TITLE: I'm Thinking As Loud As I Can - Chapter One - Trauma

NAME: Mik

E-MAIL: ccmcdoc@hotmail.com

CATEGORY: SRA

RATING: NC-17. M/Sk. This story contains slash i.e. m/m sex. So, if you don't like that type of thing – STOP NOW! Forewarned is forearmed. Proceed with caution. Of course if you have four arms you can throw caution to the wind.

SUMMARY: If you can't be mine, you won't be anyone's.

WARNING: Graphic depictions of violence and rape. And more graphic depictions of the aftermath of same. Certain aspects of this story are based on actual events. The names have been changed to harm Mulder.

ARCHIVE: Not to be archived without my permission.

FEEDBACK: Feedback? Well, yes, if you insist …

TIMESPAN/SPOILER WARNING: This is an AU, very vague spoilers for multiple episodes, nothing current.

KEYWORDS: story slash angst Skinner Mulder NC-17

DISCLAIMER: Fox Mulder, Walter Skinner, and all other X-Files characters belong to Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen Productions and 20^th Century Fox Broadcasting. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made from their use. I'd rather say that they really are mine, but I've been advised to deny everything. But when I am king…

Author's Notes: There is a prison where the walls cannot be scaled, the locks cannot be broke and the sentence is always life. It is the prison of a broken soul.

To a Dragon Princess and a Midwest Bearcat, for holding my hands through this process ... more thanks than I have words.

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.

I'm Thinking As Loud As I Can

Chapter One - Trauma

by Mik

They never really prepare you for these things, even when they take you aside and begin with that phrase...'You need to be prepared...'

I wanted to brush them all aside. My agent had been missing seventy-two hours, taken with apparent force from our own parking structure. A security guard found his topcoat and briefcase and a small splatter of blood in the space where his car was usually parked. For three days there had been no word, no hint, no breadcrumb or broken twig to reveal where he had been taken. No ransom demands. The silence was terrifying.

And now he had been found. Tied up, left for dead, in the trunk of his own car, parked on an isolated road in West Virginia. That he was found at all was miraculous, that he was found before he died defied words.

Thank God Agent Scully hadn't been in my office when the call came through that he had been located. She had been haunting my office since it began. She was just coming out of the elevator when the DCPD arrived and, once she assessed the situation, she stuck tight, if not in the parking structure watching them hunt for evidence, then perched on the sofa across from my desk, scowling a hole in my carpet. I couldn't get her to go home for food or sleep or a change of clothing. The only place she was willing to go was 'out there', that nebulous place, where he was. We didn't know where 'out there' was, but she was, by God, either going to be out there or in my office. It was only by giving her simple, and truly meaningless tasks that I managed to get her up and moving around occasionally.

I momentarily considered phoning her, but only momentarily, as I shrugged on my jacket over my own three-day-old shirt, and shoved badge, wallet, gun and keys into appropriate pockets and places, but quickly abandoned the idea. The word was he was in bad shape. I needed a definition for 'bad shape', although I had a pretty good idea that was pretty bad. I didn't want to run the risk of her getting to him and seeing him before I could soften the blow. She might be a doctor and inured to injury and illness, but this man was her partner, and I didn't think she was capable of being impartial and unmoved.

The hospital where he was taken was small and his injuries were beyond their scope. I don't mean to sound as if I'm mocking that backwoods little community, but I could see it in the young internist's eyes as he met me in the waiting room. He was terrified by the possibility of letting a patient's life slip through the cracks of their limited resources. "You need to be prepared..." he began.

I brushed him off impatiently, as I tucked my badge back into my coat pocket, after running a gauntlet of the curious, the morbid, and the press. "Where is he?" I didn't really need to ask. There were two police officers posted outside a door just down the corridor. I marched up to them and displayed my badge again. Both officers looked at me in a mix of awe and warning, but I ignored them and pushed my way into the room. And literally skidded to a stop. "My God, Mulder."

