the nine hundred years I've been traveling, I have never seen a spaceship that looked like something you'd put under a cup of tea."

"No, they look like big blue outhouses," Mulder said, and scrubbed his face with both hands. "Look, I really appreciate the sentiments, but I'm late for my nervous breakdown, so if you could excuse me..."

"You mean another one?" The Doctor looked around meaningfully.

That angered him. "You don't know a fucking thing about it. You don't know what my life's been like the last five years. You don't know how it feels for the only person who ever believed in you to be snatched out of your life, and not just your life, but her family's life, everyone's life. One minute she's there, the joy of anyone who knew her and the next...the next..." he felt himself choking up. "So take your smug face and go pull that techno/hocus pocus/disappearing act one...Skyland Mountain?"

"Yep," the Doctor said cheerfully. "Part of the Blue Ridge mountains."

Mulder lunged at him, grabbing his leather jacket. "How," he hissed, "did you know about Skyland Mountain?"

"That's where she was abducted, wasn't it? Although, technically, the Blue Ridge mountains are part of the Appalachian Mountains. Your own indigenous peoples called them-"

Mulder's fingers tightened on his jacket, the leather crinkling between them like electricity. "How...did you know...about Skyland Mountain?"

"I read it. In her file." He put his hands over Mulder's wrists. "Her...efffbeeeyii file."

"That's not possible," Mulder protested. "That file's been sealed for four and a half years. I can't even get into it."

The Doctor eased his hands away. "I read it. It's all there on the TARDIS. Want to come have a look?"

End Chapter One
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