One leg was casted. Both arms were casted. His head was wrapped in some comical impersonation of an actor in a bad mummy movie. Huge black stitches crawled down his face from his left eye to his ear. His right eye was part of the mummification. His mouth also had a spider's web of stitches, and his lips were swollen to twice their normal size. His skin was mottled with bruises, the ones on his chest looked as if he'd been beaten with a baseball bat. There were also cigarette burns clearly visible on his belly and around one nipple. The other nipple appeared to have been crudely pierced with a thin wire loop. Added to all this, he was cradled in a multi-armed monster of wires and tubes, which was quietly breathing for him, and counting his heartbeat in a low, monotonous beep.

But more than all the individual injuries, there was an overwhelming miasma of the pure savagery of the attack.

I took my horrified inventory in one shocked sweep of my eyes, feeling bile rush to the back of my mouth. Like Agent Scully, I have seen plenty of death and dismemberment in my lifetime, I don't blanch easily, but this was one of my agents, taken literally under my eyes, and attacked for no reason that I could discern. Violence for cause I can deal with. Senseless violence has always disturbed me deeply. I turned away, and found the young internist at my side. He gestured me out of the room.

Outside I grabbed the arm of the first police officer. "Who did this?" I demanded through clenched teeth. "I want this son of a bitch found. And I want him crucified."

"Mr. Skinner." The doctor pulled me away.

"Who did this?" I repeated harshly. "Do we know who did this?"

"Mr. Skinner." He was trying to be patient but there was a level of urgency, possibly even fear in his voice that forced me to hear him.

I looked down at him. "Is he going to live?" I know the tone of my voice really said 'He'd damn well better live.'

He turned and gestured that I follow him into the On Duty's office. My heart sank like lead. That was where they took you to tell you there was no hope. No. I didn't want to go into that room. But he was standing there, trying to look kind, holding the door for me. Biting down hard on my lower lip I settled into the chair I was offered, and waited for the words. Mulder was no picnic to work with, but damn it, he deserved better than this.

"He is in very serious condition." The young man was rummaging over the desk in the corner. "As you can see, he has been severely beaten. Multiple broken bones, cuts, contusions, some internal bleeding and the onset of exposure. It was twenty-eight degrees last night," he added as if I might be interested by this little bit of trivia. "I believe he spent last night in the trunk of his car, naked. That's how he was found, this morning anyway."

"Oh, my God." The prayer was literally ripped from my throat.

He nodded, still not looking at me. "There were rope burns on his wrists, throat and ankles. Cigarette burns on his thighs, abdomen, and chest. His collarbone was broken in two places. Femur of his left leg, ulna of his left arm, ulna and radius of his right arm." His voice was flat as he recited these facts. "He had been beaten with a blunt object across his back with enough force to crack vertebrae as well as do some damage to his kidneys." He sighed and smiled a regretful small smile. "My guess, which is hardly an educated one, is that despite being tied, he put up one hell of a struggle."

I didn't even realize I was nodding. That was Mulder, all right. He never took anything lying down.

He reached for something on the desk, barely averting a landslide of charts and books and half filled paper coffee cups. "This, as you have no doubt discerned, is a small hospital, with very limited resources. His injuries are really much too severe for him to receive appropriate care here, but I wouldn't want to risk moving him." He glanced over his shoulder at me. "What would be best for him is to have the staff and equipment transported here."

In my mind, I was already making the necessary phone calls. "Then he will live?" I prompted impatiently.

"I think he will live." He brought a fresh manila folder to the table, fresh yet already marred with blood. He opened it as he sat, trying not to wince. It was clear from his expression that his remote little hospital had never seen injuries like these before. "I am a little more concerned about his life after he survives."

I swallowed. "What do you mean?" Mulder...one of the most cerebral men I'd ever known...a vegetable?

The young man's dark face grew darker and he measured his words very carefully. "There is also some evidence of sexual assault."

I reeled at the words. I know it happens, I know it is a horrifying reality to some woman every thirty seconds. But to think of a man being raped...to think of one of my agents...I forced myself not to let him see me react. I decided for a moment to think of something else, something proactive, something I could do. I stood slowly, opened the door, and gestured down the hall to one of the policemen providing him security.

The young man came toward me, looking earnest and anxious, a hand at his holster, a glance back at his partner. "Yes, Sir?"

"I want the press shut down. Now." I kept my voice calm and quiet, but the tone was unmistakably forceful. "Clear them out of here. Understood?"

He didn't, but he nodded because he understood he had been given an order. "Yes, Sir." He backed away from me, squared his shoulders and started marching toward the throng near the door.

I watched him for a moment. "Like Daniel going into the lion's den," I murmured, then turned back and shut the door. I came back and sat down and made myself look up at the doctor. "Do you think he will remember it?" I gestured toward the folder. "Given the extent of his injuries?"

He nodded, and there was a downturn of regret in his smile. "He remembers. When he was discovered, and the police officers attempted to lift him from the car trunk, he screamed and panicked."

Mulder? I had never seen Mulder panic before. I had seen him hotheaded, angry, occasionally afraid, high on adrenaline and out of his mind on drugs, but never panicked. I could feel my mouth going dry at the very image.

"When we tried to communicate with him in ER, he was completely non-responsive. He simply lay on the gurney and trembled, flinching any time any one of us touched him." He shook his head. "He hasn't spoken once. We didn't even know who he was until one of the officers on the scene ran the plates on his car and found there was an APB out for it." He gestured faintly. "That's when we contacted you."

"Were there any prints on the car? Any other physical evidence? Has he given a description of his assailant?" I stopped. That spoke to how discomfited I was. He hadn't spoken, the doctor just got through telling me that.

He stood. "You'll have to discuss that with the police."

"I will." I stood. "Thank you...Doctor...?"

He offered his hand. "Klimpratoom."

"Yes, Doctor Kl...um..."

He smiled faintly. "Dr. K."

"Dr. K." I hovered there, not knowing what to do, torn between a desire to run and hide from a grisly reality and to tear up the local environment until I had brought that animal to ground and driven a stake through the place where a heart should be. "I'll need to speak to the officers...is there a place...?"

He nodded. "You can use this office. I'll send someone with coffee. You look as if you could use it."

I thanked him and settled down at the cluttered table again, when something struck me. Whether accidentally or by design, Dr. K had left Mulder's chart there. I wondered for a moment about the ethicality of reading it, and then wondered what was in there that he couldn't bring himself to tell me.

I didn't actually touch the file at first. I merely changed seats so I could look at it. It wasn't until I started reading the description of certain injuries that I pulled it close to me and studied it. Brutal phrases leaped out at me. Phrases like 'bruising on the thighs, buttocks and anus consistent with forced entry' or 'traces of semen found near mouth, on back, buttocks and thigh, however not present in rectum' or, and to me the most frightening, 'traces of rust and iron shavings found in rectum, indicating rape with a foreign object, possibly a tire iron or iron pipe'. Oh, dear God, Mulder.

A young woman came in with a paper cup of coffee. I sat back from the table guiltily. She looked at me with eyes large with concern. But she said nothing. I thanked her gruffly. But it wasn't guilt that roughened my voice. It was tears.

*******************************************

It had been a long time since I had done any serious field work, but within two hours I had interviewed the two police officers who were initially on scene, almost the entire ER staff, had examined lists of the evidence taken both at the scene and from Mulder's body, and had organized a task force with both local staff and specialists brought down from DC. Before long, this regional medical center was crawling with 'Feds'.

Scully was on the scene as well. Despite my well intentioned suggestion that she stay in D.C., she came charging in, brushing past protesting nurses and security guards, waving her badge and sending her eyes around, missing no detail. It was immediately clear that her assessment of the hospital was the same as mine, insufficient for Mulder's needs. And she did not even yet know his needs.

And she did not miss me, as I stood in the doorway of the On Duty office, talking to the trauma physician I had flown in from Baltimore. "Sir," she said, as she approached me. "You said you needed a doctor for Agent Mulder." There was reproach in her voice, as if to remind me that she was a doctor.

"Yes, Agent." I indicated the tall, spare woman at my side. "This is Dr. Lemon. She's taking point on Mulder's medical care." I handed Dr. Lemon the folder. "This is Dr. Scully. She is Agent Mulder's partner."

Dr. Lemon, whose personality might have been colored by her name, gave us each a brisk nod and left, the medical chart tucked under her arm. Agent Scully made a move to follow her, but I put a hand on her arm. She wasn't ready to see Mulder yet. "Agent Scully. Agent Mulder is going to need you more as a friend right now."

She looked up. "What happened to him?" she demanded. I've never known a woman who can demand the way she does. She turned toward the hall again. "I want to see him."

I beckoned her into the office and shut the door. "Agent Scully...Dana..." I stopped. I didn't know how to tell her.

Using her given name was a mistake. I could see terror in her eyes. "Is he dead? Dying? Sir, what is his condition?"

"He is in very serious condition. He...it appears that he was...ah...beaten." I ran a hand over the back of my neck. "Tortured and...assaulted." The word stalled in my mouth, dragging the 's' out like an extended hiss.

"'Assaulted'," she repeated. Then her eyes grew as large and surprised as the young woman who caught me reading Mulder's folder. "Oh...Sir." She lowered her eyes, and color crept up her cheeks. She sent her eyes across the room. "How is he taking it?"

I sagged wearily. "Not well," I was forced to admit. "I've requested a psychologist from the New York Bureau to come down and evaluate him. I don't think he should be seen by one of his peers in DC."

"No, Sir." She was still avoiding my eyes. "I'd like to see him, Sir."

"Give Dr. Lemon a little time with him," I said, a suggestion bordering on an order.

"Yes, Sir." Shoving her hands in her pockets, she backed up, leaning against the dangerously over stacked desk, still keeping her gaze from mine. "What do the local people say?"

For a moment, all I could think about was a hundred medical charts and four ancient editions of Physicians' Desk References tumbling down and crushing her. "There isn't much to say. It was Mulder's car. It had been wiped, albeit clumsily, for prints, but we're having one of our guys go over it again. The ground was frozen last night but there was no frost, so they can't seem to pick up any footprints or tire tracks on or near where his car was found." I leaned back against the counter and looked down at her. Then looked away. "There is semen, of course, and they're trying to come up with a match in the DNA data banks."

She nodded with a jerk. "Has he said anything?"

I shook my head.

She drew in a long breath through that narrow nose. "I'd like to see the medical records, if I may, when Dr. Lemon is through."

"Agent Scully … be his friend," I repeated.

She finally looked up at me, and her eyes were as sharp as ever. "With all due respect, Sir, I am a trained investigator. It is possible I can find some...some...something in the medical records that Dr. Lemon could overlook."

She had a point. "Very well, Agent Scully. "

After that, I wasn't sure what we had left to say to one another, but we still stood there, because we didn't know what else to do. I went out for a few moments, to stretch my legs and look around the one story facility, and on my way back I brought two coffees from the machine in the lounge. She accepted hers and went to the table where I had gotten my illicit look at his medical records.

"Just how bad is it?" She lifted the plastic lid away carefully. "Have you any idea the nature and extent of the injuries? Or do you only know about the..." she stirred coffee for a moment. "...trauma?"

"It looks as if he was tied up and beaten with a blunt object, burned with cigarettes and..." I stopped. I still couldn't say it out loud.

"Why, Sir?"

"A very good question, Agent." I sighed and settled at the table opposite her. "And one you know we've been asking ourselves from the moment the abduction became apparent. We're running a check on anyone recently released or escaped from prison who might have a motive for such a personal attack. I know you have reviewed all of his current cases and there is nothing to suggest that any of them might have pushed someone to take such drastic measures. We're also trying to account for any change in Mulder's habits recently."

"Implying...what, Sir?" She pursed her lips in disapproval. "That he's gotten himself in trouble again? Or that he's doing something illegal after hours?"

"No, just looking for anyone who might have threatened him in some way recently." I gave her a very frank look.

She was shaking her head. "No...no one I can think of, Sir. He's been very well behaved of late. All he does is work and …" she paused thoughtfully. "There was a guy he was running with...they decided to train for the marathon together...but no...Mulder gave up on that a couple of weeks ago."

I jumped on it desperately. "Any reason why?"

She shook her head again. "I think he said he was going to be out of town the day of the race." She sipped coffee. "Aside from that, you know how he is. Work is his life."

"There has to be something," I averred. "Something more than just 'work'."

"Well, he does have a way of stepping on the wrong toes," she conceded. "No matter how hard he tries not to."

"It wasn't one of his...usual...conflicts," I said carefully. "And a random attack doesn't make any sense, either. It looks as if whoever it was knew Mulder, and knew his habits. Those security cameras pass his parking space every ten minutes. We've looked at the film for four hours prior to and an hour after he was taken. There is no sign of anyone lurking, yet he was approached, rendered helpless, put in his car and taken out of the parking structure in the ten minutes between camera sweeps. It must have been someone who knew Mulder leaves a little early on Tuesdays."

"What about the guard at the gate, Sir?" Scully prompted. "He would have noticed someone unauthorized driving Mulder's car, wouldn't he?"

I frowned. "Evidently the guard at that gate had gone to the bathroom, and left the gate on automatic. All this person would have to do is pass Mulder's badge over the scanner, and the gate would lift. If this was random, which we doubt, this person was very lucky."

"Or he had been stalking Mulder," she concluded.

"Yes." We finished our coffee in silence, the question still lingering between us, was this a random act of violence perpetrated against Mulder by unlucky chance, was it a ruthlessly plotted revenge by one of the hundreds of people Mulder had helped send to jail, or was it someone Mulder knew, trusted, invited into his life?

*******************************************

The investigation was adding up to a pile of negatives. No witnesses, no prints, no tire tracks, no known motive, no recently paroled or escaped convicts with a grudge, no matching DNA in the data banks. And no word from Mulder.

Dr. Lemon was extremely thorough in her examination, and gave me a long list of the equipment and medications she needed, along with a list of concerns about his limited level of care in that hospital, and even a faint hint that she felt Dr. K might not be as well trained 'as one of our doctors' but she could add nothing to Dr. K's original conclusions.

I was prepared to censure her for the suggestion of racism in her remarks, but then I realized it wasn't racism. She was an equal opportunity complainer.

She bristled at the idea of letting Scully read the charts. I admit Scully wasn't very patient or polite about demanding to see the records, but her nerves were pretty frayed by that point. I took Dr. Lemon aside and asked her to be charitable, that this man was Scully's partner and friend and she needed to feel she was helping. With a very benevolent air, Dr. Lemon surrendered the records, but hovered nearby as Scully studied. And after all of that, Scully found nothing to add to the original assessment. The irrefutable fact was the man had been beaten, brutalized and raped with a foreign object, in a very personal attack.

Dr. Lemon was certain that Mulder was capable of regaining and maintaining consciousness, but had not yet. She offered no explanation why, and would not until she had a portable CT scanner delivered. But she said there was no outward indication of brain damage. She managed to say it in a way that implied he was just being stubborn.

I had been at the hospital more than twelve hours before I could force myself back down that hallway and into the room. I don't know why I was afraid to look at him. Perhaps I was afraid he would open his eyes and look at me. I didn't want to reveal that I knew how he had been hurt. I didn't want him to see pity in my eyes. And I knew I couldn't keep it from him.

If anything, he looked worse when I got there. His face was a sickening purple now, bloated and battered. An NGT had been inserted in the nostril that was not swollen shut. His hands were clenched tight, either in pain or in the throes of memory, I wasn't sure. But I wanted to do something, so I reached for one hand, worked the fingers open and held firm as he clenched again. The grip wasn't weak, but one-sided, probably due to the broken bone on the outer side of his arm.

I'm not sure why it gave me comfort to do this, certainly it afforded me more comfort than him, if the bone-breaking spasm wrapped around my hand was anything to judge by. But this small, intimate gesture was the only way I could think to tell him I was on his side. He wasn't just going to be a case, an investigation, a number, a victim. I wanted him to know that I was, probably now more than any other case of my career, aware of the humanity behind the crime. I wasn't going to let him lose his.

Despite the grotesque affects of his injuries, I could still see the man I had known, admired, censured, complained about, bullied, disciplined and even...yes, even liked. Mulder had always been a difficult responsibility for me, but he was undeniably brilliant, and unquestionably dedicated to his beliefs. He was not capable of compromise, and he wasn't a coward. I had no doubt that, despite the viciousness of his attack, Mulder fought to the last. I didn't believe, as Dr. Lemon rather harshly implied, that he was hiding from reality. I believed, when he could, he'd face it head on.

Scully came into the room a few moments later. She saw him gripping my hand but made no comment. She came to the other side of the bed and looked down on him with such a tenderness that, for one moment, I wondered if there had been something more between them than the remarkable intimacy of their partnership. She reached out and brushed at his brow lightly, and smiled. Her eyes skittered to his knuckles, white against my hand. "That must hurt. He has quite a grip."

I nodded.

She took his other hand, and worked her tiny fingers into the spasms of his. We looked at each other and nodded. We were going to be partners in this.

*******************************************

We started sharing the vigil in his room. I sent Scully out to find a hotel room we could take turns using, and gave her instructions for a nap and to bring food when she returned. I pulled a chair to the side of the bed, and watched, willing him to somehow know that he wasn't alone. And he slept.

When Scully came back four hours later, looking slightly less worse for wear, I was still resistant to the idea of leaving him. Somehow I needed to be there when he finally surfaced. I needed him to know I was on top of it for him. But wiser heads prevailed. I ate the cold cheeseburger and drank a surprisingly good malt, took the key and returned to the little roadside hotel room she had acquired, just beyond the junction. Scully had cleverly gotten a room with two beds and a deep tub. 'That woman isn't paid enough,' I thought, looking down into it. I took a long soak and climbed into bed, making a mental note to stop at the Wal Mart on my way back for some clean socks and underwear.

This went on for three days. I had become well known at the Wal Mart, picking up sundries; shaving supplies, cold cream for Scully, even a pair of slacks and a sport shirt so I could send my suit out to be cleaned. We did it in six hour shifts, each of us spending a part of each day and each night with him. We watched him through exams and tests and endless stillness. His CT came back normal, amazingly enough. But he did not wake.

Slowly the bruising faded to a Crayola mixture of blues and yellows and greens. The burns on his skin looked less red, less swollen. Even his breathing became less labored. Still he did not wake.

It was ten o'clock Monday night, when he opened the one unbandaged eye. He made a little sound … not a cry, not a groan, just a little sound, and tried to lift his head. I started to rise from my chair, to see if I could help him, but the look in that one eye was enough to tell me I was the last person he wanted help from. He closed his eye, eased his head back and turned his face away from me as much as the bandages would allow.

I knew what he wanted was for me to have the good grace to get up and leave him to his pain and his shame, but I could not. I moved around the side of the bed and touched his hand. "Mulder?"

He remained still, his eye closed, his face expressionless.

I leaned over him. "Mulder, I know you're awake and can hear me," I said, quietly but firmly. "I just want you to know that we're going to get the bastard who did this. I've got the best people on it."

His eye shut tighter.

"Mulder?" I tried to keep my voice gentle, but there was an urgency inside me that I couldn't completely contain. He was the only one who could answer this question. "Mulder, do you know who did this to you?"

He was still for a moment, then gave his head one short shake.

And then I knew it with a cold conviction...he knew his attacker. And I ached all the way down to my shoes.

- END chapter 01 -
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